I must have space on my mind this week, as well as Remembrance Day.

The Planets (Op. 32) is a 7 movement suite for a large orchestra.  How large?  Two Piccolos, 4 Flutes, an Alto Flute, 3 Oboes, a Bass Oboe, an English Horn, 3 Clarinets, a Bass Clarinet, 3 Bassoons, and a Contrabassoon.  Six French Horns, 4 Trumpets, 2 Trombones, a Bass Trombone, a Euphonium, and a Tuba.  Six Timpani, a Bass Drum, a Snare Drum, Cymbals, a Triangle, a Tam-Tam, a Tamborine, a Xylophone, a Glockenspiel, and Tubular Bells.  A Celesta and an Organ.  Two Harps.  Your usual compliment of 1st and 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos, and Double Basses.

Oh and two (count ’em) two Three Part Women’s Choruses (two Sopranos and an Alto), located in an adjoining room thank goodness because there’s hardly any place to put them on stage.

The 7 movements are supposed to be evocative of, what else, the planets.  Can you spot the ones that are missing?

1. 00:00 Mars, the Bringer of War
2. 07:21 Venus, the Bringer of Peace
3. 15:58 Mercury, the Winged Messenger
4. 20:14 Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
5. 27:50 Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
6. 37:12 Uranus, the Magician
7. 43:15 Neptune, the Mystic

Why Earth silly, and also Pluto which wasn’t discovered until March 13, 1930.

Now Holst despite his German sounding name (Gustav) was actually 2nd generation British, his Grandfather Gustavus having emigrated from Latvia in 1802.  As an early 20th century composer he’s perhaps best described as post-Romantic of the Folk Music vein.  He actually admired Wagner (idiot) and would have done much better sticking to his earlier Idol, Arthur Sullivan.  As is typical of the 20th century school he could and did write in many of the established musical forms (Symphonies for instance), but didn’t feel bound by them.  He was a big fan of Henry Purcell and was frequently inspired by poetry rather than nature, a post-Romantic trend, and by Folk Music (a late Romantic trend), a sublimation of the jingoistic nationalism of much Romantic Music.  He was also impressed with Hindu mysticism and did several of his own translations from Sanskrit and wrote a few pieces based on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, a more 20th century sort of thing.  Perhaps his best musical friend was Vaughan Williams who was arguably the most influential British composer of the 20th century.  Holst was “traditional” in that he was not nearly as interested as some of his contemporaries in flouting convention just for the sake of it.

The Planets, his most successful work, was written between 1914 and 1916, and received it’s first performance in 1918, just before he left for Salonica to work with British veterans waiting to be demobilized.  He had frequently volunteered for military service but was rejected because of his chronic asthma.  Several of his relatives, friends, and musical acquaintances did serve and a few of them died.

When I listen to this piece, especially the movements related to the Inner Planets (Mars, Venus, and Mercury), I often think of the Great War and speculate about whether the music was effected by contemporary events.  Traditional music history though suggests that the motivation was astrological and the movements reflective of the influence of the planets on the psyche.

This particular recording is the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Karajan and has some nice pictures from NASA.

As for astrology?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

–Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Hong Kong’s umbrella protests are here to stay

Ian Rowen, The Guardian

Wednesday 12 November 2014 04.03 EST

As world leaders meet in Beijing for the Apec forum, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy umbrella movement continues. Even if the tens of thousands of protesters who poured on to the streets after the police launched 87 rounds of teargas at students on 28 September have shrunk in number, the occupations have endured far longer than anyone expected.

Although the protest’s goals may not be met before the next major election, in 2017, it has already succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its originators. None of them expected the occupation to get this big or last this long.

More cosmopolitan, inclusive, and networked than previous social movements in the region, the umbrella revolution is arguably “the first ever genuine movement for freedom on Chinese soil,” as a visitor from Beijing put it to me last week. We were speaking next to my tent, in the Admiralty occupation, where I have been camping in order to conduct research on mainland Chinese people’s engagement with political protests and to examine what that entails for the future of the region.

…

On 5 November, a contingent of Cantonese speakers wearing red-tinted Guy Fawkes masks paraded through the streets. The next day, a group of yellow umbrella-bearing secondary students, organised informally via WhatsApp instant messenger, formed the shape of the Chinese character for “umbrella” and sang odes of freedom to media crews.

As rain fell on Friday night, middle-class families distributed ginseng tea to occupiers huddled in makeshift but well-stocked supply stations.

History was made the next day, when Hong Kong’s annual gay pride parade culminated in Tamar park, adjacent to the Admiralty occupation. Entering a sea of rainbow umbrellas, leaders from the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), the most prominent of the pro-democracy activists, joined the event, linking their call for genuine universal suffrage to wider concerns for social justice.

Sunday ended with a march to the China Liaison Office, responsible for coordinating the policies of the Beijing leadership with the Hong Kong administration, where an estimated 1,000 protesters placed yellow ribbons around the railings.

…

Beijing’s aspersions about sinister western forces aside, no one group is directing this occupation. Although HKFS was recently found to be the territory’s most popular political group in a Hong Kong University poll, receiving more public support than any pro-Beijing or pan-democrat party, they are not in charge. Even if they or Scholarism – another prominent student group, led by the 18-year-old Joshua Wong – issued calls to retreat, it is far from certain that all demonstrators would heed them.

The government also has its hands tied. Given the high degree of international media attention Hong Kong received after earlier police actions, an immediate, Tiananmen-style crackdown is unlikely. Teargas and pepper spray might just send more people back into the streets.

