Archives for April 2013

James Demopoulos passed away Saturday night on his 75th birthday. That statement means almost nothing to anyone. Please allow me to rephrase; Jimmy Damon passed away Saturday night on his 75th birthday. That statement will ring loudly to anyone who knew the Chicago lounge scene in the 70’s and 80’s. It will ring even louder to anyone who’s been to Navy Pier and noticed the street sign stating that all the buses are driving on the Jimmy Damon Way. There will be a lot written in the regular media about his career, which was enviable, and about his talent, which was legendary, and about how Bill Murray managed to lionize and satirize him at the same time. Most of that will be 100% correct and written by copy editors who never met the man. That’s not a slam on them, that’s their job. But Jimmy Damon was my friend. He has been for almost 30 years. The fact that I was playing in punk bands while he was prepping for Sinatra tribute shows never bothered either of us. We liked each other and that was all we needed to know.

I have built his web sites, his promotional DVDs, his press kits and much more. Some I was paid for, some I did when he needed a favor. The truth is I enjoyed doing stuff for him so much I probably would have done all of it for free if I could. He would never have allowed that, of course, he had pride as well as talent.

In 2010 Jimmy did a lengthy interview with WKNO in Memphis. In it he recounted many of the stories he’d shared with me and a few he hadn’t. I didn’t feel slighted in the least. I knew stories about his family and his early years that were never going to be in an interview like that.

Not because they were salacious. They weren’t. Simply because they were quiet and personal and those kind of stories make boring press.

“My kids liked George Burns” is not that interesting of a story. Not to outsiders, anyway. Which, to me, is fine. We all need to be able to keep some part of our lives to ourselves.

Jimmy and his family have always been good and kind to me. So while I, Marilyn, Dana, Bartolomeo, Antonio, Alexa and Juan will mourn the loss of someone we deeply loved, we will also celebrate the life of a man who truly enjoyed all the gifts God had given him.

Hopefully, when all is said and done, each of us can say the same.

I leave you not with some woeful missive, or tearful treacle, but with a video of a laugh that Jimmy loved sharing.

Thank you for allowing me to let him share it one last time.

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Yesterday I got bought lunch by some people who wanted me to do some web work for them. As any independent contractor knows that is never a good sign. Usually they only buy you lunch to get out of paying you. And that was exactly the case yesterday. Still, I got a free lunch and that is the important part here today. As you may remember I recently almost killed my boss. He had been watching me use hot sauce after hot sauce on my food and decided he would give it the old school try. It was the same as if he had mastered a tricycle and then decided to street race a Ferrari. There were steps in between he was missing. Still, he survived. Yesterday’s lunch took place in a Chinese restaurant. I ordered the spicy squid with Szechuan pepper sauce on the side. The waitress asked me three times if I was sure. Three times I said yes. About a minute later a young man walked out and asked me the same question. He could have been the waitress’ grandson, a nephew or some random Occidental who happened to be near by. I had no way of knowing but assured him I had ordered correctly. Then, just before our meal was delivered the chef came out to ask me as well. I was beginning to worry. Was their Szechuan sauce somehow different? Toxic? But it wasn’t. It was spicy, which is what I wanted, but not dangerously so. Anyway, after the meal the waitress came up to me and asked the oddest question I have ever heard. “You sure you American?” I assured I was an American of Irish descent. She looked at me and laughed. “Oh, Irish,” she exclaimed, “that okay then, Irish crazy!”

So there you have it. I am genetically predisposed to insanity. But I still wasn’t crazy enough to take that job.

As it turns out, the evolutionary path that led to me may not be unique. The Keplar telescope is finding more and more, supposedly, habitable planets every day. Which means that molecules there might be doing what molecules here do and grouping up to form beings like you and me. Seth Shostack is so stoked about the latest discoveries he’s trying to figure out what to get a a Klingon for a first date.

The latest planets turned up by NASA’s Kepler telescope are — like the kids in Lake Wobegone — gratifyingly above average.

These new worlds offer both promise and insights, because they’ve got traits that are both appealing and mildly disconcerting.

