cactusowl

[cactusowl]

Radioactive peanuts!

By request from @littlethingwithfeathers​: I’m a particle physicist. During my PhD, I worked as a graduate teaching assistant teaching a lab class involving electromagnetism and the basics of nuclear physics for premeds. 

I didn’t actually feed the students radioactive peanuts... but they thought I did for a moment. :)

The last lab of the year was on nuclear radiation. When the students came in, I was eating peanuts from a large orange platter, and I offered them some.

During the lab, the students would use Geiger counters to explore the differences between how alpha, beta, and gamma radiation behaved, so I started by drawing a diagram on the board of a Geiger counter, and explaining how they worked. I demonstrated by showing them the “clicking” from the natural background -- mostly radioactivity from the concrete around us. But, as I walked around the room, it started clicking faster as I got near the tray of peanuts. I looked shocked -- “uh ... did anyone eat any of those?” The students didn’t quite know what to think, and some of them looked worried... until I explained to them what was going on.

We had a number of radioactive sources: natural uranium ore, along with small amounts of artificial isotopes (polonium-210, caesium-137, and the like). We also had a large orange Fiestaware platter made of glaze that contained uranium. The chemical properties of atoms are totally separate from their nuclear ones, and it so happens that you can make a beautiful orange glaze out of uranium. “Fiestaware” sold bright colorful plates and bowls, and they used uranium for their orange glaze. It’s very slightly radioactive, like anything made of natural uranium.

It’s pretty safe: uranium-238 has a half life of four billion years, and it’s sealed in the glaze -- unless you ate the platter itself, it wouldn’t hurt you, and then you’d be more in danger from heavy metal poisoning than radiation. Still, it and its decay chain are radioactive enough to pick up with a Geiger counter. The peanuts weren’t radioactive -- the platter was. 

The students took the lesson well: that radioactivity is natural and all around us, that there is a profound difference in magnitude between “what you can detect with a Geiger counter” and “what will hurt you” and a profound difference in activity between low-level sources (like the potassium-40 in a banana or the uranium-238 in that platter) and high-level ones (like the polonium-210 sources they had; I told them the story of the poisoning of Aleksander Litvinenko by the Russians using polonium-210). Later on in the lab, they would measure much higher radiation levels from the small amounts of high-level radioactive material (like polonium-210) that they had.

By comparison to Chernobyl, and using the same units in the show: * Natural background is about 30 millionths of a roentgen per hour * The radiation above the Fiestaware platter was perhaps ten times that, or 300 millionths of a roentgen per hour. (The peanuts were not appreciably radioactive at all.) * The erroneously-low level they cited as “not great, but not terrible” was 3.6 roentgen per hour * The radiation level on the roof above the reactor core (cleaned by the “biorobots”) was 12,000 roentgen per hour

[cactusowl]

My name is Nebulosa. I’m an owl. Yep, the fluffy ones with the big eyeballs and the pointy feet. I was raised in a messy but cozy nest by two wonderful owl parents who brought me fuzzy critters they murdered to eat, and was then adopted and awoken to sentience by a loving, doting druid who taught me lore and magic. I nibbled on his fingers occasionally when he was being a brat. Then the sun stopped coming up. Everything else froze. Then he froze. Then I, adapted to the cold better than nearly anything else, starved to death. My ghost haunted the largest tree in the grove. Then it froze.

Then, sad relics from a sad dead world, the dead bones of the trees and my dead bones and my ghost slipped into hell -- along with the nearly-but-not-quite-dead pinecones clinging to their branches. So I haunted that tree for a hundred centuries and kept it safe from all the nasties of Hell -- the demons and the devils and occasionally the worse things in between, using little air currents to sweep those pinecones in a pile, feeling the nearly-dead ember of the waiting life inside. Until Laurequinde and Saffron showed up, and replanted one in a pot. Then I haunted that for a bit, until they found another little owl chick for me to haunt. It’s not fluffy enough and its eyes don’t look sad enough but that’s what wildshape is for. Rules don’t say an owl can’t turn into another owl, after all.

So please excuse me if I have better things to do then hooting at the moon. It doesn’t shine anyway, on account of the sun not shining. At least, not until yesterday. We turned it back on. It was hard. 