While the Leung administration may be preparing to clear the occupation with force, it could just as well be betting that it will win a war of attrition. But subtropical Hong Kong is not New York, where Occupy Wall Street faltered when it faced a cold winter and a lack of clear demands.

Although the numbers of people protesting in Hong Kong may fluctuate or dwindle, the occupation is still unlikely to be cleared without force or a significant concession from the government.

I once shot an Elephant in my pajamas.  How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

Demonization

The real news and next week’s guests below.

Pentagon: US ground troops may join Iraqis in combat against Isis

Spencer Ackerman, Guardian

Tuesday 16 September 2014 14.50 EDT

The Pentagon leadership suggested to a Senate panel on Tuesday that US ground troops may directly join Iraqi forces in combat against the Islamic State (Isis), despite US president Barack Obama’s repeated public assurances against US ground combat in the latest Middle Eastern war.

…

It was the most thorough public acknowledgement yet from Pentagon leaders that the roughly 1,600 US troops Obama has deployed to Iraq since June may in fact be used in a ground combat role, something Obama has directly ruled out, most recently in a televised speech last week.

Dempsey, who has for years warned about the “unintended consequences” of Americanizing the Syrian civil war that gave rise to Isis, said he envisioned “close combat advising” for operations on the order of taking Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, away from Isis.

He also opened the door to using US “advisers” to call in air strikes from the ground, something Dempsey said they have thus far not done but which the US Central Command leader, General Lloyd Austin, initially thought would be necessary when pushing Isis away from the Mosul Dam last month.

…

Isis’s ultimate defeat will be a “generational” effort, Dempsey said, during which “moderate” Muslims abandon its ideology – raising questions about what the US military’s actual endpoint will be in pursuing the goal of “degrading and ultimately defeating” Isis, Obama’s stated goal.

Obama to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq as campaign expands

By Phil Stewart and Roberta Rampton, Reuters

Fri Nov 7, 2014 6:44pm EST

President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground to advise and retrain Iraqis in their battle against the militant group Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Obama’s decision greatly expands the scope of the U.S. campaign and the geographic distribution of American forces, some of whom will head into Iraq’s fiercely contested western Anbar province for the first time to act as advisors.

…

About 1,400 U.S. troops are now on the ground, just below the previous limit of 1,600 troops. The new authorization gives the U.S. military the ability to deploy up to 3,100 troops.

Kirby said many of the additional American troops would be dedicated to securing bases where training and advising would take place, but he cautioned that American troops still face risks.

“We already had a couple of military deaths associated with this conflict … Nothing we do is without risk,” he said.

…

Officials said one location to which military advisors would soon travel was western Anbar province, bordering Syria, where Islamic State fighters are on the offensive.

“This is Crazy”: Ex-State Dept. Official Matthew Hoh Blasts Obama’s Doubling of U.S. Troops in Iraq

Democracy Now

First US military death announced since Isis offensive started in Iraq

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Friday 24 October 2014 23.49 EDT

Marine Lance Corporal Sean P Neal, one of 1,600 troops serving in Iraq to support the Iraqi struggle against Islamic State (Isis), died of a “non-combat” injury, the US announced late on Friday. Neal, of Riverside, California, died in Baghdad, more than 7600 miles from his home, on Thursday.

Neal, 19, was the first American acknowledged to have died in Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military’s new name for the war Obama launched on August 7. Americans have been dying in Iraq since 1991, some four years before Neal was born.

Technically, Neal may not have been the first US fatality of the Iraq-Syria war against the Islamic State. Naval forces assigned to US Central Command, which has operational control of the war, acknowledged on October 3 that a Marine, Corporal Jordan L. Spears, went missing at sea in the North Arabian Gulf after bailing out of his MV-22 Osprey. Spears took off from the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island, which carried Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, assigned to support the war in Iraq and Syria.

…

Neal was a mortarman with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment. He was part of the special Marine air-ground task force that deployed to Iraq around September, according to the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force public affairs office. He had barely been in the Marines a year, having enlisted on July 22, 2013.

The Marines said the circumstances surrounding Neal’s death were under investigation. Marine Central Command did not immediately return inquiries seeking additional comment about how Neal died or what function he was performing in Iraq.

The second Iraq War, lasting from 2003 to 2011, claimed the lives of 4,487 American servicemembers.

Groups In Egypt And Libya Pledge Allegiance To ISIS

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Tuesday November 11, 2014 4:22 am

Militant Islamist groups in both Libya and Egypt have now pledged loyalty to ISIS and recognized the Islamic State. Despite efforts by governments in Iraq, Syria, neighboring states, and the US it appears ISIS has been able to continue to spread throughout the region. Though it is, in theory, incumbent upon Muslims to pledge loyalty to a caliphate once it is declared, most Muslims do not recognize the authority of ISIS. Not only do not all Muslims hold the theological views of ISIS but even many of those that do have yet to recognize ISIS as the best vehicle for the realization of the caliphate.

However, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis of Egypt and Jaish al-Isla of Libya have pledged their loyalty to ISIS and sought to both recruit others as well as emulate ISIS’ tactics of taking and holding territory. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis is of a particular concern given both their location and capabilities while Jaish al-Isla appears more indicative of the collapse of Libya into fragments, providing another opening for ISIS.

…

What does seem to be clear is that the United States’ involvement in the fight against ISIS is not isolating the group. If anything, it has increased their popularity in the region and legitimized them among other Islamic militant groups.

