An Open Letter to Senator Arlen Specter

Senator Specter,

I feel moved to direct this public essay towards you as a means to communicate, in plain public view, with what low regard it is in that I view your recent antics regarding the National Football League and the New England Patriots. Before proceeding further, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must make it known that I consider myself a Patriots fan, much as you consider yourself to be a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. As we are brethren in this loose fraternity of fandom, I would like to assume that I may skip the details that define the fandom of a modern, educated, and civilized man and proceed directly to my main point of contention; however your recent actions lead me to believe that such an assumption may not be entirely safe. Make no mistake, Mr. Senator, I do not question your impressive academic and professional credentials, nor do I imply that you are uncivilized, but rather, I doubt the context within which you view your relative place within the dynamic of sports fanaticism.

The so-called "Spygate" incident, as you know, is a sports scandal of historical proportions. Few events of the like can be drawn upon for reference, whether from a perspective of perpetration or punishment. A highly regarded, highly successful and highly profitable organization has been caught breaking the rules of the league within which it operates. The organization has been investigated, publicly and privately, and punished, publicly and privately. The infractions in question have been viewed by some within the league as simply gamesmanship, while others have been more harsh with their judgements. You sir, seem to be the harshest voice of all. For your voice is that of a United States Senator making no effort to conceal the fact that his voice is carrying the full weight and authority of his office. To this, sir, I must object.

Allow me once more to insert a side note, again in the interest of full disclosure. Senator Specter, when I set out to write this essay, I had intended to include within it an indictment on your past actions regarding matters that many of your Pennsylvanian constituents, and many Americans, would consider to carry far more gravity. I intended to use allegorical references to the Iraq War, in an effort to illustrate your misguided ferocity in the search for truth. I was operating under an assumption that an examination of your public record would present me with ample ammunition with which to fire holes in your credibility on matters of truth, ethics and jurisdiction. What I found instead was an impressive collection of accomplishments, a body of work molded in a fashion consistent with the values and dedication required to distinguish oneself from such esteemed company. Yet, the more and more I found myself tempering my unfounded criticisms, more and more was my disappointment growing. For now, Mr. Senator, I am truly at a loss when trying to rationalize your activities.

Your decision to interject yourself and your office into the matters of a professional sports league, matters containing no legal or Constitutional significance, is flatly outrageous. As I write this letter, you and your staff are presumably preparing for your upcoming meeting with former Patriots employee Matt Walsh, who has recently turned in video evidence to Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the National Football League. By all accounts, this evidence will shed no new light on the matter, and many close to the situation feel the tapes, and Goodell’s own meeting with Walsh, will serve to put the matter to an end. Why then, Mr. Senator, do you feel it appropriate to interject? Why must you criticize the League for its handling of the situation? Why the meeting with Walsh, the meeting with Goodell? A man such as yourself, so critical of our Presidents forays into domestic surveillance and wiretapping, surely know the bounds of jurisdiction. Then why have you such blatant disregard for your own?

Allow me to close by returning to the issue of my fandom. The actions of the New England Patriots over the last several years have brought delightful highs, and agonizing lows. The recent revelations about their videotaping abuses has cast a pall over their accomplishments, one that will never diminish. As a fan the team, I wish it could be forgotten; as a fan of the sport, I know it cannot be. Senator Specter I urge you, out of respect for you and your office, to stand down and remove yourself from this issue. Your actions will stand for history to examine, and against the context of our tumultuous times, even such a talented litigator as yourself could not convince me that this is time well spent.

Sincerely and with Highest Regards,
Ian McCarty

Knock Knock Knockin'...

In the summer of 1945, as the United States prepared to detonate the first nuclear weapon in the American southwest, several scientists on the Manhattan Project team, most notably Edward Teller, expresseed concern that the kind of fission reaction utilizied to trigger the explosion may not be containable. What Teller and the others feared was that the reaction would spiral continually, growing larger and exponentially more powerful (all within microseconds), and eventually ignite the planet's atmosphere. After debate, the team agreed that this was a possibility, albeit a very small one, but decided to move forward with the test as planned.