In the four years since its launch, Kepler has chalked up 122 new and confirmed planets. It’s also caught the scent of nearly three thousand additional objects, of which probably 80 percent or more will turn out to be other-worldly orbs. Compare this track record to the approximately 700 planets painstakingly rooted out by ground-based telescopes in the last 18 years, and you can appreciate why some astronomers refer to the space-based instrument as a planet factory — churning out new worlds faster than a Hong Kong tailor turns out suits.

But here’s the thing: Kepler can find small planets (even smaller than Mercury). And diminutive worlds are more likely to be rocky, and lapped by oceans and atmospheres. In the vernacular of “Star Trek,” these would be M-class planets: life-friendly oases where biology could begin and bumpy-faced Klingons might exist.

Three of the new Kepler worlds have both the right size and the right orbital distances to boast temperatures at which water would remain liquid, a circumstance often assumed to be life’s sine qua non. One of these planets orbits the star Kepler 69 — which is comparable in brightness and size to our Sun. This possibly habitable planet is ingeniously named Kepler 69c.

The other two worlds are the spawn of a dimmer star called Kepler 62. Its brood includes at least five planets, but the habitable ones are labeled Kepler 62e and Kepler 62f.

All three of these potentially habitable worlds are “Super Earths.” The term isn’t intended to suggest planets with azure skies, unpolluted oceans, and sympathetic inhabitants. Rather, it’s a reference to size. Super Earths have super girths, between 1 and roughly 2-1/2 times that of our own planet. Habitable, in principle — just a bit bulked up.

According to SETI Institute scientist Jon Jenkins, Super Earths are turning up more and more often. They dominate the new worlds now being found by Kepler. Now that’s a bit of a head scratcher, because in our own solar system the number of Super Earths is zero. There’s nothing between the size of Terra Firma and Neptune, which is 4 times larger than Earth.

So is our solar system just unlucky, like a family with eight kids but no girls? Or is there some deeper explanation for the absence of a Super Earth nearby? We don’t know. And this is an unexpected puzzle for those who wish to know what constitutes an “average” solar system.

The discovery of these three planets has also encouraged scientists who look for life in deep space. The number of potentially habitable worlds discovered beyond our solar system is currently 9, out of a total of 872 confirmed exoplanets. The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That’s a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it’s all bleakly barren.

So will SETI experimenters fix their antennas on these new planets? Well, the answer’s as obvious as a lounge lizard: of course they will. But give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability. Lots of planetary systems will require examination before we can reasonably hope to find an alien transmission. Still, at least we know that suitable planets are not dauntingly rare.

And there’s something else that encourages me in the search for signals from these newly found members of the planetary bestiary. Kepler 62e has an orbital period of 122 days; Kepler 62f’s period is 267 days. Consequently, every 89 years these two seductive orbs line up with Earth. They’re connected to us in a straight line. If some sophisticated society has colonized both planets, then their back-and-forth communication signals — if any — will be aimed our way during this special moment.

So in this case, the new discoveries clue us not only where we should hunt for signals, but when. And that might nicely improve the odds of finding Klingons.

vam ‘oH Dun!!!

Look it up.

While Seth is curious about Klingon poon, and aren’t we all down inside, I am more interested in knowing if a Super Earth will produce a Super Hot sauce.

Also, speaking of super, it was barely 6 months ago that Neil deGrasse Tyson actually discovered Krypton. So if a fictional world can be made flesh, as it were, imagine the amazing discoveries the real ones hold.

Biters “Hallucination Generation” UNCENSORED NSFW official music video HD from Video Rahim

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The history of mankind is littered with cautionary tales. The epics of Gilgamesh, the mythos of the Gollum, the legend of Frankenstein all pop readily to mind. Today we are going to look at another cautionary tale of woe. We are going to look at the tale of Ragnarök a/k/a Twilight of the Gods. Ragnarök is essentially the tale of how the Norse god Odin gave up his eye for the gift of all knowledge and foresight. Part of that knowledge was the time of his death and the death of almost all the gods. That final battle was called Ragnarök. There is a really bad movie called Krull that tried to explore that same theme. If you can imagine a toddler explaining Chaucer you get the idea of how well it was handled. Nevertheless, knowing the inevitable Odin soldiered on. Who knows, maybe he even looked forward to that final battle with the frost giants.