@littlethingwithfeathers @saffrontherogue @lawlessdragon @kaminaduck

[cactusowl]

“Sam saw a white star twinkle for awhile. The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end, the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

—  The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

[cactusowl]

Piece in a fast four? Dancers count it in eight. Piece in a slow two? Dancers count it in eight. Piece in 3/4? 5/4? Dancers count it in eight. Completely unmetered section with extreme rubato? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. @littlethingwithfeathers @lawlessdragon 

Dancers took 5, 6, 7, 8 because musicians took 1, 2, 3, 4.

[cactusowl]

Any new technology will be commandeered for the lulz.

Also, when they’re soliciting character backstories and say “no length limit; details are encouraged?”

They lie about the no-length-limit. 

Dungeons and Dragons creatures, generated by neural network

The game Dungeons and Dragons has all sorts of lists of spells and abilities you can use for gameplay. I trained an algorithm called a recurrent neural network to generate more spells - like Barking Sphere, Hold Mouse, and Gland Growth. Then, with a larger set of spells in my training dataset, I trained a better neural net that generated even more - like Song of the Dave, Summon Ass, and Shield of Farts.

It turns out that in addition to spellbooks, Dungeons and Dragons also has monster manuals - books full of the names and descriptions of creatures that adventurers can encounter. Colin Fredricks, who created the RPG Sufficiently Advanced, was kind enough to send me the names of 2,205 creatures from the 2nd edition monster manual. 

As I had hoped, the neural network generated creatures that would probably be pretty awesome.

Owlborn Cat, Stone Vampire Bear Kick Spirit Hatfright Purple Bird Slug, Spectral Wolf, Chromatic Golem, Rain Human, Crystal Hound, Plant Fish, Astro- Wolfworm Ogre, Space Dog, Goblin Serpent Shark Mommy, Greater Giant, Dunebat Cloud of Chaos

It also generated some creatures that you should probably run from until you figure out what they are. (Though Dome Animal might simply be a cool turtle)

Brain, Fire Horse (Spider, Brain Undead Lake Man, Fire Walfablang Fraithwarp, Giant Fish, Sun of Lycanthrope, Wereladoo Pat, Great, Space Shadowstaffer Spectral Woof Greepy Jabberwont Animal, Dome Dwarf, Giant Burglestar Pigaloth Beeple, Desert Wendless Woll Memeball Marraganralleraith

There were 118 dragons in the original dataset, so of course the neural net liked generating new dragons. Some perhaps better-conceived than others.

Dragon, Death Seep Dragon, Purple Fang Dragon, Curple Lard Dragon, Dead Big Dragon Will O’Dragon

And it generated new unicorns!

Unicorn, Fumble Unicorn, Bat Unicorn, Black Willow Unicorn, Sith Sheet

These might be possible misses, though.

Man-Can Barber Beet Skull Feast, Stone Peg, Brown Kurt Durp Snake Golf Vampire, Putter

Enter your email here and I’ll send you a few more creatures that wouldn’t fit in the main post. Including the legendary Bung Dragon!

I’m crowdsourcing a couple more D&D-related datasets - see below!

Also, I thought it would be fun to generate D&D character names for a future project. If you go to this form (no email required), you can enter your character’s name, race, and class. Once I have enough of these, I’ll give them to the neural network and see what happens. Edit: wow, over 10,000 responses so far! (Check them out at this link) Keep them coming!

I’m also collecting character backstories! Submit as many as you like. https://goo.gl/forms/ReInNw0Tz0mwzTLO2 I will post some generated character bios as soon as I can figure out a strategy that works better than this:

There was the prince of the sun. He was raised by the arcane arts and accepted him to become a fire work and the pig of the scorpions. He was in the blood of curious by the world to be a part of the church, really with the bartender.

[cactusowl]

I guess I’m a bard/druid/paladin (Shemhazai)/wizard (transmuter), then!

