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Of particular interest is the press release by the Space Telescope Science Institute - the research arm of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope - promoting the claim that NGC 4319 is not connected by a filament to Markarian 205, the object next to it. These press releases appear to be a case of scientific fraud insofar as they point the readers to visible light photographs from the Hubble instead of the far more radio-deep imagery produced on much less expensive, even amateur, CCD telescopes.

Markarian 205 was reported by Weedman as a Seyfert nucleus appearing within the arms of the lower-redshift spiral galaxy NGC 4319. Most of the argument here has centered on whether or not there is a visible connection between the two. Pictures were published with and without a bridge (Arp once said that he had pictures that showed no bridge as well, and didn't want to be thought lacking in observational skill). There was some early discussion of photographic proximity effects creating false bridges between bright objects, but it doesn't go away with linear detectors. Various reports were given by Arp 1971 (ApLett 9,1), Lynds and Millikan 1972 (ApJLett 176, L5), Stockton et al 1979 (ApJ 231, 673), and Sulentic 1983 (ApJLett 265, L49). Cecil and Stockton (1985 ApJ 288, 201) used CCD data from Mauna Kea to show that there is definitely some kind of luminous object between Mkn 205 and NGC 4319, stating that "Arp was correct in his insistence that his broad-band plates showed luminous intervening material. The opposite conclusions of his critics were - depending on their degree of qualification - either wrong, misleading, or irrelevant."

Arp commented:

"We realized that ... the people who had been processing the pictures and released it must have known that the bridge was there, and yet they chose to try to convince the public that ... in fact it wasn't there, and that everything was right with the current expanding universe paradigm."

Realize that they could have argued that the radio filament was a background object, a "chance" observation. They didn't. They literally said that the filament is not there. But, the filament clearly shows up on CCD imagery - just not the optical.

The public needs to think more clearly about what has happened here. I was able to even get Ethan Siegal, one of the world's most vocal proponents of the Big Bang, to agree with me that something is not right about this particular situation.

A list of vindications for Halton Arp:

In most of these cases, cosmologists and science journalists point the public to ad hoc extensions of the Big Bang. Yet, their original model did not predict these observations.

1. Alignment of quasar minor axes (vindication of Arp ejection model)

"The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars’ rotation axes were aligned with each other -- despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years"

2. Numerous apparent interactions of objects of wildly different redshifts (not possible with Big Bang, vindication of Arp)

For example, NGC 7603, NGC 4319 and NGC 3628, just to name three. There are many, many more at this point. See the first part of the Universe: Cosmology Quest documentary and Arp's Intrinsic Redshift lecture for a more thorough treatment.

Of particular interest is the press release by the Space Telescope Science Institute - the research arm of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope - promoting the claim that NGC 4319 is not connected by a filament to Markarian 205, the object next to it. These press releases appear to be a case of scientific fraud insofar as they point the readers to visible light photographs from the Hubble instead of the far more radio-deep imagery produced on much less expensive, even amateur, CCD telescopes.

Markarian 205 was reported by Weedman as a Seyfert nucleus appearing within the arms of the lower-redshift spiral galaxy NGC 4319. Most of the argument here has centered on whether or not there is a visible connection between the two. Pictures were published with and without a bridge (Arp once said that he had pictures that showed no bridge as well, and didn't want to be thought lacking in observational skill). There was some early discussion of photographic proximity effects creating false bridges between bright objects, but it doesn't go away with linear detectors. Various reports were given by Arp 1971 (ApLett 9,1), Lynds and Millikan 1972 (ApJLett 176, L5), Stockton et al 1979 (ApJ 231, 673), and Sulentic 1983 (ApJLett 265, L49). Cecil and Stockton (1985 ApJ 288, 201) used CCD data from Mauna Kea to show that there is definitely some kind of luminous object between Mkn 205 and NGC 4319, stating that "Arp was correct in his insistence that his broad-band plates showed luminous intervening material. The opposite conclusions of his critics were - depending on their degree of qualification - either wrong, misleading, or irrelevant."