The question that begs is would you want to know the exact moment of your demise? It’s not a comfortable question. Does knowing that you’re checking out on June 3, 2027 due to natural causes exacerbated by years of drug and alcohol abuse have any benefit to you?

Ker Than, reporting for National Geographic, says that an Iranian scientist claims to have built a machine that can see into the future.

It’s not quite Back to the Future, but a young Iranian inventor claims to have built a time machine that can predict a person’s future with startling accuracy.

Ali Razeqi, who is 27 and the “managing director of Iran’s Center for Strategic Inventions,” claims his device will print out a report detailing an individual’s future after using complex algorithms to predict his or her fate.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Razeqi told Iran’s state-run Fars news agency that his device “easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you.”

Razeqi says Iran has decided to keep his prophetic time machine under wraps for now out of fear that “the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight.”

Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research, and Technology dismissed Razeqi’s claims on Friday in an interview with Fars—a sign of just how much attention the story has received.

We talked to Thomas Roman, a theoretical physicist at Central Connecticut State University and a co-author of the book Time Travel and Warp Drives, to ask about the possibilities for a Razeqi-like time machine and to debunk popular misconceptions about time travel. Here’s an edited version of our interview:

What do you think of Razeqi’s claim that he’s built a time machine that can predict a person’s future?

It’s completely nuts.

Does his alleged time machine break any laws of physics?

It’s hard to know because it’s so wacky.

What are some popular misconceptions about time travel?

One popular misconception is that you could go back to any time in the past. And that’s not true. You can only go back as far as the time when the time machine was invented. So if I invent my time machine today and I wait 30 years and go back to the past, the farthest back in the past I can go to is today when I turned my time machine on.

Another major misconception—and you see this a lot in time travel movies—is the idea that you can go back in time and change the timeline. In these stories, the time traveler goes backward in time and does something that mucks up the future and subsequently has to do something to “restore the timeline.” However, that can’t be the case, since we can’t have the same event both happen and not happen in the same universe. You can’t change the past.

For example, suppose I go back in time and try to kill my grandfather. If I succeed, then of course I’m never born and I could never have made the trip back using the time machine.

Once again, we can’t have the same event—the killing of my grandfather—both happen and not happen in the same universe.

Is there any way of getting around this “grandfather paradox”?

There are two possibilities. One is what’s sometimes called the self-consistency scenario, in which all events along the time loop that I make are adjusted to be self-consistent.

So for example, if I go backward in time and try to shoot my grandfather, something will always prevent me from doing so. The recoil on my shoulder makes me miss, or my grandfather ducks, or I change my mind. It’s like the universe and the laws of physics are conspiring to make things consistent.

The other possibility is that when I shoot my grandfather the universe splits and there’s one universe in which I shoot my grandfather and there’s another universe in which I did not shoot my grandfather.

Didn’t split timelines play a role in the latest Star Trek reboot by J. J. Abrams?

Yeah, there was something along those lines. In the movie, the Romulan bad guy Nero goes back to the past to get revenge against Spock, who he claims is responsible for the destruction of his home planet Romulus. So he’s going to get even by going back into the past to destroy [the planet] Vulcan.

But since Vulcan wasn’t destroyed in the original timeline—the one Nero came from—then upon going back into the past, he causes the universe to branch.

So the Vulcan he destroys is not the one in his original timeline, but the one in the new branch. So he’s not really getting revenge on the original Vulcan from his timeline. But I suppose revenge is revenge.

That aside, I thought that [using the concept of a split timeline] was a clever way of rebooting the franchise because then you have the same characters but you don’t have to slavishly follow the past history of the episodes since you’re in a new timeline where everything can be different.

Okay, so you might not be able to travel to the past. But is future time travel possible?

There’s no problem with that. In fact, we know how to do it in principle. If you travel very close to the speed of light, time slows down for the space traveler compared to someone on Earth.

Another way of traveling to the future is by orbiting very close to a black hole. For example, if you orbit around the black hole at the center of our galaxy, you could also have your time stretched relative to observers on the Earth.

If future time travel is possible, then could a time machine like the one the Iranian businessman claimed to have built actually work?