Obviously, the Earth's atmosphere survived. However, a very important ethical lesson can be drawn from this: Mankind will try anything once. One of these days, once is all it's going to take. Case in point: not satisfied with the strength of the first two nuclear devices deployed over Japan in August of 1945, the United States got right to work inventing larger, more powerful nuclear weapons. Edward Teller himself, obviously relieved of his fears of world annihilation, went on to invent the hydrogen bomb, exponentially more powerful than its predecessor.

As the video clip above points out, the Large Hadron Collider presents science with another risk / reward scenario, this one containing even more potential for unwanted disaster. This time, though, instead of approaching a frontier with a 'best guess' attitude of gauging the probable outcomes (a la those on the Manhattan Project, who had no hard data either way), scientists working on the LHC are working within the framework of the Standard Model of Physics, which, despite what they say about the specifics on black holes and supersymmetrical particles, does provide strong data that the fabric of spacetime will be stretched to its limit, so to speak, when these collisions occur. The reward to be gained is the completion of the Standard Model of Everything, or a completed Grand Unified Theory, as explained in the clip. Attaining this knowledge will allow scientists to define our universe with a single set of fundamental laws and values. This would allow for the expansion of our knowledge of the universe around us to expand exponentially, pun intended. Hopefully, though, one of the lessons we will not learn from this new set of rules is "never collide two protons at 99% of the speed of light."

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity is the real wild card here. This is the model that has many scientists worried. Einstein's Theory would, in this case, point to the creation of these micro black holes that, being caused by release of energy from a single point in spacetime, would be stationary. Most theories regarding stationary black holes leads to them growing. That's the big risk in this case. There are also other, less disastrous, and even quasi-comical potential side effects, like the creation of CTCs (closed timelike curves), and the theory (presented in this article in the U.K.'s Telegraph), that we should look forward to welcoming time travellers when the LHC is switched on in the coming weeks.

There are times it seems that humankind's search for knowedge resembles that of a child crawling along the floor, constantly needing an adult to warn "Don't put that in your mouth." In reality, though, we are neither the adult (coincidentally, the Higgs boson is referred to by most as the God particle) nor do we seem intent on listening. Humankind's propensity for the bigger, faster stronger, more attitude leads one to suspect that if unsuccessful in this endeavor, manknind will surely find - to mix metaphors - somewhere else to stick his finger.

For the record, Albert Einstein disagreed with Edward Teller's concerns about runaway fission in 1945. He was right that time, let's hope his theory is wrong this time.

Instant Replay

Tuesday saw an important, if unnoticed event in the ongoing Democratic primary election. Hillary Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania not only served to re-legitimize her campaign beyond any spectre of a doubt, but it also provided Clinton supporters with a key statistic that even her befuddled campaign simply cannot ignore: Barack Obama's lead in the popular vote has disappeared. With Tuesday's 1,260,060 votes in Pennsylvania's primary, Clinton moved ahead of Obama in total votes cast by a count of 15,116,076 to 14,417,134. Now, as usual in this primary contest, these numbers are accompanied by a host of caveats.

Most notable and most important is the issue of Michigan and Florida. Both of these states are having their popular vote counts, along with their delegate votes, withheld due to their violation of DNC rules regarding the timing of their respective contests. The total popular vote totals above include the tallies from both of these states; however, a major point remains. While in Florida both Clinton and Obama appeared on the ticket, in Michigan Obama was absent. Obama chose not to campaign in the state with the knowledge that the process would likely be all for naught. In doing so, though, his campaign provided definitive evidence that if there are no delegates to gain, the state is not a priority.