The Slippery Slope of More Troops in Iraq Leads To Vietnam

The Real News

America’s George W. Bush disorder: Why our new Iraq war is doomed to fail

Peter Van Buren, Salon

Tuesday, Nov 11, 2014 07:15 AM EST

Karl von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian military thinker, is best known for his aphorism “War is the continuation of state policy by other means.” But what happens to a war in the absence of coherent state policy?

Actually, we now know. Washington’s Iraq War 3.0, Operation Inherent Resolve, is what happens. In its early stages, I asked sarcastically, “What could possibly go wrong?” As the mission enters its fourth month, the answer to that question is already grimly clear: just about everything. It may be time to ask, in all seriousness: What could possibly go right?

…

Short answer: Almost nothing. Squint really, really hard and maybe the “good news” is that IS has not yet taken control of much of the rest of Iraq and Syria, and that Baghdad hasn’t been lost. These possibilities, however, were unlikely even without U.S. intervention.

And there might just possibly be one “victory” on the horizon, though the outcome still remains unclear. Washington might “win” in the IS-besieged Kurdish town of Kobane, right on the Turkish border. If so, it will be a faux victory guaranteed to accomplish nothing of substance. After all, amid the bombing and the fighting, the town has nearly been destroyed. What comes to mind is a Vietnam War-era remark by an anonymous American officer about the bombed provincial capital of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

More than 200,000 refugees have already fled Kobane, many with doubts that they will ever be able to return, given the devastation. The U.S. has gone to great pains to point out just how many IS fighters its air strikes have killed there. Exactly 464, according to a U.K.-based human rights group, a number so specific as to be suspect, but no matter. As history suggests, body counts in this kind of war mean little.

And that, folks, is the “good news.” Now, hold on, because here’s the bad news.

…

The U.S. Department of State lists 60 participants in the coalition of nations behind the U.S. efforts against the Islamic State. Many of those countries (Somalia, Iceland, Croatia, and Taiwan, among them) have never been heard from again outside the halls of Foggy Bottom. There is no evidence that America’s Arab “allies” like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, whose funding had long-helped extreme Syrian rebel groups, including IS, and whose early participation in a handful of air strikes was trumpeted as a triumph, are still flying.

Absent the few nations that often make an appearance at America’s geopolitical parties (Canada, the Brits, the Aussies, and increasingly these days, the French), this international mess has quickly morphed into Washington’s mess. Worse yet, nations like Turkey that might actually have taken on an important role in defeating the Islamic State seem to be largely sitting this one out. Despite the way it’s being reported in the U.S., the new war in the Middle East looks, to most of the world, like another case of American unilateralism, which plays right into the radical Islamic narrative.

…

Though Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi chose a Sunni to head the country’s Defense Ministry and direct a collapsed Iraqi army, his far more-telling choice was for Interior Minister. He picked Mohammed Ghabban, a little-known Shia politician who just happens to be allied with the Badr Organization.

Even if few in the U.S. remember the Badr folks, every Sunni in Iraq does. During the American occupation, the Badr militia ran notorious death squads, after infiltrating the same Interior Ministry they basically now head. The elevation of a Badr leader to – for Sunnis – perhaps the most significant cabinet position of all represents several nails in the coffin of Iraqi unity. It is also in line with the increasing influence of the Shia militias the Baghdad government has called on to defend the capital at a time when the Iraqi Army is incapable of doing the job.

Those militias have used the situation as an excuse to ramp up a campaign of atrocities against Sunnis whom they tag as “IS,” much as in Iraq War 2.0 most Sunnis killed were quickly labeled “al-Qaeda.” In addition, the Iraqi military has refused to stop shelling and carrying out air strikes on civilian Sunni areas despite a prime ministerial promise that they would do so. That makes al-Abadi look both ineffectual and disingenuous. An example? This week, Iraq renamed a town on the banks of the Euphrates River to reflect a triumph over IS. Jurf al-Sakhar, or “rocky bank,” became Jurf al-Nasr, or “victory bank.” However, the once-Sunni town is now emptied of its 80,000 residents, and building after building has been flattened by air strikes, bombings, and artillery fire coordinated by the Badr militia.

Meanwhile, Washington clings to the most deceptive trope of Iraq War 2.0: the claim that the Anbar Awakening – the U.S. military’s strategy to arm Sunni tribes and bring them into the new Iraq while chasing out al-Qaeda-in-Iraq (the “old” IS) – really worked on the ground. By now, this is a bedrock truth of American politics.

…

Having deluded itself into believing this myth, Washington now hopes to recreate the Anbar Awakening and bring the same old Sunnis into the new, new Iraq while chasing out IS (the “new” al-Qaeda).

To convince yourself that this will work, you have to ignore the nature of the government in Baghdad and believe that Iraqi Sunnis have no memory of being abandoned by the U.S. the first time around. What comes to mind is one commentator’s view of the present war: if at first we don’t succeed, do the same thing harder, with better technology, and at greater expense.

…

Unlike the U.S., the Islamic State has a coherent strategy and it has the initiative. Its militants have successfully held and administered territory over time. When faced with air power they can’t counter, as at Iraq’s giant Mosul Dam in August, its fighters have, in classic insurgent fashion, retreated and regrouped. The movement is conducting a truly brutal and bloody hearts and minds-type campaign, massacring Sunnis who oppose them and Shias they capture. In one particularly horrific incident, IS killed over 300 Sunnis and threw their bodies down a well. It has also recently made significant advances toward the Kurdish capital, Erbil, reversing earlier gains by the peshmerga. IS leaders are effectively deploying their own version of air strikes – suicide bombers – into the heart of Baghdad and have already loosed the first mortars into the capital’s Green Zone, home of the Iraqi government and the American Embassy, to gnaw away at morale.