Going to the future is no problem. A mechanism for traveling into the future is afforded by [Einstein’s] special theory of relativity. It’s when you try to go backward that you run into the grandfather paradox. However, that said, what the businessman claims to have built is still nuts.

One thing that’s rarely mentioned in time travel stories is that if you travel back only in time but stay in exactly the same point in space, the Earth won’t be there anymore. So wouldn’t time travel require traveling through space as well?

Yes, it would have to. The Earth is turning on its axis, and it’s orbiting the sun. So the Earth isn’t always in the same spot in its orbit. So if you’re staying in the same place and traveling back to the past, the Earth is gone from underneath you. When you stop your time machine, you’ll be in a bit of a pickle.

Why do you think time travel is so popular in books and movies?

You have to admit, it’s a pretty tantalizing idea. Part of the appeal is that you can go back and see things for yourself that you only know through history books and the geological record. I think everybody would think it’d be really cool to go back and see dinosaurs or go back and visit ancient Greece.

I think another appeal is we all have things in our past that we wished that we hadn’t done, or that we wished hadn’t happened. And I think there’s the desire to be able to go back and prevent those things from having happened

Before we dismiss Ali Razeqi out of hand, I will remind you that insurance companies have had a version of this science for decades. It is called Actuarial Tables. If you click that link you will see that I have less than 35 years left to live.

They use the same algorithms that are behind the whimsical Death Clock.

Of course those are still generalities and averages. Razeqi is claiming to be able to give you a day by accounting of your future.

Which is clearly nuts.

You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while…. from Richard Young

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It has been a week of people just making stuff up. Some kids found a bear paw and suddenly “SCIENTISTS ARE BAFFLED” and “EVIDENCE OF BIGFOOT HAS BEEN FOUND!!” Respectively, no they weren’t and no it wasn’t. Additionally, a documentary was released this week to no fanfare, unless your a truly disturbed person, that purported to have proof of extraterrestrial life. The press releases showed many pics of a 6 inch tall humanoid figure. The press release also states that scientists could not classify the creature’s DNA. All cool except that, in the freaking movie, Garry Nolan, director of stem cell biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in California clearly states that the DNA is human. Moving on to the “of course we believe you” realm, a lady in San Diego appears to have been unknowingly transporting marijuana across the Mexican border. The fact that she turned herself in makes cops think she may be telling the truth. The additional fact that she also turned over 30 pounds of pot is also in her favor. Just a memo to the people who may be responsible; you live in California, there’s pot everywhere. You don’t need to smuggle it in.

But, oddly enough, that’s not the truly bizarre stuff. Esha Bhandari of the ACLU has a story this week that should scare the pants of anyone wearing them. Citing an article in the New Yorker, she notes that our government is deporting U.S. citizens to foreign countries.

Yes, you read that right.

This week’s New Yorker features the harrowing ordeal of Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen with mental disabilities who was deported to Mexico. Lyttle was born in North Carolina and has psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. He was inexplicably referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008 after being misidentified as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico even though he had never been to Mexico, shared no Mexican heritage, and did not speak any Spanish. As the New Yorker article notes, “Lyttle is brown-skinned,” and “the vagaries of race and ethnicity obviously played a part” in causing him to be singled out for immigration enforcement.

ICE detained Lyttle for 51 days, despite substantial evidence that he is a U.S. citizen, and put him in removal proceedings, where he was forced to defend himself without ever having the assistance of a lawyer. Lyttle was ordered removed in December 2008, and forced to cross the Mexican border on foot with only $3 in his pocket. Lyttle endured 125 days wandering through Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, sleeping in streets and shelters, and even being imprisoned in a Honduran jail, before he was finally referred to a U.S. consular officer in Guatemala who actually listened to his story. The officer obtained confirmation of Lyttle’s U.S. citizenship by calling one of his brothers who serves in the U.S. military. Only through the extensive efforts of Lyttle’s family and a lawyer was he finally able to return.

Lyttle’s tale is unfortunately far from unique. Although no exact numbers exist, ICE regularly detains and deports U.S. citizens without ever providing them with a lawyer. And the U.S. continues to run a system of detention and deportation that fails adequately to protect the rights of vulnerable individuals like Lyttle.