Dungeons and Dragons, but your character must be a self insert, and class is determined by your current abilities Barbarian Must have a demonstrable temper, go off I guess  Bard Must be able to play an instrument Cleric Must be involved in a religious organization Druid Must have demonstrable knowledge of, or passion for nature  Fighter Must beat the DM in physical combat (hope your DM’s a wimp)  Monk Must practice a martial art  Paladin Must have a cause that one actively supports  Ranger Must be able to fire a kind of ranged weapon accurately  Rogue Must sneak up on the DM (Hard mode: steal their dice)  Sorcerer Must have a powerful family heirloom  Warlock Must work for a powerful entity (Corporations, The Government)  Wizard Must have a College Degree or a 3.0 GPA  If you can’t be any of these you start as a commoner, and may become one of these classes when you finally satisfy these conditions.

[cactusowl]

In this fanfic I will explain why I HATE PRESENT TENSE @littlethingwithfeathers

“in this essay i will explore” memes piss me off because it implies y’all still using first person pronouns when writing academically. childish ass

[cactusowl]

Extending this: when talking to people on the internet, particularly those hostile to you, you are allowed to set your goals. You do not owe them the dignity of scholarly discourse. You’re not required to prove to them why you are right.  Especially if you’re “punching up” (talking to someone representing a viewpoint that is not lacking in agency), and if you’re in a friendly or “home” space (your own facebook feed) you get to use their presence to achieve whatever ends you want: humor, the lulz, or the benefit of anyone else reading. If they don’t like it they can go away. Quite often, I engage with fundamentalists not to prove that I am right, but to make them look silly in front of anyone else around, which is far more likely to get me what I want (the denormalization of religious whackadoodlery).

When someone disagrees with you online and demands you prove your point to their satisfaction by writing a complete and logically sound defense including citations, you can save a lot of time by not doing that.

Bro, I’ve known you for twelve seconds and enjoyed none of them, I’m not taking homework assignments from you.

[cactusowl]

@littlethingwithfeathers @kaminaduck Cayn: life goals.

“You try diplomacy, however the paladin is covered in spiders”

[cactusowl]

@littlethingwithfeathers / @lawlessdragon, it’s decided: Fall-Not-Idly needs to be a rogue.

this is what a hobbit would mug you with

[cactusowl]

Might as well!

Rules: Answer 20 questions, then tag twenty bloggers that you want to get to know better.

I was tagged by @littlethingwithfeathers , who is bad for me. :)

Name: Walter

Nicknames: Owl, Dr. Freeman, cactusowl

Height: 5′9

Orientation: Straight-ish

Nationality: American. Proud of what my country is supposed to be -- not what it is right now. 

Favorite fruit: Grapefruit

Favorite season: Monsoon season!

Favorite plant: The saguaro cactus

Favorite scent: Strong cinnamon tea. The desert after a rain. Clear mountain air.

Favorite color: The deep blue of the mountain sky. The grey-blue-purple of a desert sunset.

Favorite animal: The great grey owl

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: Tea or unsweetened hot chocolate. Coffee tastes like mud.

Average sleep hours: 7 plus or minus two

Dog or cat person: yes

Favorite fictional character: Faramir. Nienna. Phedre. Shemhazai.

Number of blankets you sleep with: Between zero and two.

Dream trip: All of Europe, including lots of time in Scandinavia. Australia. The wild parts of China.

Blog created: Five years ago.

Number of followers: Fewer than I’d have if I updated regularly!

Random fact: I teach physics, tell stories, and make music. Usually I get the borders of those confused.

[cactusowl]

Making America great?

Two particularly contradictory threads wind through Trumpism.

The first is opposition to imports -- the idea that, somehow, America is diminished when Americans buy things from China. That’s clearly not true, of course -- Americans get Chinese products which make our lives better, and the Chinese get American money which makes their lives better. Trump would want a world, I would think, in which we sold more stuff to China; this would, in his eyes, make us great (again).

The second is opposition to intellectualism. People who design things, think things, write things, teach things, and discover things are not part of his “real America”. 

Then I realized: I sell stuff to China.

I’m a professor, and a great many of my students are international students from China. They travel here from Shanghai and Beijing and elsewhere to study at American universities, because American scholarship and higher education are admired worldwide. Education is a lot more than a business, of course.. But to the extent that education is a business, a product to be produced and sold, we export a great deal of it to China (and elsewhere).

