Stochastic Scribbles

The presumably upcoming vote on raising the debt ceiling is the big news story of the US today. Personally, I think they should just go with an up and down vote, but there is all these messy fights about wanting to attach conditions to the debt ceiling. Despite the ugly political fights, however, I have a feeling that things will go like this:

1. The August 2 deadline will continue to approach, with no end in sight to the debt ceiling fight. In fact, Republicans will make increasingly outrageous demands, making it seem even more likely that the United States might default on part of its debt.
2. With the huge amount of uncertainty and fears of a default by the United States government, the stock market will plummet drastically near the August 2 deadline.
3. Goldman Sachs will make a killing with all the shorts it would have made. Right before the deadline, they will also buy up a whole lot of stock at rock bottom prices.
4. In a dramatic vote immediately before the deadline, Congress will agree to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans may or may not be trying to deliberately cripple the American economy for working class people for their own political benefit, but they would never be allowed to actually block the raising of the debt ceiling. Goldman Sachs might like destroying parts of the economy to gather wealth from shorts, but even they might balk from a default which could threaten the wealth of even the incredibly rich.

But what do I know? I'm just a poor, cynical guy with no first-hand experience with the inner workings of any political or financial system, who probably has no idea what he is talking about.

A common criticism against Islam is that there isn't enough condemnation from moderate Muslims when a fundamentalist Muslim does something terrible. (The same sort of criticism can also be made against other religions, notably Christianity.) In my opinion, it's raised a bit too often even when not justified, although sometimes it is, but there's at least one case where the criticism would definitely not apply: a Pakistani governor was murdered by an extremist Muslim for opposing draconian blasphemy laws.

It won't matter if no moderate Muslim ever speaks up condemning this vile act, this is one case where the "moderate Muslims stay quiet" criticism would just earn a bop on the head from me, since it was precisely because he was a moderate Muslim speaking out that got Salman Taseer killed by an intolerant extremist. I may not have agreed with his beliefs, but I respect him enormously for standing up against intolerance. He should not have had to pay the ultimate price for it.

If you're anything like me, you'll be listening to NPR Science Friday every week (although not necessarily on Friday if you listen to it as a podcast like I do). One of the funding sources for the radio program was the NSF; unfortunately, they've decided not to continue their support. The NSF probably have their own valid reasons to stop their funding (like, there's a lot of pressure to cut the deficit, although I personally think that a public radio program promoting science would still be a very worthwhile cause to fund), but this means that Science Friday is facing financial difficulties. And despite being an NPR program, it only gets 10% of its funding from NPR. Fortunately, the program is in no immediate danger of going off the air, but of course, they could use all the help they can get.

I love the show, so I support it. If you're interested in science and have never been a listener of NPR Science Friday, then you might want to give it a listen.

Without even having read the book, the blurb for the The Annunaki Enigma Armageddon 2010 is enough to make me sure that it would quite a disaster. I definitely would not have seen it if I weren't subscribed to the science fiction section at Fictionwise, but the blurb was so much of a train wreck that it was hard to ignore:

Somewhere near the end of the year 2012 world governments are on the precipice of all out war. The United States has become a socialist state — a part of a "One World Order". The global economies are falling apart and there is an effort to correct a pseudo-scientific theory that the world is suffering from global warming brought on by the industrial countries. The politicians have attempted to create a significant revenue source by correlating the warming theory to the burning of carbon-based fuels. A carbon tax is invented and those in power are pleased. This adds further injury to the failing world economies. As this cataclysmic series of events further destroys the once vigorous monetary systems of the world, healthcare in the United States becomes state run. ...

And this is only half of the blurb! It might actually good if it were a satire, but it doesn't appear to be one. With the entire blurb basically a litany of extreme ideology (and quite a bit of delusional ideology at that), along with the complete absence of any indication of a plot, I have to wonder what the blurb writer was thinking. Did he (or she) really think anyone would want to read the book after that blurb?

Today, I turn out to be the user of the day at Einstein@Home. It might not amount to much, but I'm still getting all tingly inside.

If you happen to have idle CPU cycles left over on your computer, consider contributing them to the cause of finding gravitational waves or potential sources of gravitational waves at Einstein@Home.