IS’s chief sources of funding, smuggled oil and ransom payments, remain reasonably secure, though the U.S. bombing campaign and a drop in global oil prices have noticeably cut into its oil revenues. The movement continues to recruit remarkably effectively both in and outside the Middle East. Every American attack, every escalatory act, every inflated statement about terrorist threats validates IS to its core radical Islamic audience.

Things are trending poorly in Syria as well. The Islamic State profits from the power vacuum created by the Assad regime’s long-term attempt to suppress a native Sunni “moderate” uprising. Al-Qaeda-linked fighters have just recently overrun key northern bastions previously controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian rebel groups and once again, as in Iraq, captured U.S. weapons have landed in the hands of extremists. Nothing has gone right for American hopes that moderate Syrian factions will provide significant aid in any imaginable future in the broader battle against IS.

…

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey has twice made public statements revealing his dissatisfaction with White House policy. In September, he said it would take 12,000 to 15,000 ground troops to effectively go after the Islamic State. Last month, he suggested that American ground troops might, in the future, be necessary to fight IS. Those statements contrast sharply with Obama’s insistence that there will never be U.S. combat troops in this war.

…

Taken as a whole, the military’s near-mutinous posture is eerily reminiscent of MacArthur’s refusal to submit to President Harry Truman’s political will during the Korean War. But don’t hold your breath for a Trumanesque dismissal of Dempsey any time soon. In the meantime, the Pentagon’s sights seem set on a fall guy, likely Susan Rice, who is particularly close to the president.

The Pentagon has laid down its cards and they are clear enough: the White House is mismanaging the war. And its message is even clearer: given the refusal to consider sending in those ground-touching boots, Operation Inherent Resolve will fail. And when that happens, don’t blame us; we warned you.

The U.S. military came out of the Vietnam War vowing one thing: when Washington went looking for someone to blame, it would never again be left holding the bag. According to a prominent school of historical thinking inside the Pentagon, the military successfully did what it was asked to do in Vietnam, only to find that a lack of global strategy and an over-abundance of micromanagement from America’s political leaders made it seem like the military had failed. This grew from wartime mythology into bedrock Pentagon strategic thinking.

…

The idea worked almost too well, reaching its peak in Iraq War 1.0, Operation Desert Storm. In the minds of politicians from president George H.W. Bush on down, that “victory” wiped the slate clean of Vietnam, only to set up every disaster that would follow from the Bush 43 wars to Obama’s air strikes today. You don’t have to have a crystal ball to see the writing in the sand in Iraq and Syria. The military can already sense the coming failure that hangs like a miasma over Washington.

In or out, boots or not, whatever its own mistakes and follies, those who run the Pentagon and the U.S. military are already campaigning strategically to win at least one battle: when Iraq 3.0 collapses, as it most surely will, they will not be the ones hung out to dry. Of the very short list of what could go right, the smart money is on the Pentagon emerging victorious – but only in Washington, not the Middle East.

What we don’t know about them would fill a book and most of the books we’ve already filled are wrong.  

These periodic (short and long) or non periodic visitors to the inner Solar System have been observed since the dim mists of history at least, unsurprisingly so since some of them are bright enough to be easily visible even during daytime.  They were superstitiously thought to to be that harbingers of great, catastrophic, events.

Since the time of Tycho Brahe we’ve known that comets are exo-atmoshperic objects made more curious by the fact their commas, or tails, always point away from the sun regardless of their actual direction of travel.  This observation led to the discovery of Solar Wind.

You see the sun doesn’t just emit radiation (energy, which is matter), it likewise emits particles (which are also matter) and this stream hits the surface of the comet and erodes it, blowing away dust and gasses while ionizing them like a lightbulb and producing the characteristic ‘tail’.  Since the ‘wind’ is so much faster than the comet itself the tail points away from the sun even when the comet is moving outward in the Solar System.

The prominence of these tails led scientists to speculate that the composition of a comet was different from an asteroid, those rocky chunks of leftover planet making stuff most of which has been swept out of the Inner System and flung into the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud (if not into Interstellar space), or swallowed up by the Sun or Jupiter all because of their massive (heh, only like 99% of the entire mass of the Inner System) gravitational influence, or parked in a more or less safe orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

The scientific myth was that comets were made of more insubstantial things, like ice, and accreted of their own accord far from the warmer, more attractive (because more massive) climes closer to that sustained fusion bomb we call Sol.  Indeed some went so far as to assert that the bulk of Earth’s water comes from comet impacts.

Not so much.

As it turns out, comets are not that different from asteroids after all.  

Mystery of Earth’s Water Origin Solved

Andrew Fazekas, National Geographic

Published October 30, 2014

To pin down the exact time of the arrival of Earth’s water, the study team turned to analyzing meteorites thought to have formed at different times in the history of the solar system.

First, they looked at carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that have been dated as the oldest ones known. They formed around the same time as the sun, before the first planets.

Next they examined meteorites that are thought to have originated from the large asteroid Vesta, which formed in the same region as Earth, some 14 million years after the solar system’s birth.

“These primitive meteorites resemble the bulk solar system composition,” said Sune Nielsen of the WHOI, a study co-author. “They have quite a lot of water in them, and have been thought of before as candidates for the origin of Earth’s water.”

The team’s measurements show that meteorites from Vesta have the same chemistry as the carbonaceous chondrites and rocks found on Earth. This means that carbonaceous chondrites are the most likely common source of water.