Campaigning directly to electoral votes, or in this case delegates, is a hot button issue and causes many to question the process of the electoral college. In this primary contest, where delegates replace electoral votes, the same principals apply, causing states to vary in importance in vague proportion to the number of delegates they carry. Through the years, various candidates have pledged to ignore this process and give each citizen of each state their proper attention regardless of the number of delegates - or electoral votes - their state carries. Obama has been mum on the topic, but his campaign strategy in Michigan does plenty of talking.

So what about November, when the votes at stake are electoral, and not delegates? A previous post on this blog points to the nature of victories achieved in the primary so far, and how they may translate come November. To recap (with updated numbers), to tally the electoral votes for each state won by the respective candidate shows the following totals:

Clinton: 284 Obama:193

Allowing for the fact that many of these votes will be gobbled up by John McCain in November is a fact that only further serves to support Clinton, as she has won far more traditional "blue" states, and Obama has been very successful in "red" states, likely to go to McCain in November. When presented with this case, Obama supporters have been quick to point to two arguments: Michigan and Florida should not be included in the counts, and Obama has a strong lead in the overall popular vote. It will be very interesting to see if Clinton's campaign can capitalize on the fact that Obama's argument concerning the popular vote is simply no longer valid, and the argument concerning Michigan and Florida is simply too petty a claim to stake in the face of such an important general election. By abstaining from the Michigan contest to focus on states where the delegates would count towards his tally, Obama acknowledged the very principle that cements Clinton's legitimacy: There are certain states that, for better or for worse, carry more importance in an election, and in those states Clinton has been overwhelmingly more successful.

Obama has done a masterful job at seizing momentum, inspiring his base, and marketing his campaign. But the fact simply remains that the numbers no longer add up to support his front runner status. The idea of this primary process is to determine which candidate will be most prepared and equipped to win a national election. Looking at the numbers above, it has done so. The time is drawing very near for Democrats to fall in line and concentrate on November, for this is an election they cannot afford to lose.

A Theory of Memory

Think back for a moment to where you were when you viewed the above video, or even, where you were when you began reading this sentence. Chances are you are still in the same physical location as you are in now. Now take a moment to consider where you were an hour, a day, or a week ago. You will find, most likely, that your situation has changed, that you are no longer in the same place - or are you?

Our fundamental concept of memory is best described by drawing an analogy to a computer's hard drive. As we move through our lives, our brains encrypt information and store it away to be drawn upon and referenced again and again. Is this, though, the most logical diagram we can employ to gain full knowledge over our interface with the past? Perhaps.

Consider now a different approach. What if, like touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, etc., our memory truly is a sense? Instead of drawing upon bits of information stored away in our brains like files, our memory is a physical sense of the past as it truly exists? This may seem like quite a stretch, but consider the following: In modern quantum physics, the laws of entanglement basically assert a general inter-connectivity between all physical aspects of the universe. Theories of conservation and relativity dictate (among many other things) that all mass and all energy, in all of forms, is neither destroyed nor created, but pass through various phases of existence and physical perception, and back again and again. Lastly, for the purposes of this specific theory, consider Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, which introduces the concept of spacetime, and some of the principles that bind this phenomena to the same laws that govern all other aspects of the physical universe.

Basically stated, all of these principles allow for the theory in which the past exists physically, right alongside the present and the future and all of the physical matter and energy we use as an interface to interpret our positions therein. Adding together all of these principles allows us to look at our perception of the past in a much different light.

I'll reference the video clip to illustrate the point further. The majority of our physical existence is dictated by a series of interactions with our physical surroundings, i.e., I see the coffee mug in front of me, I reach for the mug, grasp, touch, and feel the mug, bring it to my lips and consume its contents, as confirmed by my sense of taste. Through a combination of physiological maneuvers, both sensory and muscular-skeletal in nature, I have performed an action. But what if this action involved a coffee mug that was not in plain sight? What if the same mug was behind me? An act of memory replaces an act of sight in becoming the first step in determining the mug's physical location. Under the assumptions of this new, different theory, instead of referencing a snapshot of the point in time where I placed my mug on the table behind me, my brain references the point in time itself.