Arp commented:

"We realized that ... the people who had been processing the pictures and released it must have known that the bridge was there, and yet they chose to try to convince the public that ... in fact it wasn't there, and that everything was right with the current expanding universe paradigm."

3. Numerous instances where high-redshift quasars appear aligned with the axes of low-redshift "foreground" galaxies (statistics indicate this occurs far too often for a strict recession velocity interpretation of redshift)

Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, by Halton Arp (1987)

"To summarize this initial chapter, I would emphasize that with the known densities with which quasars of different apparent brightness are distributed over the sky, one can compute what are the chances of finding by accident a quasar at a c

Hold on a second... so they just discovered the Galaxy is surrounded by gas that's the same temperature as the surface of the sun, and is 300,000 lightyears across... possibly extending far into other galaxies... I'm going to take a wild stab here and say that, if that's true it probably pervades the entire universe... Isn't this the biggest scientific discovery in the past decade? What effect does this have on Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc... etc...

It has been known for a long time that the intergalactic medium is hot enough to be ionized. That part is not news. The thing that's news is that the hot gas makes it possible to account for the baryons in the Milky Way halo, which were previously undetected.

Read the first couple pages of this and then tell me that this verdict is going to get overturned on appeal for jury misconduct.

It is very hard to toss out a jury verdict. (In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law) (Seventh Amendment).

This will get appealed to the Federal Circuit, and if Samsung wins, it will be on grounds other than the fact that the jury foreman had an axe to grind. I'm not aware of any issue in this case so juicy that the Supreme Court is likely to take it up.

The green colour mentioned in the article is simply the fact that hot oxygen emits radiation at a specific wavelength that is not actually green, but has to be represented as a colour in telescope images for us to view. This wavelength just happens to be represented as green by Hubble. It was Blue in the galaxyzoo image (supplied by the Sloan automatic survey scope).

It really is green, see http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/voorwerp.html. Blue is

http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/voting/approval.htm
http://www.tursiops.cc/idhop/av/
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html

"The full precipitating causes may never be known, but one February night in 1970 a McDonald Observatory employee (not a Texan, but an Ohioan newly hired from another observatory!) suffered a breakdown and carried a pistol to the observing floor of the 107-inch telescope. He fired a shot at his supervisor, and then unloaded the rest of the clip into the primary mirror. Happily, fused silica is more resilent than ordinary glass, and the big mirror did not break. The craters have been bored out and painted black to reduce any light-scattering effect, and the end result is simply a slight reduction in the efficiency of the telescope. It is now the equivalent of a 106-inch telescope. The incident made the national television news..."

Taken from http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/telescopes/mcdonald.html

Wrong on both counts.
The Ninth Ward dates back to the early 19th century, and many of the areas that were hard-hit were just or nearly as old as the high-and-dry French Quarter.

Compare:
Historical NOLA Maps
http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/louisiana/NewOrleans.htm
Katrina Flood Maps
http://www.katrina.noaa.gov/maps/images/katrina-flood-depth-estimation-08-31-2005.jpg

Regardless, the question is sort of moot- inhabited areas have become radically more flood-prone in the last 100 years due to federal and Army Corp damming and canaling projects, which have decimated Louisiana's wetlands, the best defense against large-scale flooding. Ask the EPA: http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/Flooding.pdf

Humans aren't capable of long distance running 'in the wild' so to speak. In the context of Savannah marathons, we'd be dehydrated severely after a few miles. We have great cooling but it comes at a huge cost, it uses a lot of sweat up. If you run 5 miles in the blazing hot African sun without stopping to drink and there's no water at your destination, you're finished. Most mammals which don't use heavy sweating will have to stop in the shade a often to cool down when running distances but won't be as much at risk of dehydration.

We're designed for running in hot weather but not distance running.

Do you have any evidence at all for your beliefs, or are you just being obstinate? Because you might have a problem running 5 miles in the desert, humans are physically incapable of it?

