The Girl Effect: The Clock Is Ticking

Thorsday Tonic - Mario Kart Love Song

via blinktwice4y

A little love song for a Thorsday morning! Enjoy!

Lyrics:
You be my Princess and I'll be your Toad,
I'll follow behind you on Rainbow Road,
protect you from red shells wherever we go,
I promise.

No one will touch us if we pick up a star,
and if you spin out you can ride in my car,
When we slide together we generate sparks
in our wheels and our hearts.

Chorus:
And the finish line is just around the bend,
I'll pause this game so our love will never end,
let's go again

The blue shell is coming, so I'll go ahead,
if you hang behind it'll hit me instead,
but never look back cuz i'm down but not dead,
I'll catch up to you.

Don't worry about Bowser or DK,
Just eat this glowing mushroom and they'll all fade away

Chorus 2X:
and the finish line is just around the bend,
I'll pause this game so our love will never end
Oh, the finish line is just around the bend,
I'll pause this game so our love will never end,
let's go again

To the Mushroom Cup,
and the Flower Cup,
and the Star Cup,
and the Reverse Cup,

Wala wala wala wala wa... Wala wala wala Waluigiiiiiiiiii!

COPYRIGHT 2008

Music and Lyrics by Sam Hart

Wednesday Wonders - Rolling In The Higgs

I am a sucker for a cappella singing, especially multiple harmonics. I am also a sucker for clever lyrics which make science both easy to understand and fun.

Tim Blais has combined both of these things in a great little video that is well worth less than 4 minutes of your time.


Rolling in the Higgs - Lyrics


There's a collider under Geneva
Reaching new energies that we've never achieved before
Finally we can see with this machine
A brand new data peak at 125 GeV
See how gluons and vector bosons fuse
Muons and gamma rays emerge from something new
There's a collider under Geneva
Making one particle that we've never seen before

The complex scalar
Elusive boson
Escaped detection by the LEP and Tevatron
The complex scalar
What is its purpose?
It's got me thinking

Chorus:
We could have had a model (Particle breakthrough, at the LHC)
Without a scalar field (5-sigma result, could it be the Higgs)

But symmetry requires no mass (Particle breakthrough, at the LHC)
So we break it, with the Higgs (5-sigma result, could it be the Higgs)

Baby I have a theory to be told
The standard model used to discover our quantum world
SU(3), U(1), SU(2)'s our gauge
Make a transform and the equations shouldn't change

The particles then must all be massless
Cause mass terms vary under gauge transformation
The one solution is spontaneous
Symmetry breaking

Roll your vacuum to minimum potential
Break your SU(2) down to massless modes
Into mass terms of gauge bosons they go
Fermions sink in like skiers into snow

Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science
Original music by Adele

Wednesday Wonder - The Longest Time (The Coral Triangle)

Every now and then I come across and video that makes me both smile and think. This is one of them. As one of the commenters below the video on YouTube pointed out: this is what the video campaign promoting science to girls should have been more like.

Lyrics are in the video. It's a great song (Billy Joel's "The Longest Time") and you will learn something new! Please do watch - it's great!

Admit It GOP: Obama's New Deal Worked

President Barack Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act while VP Joseph Biden looks on.
February 17, 2009,  Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, Colorado.

Foreign Policy magazine has published this detailed and very interesting article by Michael Grunwald:

Think Again: Obamas's New Deal , Michael Grunwald, Foreign Policy Magazine, Sept/Oct 2012.

For starters, there is voluminous evidence that the stimulus did provide real stimulus, helping to stop a terrifying free-fall, avert a second Depression, and end a brutal recession. America's top economic forecasters -- Macroeconomic Advisers, Moody's Economy.com, IHS Global Insight, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the Congressional Budget Office -- agree that it increased GDP at least 2 percentage points, the difference between contraction and growth, and saved or created about 2.5 million jobs. The concept of "saved or created" has inspired a lot of sarcasm -- Obama joked after his 2009 Thanksgiving pardon that he had just saved or created four turkeys -- but it simply means 2.5 million more people would have been jobless without the Recovery Act. The unemployment rate might still be in the double digits. (Michael Grunwald)

Another interesting bit of economic news last week was the report that a survey of economists shows that most economists think the stimulus approach to solving the economic problems caused by the Great Recession is the correct approach:

The National Association for Business Economics has put out its new policy survey, and there are some interesting tidbits in there: most economists, for example, are happy with current Federal Reserve policy. And they'd rather the government focus on stimulus for the time being, and save the real deficit cutting for a year or two down the road. Survey: Economists happy with Fed action, NPR Marketplace, September 24, 2012.

Also, here is an older but equally interesting analysis of non-partisan studies of the effect of the ARRA on the economy:

Did the stimulus work? A review of the nine best studies on the subject, Dylan Matthews, Washington Post wonkblog, August 24, 2011.