Every semester, I teach a class of five hundred students. Sometimes it’s astronomy, sometimes it’s physics, but I teach big classes. On those students, perhaps a hundred of them are from China. They are brave and industrious, traveling across an ocean to come to my little old physics class and learn about Newton’s laws in a language that they’re still learning, and they’re welcome in my class as honored guests of my university and guests in my country. But, since all Trump cares about are dollars and numbers, let’s do some mathematics, shall we? 

Each of them pays $25,000 in tuition a semester, in which they will take about five classes. This means that they’re paying $5,000 to come to my class. If there are a hundred of them, and I teach two such classes a year, that means that my classes “export” stuff worth a million dollars a year to China. This isn’t because I’m all that important or productive; I have a small army of teaching assistants, graders, undergraduate peer tutors, and support staff that lets me do this. But it’s a bit sobering to realize that you’re the boss of an enterprise selling a million dollars a year worth of stuff to China.  Other facets of American intellectual life, also, are export powerhouses. Chinese factories build products that our engineers designed. Our science improves the world for billions. Our films are watched worldwide and our art is seen worldwide. The world’s computers were mostly designed by Americans and many of the world’s great websites are American. If Trump thinks that the relics of American industry are “tombstones”, what are its universities and laboratories and Silicon Valley engineering firms and Hollywood studios? I dunno. But I think they’re pretty great.

[cactusowl]

I am a secular humanist.

Most people, used to seeing secular humanism set in opposition to religion, focus on that first word: "secular". It's true: I don't believe in gods. But that word isn't the important one.

The important word is the second one: "humanist". There have been humanists of many religions; I am one who happens to have none. What we all have in common is a belief that a better world for we humans is possible -- but, if we want it, we have to build it. Humanism is the belief that we are not doomed to a miserable existence or to be the playthings of Providence, but that through our intellect and benevolence and optimism we can forge a brighter future for us all. I hold this philosophy as close to my heart as any Christian holds the cross.

Two thousand years ago, the Greeks used the dream of flight as a symbol of human hubris, in the myth of Icarus -- the boy who dreamed of flying ever higher, and in doing so was put in his place for his ambition and found only death. But, even as they told tales painting human agency as folly, the Greeks were part of the long story of human development. They built ships, traded goods, told stories, grew in wisdom, and pioneered the idea that consensus, intellectual debate, and the collective will, not autocracy and greed, could steer their society toward prosperity and success. Their democracy wasn't perfect, but its results speak for themselves.

Five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of flying, and refused to accept "It's not the place of humans to dream of the sky!" as an obstacle. After studying the anatomy of birds, he drew designs for flying machines, machines which would have worked were they paired with a lightweight power source.

One hundred years ago, two American brothers found that power source in the internal combustion engine and invented the airplane.

At about the same time, a Russian -- using the Muslim invention of algebra, the German language of calculus, and the English discovery of mechanics -- proved that we could go to the Moon with a rocket, first invented by the Chinese.

Twenty years after, an American figured out how to actually build such rockets.

Fifty years after that, we put three humans on top of a giant firecracker, designed and built by thousands of men and women, and they carried the hopes and aspirations of billions of people with them as they put bootprints on the Moon. This machine, conceived as the ultimate weapon of war, was transformed into the ultimate expression of human achievement by intellect, willpower, effort, and community.

We can board an airplane bound for the other side of the world -- to see those we love, to meet people different from us, or just to experience our world as one community -- for a few weeks' pay, two scant millennia after the Greeks told stories about the ultimate folly of flight. We can do this because humans refused to accept "no" for an answer, and when left uncowed by falsehood and fear respond to challenges with shouts of "Excelsior!"

We live longer than ever before. We have exterminated dread diseases and are winning the war against many others. We have the insights of the world's scholars at our fingertips. The majority of us live in comfort and safety that the ancients could barely imagine.

We are not satisfied. Even as the Wright Brothers were building their airplane, Tsiolkovsky was dreaming of the moon.

We want to correct the errors of the past. We now realize that burning coal and oil change our climate, that human biology produces a wider range of healthy sexualities and genders than previously thought, that people of all races and in all places are fundamentally the same. We want a better future, one where humans have less impact on nature, one where more of us have material comfort and prosperity, one where we live in an ever more caring, compassionate, and beautiful society.