The abstract of this scientific paper says that "The Tarahumara Indians of Northwestern Mexico have long been famous as endurance runners. These capabilities are best displayed in the traditional Tarahumara sport of kick-ball racing. Participants in such races may cover up to 100 miles in 24 hours and races lasting 48 hours are not uncommon."

There's been some hubbub the past several days about these Tarahumara Indians, but this is well-known in anthropological circles ( the "science of man"), and its not controversial. Do a little googling, it's very interesting.

Here's another referenced research paper that provides evidence for long-distance running, also in cold weather places like Greenland.

Folks ask, "Why the rush?" to get time on the Hubble and other instruments.

Simply put, astronomical events can be extremely short lived. Yes, it happened millions of years ago. And it could continue for millions of years. But just as it appeared, it could go out.

Think what happens to novas and super novas. They blink into existence and then disappear. The same could happen here. Having never seen this class of voorwerp (object, thing, etc.), it is possible it could go out tomorrow or change dramatically in way which would make baseline data of the current status incredibly valuable.

Going a bit off topic here, I have to say it is totally cool to see a reference to my old friend and fellow Geek, Bill Keel here on Slashdot.

Bill and I attended UC Santa Cruz in the 1980s. I entered as a Freshman while Bill was finishing up his Phd in Astronomy (by the way, UC Santa has the top graduate program in Astronomy).

Even then he was the galaxy nerd and his dissertation was on the topic of, if I remember correctly, formation of spiral galaxies. I remember helping him with nroff and troff as he put his dissertation together.

During his Post-Doc years, he would come back frequently to perform observations at Lick Observatory (above San Jose) and to crunch data using a program written in Forth that ran on a handful of systems in the world (one of which was at UCSC).

Our friendship continued over the years (I was even one of his groomsmen).

Bill is a passionate teacher and researcher. He is very supportive of amateur astronomy (one of the few fields left where a non-professional, non-academic can have a major impact).

If you want to learn more about galaxies, check out one of his many web pages here: http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/galaxies/.

I've been to Casa Grande in Arizona, and Moundville in Alabama. Also, to another place with long squiggly mounds like giant snakes, somewhere in southern Ohio - I don't remember the name.

We have been working on developing computer games for K-12 students to learn chemistry-related concepts here at the University of Alabama, and at least our test subjects seem to find them fun and helpful.

http://www.mint.ua.edu/games/

I'm not directly involved with assessment of what the kids thought though, so I don't have the hard data at hand, and I can only say that I found them neat. More and more, academics are being pressured to perform this kind of outreach ... which I don't disagree with. By the time I see college freshman, it is sometimes very hard to undo the damage of years of neglect in public schools.

posted AC for obvious reasons. and yes, we have computers *and* programmers in Alabama (cf discussion yesterday ...)

just finished compiling the last... wait

Well, since you're the last user to finish compiling wait, I suppose you don't have much use for wait then, do you?

As much as I'd like to claim credit for my alma mater and this project, the authors didn't check the facts thoroughly. The university involved is the University of Alabama in Huntsville, not The University of Alabama. The University of Alabama is located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and boasts its own ranked engineering programs.

Let's give the Huntsville program its due.

You laugh, but while I was in undergrad in Tuscaloosa, they had a few traffic signal cameras around town and displayed the feeds on a cable channel (so you could monitor traffic conditions, what not). Some state trooper from out of town was in the office controlling the cameras and was zooming in on college girls on the sidewalks, following them around with the cameras completely oblivious to the fact that these cameras were broadcasting. Here's the writeup in the school paper: http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/1 2/3f629e6e6a1fd?template=pda

Maybe you should look at the US again. Smaller area yes, 800 year old culture nope: http://moundville.ua.edu/sketch.html

