Sep 28 2008

Enjoy these next few months…

Category: science — sardonicwhiner @ 6:17 pm

Hawaii judge stops doomsday lawsuit over collider | Science and Environment | Jerusalem Post

A federal judge in Hawaii has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the world’s largest atom smasher.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported that a US District court judge says in a ruling issued Friday that federal courts don’t have jurisdiction over the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Two Hawaii residents sued because they feared the machine could create black holes or other phenomena that could destroy the planet.

Most physicists say the collider is safe. It started low-power operation Sept. 10 but suffered malfunctions and will be shut down until spring.

Maybe the federal bailout of Wall Street won’t matter so much after all….

UPDATE:  Some folks are claiming the collider will create energies not seen since the Big Bang….

And thanks to Robbie, who pointed out this to me:

Large Hadron Rap

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Sep 28 2008

Private Space Flight gets closer

Category: economy,energy,science,space,technology — harmonicminer @ 6:09 pm

Unless I am mistaken, this is the first time a non-governmental organization or business has managed to put anything in orbit.

An Internet entrepreneur’s latest effort to make space launch more affordable paid off Sunday when his commercial rocket carrying a dummy payload was lofted into orbit.

It was the fourth attempt by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to launch its two-stage Falcon 1 rocket into orbit.

The Hawthorne, California-based rocket maker was started by multimillionaire Elon Musk, who made his fortune as co-founder of the PayPal Inc. electronic payment system.

The rocket carried a 364-pound (165-kilogram) dummy payload designed and built by SpaceX for the launch.

Wow. Harbinger of things to come, I hope.

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Sep 28 2008

Some inconvenient truths about racial preferences and affirmative action/diversity policies

Category: affirmative action,diversity,education,higher education,liberty,multi-cultural — harmonicminer @ 9:35 am

Here are the first few paragraphs of a scholarly paper presented at “Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the California Association of Scholars and cosponsored by the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and the Center for Equal Opportunity, held January 19, 2008, at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. The title of the paper is The Effects of Proposition 209 on California: Higher Education, Public Employment, and Contracting 09/25/2008 Charles L. Geshekter

In 1996, Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 209 that prohibited all state agencies from using anyone’s race, ethnicity, or gender to discriminate against them or give them preference in university admissions, public employment, or competition for a state contract.

Those who opposed Proposition 209 predicted that ending racial or gender favoritism would result in sharp declines in black and Hispanic college enrollments, setbacks for women in public employment, reduced funds for cancer detection centers and domestic violence shelters, or other alarmingly negative effects.

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