To achieve these things we need our minds, our sense of community, and sustained effort. These are, after all, the things that evolution has given us that make us human: we are intelligent, we are social, and we endure.

***

I disagree with Donald Trump's policy proposals: His suggestions, such as they are, for how to govern our country are not a good idea.

This is, of course, part of democracy. Vigorous debate between people with different proposals is healthy.

Disagreement with his ideas is not why I reject Trumpism utterly. I reject Trumpism because it entails a rejection of human intellect, a rejection of community, and the embrace of pessimism -- ultimately, the complete rejection of and antithesis to humanism.

Trump's campaign has, over and over again, disparaged intellectualism as a virtue. He has rejected the careful conclusions of scientists regarding the Earth's climate for political gain. He has disparaged the value of thoughtfulness and education, and the value of art and the artists who create it. He has embraced falsehood as a means of persuasion, and cultivated a following among the credulous not by logical persuasion but by tribalistic dog-whistles. The most basic tenet of scientific discourse is that you He has welcomed those who seek to turn back the clock on arguably the greatest medical advance of the last century, collective immunity through vaccination. He has abandoned intellectual discourse so utterly that many of his statements, ultimately, are word salad devoid of meaning.

He has welcomed only the narrowest circle of folk into his tribe, and rejected the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of those outside it. People who love differently, believe differently, have different bodies, look different, or live elsewhere are not welcome in Trumpdom. In his world, Americans are no longer free to buy things from China, trade that has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. Our southern neighbors, whose culture has enriched our own and whose labor has enriched our people, are now verminous invaders to be barricaded away. Desperately suffering Syrians, fleeing war and devastation, are to be feared, rather than to be welcomed as neighbors in need. Women seeking even the most basic of human rights, agency over their own bodies, have no place in Trump's world. In his quest to unify his tribe around some mythical idea of masculine prowess, he has demeaned kindness as weakness and charity as debasement. He even seeks to demolish the American people's ability to use its government as a steward of the communal trust; in Trump's world, we can no longer use our government as a vehicle to provide for the common welfare.

In order to unify his followers behind his banner, he has drummed up fear of everything outside their movement, convincing them that their nation is failing and that only he can save them. He has rejected hope for rhetoric about "American carnage" and pointed to the signs of economic change -- change that has lifted a billion Asians out of poverty -- as "tombstones". Rather than a call to think clearly, come together, and work hard in order to forge a better future, he has called for ... what? For people to be paralyzed by fear, to reject the ability of the human mind and human effort to improve our world, and to embrace the false belief that only by destroying the progress we've made so far in improving our lot can we reclaim some lost "greatness". Contrived fear is a powerful motivator to those not skeptical of it, and has been harnessed by self-serving would-be leaders again and again to serve their own rise to power and feed their narcissism.

We do not live in a Trumpian world. We live longer, healthier lives than our ancestors. Fewer of us suffer violence, more of us know more about our world, and more of us have the freedom to choose our own paths in life than ever before. Billions of people around the globe have been lifted out of abject poverty by international trade, by the ability -- facilitated by the humble shipping container -- to see our distant neighbors' livelihood as interwoven with our own prosperity. The errors of the past -- racism, sexism, the past ambitions of conquerors, and bad stewardship of nature -- still haunt us, but are we not human? Are we not the same species that in a few short centuries beat back disease, charted the dance of nature, mastered our world, and learned the secrets of the furthest stars? We can overcome these challenges and others, so long as we are not too cowed to stand tall and face them. Our previous president recognized this. Even if his vision was not always clear, even if he couldn't achieve it all, he understood: in 2009 he told the Iranians, "History will remember you for what you can build, not what you can destroy." He was speaking to Iran, but his statement is true for us all.

I can respect and work with people whose ideas for progress differ from my own. But I will oppose, in any way necessary, a movement which seeks to arrest the march of humanity toward a better world and to stymie the promise of the human intellect and spirit. Too much is at stake; the future, absent the interference of a narcissist who has by cynical means found himself in a position of power, has too much promise to let him ruin it.

Trumpism is anathema to humanism. His movement is trying to thwart everything that we are trying to build.