But if you rob someone with a pretend gun you can still be charged armed robbery. see http://www.law.ua.edu/colquitt/crimmain/crimcase/g arza.htm Even pointing a fake gun at someone can be a crime, so that part of your plan might not work. see http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/i s_20050108/ai_n10043840

this is nothing new: it started before the WWI and now there are dozens of companies, universities or hobbyist doing it. It is called: "content analysis", "data mining", "discourse analysis" etc. There is a legend that sais that British intelligence managed to predict quite acurately airstrikes on England based on content analysis of Goebels' radio speeches. Take a look at this links if you are interested. Bibliography of Content Analysis Listings from Communication Abstracts, 1990-1997 Content Analysis Resources web site Text Analysis Info Page - all on text analysis and related topics The discourse analysis page of AI Topics Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP) Département de science politique, Université Laval The Center for Social Research Methods: not necesarily content analysis, but it's good to take a look at Research Methods Knowledge Base The Annenberg School for Communication Web Concordances at the English Department of the University of Dundee Companion Website for the book Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus Journal: Language Awareness; has some free issues/articles. The General Inquirer Home Page Journal of Second Language Writing Writing Guides: Conducting Content Analysis at Colorado State University; with a nice adnotated bibliography The Content Analysis Guidebook Online, An Accompaniament to The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberley A. Neuendorf. The Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Literary and Linguistic Computing eximancer - Practical Text Mining and Concept Mapping Journal Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation: some online articles Content Analysis News and Discussion mailing list archives some Resources related to content analysis and text analysis; updated quite recently: June 30, 2005;

this is nothing new: it started before the WWI and now there are dozens of companies, universities or hobbyist doing it. It is called: "content analysis", "data mining", "discourse analysis" etc. There is a legend that sais that British intelligence managed to predict quite acurately airstrikes on England based on content analysis of Goebels' radio speeches. Take a look at this links if you are interested. Bibliography of Content Analysis Listings from Communication Abstracts, 1990-1997 Content Analysis Resources web site Text Analysis Info Page - all on text analysis and related topics The discourse analysis page of AI Topics Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP) Département de science politique, Université Laval The Center for Social Research Methods: not necesarily content analysis, but it's good to take a look at Research Methods Knowledge Base The Annenberg School for Communication Web Concordances at the English Department of the University of Dundee Companion Website for the book Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus Journal: Language Awareness; has some free issues/articles. The General Inquirer Home Page Journal of Second Language Writing Writing Guides: Conducting Content Analysis at Colorado State University; with a nice adnotated bibliography The Content Analysis Guidebook Online, An Accompaniament to The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberley A. Neuendorf. The Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Literary and Linguistic Computing eximancer - Practical Text Mining and Concept Mapping Journal Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation: some online articles Content Analysis News and Discussion mailing list archives some Resources related to content analysis and text analysis; updated quite recently: June 30, 2005;

Studies showing correlations between violent video games and hostility:

One by the University of Oklahoma Medical School:
http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%20 1.pdf

One by the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development:
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content _storage_01/0000000b/80/0d/ba/44.pdf

Here is an interesting study that challenges the correlation vs. causation argument. It basically states violent video games induce violent tendencies (not necessarily behavior).
http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/672%20Bushman%20&%20A nderson%202002.pdf

There's no reason to be frightened. The Wikipedia section you quoted does not address it. On the other hand, many easily found university style guides do address it. There are more. Feel free to browse.

Too late, already been done. Note BB's response to the security issues- this is one of the major problems I have with them.

Maybe it's just that most slashdotters don't read articles, but I did read the article and it seems an environmental problem of some concern.

Invasive species are a big problem. Those who deal with kudzu in the Southeastern US or zebra mussels in the Great Lakes know this.

