Skulls in the Stars

I just saw this article on CNN the other day: Planes slow down to save fuel. Apparently airlines are finally starting to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, and are learning that going at a slightly slower speed can save significant money.

This isn’t a new observation: young folks today probably aren’t aware of the fact that the former national 55 mph speed limit was originally implemented in 1974 not for safety, but to conserve fuel in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.

The reality is that air resistance becomes a major limiting factor on fuel efficiency at high speeds.  Roughly speaking, the drag force increases as the square of the velocity at high speeds, which means that driving 100 mph results in 4 times the drag force that driving at 50 mph causes.

I drive a hybrid Civic, and the dynamic mpg gauge on the vehicle gives me significant insight into how air resistance kills fuel efficiency.  I typically find that, driving steady at 55 mph, I can get 40-50 mpg.  Once I push the car up past 70 mph, and into 80 mph, I’m lucky to get 35 mpg.  At low speeds, the car can ‘coast’ for appreciable distances without using fuel, but at high speeds, the engine must constantly work against the drag force.

These numbers, over long periods of time, add up: driving a little slower on a day-to-day basis can save you some significant money in the long run.

Via yet another tangled web of links (via Crooks&Liars, via BradBlog, via RatTube), we find this rather remarkable Fox “News” video. In late March 2008, the Reverend Michael Pfleger invited Jeremiah Wright, conservative demon of the month, to deliver a blessing at Saint Sabina in Chicago. Bill O’Reilly sent one of his ill-informed conservative waifs to ambush, harass and interrogate the Reverend, but the Reverend wasn’t going to be readily pushed around. Video link after the fold:

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CNN’s current headline, as I write this: “President Bush takes part in commemorative tree planting.”  This is listed as a “Live, developing story.”

So I’m standing in line at the security checkpoint at the airport, and not even a long line at that (10 minutes?). Suddenly a gruff older man starts complaining to his wife next to me. He says, “If they had just taken that shoe-guy off the plane and shot him, we wouldn’t have to go through all this.” His wife asks, “What?” “The shoe bomber,” he clarifies. “If they’d just taken that shoe bomber right off the plane and executed him, we wouldn’t have to put up with all this security.”

It’s amazing how many wrong statements and assumptions are contained in this one little “argument”. Suffice to say that it’s hard to imagine that people who are willing to kill themselves and destroy an airplane they’re flying in, feet first, would be deterred by the threat of execution.

If you want to understand the simple-minded political discourse in the U.S., you don’t necessarily have to look much farther than the views of some of its citizens.  And this guy was complaining about a ten-minute wait!

This made me laugh.  Via The Agonist (through Crooks & Liars), we get the story of the Woessners, professors at Pennsylvania State University.  The Woessners (one conservative, one liberal) did a study to investigate why so few conservatives end up as professors in academia.  Among their many findings and conclusions, they recommend:

 The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.

In other words, to get more conservatives to be professors, adopt very socialist hiring policies!

This is inspiring a bit of a rant in me; if you’d like to see some other reasons why very few professors might be into right-wing policies, look below the fold…

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In the wake of the appalling Northern Illinois University tragedy, it has been depressing to see the right-wing gun fanatics making the same tired and irrational arguments against any sort of gun regulation and, even worse, in favor of unrestricted concealed-carry laws on campuses. You can see all of these arguments brought forth by the extremists in the comments section of this post on Carpetbagger.

What astonishes me more than anything is that the extreme views of the gun fanatics make them living refutations of their own arguments. Reasonable people could convince me that there is a good middle ground on gun control, in which law-abiding citizens can own weapons with some restrictions; the fanatics push my temperament much closer to a full ban. This is a shame, because I have a lot of good friends who are gun owners and whom I have literally trusted with my life - I would hate to see crazies shift the gun discussion to the point where no reasonable solutions to gun violence can be found.

In the spirit of trying to push a reasonable discussion on gun violence - or maybe just to rant - I thought I’d refute, again, some of the common refrains of gun fanatics.

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Mrs. Bad Astronomy has written a guest post on her husband’s blog (h/t Science After Sunclipse) concerning the media’s tendency to refer to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as simply “Hillary”. The conclusion drawn is that this represents, either consciously or unconsciously, some sexism on the part of the media. Referring to a Presidential candidate by her first name, in this view, is an indirect way of minimizing her importance and her seriousness.

A number of commenters on the post more or less dismissed this opinion because Clinton herself uses the campaign slogan, “Hillary for President.” In the commenters’ view, Hillary wants… erm, Hillary Clinton wants to be referred to by her first name, and the media is simply going along with this.

I suspect there’s some truth to the latter view, but I also don’t doubt that there’s some sexism, albeit probably unintentional, going on. I have some anecdotal evidence from academia that supports this.

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Via Kevin Drum, I came across a short (less than 7 minute) documentary about Steve Benen, who writes The Carpetbagger Report political blog and subs quite often on Crooks & Liars and Talking Points Memo. Steve is perhaps my favorite political blogger and one of the biggest reasons that I got into blogging myself: he convinced me (through his posts) that the internet(s) are a place where you can have reasoned, intelligent discussions and learn a lot about the world.

Anyway, a friend of Steve’s made a short documentary about him. Steve mentions it himself here, and I’ve put the YouTube video below the fold…

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My friend Personal Demon (h/t) forwarded this image of a Romney supporter, from Yahoo! News photos:

Yes, the dead have risen and they’re voting Republican! (PD said in his email that he’s a mean, mean man.  I have to agree with him!)

Any suggested slogans for zombie supporters of Romney?

I’m always amazed at some of the ridiculous things that come out of the mouths of the so-called ‘conservative elite’. Here’s Jonah Goldberg, defending the premise of his book Liberal Fascism on Salon.com (h/t Crooks and Liars):

To sort of start the story, the reason why we see fascism as a thing of the right is because fascism was originally a form of right-wing socialism. Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

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