Just as the neurological experiments of Ben Libet (explained in the clip) point to a possible connection between our physical sensations and the future, could it be that there is a physical link between our senses and the past?

U.S. Obesity Rates

I found this amazing - but startling - chart on Paul Levy's blog. Click through the slides to watch the unfortunate trend in obesity illustrated in dramatic fasion.

Read this doc on Scribd: obesity trends 2006[1]

This information is all the more alarming when the numbers are put into perspective. The following information is taken from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) website.

Defining Overweight and Obesity
Overweight and obesity are both labels for ranges of weight that are greater than what is generally considered healthy for a given height. The terms also identify ranges of weight that have been shown to increase the likelihood of certain diseases and other health problems.


Definitions for Adults
For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the “body mass index” (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat.

An adult who has a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.
An adult who has a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.
See the following table for an example.

Height Weight Range BMI Considered
5’ 9”
124 lbs or less Below 18.5 Underweight
125 lbs to 168 lbs 18.5 to 24.9 Healthy weight
169 lbs to 202 lbs 25.0 to 29.9 Overweight
203 lbs or more 30 or higher Obese

(To calculate your BMI, click here)
With health care, and more importantly, health care costs continuing to draw national attention of a mostly negative ilk, the trends and statistics illustrated above may help to point out that many, many more people than just doctors, politicians and health insurance executives play a very fundamental role in determining the nature, and cost, of health care in this country.

Happy Anniversary

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the second United States invasion of Iraq. Since that day in March of 2003, over 4,000 American service men and women, and countless Iraqi soldiers and civilians have given their lives for...what? Trying to justify this crusade now involves revisiting the tired, and in many cases wholly discredited reasons that the Bush administration has paraded before the public time and again, without much care or regard for the public's reaction. To review:


- "Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction."


Proven false. Not only were these claims unfounded at the time of their assertion, they remained so at the time of invasion and throughout the subsequent occupation. The United States did finally admit in 2004 that there were, it seems, never any WMDs in Iraq after all.


- "Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq."

Nope. There is categorically zero evidence that prior to 2003 Al Qaida was any more operational in Iraq than in was in Dearborn, Michigan. Of course, there's one proven way to ensure that Al Qaida will operate in Iraq: remove any form of a central government, and place 150,000 United States soldiers into the mix. Conveniently for the President, one can no longer argue that Al Qaida is not present in Iraq.


- "The world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein and his sons in power."


This is true. However, the world would most likely be safer without Kim Jong Il, Pervez Musharraf, and Vladimir Putin, too. Is it logical to go to war with every leader with whom there is a conflict of ideology? Hardly. Of course, if the removal of a despot could turn the tide towards world peace, who could possibly oppose that? After all...

- "A democratic Iraq will have a stabilizing effect on the rest of the Middle East."


How's that working out for you, George?


All kidding aside, the examination of the case for this war, now five years on (granted that many of these reasons "evolved" out of circumstance) sheds light on a great American tragedy. George W. Bush took office in 2001 claiming to possess the power to unite America, and the knowledge needed to keep from further dividing us. This is, quite literally, the exact opposite of the result we have endured and experienced. We are a nation divided, a nation at war, a nation in peril.


The menace of this administration has successfully curbed the tongues of those who have spoken out against it, and dissuaded its detractors from full engagement. As the Democrats in-fight their way towards another national election, maybe they should stop to consider their quest for an identity, in the wake of a humiliating eight years.


This is a party all too familiar with scrutiny, with lying under oath and impeachment. When is it that Democrats will realize that their "moral high ground" cannot automatically exclude the act of confrontation, and that if one precludes themself from retaliation, their adversary will perpetually attack?


This may not be the most cohesive, compelling, or thought provoking piece you hear on behalf of these ideals, but hey, as our President loves to point out, "fool me once..."










Never Forget

Who's Winning?