Selected quotes from http://www.cptr.ua.edu/kudzu/ "Kudzu was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control. Hundreds of young men were given work planting kudzu through the Civilian Conservation Corps. Farmers were paid as much as eight dollars an acre as incentive to plant fields of the vines in the 1940s. The problem is that it just grows too well! The climate of the Southeastern U.S. is perfect for kudzu. The vines grow as much as a foot per day during summer months, climbing trees, power poles, and anything else they contact. Under ideal conditions kudzu vines can grow sixty feet each year. While they help prevent erosion, the vines can also destroy valuable forests by preventing trees from getting sunlight. This problem led Dr. James H. Miller of the U.S. Forest Service in Auburn, Alabama to research methods for killing kudzu. In eighteen years of research, he has found that one herbicide actually makes kudzu grow better while many have little effect. Miller recommends repeated herbicide treatments for at least four years, but some kudzu plants may take as long as ten years to kill, even with the most effective herbicides." Great job security move, guys...introduce a solution that will require yet another solution that will require... How much harder is it to eliminate giant prehistoric elephant herds that grow out of control, and how is this going to effect the ecosystem of the North American continent.

The Apollo moon missions were observed telescopically by both amateur and professional astronomers. A terrestrial observatory even provided critical tracking information for Apollo 13's final course correction.

Kudzu grows as fast as one foot per day.

If only beer grew this fast in the wild!

You could try growing Kudzu, that seems like it fends for itself pretty well. Also, you are not going to be hassled by your fellow cubicle mates asking for cuttings; they'll get them whether they want them or not. If they've got their own plants already, well that's just too bad... Best of all, if you are running Red Hat it will even configure your hardware for you, so there's a definite geek connection too... ;)

Here is a moderately comprehensive index of women scientists throughout history. Some names are linked to biographies.

The woman who commands most of my respect, geek-wise, was Mary Annings. She discovered her first new species of dinosaur at age 12, and a second at age 20. She made a living collecting
(and extracting as necessary) fossils, which she sorted and indexed. It is said that she inspired the tounge-twister "she sells sea-shells by the sea shore". Anyone who can run their own business at age 12, AND make enough to feed herself and her siblings, AND have enough time to recognise a new discovery, is deserving of enormous respect.

There are two women in history I respect as leaders. Margret Thatcher, although I despised her policies, has few equals when it comes to getting things done.

However, Britain has had one female ruler who was stonger still. Bodicca (also known as Queen Bodaccea) was betrayed, abused, molested and torured and her father (the King at the time) was savagely murdered in front of her. The tribe she belonged to (the Icini) were scattered and - if caught - butchered. She managed to gather the survivors up, get herself accepted as ruler, turn them into a near-invincible fighting force, and kicked the Imperial Roman army very nearly out of Britain entirely. Most British currancy today bears the figure of a woman in iron-age battle-dress. This figure is derived from the historical Bodicca. Even the legend of "Robin Hood" hasn't had that kind of a grasp on society.

To me, it seems obvious that women have been significant in many disciplines, throughout history. It begs the question of how much further along society could have been if more had been encouraged. Given the sheer number of names on the list, it also begs the question of why feminists are NOT pointing to such an established, proven history to push for greater equality. The future isn't known, but the past is.

Example of human fuckery (a bad thing): Kudzu.

Read up on both and tell me that the latter is a simple matter of "survival of the fittest".

Cool link on just what the potential of the human body is. http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant475/Papers/Batt les.pdf

I made some these bits of electronic music as far back as 1990, how come I'm not on the list?

Itch (commodore 64)
Sounds of Selene (c64, vocals)
A Ship Defines the Ocean (tape manipulations of guitar, keyboard, home-made wind instruments)

I made some these bits of electronic music as far back as 1990, how come I'm not on the list?

Itch (commodore 64)
Sounds of Selene (c64, vocals)
A Ship Defines the Ocean (tape manipulations of guitar, keyboard, home-made wind instruments)

I made some these bits of electronic music as far back as 1990, how come I'm not on the list?

Itch (commodore 64)
Sounds of Selene (c64, vocals)
A Ship Defines the Ocean (tape manipulations of guitar, keyboard, home-made wind instruments)

Nah, the reason we don't eat people is more likely the diseases like kuru. Or perhaps because the symbolic kind of cannibalism practiced in Catholicism is just less messy.