“The study shows that Earth’s water most likely accreted at the same time as the rock,” said Marschall.

But comets have tails!

Comet-Like Asteroid Boasts Dusty Tail

By Jenna Iacurci, Nature World News

Nov 12, 2014 02:37 PM EST

In a case of mistaken identity, a newly active asteroid in our solar system’s famous Main Belt is boasting a dusty tail, thinking it’s more a comet than an asteroid, according to recent research.

Usually it’s easy to tell the difference between a comet and an asteroid. A comet is a body composed of rock and ice that, when it passes close to the Sun, heats up and begins to sublimate, displaying a visible tail or coma. Asteroids, on the other hand, are composed mostly of rock and typically have few comet-like qualities.

But in recent years several asteroids have broken the boundaries of their definition and begun to sport dusty tails. A dozen of such unusual asteroids in the main asteroid belt have been identified thus far, and now a long-known asteroid is joining the club.

Called 62412, it’s the first comet-like object seen in the Hygiea family of asteroids, and only the 13th known active asteroid in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Active asteroids, unlike others of their kind, sometimes sport a tail when dust and gas is ejected from their surface, giving them a comet-like appearance.

Not only that, but it should come as no surprise.  Quite a large percentage of Meteors are from comet trails rather than Asteroids and you know what?  They look exactly the same.  To the extent that Asteroids are slightly less volatile you should remember they’ve been sun blasted for about 4.5 Billion years.

Indeed it’s highly likely that most of the far Solar objects originated much closer to the sun than is commonly believed–

(I)t is suggested that this planetary system evolved in the following manner. Planetesimals at the disk’s inner edge occasionally pass through gravitational encounters with the outermost giant planet, which change the planetesimals’ orbits. The planets scatter inwards the majority of the small icy bodies that they encounter, exchanging angular momentum with the scattered objects so that the planets move outwards in response, preserving the angular momentum of the system. These planetesimals then similarly scatter off the next planet they encounter, successively moving the orbits of Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn outwards. Despite the minute movement each exchange of momentum can produce, cumulatively these planetesimal encounters shift (migrate) the orbits of the planets by significant amounts. This process continues until the planetesimals interact with the innermost and most massive giant planet, Jupiter, whose immense gravity sends them into highly elliptical orbits or even ejects them outright from the Solar System. This, in contrast, causes Jupiter to move slightly inward.

The low rate of orbital encounters governs the rate at which planetesimals are lost from the disk, and the corresponding rate of migration. After several hundreds of millions of years of slow, gradual migration, Jupiter and Saturn, the two inmost giant planets, cross their mutual 1:2 mean-motion resonance. This resonance increases their orbital eccentricities, destabilizing the entire planetary system. The arrangement of the giant planets alters quickly and dramatically. Jupiter shifts Saturn out towards its present position, and this relocation causes mutual gravitational encounters between Saturn and the two ice giants, which propel Neptune and Uranus onto much more eccentric orbits. These ice giants then plough into the planetesimal disk, scattering tens of thousands of planetesimals from their formerly stable orbits in the outer Solar System. This disruption almost entirely scatters the primordial disk, removing 99% of its mass, a scenario which explains the modern-day absence of a dense trans-Neptunian population. Some of the planetesimals are thrown into the inner Solar System, producing a sudden influx of impacts on the terrestrial planets: the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Eventually, the giant planets reach their current orbital semi-major axes, and dynamical friction with the remaining planetesimal disc damps their eccentricities and makes the orbits of Uranus and Neptune circular again.

Why is this relevant today?

Well, we just landed a probe on a comet, first time ever.

Philae lander makes historic touchdown on comet

Ian Sample and Stuart Clark, The Guardian

Wednesday 12 November 2014 19.30 EST

The feat marks a profound success for the European Space Agency (ESA), which launched the Rosetta spacecraft more than 10 years ago from its Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. Since blasting off in March 2004, Rosetta and its lander Philae have travelled more than 6bn kilometres to catch up with the comet, which orbits the sun at speeds up to 135,000km/h.

…

Landing Philae on the comet’s surface was never going to be easy. When ESA managers got their first closeup of the comet in July, its unusual rubber duck shape left some fearing that a safe touchdown was impossible. The shape was not the only problem. The comet’s surface was hostile: hills and spectacular jutting cliffs gave way to cratered plains strewn with boulders. If Philae landed on anything other than even ground it could topple over, leaving it stranded and defunct.

…

On Tuesday night, hours before Philae had left its mothership, the chances of a safe landing took another dip. Overnight, a thruster on the lander failed to respond to commands sent from Earth. Engineers tried for hours to correct the fault but to no avail. The malfunction threatened to abort the mission, but at 0235 GMT on Wednesday mission controllers decided to go ahead with the landing regardless.

The nitrogen thruster, facing upwards from the top of the lander, was designed to fire for 60 seconds as Philae touched down to prevent it from bouncing off the comet’s surface where the gravitational pull is several hundred thousand times weaker than on Earth.

Can Philae hold on? Fears for comet mission as controllers reveal harpoons that should have tethered lander failed to work – causing it to BOUNCE as it landed

By Jonathan O’Callaghan and Ellie Zolfagharifard and Mark Prigg, Daily Mail

Published: 02:45 EST, 13 November 2014

Philae’s cold thruster is nitrogen-powered and is designed to fire on landing in order to prevent the probe from flying off into space due to the comet’s weak gravity.