Another American humanist and scholar of ethics said, a few decades ago, that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." He spoke of community and morality, but his words ring true across the scope of human progress: in the end, we have always overcome, because that is what humans do. But the arc of the moral universe doesn't bend that way because of cosmic fiat or ethical inevitability, though. It bends that way because people stand up to people like Trump and say "This shall not stand!"

[cactusowl]

Something is burning.

When I stepped outside my house this morning, I noticed something strange. I smelled smoke. Not cozy woodburning smoke from someone’s fireplace. It’s still 70 degrees outside here. And it wasn’t smoke from an engine or electrical equipment, for I couldn’t just smell it, but I could see it. Hanging in the air, giving everything a soft, blue tinge. 

See, I live in northern Alabama. And the southern states in the US have been experiencing a horrible drought. It hasn’t rained in earnest for months. The leaves are barely bothering to change color before falling despondent to the ground. We’ve been in a state of drought warning for weeks. And so it was only a matter of time before we started seeing forest fires.

There’s none yet within hundreds of miles of my house, but the smoke from fires as far away as Georgia has traveled up to our neck of the woods. And let me be clear… it’s not just the vague smell of smoke. It’s enough to cloud the air, and make me sneeze and cough. It stings my eyes and is aggravating my headaches. And I’m sure for people with serious lung conditions, this is very worrying. 

And I wonder and worry about the people closer to the fire. If it’s affecting me, someone so far removed that even though I can see the symptoms, and even suffer a tiny bit because of them, I can only wonder how bad it must be for someone in the thick of it all.

Y’know… I’m not about to go join the Georgia volunteer fire department or anything like that. Because thankfully we as a nation believe that we should have things like the national guard and fire departments to help in crises like this. So I and other normal citizens don’t have to go grab a bucket. 

But… I just wonder.

As I was driving through the haze, my car A/C on internal circulation so I wouldn’t have to breathe the smoke more than I had to, I realized that this is sort of what it’s like as a person of priviledge in the wake of the election. I’m certainly one of those people. I’m a natural-born, white, middle-class American citizen. I’m a woman, but I’ve had good enough access to healthcare all my life, so not only did I never struggle to access birth control, I had the means to get my tubes tied about three years ago. I’m omnisexual, but I’m also in a heterosexual marriage, which will not come under scrutiny. 

And so when people tell me, “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.” I sort of have a hard time arguing on my own behalf. Sure. I’ll be fine probably. The fire isn’t burning my house down.

But I can smell the smoke, so something’s burning.

My trans friend who is biting his nails over his safety, to say nothing of his prospects of transition.

My gay friends, some of whom recently got married. What’s going to happen to the status of their union? What if they have kids?

My immigrant friends who already have to prove their citizenship at every turn. What is life going to be like for them when all this xenophobic madness becomes actual law?

My friends who are people of color, who worry their knuckles white about their own safety.

My friends whose lives depend on some of the statutes in the Affordable Care Act. Who are in serious trouble if things like the restrictions on pre-existing conditions and lifetime limits are allowed to come back.

I am none of these people. I am not in trouble. I’m not likely to be in trouble. But I know that just because I’m not, and just because you aren’t, doesn’t mean trouble isn’t coming for a lot of people. And there is no fire brigade or national guard to help with this. So grab your bucket.

And if you don’t believe me, come step outside my door, and take a deep breath.

No. You can’t see the fire.

But something is burning…

[cactusowl]

A professor’s statement on the election

I made the following statement to my 600-person astronomy class today:

https://walterfreeman.github.io/ast101/election-statement.html

A few words, first, to all of you who are international students. It doesn't matter what country is on your passport; this is your class and this is your campus, as much as they are anyone's. I am honored and I am humbled that so many of you have traveled so far to come study in my little old astronomy class here at Syracuse University. It's the greatest compliment that anyone could give me and our university. This university is yours, too, and you are honored guests in this country.

At a time when the world was concerned about nuclear annihilation and seemed divided in two, we sent a little robot into space. So many of our brightest minds spent their genius on producing plutonium to make nuclear weapons, but this little craft used the energy stored in plutonium instead to generate warmth, keeping its instruments and radios running in the cold of space. And some of the more hopeful among us -- scientists who spent as much time imagining as they spent calculating -- argued that, before Voyager's power dwindled to the point where it no longer could, we should take one last picture of Earth. Here it is -- all of us, made of the same atoms as each other and as the stars, all on this little blue pixel right here. This is but one in a long line of moments when we've looked to the stars and told stories about them that bring us together and that inspire a shared sense of community.