Tuesday Tonic - My Stand (Tombstone da Deadman)

from the incomparable rationalwarrior aka Tombstone da Deadman.

Lyrics - My Stand

My tolerance for ignorance is nonexistent
why resist it cause faith-based claims can't
go the distance
you're either going to stand up for reality
or surrender to the fantasy
but either way don't care if people mad at me
my criticisms so much bigger than religion
it's about the fact that we're lacking in total skepticism
these days it kind of seems like being a skeptic is a
negative
so my position is that faith's a type of mental sedative
the type of things I rap about are really not cerebral
there's just an overabundance of really stupid people
who get offended when I challenge all their sacred shit
fuss and complain but then abstain from debating it
they want me suppressed so they try to say that I'm
obsessed
the knee-jerk reaction whenever they hear my views
expressed
some of the ones that ain't blind sit on the sidelines
too scared to offend but then defend all those dumb
lies
you really think these theists see you in a different light
because you're the type that's passive you're favorable
inside their sight
you really think they think that you and I are not alike
and that they don't imagine you burning in hell in afterlife?
To them, you're just a sacreligious blasphemy
a tragedy, a heathen who doesn't respect his holy
majesty
my contention you're respected on condition
that you never contradict them or ever speak your
convictions

(Chorus)
I know that you don't see this as imperative
but I refuse to lose and let stupid frame the
narrative
so this is where I making my stand
and now regardless who don't like or how they get
mad
see while they rest of you capitulate and go with the
plan
I'll be beating on this wall until I breaking my hand
so listen while I state official policy
no matter how I'm threaten with hell they'll never 
silence me
I know that you don't see this as imperative
but I refuse to lose and let stupid frame the narrative.

(2nd verse)
Being a skeptic means much more than being
atheist
and until you accept that you won't relate to this
that cognitive dissonance that you experience
is when there's things you claim to believe in but ain't
living it
most of you say that you're the type to question
everything
until I hear the conspiracy theories that you're echoing
and when I scrutinize the things you try to say are lies
expose your sources as suspect I see your logic dies
some still believe in pseudo-sciences...
engage in special pleading
when theists use the exact same reasoning
I've ven seen atheists use arguments from ignorance
and seem hard pressed to tell me exactly just what the
difference is
a skeptic without the ability to analyze
is just as bad as theists cause he probably will accept a lie
just as long as it verifies all his biases
applying it to his knowledge pool and diving in
I'm not saying that some conspiracies do not exist
I'm just saying that a lot of them are some bullshit
so I'mma call a spade a spade no matter who asserts
it
no one is perfect, just one lie and then it's all perverted
bring down the curtain on that sad display
the only way's to question yourself and all the things
you say
start today
and maybe we can rise above and be examples
for others to emulate and that's the way we win the
battle.

(Chorus)
I know that you don't see this as imperative
but I refuse to lose and let stupid frame the
narrative
so this is where I making my stand
and now regardless who don't like or how they get
mad
see while they rest of you capitulate and go with the
plan
I'll be beating on this wall until I breaking my hand
so listen while I state official policy
no matter how I'm threaten with hell they'll never 
silence me
I know that you don't see this as imperative
but I refuse to lose and let stupid frame the narrative.

Tombstone da Deadman, the Rational Warrior

Isn't That Just Ducky!

Hello there!

I so enjoy a lovely nap near the garden.

Pardon?  You want to sit here?  Right here? Right now?

Well, come on and sit here! We can be cozy together!

I so enjoy a lovely nap by the garden window, cozily tucked in by a human.

Isn't that just Ducky!

Saturday Inspiration - Colourful St. John's

Happy Saturday to all!

Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good day, Humans.

Today is the first Friday of fall.  The air should be crisp, clear and bracing.

I am pleased that it is autumn at last. Now for some frisky activity...

What do you mean it is nearly 80 degrees outside? It is autumn!

I am pleased that it is autumn at last. Now, weather: I expect you to cooperate!

Today is the first Friday of fall and I am pleased.

Thank gods it's FreyaDay!

Thorsday Tonic - Subway Serenade

A little slice of American life.  Enjoy!

The artist is Jessica Latshaw, and this was an impromptu jam session on a New York subway.

This video illustrates what is one of the best things about the USA. Every day, millions of people move through the streets of American cities and towns; people from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Our "melting pot" is more of a beautiful colorful swirl of amazing human potential.

When we look into each other's faces every day: on a bus or subway, at the corner gyro shop, over the counter at the neighborhood deli, across the aisle in a public school classroom, we begin to move out of our own little worlds and into the larger world of shared human experience. And we see that it can be awesome, that people are people even if they look or sound different from us. We can be citizens of this great country and we can enrich one another's lives.

Get to know your neighbors. Go out of your way to meet people of other cultures who have joined your community. That is the American spirit. It is what built this country and what still makes it great.

e pluribus unum