In order to prepare cold-gas jets, scientists use one of two pins to puncture a wax seal on the thruster’s gas tank. Experts detect success by the change in pressure in the piping system.

However, this morning mission controllers did not see pressure increases after two attempts with each of the two pins. But according to the industry provider, there may still be a chance that retrying the puncture of the wax seal would succeed, even after four failed attempts.

Now this is an amazing feat of celestial navigation made more so by the irregular shape of the target, its speed and distance, activity of the landing area, and low gravity, but it was not perfect.  Since the engineers expected the surface to be icy they employed harpoons as anchors.  Well, it’s more rock than ice.  Moreover a top thruster was supposed to fire to ensure positive contact during a sub-surface drilling operation has so far been unresponsive and it’s unknown if that part of the mission can be completed.

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science and Tech News and Blogs

• What really caused Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo to crash during test flight? Here are some theories, By Rhodi Lee, Tech Times
• Now You See Them: ‘Magic Islands’ Appear on Saturn’s Moon Titan, by Dan Vergano, National Geographic
• Traces of Fukushima Radiation Detected Off California Coast, by Becky Oskin, Live Science
• Lawsuit Claims Chukchi Rules Fail to Protect Walrus, By Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Radio Network
• Google Wins Contract to Lease NASA-Owned Historic Airfield, by By Fran Berkman, Mashable
• DJI Inspire 1: A Badass Drone That Shoots Lovely 4K Video, by Mario Aguilar, Gizmodo
• Greece holds breath as skeleton found in Alexander-era tomb, By Sophie Makris, AFP
• Will Purr for Treats: How Cats Became Domesticated, By Tia Ghose, Live Science
• Monsanto settles farmer lawsuits over experimental GMO wheat, Reuters
• Ice Age Death Rituals Revealed at Infant Burial Site, By Laura Geggel, Live Science

Science Oriented Google Doodle!

The Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

I love the smell of smog in the morning.  Smells like… prosperity.

Nicorette?

Quit smoking my ass.

The real news and this week’s guests below.

Die Like A Dog

The real news and this week’s guests below.

What happened to Josie?

Spring Break

The real news, the 2 part James Risen web exclusive extended interview, and this week’s guests below.

Well last night there was big, really big, news.

Bernie Ecclestone and F1 to welcome customer cars for 2016 season

Paul Weaver,The Guardian

Sunday 9 November 2014 09.55 EST

Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One have decided to turn their backs on the smaller teams in the sport as they move towards customer cars in 2016, when the big names will provide all the cars for the grid.

The process will start next season when Red Bull and Ferrari will each run three cars. Then, the following year, newcomers Haas will be Ferrari’s first customers under the new setup as the sport increasingly comes under control of the Big Five: Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren and Williams.

It will ultimately mean the end of teams such as Force India, Lotus and Sauber who have had their appeal for a more democratic share of the money generated by the sport thrown back in their faces.

…

The grim news of customer cars was given to the teams when they met with Ecclestone on Saturday night, and was met with abject horror, though this is what some of the smaller teams have been warning about for years now.

One prominent insider said on Sunday, just before the start of the Brazilian Grand Prix: “This is a sleazy and appalling way to go about it.”

What exactly are “customer cars”?  They are basically extra chassis/powerplant combos that combined with the standard Pirelli tires are about 98% of a racecar.  They will be sold to teams, for a price, so that they don’t have to do, or pay for, engineering design bureaus and development teams.

Why, exactly, is this a bad thing?

Most of the true afficiandos (of which I am not one, I just watch the races so I have something to talk about with my Dad) would say the primary negative results will be stifling innovation and forcing uniformity.  Formula One has always fancied itself as a breeding ground of cutting edge technology and that reputation would be lost in favor of a more cookie cutter Turn Left, Indy Car approach.  The counter argument is that it places more emphasis on driver skills to which I say- What driver skills?  Outside a handful of drivers led by Alonso (who can make a brick look racy), Hamilton (who is especially good at passing), and Button (best tire management on the track), none of the current crop seems particularly outstanding except for the ones that are truly bad and buy their seats with sponsorships (what, you didn’t know that drivers pay millions more to their teams than they make in salary and purses and depend on their patrons and endorsements for their real income?).

Speaking of money, this really puts the Littles between a rock and a hard place.  The “customer cars” will not be cheap and they don’t really save all that much.  A lot of development goes on during the season so there’s a limit to how much you can downsize in engineering and development.  They are still basically screwed by the fact that virtually all the revenue sharing, that huge $900 Million cut of $1.5 Billion Bernie the bastard likes to brag about, goes to the big five- Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren, and Williams who also, along with Bernie, control the Strategy Group which is supposed to repesent the interests of all the teams and the management.

They’ve already killed an expense cap for 2015.

Let’s look at these operations-

Red Bull is the only team in position to field 3 cars in 2015 because they’re already fielding 4, Red Bull and Toro Rossa distinguished only by the powerplants, Renault (which sucks) and Ferrari (which sucks worse).  Dietrich Mateschitz doesn’t care about how much money he loses, it falls in the rounds of the vast sums he spends promoting his Energy Beverage Empire.

Ferrari really doesn’t have much existence outside of Formula One.  Enzo was always race first and oh, let’s sell some very expensive fast luxury cars to pay for it.  Enzo is dead and now the operation is run by the suits at Fiat and selling expensive luxury cars is what they’re about.  For them also Formula One is mere marketing, it’s kind of like Cadillac competing in Turn Left racing.  They make crap and will whore it to anyone, coasting on their reputation of greatness while not really giving a damn.  Bernie loves them and gives them sweetheart deals because they have a huge fan base and are ‘the soul of the sport’.  They are entirely unlikely to field a third car because they can barely support the two they’ve got.