But throughout our history on this little world people have drummed up fear of The Other for selfish reasons, and at the moment fear of people who look different, who believe in different gods, who love differently, who speak different languages, or who call different places home is being used to drum up hatred and exclusion. Really? You're going to deny someone their fundamental dignity because their ancestors came from a different spot on that pixel, or because they have a bit more melanin in their skin?

I'm just a scientist. I've chosen to devote my career to teaching people what's in the sky and how it works, and hoping that the things of astronomy and physics, in their elegance and beauty, will inspire some of you as they've inspired me.

But, at the moment, my career is seeming awfully impotent in the face of what we need. At the beginning of this class I told you that this class belonged to all of you, and especially to the non-science majors. Now you're the ones whose skills seem so much more valuable than my own. If one of you political science majors is able to argue a little more compellingly that climate change is not a hoax but a very real problem that warrants urgent attention, then I'm a happy professor. If any of you journalism majors have taken just a bit of the scientific philosophy of skepticism and pluralism to heart, and doggedly pursue an investigative story with integrity rather than accepting the dictates of the powerful, then I couldn't care less whether you remember Kepler's laws.

And if one of you television/radio/film or creative writing majors -- the storytellers and the dreamers among the class -- is inspired by anything in this class to tell a tale about the pursuit of a better life beyond the confines of Earth, then you've made my work worth it. Your questions about other worlds that might be are, if anything, more crucial now than folks like myself who study mostly only this world that we have.

In this era of animosity I can't do much. But I can do something -- I'm a professor, if a very junior one, at this university. And I want you all to know that no matter what grades you make, no matter who you voted for, and no matter what you look like -- no matter what god or gods you do or don't believe in, how you dress, what language you speak, what country you're from, how many of Kepler's laws you remember, what gender you are and how you express it, or the person or people you love -- you are welcome in my class. You're welcome at our university. You're equal in dignity to each and every other person in this room. You're free to express your ideas, here and elsewhere, in any peaceful way that affords others this same liberty. And if anybody on this campus tries to deny you this welcome, this dignity, or these rights, let me know. Let my colleagues know. You have allies from this temporary professor all the way up to the chancellor's mansion. And we will exhaust our resources down to the last dregs to set things right.

[cactusowl]

Fascism then, fascism now

Adapted from a comment to my mother on Facebook:

My grandpa said "hell, no" to fascism -- sitting in a little glass bubble in an aircraft with a pair of .50 machine guns as his only defense against the Nazis. I sure hope nobody needs to get shot or bombed in this current battle against fascism. The weapons we need aren't .50 caliber machine guns. But fascism in this age will be beaten the same way it was seventy years ago. Thing is, my grandfather's machine guns weren't the only thing that kept him safe. The B-17 bristled with so much defensive armament that the Nazis called it the "flying porcupine" -- other folks, just like my grandfather, some without even parachutes, behind their machine guns. They flew in formation, too -- a formation carefully designed so that any enemy getting close would be taking fire from about fifty separate guns on a half-dozen planes. If I'm recalling my history, they shot down more Nazi aircraft than any other US airplane. Luftwaffe fighters could pounce on any aircraft that strayed from the formation, but getting near the American formations of aircraft flying in solidarity meant getting cut to shreds by an atheist shoemaker from small-town Georgia who shares my name, a Jew from New York, a farmer from the Midwest, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, people who supported the New Deal and who opposed it, rich men and poor men, who had only in common a conviction against fascism and an American home. This image -- of a squadron of B-17′s concentrating fire from half a hundred machine guns on an approaching Me-109 -- is a violent, militaristic one. I fervently hope that this current crisis doesn’t come to violence on our side (it already has on theirs). But the martial metaphor is apt: this is war. It’s not war against people; it’s not the kind of war where you crush your enemies’ lives and burn their property. It’s ideological warfare, the sort where the goal is utter rejection of a hostile ideology, the sort where victory amounts to discrediting fascism and the institutions that spawned it, while along the way protecting the vulnerable who are in its path. As of today there only are two kinds of American politics: fascist, and anti-fascist. If you are not the former, then now you need to be the latter without qualification. Sorting out the details can come later; now we need to close ranks and make sure our country gets home safe. Right now our allies are equally McMullin Republicans and McCain Republicans, mainstream Clinton Democrats and Sanders-style social-democrats, Marxists and radical libertarians -- even anyone who may have voted third party who you might be tempted to blame for losing the election. That's what "solidarity" means: finding common ground with your allies, ignoring differences in the face of a greater evil, and circling the wagons around the most vulnerable among us. Trump may not be a threat like the fascists in the 1930′s, a threat that required guns and bombs to answer, but the forces he stands for are the same, and he needs to be resisted with the same solidarity, organization, and fervor that kept my grandfather safe in the war. My grandpa had more on his side than his fellow ball-turret gunners in the Eighth Air Force, too. He had the ingenuity of some geeks with compasses and straightedges who figured out the optimum formation to fly in, to absolutely maximize the amount of defensive fire that could be brought to bear on an attacker. He had the ingenuity of some other geeks who understood electrodynamics and who realized that strips of tinfoil cut to the perfect length would jam German antiaircraft targeting radar. He had the tireless service of the flight crews back in Britain keeping his plane in the air. Thanks to the individual heroism of the British men who flew the Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the tireless service of the British women who told them exactly where to fly, he had a free and defiant Britain to return to after each mission. He had the dramatic force of the storytellers and the reporters, who spun a heroic narrative out of the events of the war and kept everyone inspired and motivated to keep up the fight. We need all those things now -- fervor and rage and cleverness and inspiration. Whoever you are, whatever you do, roll initiative.

[cactusowl]

Twenty, plus five per round, plus however far you want to go in the negatives.

Each. And there are quite a few of us.

@lawlessdragon @kaminaduck @littlethingwithfeathers

11/9/16

Hello, my friends. 

I’ve been trying to come up with words to describe what I’m feeling after the election. I’ve been trying to write this over and over all day, and nothing feels quite right, because I’ve been trying to remain as objective as possible, to be able to address everyone. And I find it very difficult to do that, because I can’t be objective about it.

I come from a position of privilege. I’m a cis, white, male. I pass as heterosexual and Christian. I have a white-collar job, and health insurance through my employer. As long as I keep my head down, I would be relatively safe from the repercussions of the election for the next 4 years at a minimum. 

And yet, my first reaction is of fear.

I said I pass as heterosexual, but I’m pretty much bisexual. I said I pass as Christian, but I honestly don’t know what I believe religiously, and I’m too open-minded to be in the Religious Right. I’m polyamorous. My wife is omnisexual, and we have an open marriage. Hex, my partner, is a trans man. Everyone in my squad identifies somewhere on the spectrum of sexuality that’s not 100% heterosexual. Then there’s all of you, who are as diverse as anyone else.

So, when I say that I’m afraid of what’s to come, I want you to understand my full meaning. I’m not just afraid for myself or my loved ones. I’m afraid for all of us. 

The thing about fear is that, while it’s a perfectly valid emotion to the results of the election, it cannot be the only thing we feel. What was the line that President George W. Bush said? “If you give in to fear, the terrorists win.” I never thought I would quote him, but it’s apt. This was an emotional election, and fear was used to fuel it. 

I’m not saying don’t be afraid; again, your emotions are valid right now. What I’m saying is, don’t stay afraid. We need time to process and come to terms with the reality that is in front of us. But we cannot–we should not–wallow in it. We need to remember that our existence is a defiant act in this country, and every day we live is a protest. Every time we go to a rally or support those who need it or write to Congress, it is a small act of revolution, a middle finger to those who want to do us harm. But we need to do more. 

Tomorrow is another day. January 20, 2017 is another day. November 10, 2020 (the next presidential election day) is another day. And if we are going to correct the mistake that was this whole election cycle, it’s up to us to do something about it. We’re not going to get help from anyone in our government, so we have to do this ourselves. And the only way we can succeed is together.

Last night and today was the surprise round. Tomorrow, we roll for initiative.