Engage psudo-science/fiction : So, when you decelerate out of FTL, aren’t you going to give off a lot of Cherenkov Radiation, and doesn’t the transition from hyperspace to realspace carry over a lot of tachyon/dark-matter particles that have to get shed from the ship in a ‘discharging’ action in the relative proximity to a gravity well? And the photons from our gravity well are simply trailing them behind the ship ship and triggering a refraction effect to make it look like a comet tail?

Ok, enough of that, but a boy can dream…

… What ever it is, its gorgeous, and I hope we can get better pictures of it, if not establish communications

Click here to see a larger version [nasa]

This blog post at : http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/11/incredible-vista-of-the-cosmos/ has done that to me today.

Here’s another phenomenal picture. It’s an amazing 2 x 1.5 degree field toward the center of the Milky Way, revealing about a million stars! It’s taken completely in the near infrared, just outside of what the human eye can see, and shows dust and stars mostly invisible in optical light.

Click here to see that amazing image, and fathom that most of it is invisible to our naked eye, but is there, sitting there, in our galaxy…

Yeah, tears in my eyes, at how amazing our existence is.

A few weeks ago one of the members posted this simple sentence.

I’ve had 4 “real” programming jobs in my 5-year career. They’ve all ended the same way: innovation isn’t allowed, new features are all emergencies, and development ends up the least of my responsibilities.

Sounds like some self pitying whining talk to me… except every so often I wonder if I’ve been in the same boat as well… Then my optimism and naivety kicks in and I forget about complaining, and just do the best job I can. But it still was there, scratching at the back of my head… Something is wrong, at a larger level then I can identify…

A friend of mine, who follows reddit as well apparently noticed one of the comments on in the thread. I’m reposting it here in full, but please visit the thread to at least give reddit a few more hits in their ad counters

Direct link to this comment

If you are talking about the US, no, it’s not just your job – it’s most medium to large corporations, and too many small companies. The last decade of corporate strategy can largely be characterized at all levels of operation as a “fear strategy”.

The company I used to work for has been in pure fear mode for most of this time – it is economically imploding now largely due to its own mistakes caused by this fear, not for lack of market opportunity as they tell their shareholders. Most other companies I visit as my customers or suppliers are also.

Fear strategies are characterized by irrational risk fear and reduction efforts, by inward looking diminished goals and reduced scope of activity and outlook, by general pessimism and CYA.

The negativity is so pervasive that we now are gaining major advantages over far larger competitors with just our small modicum of optimistic planning, strategy and execution. Most of our competitors have literally lost the capacity to innovate as far as I can see. I like it but it’s scary for others who depend on them to be otherwise.

There are two coupled reasons: most Fortune 1000 companies are in their terminal phase of life cycle “fade”, and various major events have triggered fear. Each of these feeds on the other in a positive feedback loop (taking them in the wrong, fatal direction).

The first is the diametric opposite of corporate start-up and being on a leading edge of something productive which is dominated by optimism. Just as corporations are born, they can and usually do die. There is usually a small cluster for key mistakes that get made that transition the company into a declining, trailing edge organization – most of corporate America is in that phase.

One of the big ones was to abandon manufacturing almost entirely and embrace financial services. Remember that before the crash, FIRE was 70% of US GDP. The Fortune 1000 was 70% of GDP. Not always the same 70% but close enough when it’s the majority of economic activity.

The events are the obvious ones such as the displacement of Cold War fear attention, the dot-com crash, 9-11, general fear-mongering by politicians, over-reliance on single point, profit-driven news sources (the Internet partly ameliorates this), the Wars, Peak Oil, Boomers reaching a similar biological terminal life cycle phase, etc.

Only creative destruction and embrace of their deaths will ever fix anything. The Fortune 1000 is largely not repairable and trying to do so is akin to putting a terminal, comatose 90-year-old on life support; mostly a futile and wasteful effort despite the superficial emotional satisfaction of false continuity and false permanence it brings.

Individually, join or start a small, new company. Consider emigration. Be responsible for your own destiny – the Fortune 1000 never really cared about that and certainly won’t now. Downsize to what really matters, which once you try it you’ll discover is a whole lot less material and less expensive.

My wise father said that you can tell what part of a corporate life cycle a company is in by the credentials of the CEO and executive staff: start-ups have creative professions which include engineers and scientists to imagine new ideas, products and markets for a new company; young adult companies have sales and marketing people to take advantage of the leading edge profit opportunities; the middle-aged company is led by process people and accountants because there is no growth left and every dime of profit comes from cost control and efficiency; and terminal phase is led by lawyers and politicians because the company must do merger & acquisition to grow, lie about its products’ value and have legal cover, or must go through “probate”.

Think about why the Fortune 1000 “needs” to own the political process at all these days – this is why we have the political corruption they’ve caused: if they could compete at all it would be easier and cheaper for them but they can’t so they have to “buy” political cover to survive. Have to have bail outs from the government to survive. It’s pretty obvious.

… join or start a small, new company. Consider emigration…

How about both?
An interesting read, that helps cement some things I’ve been thinking about pretty hard.

The more of us who are aware, the less they can lie to us.

But none the less, Cramer just got destroyed.

Edit:
You just have to watch the whole damn thing.
All 3 segments across the whole episode.
The Dailyshow posted the ENTIRE interview, all excerpts included.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=220533

From Daily Kos

This week, Senators Dodd and Feingold won a battle in the fight to stop the FISA capitulation. In an attempt to stop retroactive telecom immunity, they delayed a vote on the bill until after the July 4th recess. This buys us more time to shore up the votes needed to defeat the bill. However, it’s unlikely we’ll succeed without real support from leaders in Congress, most of whom have already abandoned us.

Senator Reid caved in long ago, and Speaker Pelosi folded just last week. There is one leader left who could make a difference and support our cause: Senator Barack Obama.

Back in December, Senator Obama’s office released a statement that he “unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies.”1 On Wednesday, however, Obama said in a press conference that “My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”2

Senator Obama still has time to make this right, but it won’t happen unless we all work together to hold him accountable.

The delay in the FISA vote gives senators a new chance to stand up for the Constitution — will Senator Obama stand with them? Sign this petition and urge Senator Obama to vote his conscience and stand by his previous statement: No retroactive immunity for telecoms. No caving on the constitution.

Sources:

¹ Senator Obama’s statement on retroactive immunity from December 17, 2007.

² Video and selected text of Senator Obama’s press conference from June 25, 2008.