Mercedes is the only serious player from a manufacturing standpoint and they have it all, an actual Car Company with a racing division.  It’s not really a surprise that they’re the only ones who were able to manufacture the new specification engines (with any power or reliability) and in 2015 they’re about to reap the benefits of that.  The problem is that they are not above giving their best stuff to their Works team first and holding out on their paying customers.  Like Red Bull Formula One is a mere blip on their bottom line marketing budget, but while they’d be happy to sell you things at an exorbitant price they probably won’t field a third car because they have real accountants and it’s marginally ineffective, where is the additional benefit?

McLaren and Williams actually have more in common with the Littles than they do with the Big Three.  They are primarily racing teams, not marketing vehicles.  They buy most of their tech off the shelf and use their design and development staff to package it in a chassis that innovates enough to keep them competitive, McLaren more than Williams because Williams has been out of contention for so much longer.  Like Ferrari both teams are sputtering on the fumes of their reputation, but they don’t even have the consolation of an Automotive giant like Fiat backing their play when it deigns to notice them at all.  These teams will never be able to add a third car and are likely to vanish as developers under a “customer car” system leaving only Mercedes (for sure, as long as they don’t get bored or pissed off and leave for 50 years like they did the last time) and Ferarri (maybe, if Fiat lets them) as vendors.  Dietrich Mateschitz has no investment besides marketing in Formula One and would be content to have it ‘Formula Red Bull’ with either all the cars wearing his colors or better yet his Harlem Globetrotters beating up the Washington Generals (which would be all the others) every week.  He will spend what it takes to win which I have to admire in that George Steinbrenner way, but if he can win with off the rack why waste money?

Haas Racing

Bernie is looking at the U.S. market in a big way.  Haas makes his money off his industrial tool business and has been quite successful in the Turn Left and IndyCar world where buy rides are the norm.  Now one might think that he’d want to do his own designs to showcase his CNC prowess, but it’s far from a sure thing.  In any event he has no plans to race before 2016 and it’s highly unlikely he would be a supplier until it was proven his cars were competative.

Ecclestone’s Hard Place

Most of his track contracts have severe penalty clauses for showing up with less than 14 – 16 cars because of the 2005 U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis where the drivers using Michelins refused to race out of safety considerations and only 6 cars took the track (and the drivers were quite right to do so).

While the 3 Littles (Lotus, Force India, and Sauber) and the one receivership team that is attempting to continue (Caterham, Marussia is done) have filled to race in 2015, were they to withdraw Bernie would only have 12 cars in his traveling show, and the last time “customer cars” were used was likewise a time of low participation-

Three-car teams? F1 has had them before, but things were different back then

By Mike Wise, Sky News

30/10/14 12:46pm

Sixty years ago, Mercedes were entering as many as four cars per race while BRM stretched as far as five in the early-1970s. Meanwhile, the sale of customer cars produced some real ‘David and Goliath’ moments: Stirling Moss beating the might of Ferrari in an old, underpowered Lotus at the 1961 Monaco GP, for example.

That car was entered by Rob Walker, who was also the last private entrant to win a grand prix in 1968. Fields were low around that time too, but the answer came via the simple expedient of bolstering the grid with Formula 2 cars.

F1 was a marginal sport then, with less money floating around and so fewer vested interests. Looking back, the people with most to lose were the drivers themselves: in 1968, four were killed between April and July alone. The arrival of sponsorship that year signposted the future but, as we’re currently seeing, commercial imperatives create different sorts of problems.

The template for two cars-per-team came with the signing of the first Concorde Agreement at the start of 1980s, which also brought an end to the use of customer cars. Of course, the ensuing period has seen F1 turn into a money spinner but a good chunk of its revenues (estimated in total at around $1.5 billion per year) aren’t re-invested in the sport.

…

Times are still tough for most, though, and with that in mind the FIA announced its intention to introduce a budget cap in 2015. But those plans didn’t get far: the big teams vetoed them in April.

It’s an outcome that demonstrates just how F1 can’t seem to help itself: that the biggest teams, under the guise of the Strategy Group, have the power to block rule changes they don’t agree with.

The Strategy Group was formed last year as a result of a deal between the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone. Both also sit on the group, which approves proposals by a majority vote. But if there’s a rule the big teams and the commercial rights controller don’t like, they can nip it in the bud.

…

In effect, then, the governing body – which you’d think would have a large measure power to legislate the sport it presides over – can’t do anything if the others disagree. Smaller teams have no say at all, although you have to wonder what their attitudes would be if things were different for them.

So the big teams seem intent on feathering their nests, with the smaller ones stuck on the outside looking in and two of them seemingly heading for oblivion. Meanwhile, Ecclestone remains F1’s ringmaster even at the age of 84 while the FIA sits on its hands.

Where does F1 go from here?

If revenues aren’t being re-invested then the sport itself could somehow buy back the rights (now valued as high as $12 billion but leased to Ecclestone by the FIA in 2001 in a 100-year deal worth just $360 million). But that’s surely too big an ask now; teams and manufacturers have had the chance before and didn’t take it.

The cut teams do take could be split more equitably but, again, that would need agreement from the bigger teams, who rejected the budget cap idea summarily because they don’t think it’s enforceable. But salary caps are enforceable in other sports; are the books of F1 teams and their wider businesses really that much more complicated?

