Husband charged in disappearance of Laci Peterson and unborn child

What makes this case special? Laci Peterson's disappearance and her likely murder is tragic. Yet there were at least two other pregnant women in California within the last year who disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Is it that her husband is a suspect? Husbands are always suspects? Is it that she was young, beautiful, and with child?
The reason I ask this question is that I saw the story and reflexively I wanted to write about it here. Yet how is it relevant? I don't pretend to write for a news website. Here is the original story from MSNBC.com. Whoa! Scott Peterson was arrested as I was writing this post.
One has to wonder, who gets to decide which stories are newsworthy? Which murders are the grisliest, kidnappings the most heartrending, car accidents the most tragic, robberies the most shocking, foreign events the most important, etc.? Network executives might answer that the public decides indirectly by rewarding the most relevant news media with their ears and eyeballs. I don't think so. Public preference plays a role and is often blamed for the dumbing down of the news; but I don't think that is a fair answer. The news media filters the news to align with their own private agendas and biases. Journalists operate under the pretense of objectivity but most people would agree that "objectivity" is only a smoke screen to protect the journalist. I've come to prefer opinion journalism to straight news reporting since opinion and thus bias is already acknowledged. (at least I think it should be)
So to come full cicle in this blog post, why Laci Peterson? Why her particular tragedy? If her husband had been arrested two weeks earlier would anybody care, or would stories of death and destruction in Iraq been more important?
What is news?

Manned Space Flight!

A secretly built airplane appears to be poised to fulfill the dream of flying into space without the aid of booster rockets. You know what this means? Companies will be able to go bankrupt flying from New York to Jupiter, instead of just New York to Paris. Here's the story on MSBC.com. The most amazing aspect of the story is that the development of the plane was privately developed. It isn't often that private developers conduct successful secret large scale projects of this kind.

Dueling point's of View at Slate

Finally, a journalist has emerged to answer Mike Kinsley directly and he works for Slate! Imagine that, the best answer to Michael Kinsley's constant sniping at the Bush administration comes from one of his own employees. Yesterday, Michael Kinsley accused the Bush administration of favoritism in allocating contracts to rebuild Iraq. The very next day Christopher Hitchens shot back. I don't know what Christopher Hitchens' political persuasion is but he consistently defends conservative positions with a skill and ferocity that warms the heart of Republicans everywhere. I am just curious how long he'll last. If I understand how Slate works Christopher Hitchens will continue working there a long time. However, it would be surprising that anybody who defies their superior as directly as Hitchens does would last any length of time.

Back from Aggieland

I have decided that Texas A&M isn't such a bad place after all. I partied last night with several of Aggieland's finest students and I have to say that the social life there is much better than what I experienced at UTD. One thing though, Aggies drink like fish! Apparently there isn't anything to do in Bryan that doesn't involve imbibing huge quanities of alcohol.

Sudden Insight: Relativity. gravity, and bowling balls...

As a child, I had a strange fascination for relativity theory. I'd pore over encyclopedias for hours reading about gravity equaling curvature, space-time, and squinting at impenetrable equations. Even now, I am prone to protracted discussions about relativity, quantum physics, and the basis of all reality. Last night (this morning) I was engaged in a protracted conversation on the topic of the origin of reality, relativity, etc. when I started talking about gravity being equal to curvature. The metaphor I had eventually settled on in my mind was of a bowling ball sitting on a bed covered in 2 dimensional graph paper bed sheets. The bed sheets would curve underneath the bowling ball and objects on the bed sheet would naturally sink toward the bowling ball. I quickly realized that this metaphor was unsatisfactory. The objects did sink toward the bowling ball but only because of gravity and not any warping of the bed. If this example was held in outer space for instance, it would immediately lose its illustrative qualities.
I was about to go to bed when a better metaphor hit me. What if space-time was an elastic container that warped to restrain massive objects? I envisioned elastic graph paper stretched around large objects embedded in the plane of the paper. Smaller objects moving in the vicinity of the larger object would tend to draw close to the larger object because the larger object had compressed their space in the graph paper. Smaller objects tend to move toward larger objects because they have less room to move! Imagine that objects move only along the lines in graph paper, and that suddenly the graph paper developed a square that was swollen or distended, while the rest of the graph stayed roughly the same size. If you lived in the graph paper and defined your frame of reference from the graph paper you would not see the bending of your space but you would see objects tending closer to the center of the warped area. Looking at gravity this way also explains why gravity is diminished at distance from a mass. The warping is less severe and has less influence on movement. Since there are no visible lines for us to observe or an visible higher frame of reference we cannot percieve the bending and flexing of our space-time.

Not with a Bang...

The war for Iraq appears to be coming to a quiet end. The last major outpost of Saddam's Baath regime, Tikrit, may fall without a battle.

A Worthy Cause

Help a girl out you know? Buy her some enlarged mammary glands! People think (and they are right) that they can get people to give them money for anything.

Stuff that I am reading

If you're ambition is to grow up to be like Idaho (heaven help you, poor fool) than you have to develop a voracious appetite for news. The easiest way to satisfy a lust for intelligent discourse is not the morning newspaper, (well maybe since it is online) or televison news, but internet media. Most newspapers are also available online for free on the day of publication, and there are also numerous independent webzines that publish outstanding opinon articles about all and sundry.
My favorite webzine and one of the few completely free news websites left standing, is Slate magazine. Slate owes its existence to the help of Microsoft (much of Slate's traffic is routed through Microsft's MSN portal) but the quality of the opinions and writing at Slate is ungodly. Slate doesn't attempt to cover the news in the same way MSNBC.com or CNN.com does but the results are more satisfying since you get the news distilled through the lens of an intelligent writer's opinion. My only beef with Slate is that the journalists are overwhelmingly liberal. My beef is mitigated by the fact that the bias is acknowledge rather than covered in a veneer of journalistic integrity.
The next best way to find breaking news is Google News. I don't consult google for news very often, but the results are always satisfyingly comprehensive. Here's a story about UN involvement in post-war Iraq that I just picked up from the google news homepage. If it is out there google will find it.
The bulk of the most interesting material I read are random links picked up from the web from my start page, Slate.com, MSNBC.com, and random web browsing. Here's some stuff I am reading now:

• BuzzMachine
  
• BBC News
  
• Andrew Sullivan
  
• Paul Krugman in the New York TImes
  
• Fashion in the New York Times
  
• Ken Layne
  
• www.mightygirl.net
  
• This gem from an anti-war activist detailing the left's failure to detail alternatives to war.
  
