Bits

[rahne_everson]

• Michelle "Check on dem unamerican democrats" Bachmann continues to say stupid things, now over Obama's cap-and-trade proposal:
  
  "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.”
  
  You know, call me crazy, but I don't think Jefferson meant we should have a revolt over emissions trading. I think it was more like threats to our individual freedoms and liberties, not for, oh, Cargil so they can keep blasting tremendous amounts of corn smoke over Dayton. But hey, I'm a liberal Republican, so I'm a traitor amirite?
  
  
• Immensely cool robots are being tested in Afghanistan for combat:
  
  The BigDogs - four-legged robots that can navigate the country's treacherous terrain - and pilotless helicopters than can transport tons of supplies to very remote bases are just two of the new weapons being tested in Afghanistan.
  
  The war zone is increasingly becoming a development laboratory for machines that don't eat, sleep, polish their boots or suffer casualties. But can they succeed where man struggles?
  
  I think they will. Robots will never fully replace soldiers, but I seem them certainly replacing infantry and much ground forces. Of course, we have to keep Skynet locked away on that server-- hey who are you and what're doing with-- NO DON'T DO THA-- *static*
  
  It takes a moment for the senses even to comprehend BigDog, a four-legged robot that vaguely resembles a headless pack animal.
  
  The machine's creator, Boston Dynamics, has a motto - “dedicated to the way things move” - and that’s precisely what is both jarring and fascinating about its invention. Using a gasoline engine that emits an eerie lawnmower buzz, BigDog has animal-inspired articulated legs that absorb shock and recycle kinetic energy from one step to the next.
  
  Here's a video of it in action:
  

  Click to view

  
  It's clunky and kind comical the way it bounces on its feet, but it stays upright on uneven terrain. Still really cool.
  
  Enter the K-MAX, a remote-controlled helicopter designed to transport heavy loads - even in Afghanistan's high altitudes.
  
  The K-MAX's unique rotor design - two intermeshed rotors turning in opposite directions and slightly angled to prevent the blades from colliding - give this unmanned aircraft a distinct advantage.
  
  “All the energy goes into the lift and eliminates the need for the tail rotor,” said Frans Jurgens, spokesman for Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, which has partnered with Kaman Aerospace Corp. to manufacture the unmanned K-MAX aircraft.
  
  Here's a video:
  

  Click to view

  
  K-Max can lift 6,000 pounds by itself, and until now has been used by the logging industry to carry cargo in high altitudes. Unlike many unmanned aerial vehicles though, it still needs a visual confirmation, as the controller basically pilots it by remote control. I have high hopes, but some remain skeptical:
  
  "When you’re dealing with a small area and a very small margin of error, mountains, temperatures, and other factors like heavy unpredictable winds, it’s hard to believe unmanned flights could account for all the variables,” Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Smail, a pilot from Eagle Lift, the 7th battallion 101st Aviation Regiment, told FOXNews.com in a phone interview from Afghanistan.
  
  “Everything those troops have we’re responsible for bringing,” Smail said. “Not saying it can’t be done, I would just be skeptical.”
  
  Which are valid concerns, though it can be programmed to deal with common wind and weather patterns in the areas it'll be flying. As soon as we develop computers that can learn on their own however, that'll be a piece of cake.
  
  
• As the automobile market falls apart across the globe, Sweden has decided it isn't going to help Saab, a move that has confused and worried many:
  
  Why is the government apparently dead set against helping Saab, an iconic brand that stands as a global symbol of Sweden, with Ikea, Volvo and Abba?
  
  That is what Paul Akerlund, the local chairman of the automobile workers’ union, wonders.
  
  “I’m a little surprised,” he said. “They say the market should help itself, but the market has collapsed around the whole world. It’s an extraordinary situation.”
  
  He added, with a note of accusation in his voice, “In Germany, France and England, the government is going in to help the car manufacturers.”
  
  But Swedish officials say "NO U":
  
  [A]s the enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, put it recently, “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
  
  ...
  
  Swedish officials have condemned what they see as protectionism by other European countries that have pledged to prop up their own failing car industries.
  
  All of which is incredibly weird given Sweden's traditionally hardline socialist state. But they seem to be have other beefs that have contributed to the decision, notably their anger at GM:
  
  They have also been scathing about General Motors, Saab’s owner, and the last thing they want is to seem to be bailing out a despised foreign company.
  
  Struggling for its own survival, G.M. has said it will completely pull out of Saab by the end of 2009, a course that Ms. Olofsson, the enterprise minister, described as tantamount to declaring “that they wash their hands of Saab and drop it into the laps of the Swedish taxpayers.”
  
  She said: “We are very disappointed in G.M., but we are not prepared to risk taxpayers’ money. This is not a game of Monopoly.”
  
  ...
  
  Saab was always known for its innovative engineering. But analysts say that in recent years, with General Motors’s emphasis on volume rather than individuality, it has lost its edge.
  
  “Under G.M.’s ownership, they denuded the intellectual content behind the brand,” said Peter Wells, who teaches at Cardiff Business School in Wales and specializes in the automotive industry. “Its products are not exciting enough, and Saab doesn’t have a strong brand identity anymore.”
  