…

In a nutshell, it’s the same old story: about how business and entertainment shove the actual sport to one side. But if the sport loses its intrinsic appeal then, ultimately, no-one’s a winner. As such, the situation needs some give from those who, as we know, find that difficult.

Doubtless F1 will adapt and survive as it always has but if that means three-car teams or customer cars as anything other than a short-term measure then it doesn’t bode well. Just look at what IndyCar racing has become.

When they were last on the grid, it was for the right reasons: as part of a less rigidly professional yet more charming sport in which money wasn’t necessarily the be-all and the underdog would have his day.

But if it happens again it would be for the wrong reasons and serve as the best proof yet that F1 is heading down the wrong track.

I’ll note that today’s F2 cars are 2 – 3 seconds a lap slower and IMSA races multiple classes on the same track simultaneously all the time.  On the other hand IMSA runs very few races, doesn’t get much TV exposure, and is definitely a third rate series.

But ek you say, that’s a Sky News report and aren’t they owned by Murdoch?

You mean Rupert Murdoch who can buy and sell Bernie Ecclestone 6 times before Tuesday?  You mean Sky One that has the largest television deal for Formula One broadcast rights?  Precisely.

Bernie is playing a dangerous game here and Formula One could disappear much faster than you think.

This is big news.  Bigger than all the silly season stuff I had prepared, bigger than the Drivers Championship.  I don’t use ‘Breaking’ except ironically, but this went down last night and blew the rest of it out the window.

I might fill in later, we’ll see about that after the race.

Oh, the Race.

Autódromo José Carlos Pace is about the shortest track there is.  They just resufaced and if it rains (which it does constantly) it will be a skating rink.  On offer are Mediums and Softs.  Mercedes and Williams (Mercedes) hold the first 2 rows, McLaren (Mercedes) and Red Bull (Renault) split the 3rd and the first Ferrari (Alonso, the brick racer, who else) shows up in 8th.

Pretty tables when I get to them.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the very name tells a story of the pervasive anti-Semitism in pre-World War II Europe.

Mendelssohn’s Grandfather was the noted Jewish philosopher Moses and his Father Abraham a banker who was instrumental in breaking Napoleon’s Continental System which may explain Felix’s positive reception by the British.  Abraham was not very happy being a Jew, especially a notorious one, and declined to have Felix and his brother Paul circumcised.

After moving the family to Berlin from Hamburg in 1811, Abraham had Felix baptized in the Reformed Church where he acquired his Christian name- Jakob Ludwig.  Abraham himself renounced the name Mendelssohn and adopted the name Bartholdy from his wife’s family which itself had taken it from the name of some property in Luisenstadt that they owned.

Talk about your Oedipal issues-

Abraham later explained this decision in a letter to Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his father Moses: “There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius“

Dysfunctional?  Hmm…

Felix’s sister Fanny was much more talented that he was but she was a girl so, you know, couldn’t actually do anything being property and all.  She hated the name and wrote him in 1829, “Bartholdy […] this name that we all dislike”.  Felix himself compromised and styled himself Mendelssohn Bartholdy out of deference to his Father.

Felix was restrained from displaying his musical talents at an early age by his Father (Hmm…) but they were apparent by the time he was 6.  In 1819 he and Fanny were allowed to study with Carl Friedrich Zelter who ran the orchestra at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin.  They had an extensive collection of original J.S. Bach manuscripts and Felix became a big fan.

Zelter introduced Felix to his friend Wolfgang von Goethe in 1821.

von Goethe: Musical prodigies … are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age.

Zelter: And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?

von Goethe: Yes … but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child.

I guess it was the incessant fart jokes.

Felix led a short and presumably deeply unhappy life (Father a control freak self hating Jew?  Do the math.) passing at a young 38 from a series of strokes which his family was predisposed to.  As for his religious views, it’s a  matter of some dispute.  He was a conforming member of the Church, yet commissioned a complete collection of the writings of his Grandfather Moses and once wrote his sister Rebecka regarding her complaints about an unpleasant relative-

What do you mean by saying you are not hostile to Jews? I hope this was a joke […] It is really sweet of you that you do not despise your family, isn’t it?

He may or may not have had an affair with Jenny Lind the Barnum Sideshow Freak and while he was acclaimed by his contemporaries for his virtuosity, he was also regarded as a completely conventional frump.  He admired and patterned himself after Bach and his connection with the Romantic movement is that his compositions were designed to evoke emotion rather than as clever and catchy technical exercises.

Up until the acendancy of Hitler he was a respected, if minor, member of the German “Art” Music (I’m telling yah, boffo in Britain) Pantheon.  And then-

Ironically today is the 91st anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Contemporary critics are back to the “well, he wasn’t revolutionary enough” stage which is an improvement I guess.  I’d agree with Friedrich Nietzsche–

At any rate, the whole music of romanticism [e.g. Schumann and Wagner] … was second-rate music from the very start, and real musicians took little notice of it. Things were different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master who, thanks to his easier, purer, happier soul, was quickly honored and just as quickly forgotten, as a lovely incident in German music.

The reason “incident” is highlighted is some people think it’s condescending coming from Nietzsche.  I don’t mean to imply anything by it at all even though I endorse the gestalt of the comment as a whole (did I mention I’m part German on my Mother’s side?)- Schumann is totally forgetable, Wagner an insane raving egomaniac.

While Mendelssohn is best known for the Wedding March I choose to present instead Symphony #2 in B-flat major, entitled Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) which is notable for it’s inclusion of a chorus and was written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the printing press.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.