• A discussion of women in the military at Slate.com
  
• My friend's new tatoo.
  

Blogs you should read

I think I am going to start a new feature on my blog to go with my "Sudden Insights". I think I'll call it "Voices of Reason". Every once in a while I run into a a blog written by somebody whose world view, while not an exact mirror of my own, appears to be built on logical foundations and reasonable conclusions and not blind ideology. The world is populated with unreasonable people, who yell and scream to be heard above the din but are usually only adding to the confusion. Most people refuse to listen or change their minds from mere inertia. They have always seen the world in a particular way for whatever reason and they aren't flexible enought to listen to what somebody else has to say. Being unreasonable is worse than unintelligence. A stupid person is hampered by simple ignorance and lack of ability to think. An unreasonable person can hear the truth, ignore it and continue to speak the lies he spoke before in the face of damning evidence. Nick Denton is a Voice of Reason and if I am not mistaken in my reading of Wired Magazine an internet micro-publishing mogul. You should be reading his blog, even if you disagree with what he has to say, really...

Mickey Kaus Explains Why everyone should own a BMW or 350Z

Mickey Kaus's Gearbox column at Slate.com details why rear-wheel drive cars are so much fun to drive. Now I know what to say to my friends when they ask why I like BMW's. Rear-Wheel Drive!

Still trying to get a handle on Wander-lust syndication

I'd been wondering why I couldn't see the last three posts; now I know why - I didn't close the comment tag on the syndication command. I am so stupid sometimes.

Fun For Car Nuts Everywhere
Mickey Kaus's Gearbox column at Slate.com details why everybody should run right out and buy a 350Z. Kaus also explains why BMW's are so much fun to drive.

Stumbling into the Weekend

I feel like I have the beginnings of a nasty cold or the flu and I am really in need of rest; but guess what? It's the weekend! This week went by fast, but today seems like it is dragging and my body seems to be calling on me to let up a little, so I will.
I feel like I am living at a pivotal moment in history, and that I will soon be involved in making history in ways that I do not yet understand. At the same time, I am really just counting the days till I ship out and just watching as other people live their lives at full throttle, while I am idling. The best I can do is prepare and try to entertain myself while I wait.
Lately, I have been getting back some really good modeling pictures. Maybe I will post one or two. In the meantime I think I am going to try find some chicken soup. :-p

Europe Comments on the War and is China hiding something?

Isn't it nice to see that our allies are behind us in the war effort? CNN has comments from various European leaders about the Anglo-American coalition's progress in Iraq. It should be obvious that many European countries have no interest in anyone's security but their own.
Meanwhile, China is busy covering up evidence of a dangerous and possible massive outbreak of disease within its borders. The story is that they actually shipped an American teacher to Hong Kong to avoid having another death on the mainland. It jibes exactly with my theory that China is the new Evil Empire and shouldn't be trusted further than you can throw several billion people at once.

The argument for and against war

The problem about arguing about war is that modern warfare moves with such startling rapidity that the war can start and end before the the interested parties have finished their arguments. An interesting point that could undermine many people's anti-war stance was brought up by William Saletan at Slate today. Those who argue against war should argue for a war that saves more lives than it destroys. Even if that is not the case in this war (too early to know), less collateral damage is the trend. Net loss of life may not be the question now but it will be the next time. Will anti-war advocates be able to justify their arguments if it is known that more innocent people will die if American troops stay home?

P.S. I know why I lost the link to Blogdex. Part of the reason is spelling. It is spelled "Blogdex" and not "Blogodex".

Breaking News, or Other People's articles I was able to dredge up on the search engines

I found that link to blogodex. It is strange that google search doesn't bring up the real blogodex website in the top ten results, but I assure you that does not mean blogodex is irrelevant or not useful. I wonder if it has anything to do with plans google has for dominating blog searching. Even this is unlikely since google is run by conscientious folks who believe strongly in fair play.
A few Iraqi children seemed to be pleased with the result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Finally I have some ill but old news from a British news paper: One in three French People Have Saddam's back! I wonder what happens now?

Peace! Peace!

Christopher Hitchens puts salt in the wound. I like it :).

Baghdad FALLS!

Baghdad is in American hands.

How Do People muster the Creativity to Create Endless streams of headline titles?

I am overly fond of ironic headline titles and subject lines that are not really titles or subjects.
I am at work and I am in a tie and I am teaching mathematics. The teacher I am subbing for is a discplinarian so the kids are fairly well behaved and probably love me to death since I am not nearly as strict.
Jeez, when is lunch going to come? I find that I become more priitive all the time, and I am more concerned with my elemental needs - you know food, sleep, sex, etc. I find that nearly everything I need is in short supply so I have little time to think about more complex motivations. I am not starving, but I am hungry; I am not exhausted, but I am a little fatigued; and I also don't have enough time (bell just rang) to consider my other "Maslow" needs so I my audience will have to miss out on my clever description of my non-existent love life.