  And Sweden has a more right-leaning government elected in 2006 that prefer market forces to handle things instead of the state. Frankly though, socialism is incredibly entrenched in Sweden, so I don't see how allowing Saab, a national icon and company that employs thousands in the country, is going to aide in a transition to capitalism. I can understand that you're pissed at GM, but by not keeping Saab afloat at least for the time being, the situation is only going to get worse. Like with Trollhattan, a small community of 54,000 that Saab employs 4,000 from. The town is also home to the Saab Museum where an average of 50,000 tourists a year visit to take the tour.
  
  But the prospect of failure is too awful for Trollhattan’s mayor, Gert-Inge Andersson, to even contemplate....
  
  “I’m being optimistic, because I can’t envision a time when Saab doesn’t exist,” Mr. Andersson said in an interview in City Hall.
  
  His son worked at Saab for a decade; his daughter’s boyfriend works there now. “Saab is our identity,” he said. “We have lived with it for many years, and it’s very important to all of us.”
  
  Depressions really are a bitch.
  
  
• Texas is just filled with all sorts of problems thanks to the creationist dimwits. The Texas Freedom Network reports on a new bill in their state legislature that may override any attempt by the SBOE to improve the science standards:
  
  House Bill 4224 by state Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, is a full frontal assault on science education in Texas. The bill would open the door to teaching public school students almost any cockamamie concept that any crackpot wants to portray as “science,” regardless of what mainstream scientists and school administrators have to say about it.
  
  The bill inserts directly into the Texas Education Code a requirement that students learn “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. It also forbids any governmental entity from stopping a teacher who offers just about any argument he or she wants against a scientific theory so long as the teacher portrays it as based on “scientific evidence and information.”
  
  In other words, it's another bullshit solution to the nonproblem of academic freedom. God I hate these... There's no reason to ever think that the government is interfering with a teacher's ability to teach, there's just the appearance of such to the IDiots and creationists because they're bullshit isn't getting taught as science in science classrooms. It's a contrived and manufactured problem, that's all.
  
  Here's the text of the bill, and I've copied the relevant section:
  
  (d) No governmental entity shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students to understand, analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.
  
  They don't. /legislation.
  
  
• Don "Spiders don't come from rocks by nothing" McLeroy, the creationist dentist and chairman of the Texas SBOE, endorses a book:
  
  In critiquing the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) missionary evolution tract-Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, he identifies their theft of true science by their intentional neglect of other valid scientific possibilities. Then, using NAS’s own statements, he demonstrates that the great “process” of evolution-natural selection-is nothing more than a figure of speech. These chapters alone are worth the reading of this book.
  
  lol The book, by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., is called Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They’re Descended from Reptiles. That says it all right there.
  
  The whole thing is online, so you can read the crazy for free. As the title suggests, he equates evolution with atheism, calling it "evoatheism" (lolwut?) and says that the National Academy of Sciences is perpetrating a war against God and the true science of the Creator. Or think Expelled on steroids. And this is what the chairman of a state education board likes. What the hell is wrong with this picture?
  
  People from the Texas Freedom Network bravely dived in, and pulled out wonderful gems like:
  
  Out of millions of species on this planet, the evo-atheists cannot specifically trace back the “evolutionary” ancestry of one of them even a single “evolutionary” generation. That’s an ugly embarrassment and an ugly fact. The NAS [National Academy of Sciences] writers have to slap some lipstick on their “no-evidence” pig.
  
  Johnson seems to love pigs, because he keeps referring to them:
  
  The NAS hierarchy knows how ugly their atheism looks to the God-fearing citizens of America, so they’ve got to smear a lot of lipstick on their atheist hog.
  
  Sarah Palin? Oh wait, sorry, I misspoke.
  
  But wait! There's more!
  
  The NAS writers express the taboo in their book thus:
  
  ". . . arguments that attempt to confuse students by suggesting that there are fundamental weaknesses in the science of evolution are unwarranted . . ."
  
  If we take out the dependent clauses, leaving just the subject and predicate, we have “arguments are unwarranted.” The arguments to which they refer are coming from the creationists and those who espouse intelligent design. The NAS writers mean that creationist and intelligent design arguments are forbidden. That’s the taboo.
  
  And:
  
  Their arbitrary staining, or tainting, of all nature with their atheism is an important part of their “scientific method.” The hierarchy of the NAS has stolen true science; they are sacrificing our children to their atheism, and at the same time, destroying our children’s faith in God.
  
  And~!
  
  The Greek word translated as stupid is moron, where we get our word for a mentally dull and sluggish person. In my judgment, only morons-more than 11,500 morons in this case-could sign a letter maintaining that the “timeless truths of the Bible” are compatible with the billions of unpredictable aberrations of evo-atheism. What do these apostate morons celebrate at their Sunday services, the lies about humanity’s origins told by Moses, Jesus, and Paul?
  
  AND!
  
  What kind of monster parents teach their children that they’re descended from rodents and reptiles?
  
  Wow! I think I just came in my pants! Wait... wait, no, that's the aneurysm finally bursting in my head and making me delirious... ooo, sparkly... *crashes onto computer*