It's no secret that Americans are witnessing one of, if not the closest Democratic primary contests in recent history. The nightly news is reaching the saturation point for the terms "superdelegate," "do-or-die" and "momentum." Recently, the story of this run-off election has focused on Barack Obama's momentous charge towards 11 straight primary victories, his ever growing list of influential and powerful backers, and his seemingly inevitable march towards the White House.

There is no denying that Obama enjoyed quite a February. Coming into the month trailing Senator Hillary Clinton, with many observers questioning just how long he could hold out, something unexpected, at least to most, began to happen: Obama began picking up some very key endorsements. Most notable were Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, the two U.S. Senators from Massachusetts, both former presidential candidates themselves. The reasoning these two Democratic stalwarts pointed to was that Obama, to paraphrase the two, "felt like a winner." At the time, this seemed an odd notion. Clinton was leading in the polls, had secured strong results in the early primaries and caucuses, and looked to be well on her way to securing the nomination. Then a funny thing began to happen: Obama began winning. He didn't stop winning, in fact, until this past Tuesday, when Clinton defeated him in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas (more on this in a minute) in what was looked upon by many as a last ditch effort to save her campaign.

Even now, many Obama supporters claim that Clinton's victories this week were "too little, too late," and the time has come for her to step aside and allow Obama to secure the nomination. Indeed, it is hard to argue with Obama's supporters, who can point to 24 primary and caucus victories, including the aforementioned 11 straight, and to a well oiled campaign machine that seems to be impenetrable even to Clinton's fiercest attacks. Then again, a closer look at the numbers to date suggests there may not be an argument at all.

This November, the two (sorry, Ralph) eventual presidential candidates will be vying for the magic number of 270 electoral votes. Each state is worth a predetermined amount of these votes, and in nearly every instance in modern campaign history, it's winner-take-all. Looking at the Democratic primary and caucus results to date, a very different picture than the one being illustrated in the media begins to take shape. If electoral votes were to be handed out right now to Senators Clinton and Obama based upon their victories to date, the results would read like this:

Clinton - 229 Obama - 190

Now, there are a few caveats to these numbers, and they are as follows: The primary contests in Michigan and Florida are currently being withheld from the delegate counts for either candidate. Clinton won both Florida and Michigan, but Obama did not appear on the Michigan ballot, and both contests were disqualified by the Democratic National Committee for taking place too early in the primary season. For the sake of argument, Michigan's 17 electoral votes will be struck from Clinton's tally, bringing her to 212. Next is the issue of Texas, which held both a primary election and caucuses on Tuesday, in a confusing and yet unresolved election process. Two thirds of the states delegates are awarded to the primary victor, while the remaining third are doled out in the caucuses. While the results of this process are still being calculated, one number has been confirmed: Clinton won the popular vote by roughly 100,000 votes.

In the figures above, Texas' 34 electoral votes were not awarded to either candidate, nor are they likely to be in November. In fact, many of the states won by Clinton and Obama will go to neither in November, regardless of who ends up winning the nomination. Texas, like many Southern and Midwestern states, is "red," meaning it will nearly always end up awarding its electoral votes to a Republican.

So what does this mean for Clinton and Obama? Well, looking again at the election results to date, they show Clinton having won two traditional "red" states: Arizona (sure to go to home town favorite John McCain), and Oklahoma. No doubt there are other states, Tennessee, Arkansas and Nevada that teeter on the "purple precipice," if you will, but none of the states is a true home run for Republicans. Taking away the electoral votes of Arizona and Oklahoma drops Clinton to 195 in this tally. Obama, on the other hand, has won a whopping seven "red" states: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska. Like Clinton, he was won several "in between" states, but for this argument only the seven states listed will be subtracted. In doing so, Obama's total electoral votes drops to 139.

Granted, this calculation is far from scientific, and if elections were held again today the results may change, but in viewing the statistics in this light, one must wonder who's time has come to step aside, and who, in fact, "looks like a winner."