Tell that to the people being overrun by kudzu.
Burn it, it grows back. Salt the earth, it grows back. Spray herbicide, it grows faster! The only way to get rid of it is to dig up and destroy every single root.

Until an entire field is covered in it...then several...then a large township...etc. It's not a problem to kill a golf course green with a shovel or burning it, but are you going to do the same with fields and larger?

Look up the history of Kudzu for an example of something that once was thought of a great idea, now everyone hates it.

The human form of the disease was first observed among the natives of New Guinea in the early 1900's. The tribal custom was to consume the bodies of decedents, and the consumption the brain was a special honor reserved for immediate family. It was in this way that a minor epidemic began.

And frankly, that sucks. I've been a fan of The Simpsons show since the first episode in 1989, so I've seen it decline. At this point, the movie might not suck if it was 2D. But live-action/CGI won't cut it.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut did well, because it was an extention of the show. Imagine if the South Park movie was live-action: it would've tanked.

Hopefully Groening and co. will pull this off, but I have my doubts...

Everybody here seems to assume that any Orkut member has the ability to create other Orkut members (by invitation), but neither the CNN story nor the Orkut website itself supports that assumption.

Many here have issued blanket condemnations of this scheme, based on the idea that a few members could ruin the system by inviting undesirables into the elite club.

If somebody here knows authoritatively what system Orkut is using, would they please speak up?

On the other hand, what system WOULD work the best?

• Approval voting?
• Let each member sell their membership to the highest bidder?
• Something else?

On how I didn't put the cover sheet on my TPS Reports. So I decided to go into construction instead.

Here is the answer you need, courtesy of your favorite search engine.
http://www.cptr.ua.edu/kudzu/

One of the things he noticed was that galaxies happen in statistically significant concentric shells, at least according to the redshifts. One of the less heated discussions I've seen of the consequences is at the University of Alabama's Astronomy department. Bill Keel, the astronomer here commenting, finishes "The evidence in favor of the standard picture is hardly compelling [...]. It survives mostly because nothing better has shown up;". Bill is the bloke who (which Ray White) brought us the silhouetted galaxy shot from Hubble, and has a huge collection of astronomically interesting stuff on his site.

Haven't these loons ever heard of Kudzu?

You can see Un Chien Andalou here, enjoy!!!

In America *TODAY*: Liberals want to socialize everything this IMHO is a terrible idea. Liberals also are pushing PC garbage like They also tend to be mush more UN focused (again I am not too fond of the UN telling the US what to do) and by their willingness to vote 'Green' which is an international party that does not put US interest first.

In America *TODAY*: Conservatives want to reduce the federal government bleed into states rights (the main difference between Libs and Cons is the 2nd and 10th). Conservatives today more line up with the founding fathers than Liberals do otherwise socialized healthcare, and federal school programs would bu in the constitution.

The most dangerous group in America is the Populist this is a group that says what 70% and above want to hear Bill Clinton and GW are both Populist. They are dangerous because they have no fixed set of values just what makes them feel nice to say.

Right now DC is run by populist from both parties and that is what's scary. Conservatives did not want homeland security it violates the 10th in so many ways and liberal did not want to vote to give bush war powers (which almost all D's did).

Me I left the Republican party after I saw it would never go back to respecting conservatives (we are treated like the Democrats treat minorities 'come vote for us and we will throw you crumbs') and am joining the Constitutionalist.

bittorrent, enjoy

Psycho Headlights

I don't know who's car it was, but my friend and I filmed it (however poorly) outside my old college dorm. This car's pretty old, so I would guess it's more likely a mechanical glitch than a software one, but maybe someone out there's seen this type of thing before and knows what causes it?

People also thought Kudzu was a good idea. Now it's devouring the entire southeastern United States.

Oh, piffle. All it takes is a little care and preparation of the meat.

Now if we could just get Peggy Whitson to flash us! Does anyone know whether the U.S. Naval Observatory Telescope is open on the morning of the 6th?