Bad Idea

Not The Basis of a Sound Economic Policy

I had NPR on in the background, and heard someone talking about the economic policy of a former dictator of Burma (now Myanmar). Ordinarily that type of thing wouldn't have caught my interest (and indeed I don't remember what the rest of the program was about), but in this case, it turns out that the dictator woke up one day in 1987 and decided that the denomination of all of the bank notes should be divisible by nine. So, the government issued 90, 45, and 15 kyat notes (yeah, 15 is not divisible by nine. tell it to the general).

This would be funny if that was it. However the dictator also decreed that the old notes had no value. So, everyones' cash was worthless, and many people immediately were bankrupt. Here is one description of the event. The dictator has since been deposed and died, but alas, the country is still ruled by a military junta, and is not much better off. Strange, sad, and true.

Don't Put on that Tin Foil Hat!

I noiticed this on Boing Boing: four MIT students did a study on the effectiveness of aluminum foil hats in blocking radio-wavelength mind-control waves.. Suprisingly, in some cases the hats amplify radio waves. In their words:

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites. The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.

Please Don't Panic

A couple years ago, Fred Baganoff and I created an image of the center of our Galaxy as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It's been used in many places, including on the cover of the 2004 Calendar for Chandra, the cover of the "Science with Constellation-X" white paper, and in a couple press releases.

However, I must admit that I feel like I've really hit the big time now that the image is in the Weekly World News. The image has been flipped and blurred on one edge, but is unmistakably mine. They interpret the Galactic center as a giant acid cloud about to destroy Earth. Needless to say, that hypothesis doesn't have the support of the wider scientific community. If after reading it you find yourself worried, I would suggest living in a giant solid-glass jar that will protect you from the acid, and keep you from bothering the rest of your friends with your unfounded neurotic fears.

Thanks to Craig Heinke for sending me the link. I bet they thought the astronomers who made the image would never find it. I wonder whether they asked NASA's permission to use this? Oh, well. I didn't ask permission to re-use their article for this weblog, so we're even. Long-live fair use!