The New Yorker article by William Finnegan, “The Deportation Machine,” highlights many of the continuing systemic problems with ICE policies, including its use of the flawed Secure Communities program, the prevalence of racial profiling, and the lack of any right to appointed counsel for individuals in immigration court. This lack of counsel is particularly problematic for people such as Lyttle, who, because of their mental disabilities, may not understand the immigration proceeding enough to be able to represent themselves adequately.

Although Lyttle was eventually able to return home with the help of a lawyer, not all those who are wrongfully deported have access to the same resources. In Lyttle’s case, the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to detain him, prosecute his removal proceedings and litigate against his federal court case—brought by the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of Georgia, the ACLU of North Carolina, and pro bono lawyers including the law firm of Troutman Sanders—and ultimately pay him monetary damages. However, the government has never admitted any wrongdoing, nor has it put in place procedures sufficient to ensure that this cannot happen to others.

On Tuesday a federal district judge ordered the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Attorney General, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review to provide legal representation to immigrant detainees with mental disabilities who are facing deportation and who are unable to adequately represent themselves in immigration hearings. The ruling in the class-action lawsuit Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder is the first of its kind for immigrant detainees, who often languish in detention facilities for years without legal representation.

While a landmark victory, this ruling only applies to people in California, Arizona, and Washington. More is still need to protect the constitutional rights of those particularly vulnerable to mistakes caused by ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics. As Mark Lyttle’s case demonstrates, the risk of wrongful detention and deportation is all too real for U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.

The old joke of “where do they bury the survivors” is not supposed to have a numerical answer. That is also true of the number of U.S. citizens who get sent back to where they didn’t come from.

When Cheech Marin released Born in East L.A., it was meant to be comedy not prescient. I’m big, white and have a baritone voice. If I’m not careful I could wake up in Moscow.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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I like comic books. Of course, now that I’m older I prefer graphic novels. The difference? Graphic novels are more expensive. Among other things. One common theme in many of them is humans who have been altered somehow. Spiderman is a good example. Nice kid meets radioactive spider and becomes a super hero. Or Wolverine. Nice guy, who just happened to be an assassin who can’t be killed, gets experimented on by evil government people in Canada (why is it always Canada?) and ends up with no memory and adamantium claws. He then uses this new accessory to become a teacher at a school for misfit toys. Or something like that. Nevertheless you get the basic idea. Otherwise normal people suddenly have awesome powers. That’s a lot of fun to read about and it’s fun to fantasize about.

But, because scientists are stone cold insane, we may soon find out how well such people would really fit in. U.K.’s Daily Mail reports that the Ministry of Defence plans on creating meta-humans within 30 years.

A generation of genetically-modified ‘X-Men’ superhumans could be among us by 2045, a Ministry of Defence think tank has said.
Advancements in gene technology could help humans gain mutant powers such as the likes of Wolverine, Cyclops and Storm in the popular comic book and movie series, it has been reported.

The MoD’s Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre warn however that ‘genetic inequality’ could result from advancements in biology being unequally shared across society.

The centre met last summer for a two-day summit, featuring experts from government, industry and universities. The details have been released following a Freedom of Information request by The Sun.

It was reported during the summit, held to predict what would happen in the future, that: ‘Advancements in gene technology could lead to a class of genetically superior humans by 2045.

‘Human augmentation is likely to increase over the next 30 years.

‘Discussions highlighted that it is possible that advances in biology, unequally shared across society, could generate genetic inequality.’

The X-Men are a team of mutant superheroes created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, who first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1963.

The mutants use their powers for the benefit of humanity, despite an ever-growing anti-mutant sentiment among mankind.

The comics were turned into a highly-successful film series, featuring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, Ian McKellan as Magneto and Patrick Stewart as Professor X.

Okay, let’s take Wolverine as an example. Assuming he had a modicum of intelligence he could easily kill people with his claws and no one would ever know since they retract. Storm? Picture the Sahara ocean. Professor X? This is your brain would no longer be true. Magneto? He could pull down the Willis Tower on a whim.

I’m not saying that people with those powers would do those tings, I’m just point this out that there is no way in hell we could stop them if they did.

Sleep well everyone.

tsurufoto presents… Sheila Savage Saves The Day!!! (NSFW) from tsurufoto. on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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