The Sunday Newsies

Ehud Barak was interviewed today by Zakariya. FZ did his best to press the Defense Minister on the subject of Israel's intentions toward Iran and quickly hit a stone wall. Actuall,y Barak stonewalled him on several subjects. The only thing that EB wanted to talk about was the coming fall of the Syrian government. It is tempting to think that Barak had some hidden purpose in appearing on TV this morning. Was there some message in his surly refusal to say anything about the Israeli cabinet's attitude toward Teheran? Perhaps not, perhaps he just likes the attention.

The Super-Committee. What a bunch of bums on both sides! It is clear now that neither side expected anything to come from this three month farce. I doubt if the sequestrations will ever take place. They can rescind them in the lame duck session after next year's election. The real struggle next year will be over the Bush tax structure which will end 1 January, 2013 unless renewed.

The CERN FTL issue is probably the really big story of the coming year. pl

 

Comments

[Roy G.]

According to MJ Rosenberg, Barak committed a major gaffe on the Charlie Rose show when he let slip his opinion that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program as a regional geopolitical strategy, not because they hate Israel. Rosenberg takes that statement as evidence that Israel's causus belli is revealed to be a sham. Comments?

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112075149379758.html

[walrus]

I think that CERN is going to have to do a lot more work with clocks before it can prove that FTL is happening because the problem of synchronising clocks involves some rather esoteric physics.

It is not as simple as using "GPS" time to synchronise clocks at both ends of the experiment because GPS time is constantly being steered otherwise the system would be unusable through inaccuracy in a few days. Then there is the known Einstein gravitational red shift that must be compensated for since we are in a gravity well compared to the GPS satellites.

One author has already pointed out that differences in gravity between CERN and its target would also have to be accounted for, even the gravity history of a running clock being moved between CERN and the target.

One Alexander Franklin Mayer has posited a "Transverse Gravitational Red Shift" that might explain the observation. His theory is extremely unpopular because one of its implications is that the Universe is not expanding and of course a lot of scientific reputations and much taxpayer money has been invested in The Big Bang.

I think I read that CERN is proposing to use/beg/borrow an optical fiber link to synchronize the clocks. If Mayer's theory is correct, this should produce the startling and mildly hilarious result that according to CERN, the target clock is running slow, but that according to the target clock, CERN's clock is running slow.

You can read about his idea here if you wish. If he is a Scientific fraud, he is a very good quality, most entertaining, one.

http://www.sensibleuniverse.com/

[bth]

Congress is creating a scenario where the worst case unfolds due to the Super Congress' failure, and then we are rescued by the incumbents just before the election campaign season. I suspect both party's incumbents fear the public will take a 'throw the bums out' attitude this time around.

[Robert]

"The Super-Committee. What a bunch of bums on both sides!"
Agreed, although the Democrat bums are in a very different league then the Republican pyromaniac obstructionist.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

Even if tiny particles of us could go beyond the speed of light, we, instead, in our walkabout on the earth in the next few years, will get to see if the multi-national wealthy can impose austerity on all the rest of us.

[Jake]

Maybe we should experiment using a particle accelerator and Members of Congress? What could possibly go wrong?

[J]

What about 2012, what about 2012? What did the Mayans say? Stuff never ends, does it. Shimy shakes, volcanoes, near miss asteroids, meteors, unnecessary wars, crooked politicians who can't even agree among their crooked selves on how they're going to sham the rest of us.

Can't we ever get a break? Now what did the Mayans say? Hmm.......

[WILL]

Speaking of scientific frauds. Either a revolutionary energy breakthru or a confidence game. it seems a fraud 2 me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057611/Italian-scientist-Andrea-Rossi-claims-achieved-cold-fusion.html

[Mark Logan]

Under humor: If nothing else, the CERN results has at least made the Neutrino Wiki-page go super critical. Remarkable melt down in progress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ANeutrino

[William R. Cumming]

Fascinating to me that all are focused on the impacts of Washington stalemate on USA. Don't they understand the real import? I believe as some others that the USA was largely [not always of course] a force for good in the last several centuries. Now the world awakens to a new age in which American influence and power is not just in decline but absent. And example? NY Times today has an article debating what US policy should be in Egypt! IT fails to mention that the GENERALS in Egypt are largely funded by guess who the USA! The world now looks at US actions not words.

By the way the fathers and stars of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Adam Smith and David Hume, believed that democracy and capitalism could end in cultural stalemate. Looks like they were more prescient than our own leadership. And they favored both as systems of politics and economics. Perhaps we could lift the level of debate in the 2012 election if both those important persons were once again read and the political and economic classes in the USA understood their concerns, arguments, and solutions.

[Laura Wilson]

The bums on both sides certainly weren't picked in the same way by their respective parties. The Dems chose seasoned legislators and the GOP chose ideologues who have done very little legislation.

Governing is a quite a bit beyond the first string or the bench of the GOP right now. God help us all.

[securecare]

"...it's the end of the world AS WE KNOW IT..." - REM

Which will be great for we of the 99.9%. Expect, of course, a few more "convulsions" before things simmer down.

[securecare]

Time to stop looking into the unknowing past and their 0.1% for guidance to our future. Plenty of excellent modern perspectives to utilize for navigation.

"When people start taking the comedian seriously and the politician as a joke,
everything changes." - Will Rogers

[The beaver]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/report-dozens-of-u-s-spies-captured-in-lebanon-and-iran-1.396840

Dozens of spies working for the CIA were captured recently in Lebanon and Iran, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press and ABC News on Monday.

If this is true, then one wonders who really killed Hariri since it is a known fact that the Telecom network was/is Israeli owned and some of the spooks were working for the telecom company.

[steve]

Shackle them to a few neutrinos and let 'er rip.

[turcopolier]

Beaver

You can't run an espionage service as a "jobs program." If you do, then you eventually pay a price. A senior officer asked me once ehat sort of people were needed for this kind of work. I told him that you needed well educated, empathetic predators who were at home in locker room or board room." It was not the desired answer. pl

[The beaver]

Have you seen this article by David Frum ( Canadian American)?

http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

[J]

Just curious, but what was the answer the senior officer was 'expecting' you to say instead? Was the individual miffed or confused after you imparted the them the facts of life of the real world? What did their body language say?