Stupid politician tricks

Arkansas:  'Very, very old rocks.'  (Link from amenquohi)

I know exactly how I'd deal with this:

[Teacher] "Yes, Johnny?"

[Johnny] "Mr. Smith, how old are these rocks?"

[Teacher] "I'm sorry, Johnny, the school district has forbidden me to give you a truthful and accurate answer to that question."

The science facility in question says "[t]hey have polled teachers in the districts they serve and have heard from them more than enough times that teaching evolution would be “political suicide.”  I seriously think some of these people wouldn't be happy unless the world returned to the Dark Ages.  I sometimes wonder whether it would change the attitudes of fundamentalists if they were prohibited by law from using any modern technologies that are not spoken of in the Bible -- you know, things we take for granted like motorized vehicles, medicine, sanitation, indoor plumbing.

And Washington DC:  Bush says Congressional oversight rules on the renewed Quisling Patriot Act "are not binding" on him.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

"Does not consider himself bound", huh?  As someone else put it, "Either veto it, or live with it as it is."  Does Bush think ANYTHING is binding on him?  I think I'm going to follow after several other people I know and just start calling him King George, because he pretty clearly thinks he's a king, not a president.

And finally, a humorous commentary in photographic form.  I have to admit it took me several seconds to realize what the "entrepreneur" here is actually selling and why....

---

Oops.  Somehow lost a strikeout tag up there.  Fixed now.

More failures of the system

Specifically, in this case, the 911 system.  A 34-year-old Chattanooga, Tennessee mother called 911 to report a kitchen fire and request assistance from the fire department ... as a matter of fact, she called 22 six¹ times over a 27-minute period.  Nobody answered, because of the four 911 dispatchers supposedly on duty, three were simultaneously on break and only one was answering the phones.  Eventually, family members ran to the fire station half a mile away to get help.

The article goes on to state that last month, 20 percent of "more than 10,650" calls to 911 in Chattanooga were not answered, and between January and October 2005 there were more than 27,000 unanswered 911 calls.  Responsible officials tried to explain it away as "caller hangups and repeated calls".

It gets worse.  Turns out even if you do get a 911 dispatcher in Chattanooga to answer the phone, there's no guarantee anyone will actually be dispached to help you.  A 70-year-old man in northern Hamilton County had to have his daughter drive him to the hospital after he severed an artery in his arm while working in his shop, called 911, gave them his location and told them he was injured and bleeding profusely ... and no-one came.

[1]  plutosonium pointed out that I'd misinterpreted this in the article.  22 total calls to the 911 dispatch service went unanswered during the 27 minutes of the fire, but only 6 of those were regarding the fire.  No information is given regarding the other 14 unanswered calls.

Pooooossstts .... iiinnn .... Spaaaaacceee!

Two tidbits here.

First, zaitcev passes on a report from Spaceflight Now in the failure iof SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch from Kwajalein at 2230Z today.  The Falcon 1 was lost about 70 seconds into the stage 1 burn; it appears the cause may have been a malfunction or failure of the main engine turbopump.  The last video from the onboard camera shows the booster apparently beginning an uncontrolled roll, after which the video signal was lost abruptly.

In more abstract, but at the same time more potentially earthshaking, news, james_nicoll came up with this article about the discovery by ESA-sponsored researchers of a gravitomagnetic field induced by a spinning superconductive flywheel.  (To non-physicists, at a first approximation that's "artificial gravity".)  No gravitomagnetic field has ever previously been detected; the field generated in this experiment, while only 100 μG in strength, is 10²⁰ times larger than predicted by general relativity.  (Look what we're saying here, though:  100 μG generated by what appears in this larger photo to be pretty much a bench-top experiment.)

The result can be explained by assuming that gravitons gain mass, in a manner analogous to the mass gain of photons by which quantum theory explains the electromagnetic properties of superconductors.  If the observed result can be independently reproduced and verified, it could help develop a quantum theory of gravity, and might someday lead to a gravitomagnetic spacedrive or to artificial gravity for spacecraft.