there are enough dumb shits here already for me. What I'm saying (Enderian?), it doesn't really matter to me if the hyena and her runt stay or go. Two more, two less, blah blah.

Anyway, what I enjoyed in the news, yesterday (the bold part for shortcutters):

Scientists see blast from past -- 13 billion years ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Astronomers have seen the furthest back in time ever, measuring light from a star that exploded 13 billion years ago, just after the dawn of the universe.

They traced a gamma-ray burst called GRB 090423 to see the light from the massive star that died 630 million years after the Big Bang that brought the universe into being, they reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

Two separate teams measured the redshift of the object at about 8.2. Redshift is the distortion of light as it travels across space and time and is often likened to the sound of a train rising and falling as it approaches and passes the listener.

This extreme redshift -- the highest ever recorded -- shows the burst occurred when the universe was less than 5 percent of its current age, Nial Tanvir of Britain's University of Leicester and colleagues reported.

"The redshift measured for GRB 090423 means that the burst occurred at a time when the universe was about nine times smaller than it is today -- putting the timing of the event at about 630 million years after the Big Bang," Bing Zhang of the University of Nevada wrote in a commentary.

"Gamma ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe," he added.

"They are believed to be associated with the formation of stellar-sized black holes or rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars during cataclysmic events such as the collapse of a massive star or the coalescence of two compact stellar objects."

In this case, the star's death long ago was bright enough to outshine even galaxies and will help scientists understand what happened in the early days of the universe. (article)

Especially that last sentence .. "the early days" .. imagine that, 630 million years = the early days. I love it. I wonder if that was done intentionally. Anyway, made my day. And I guess my point: nobody anywhere can really imagine 630 million years, let alone a week.

Now today, as reported by BOTF stalwart Michael somebody (ditto),

US to Pay Taliban to Switch Sides

October 28, 2009 "BBC" -- The US military in Afghanistan is to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul. The move is included in a defence bill which President Obama is set to sign. Such payments have already been widely used by US commanders in Iraq, but it is the first time the system is being formally adopted in Afghanistan.

Early on Wednesday, Afghan troops were engaged in a shootout with suspected militants at a house in Kabul. A day earlier eight US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan. The deaths make October the deadliest month for American forces in the eight-year war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is yet to decide whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Mr Obama has said he will not risk their lives "unless it is absolutely necessary". The latest attacks come amid heightened tension in Afghanistan in the run-up to the second round of a presidential election marred by widespread fraud in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

The Commander's Emergency Response Programme, or Cerp, was set up to give the US military the means to clear roads, dig wells and provide other urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, the BBC's Richard Lister in Washington says.

But in Iraq, the money can also be given to insurgents provided they switch sides. Backers of the Cerp scheme say it enabled some 90,000 formerly hostile Iraqis to form local militias and protect their towns from militants, our correspondent says. He adds that now the same authority is being given to US commanders in Afghanistan.

A clause in the annual defence appropriations bill says they can use the money to support the "re-integration into Afghan society" of those who have renounced violence against the Afghan government. Although $1.3bn (£691m) has been authorised for the fund as a whole, no specific sum has been allocated to the re-integration programmes, our correspondent says. The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, has said he envisages the money being used to pay former Taliban fighters to protect their communities. (article)

It's about time. I know it's not news (or "new news"), but it's the only logical thing to do and let's hope this is being done with even more vigour and purpose and money at some higher levels. "Stick to your knitting and all that."

Hard to imagine "9 times smaller than the size of the current universe" too.

9 times smaller, and still impossible to comprehend. Interesting thought exercise. How much older, and therefore smaller,would the universe have to be before I can get my brain wrapped around it.

Thanks dave.

Huet rocks!!

Then again, can't go too far back either. They start talking about the instant of the Big Bang, and begin giving size estimates when it was .00000000000000143 seconds old, and I have a hard time with that too.

How old when it when it was the size of a regulation NBA basketball?

That I can picture, at least in terms of the size.

that intrigued me about that article.

I wonder how much of this is still considered valid (I just looked, the book's only 11 yrs old, feels like more). I mean down to the detail level. Anyway, I attended a serminar with him as the featured speaker, but what can you do on this topic (Inflation) in an hour? I would say this, it was a solution that fit a problem, for sure. (not a cynic though!)

Here's what I thought though. In order to make that statement (9 times) you have to be extra-universe, it would seem. And who's been there? Well, we're all meta specialists here, I guess, maybe that's why I posted it.

I hadn't seen this when I posted, but the Guth book hits this bang on.

There are a few discrepancies about the apparent age of the universe. Some of the calculations don't seem to make sense when used to support a 15-20 billion year old universe model. As soon as the paradox became apparent, the creationist crowd started accusing the astrophysics community of creating a solution to fit a problem.

And I agree, since nobody can grasp the "concept" of the universe completely, it's difficult to discuss aspects of it, like size or age or expansion or crunching....

Yeah, I have a headache now.

Corr: When the current model said 15-20 billion.

Now, it's kinda weird, but when it's written like that, 630 million years v 13 billion years, and 9 times smaller than present, it makes it a little easier to imagine.

when they came up with 13-14 billion for the universe they still had some stars at 15 - 16. I think that has been somewhat put to bed now (by the PTB!), perhaps with the assistance or (or related to) the evidence for the accelerating universe option. (okay, that's enough.)

----

p.s. apologies to alexa for a recent post (not to or about alexa, to make that clear)

and deservedly so, especially Our Founder, when we see the "Most Active" board totals next time it's reindexed.

First story---I have a hard time reconciling it with Bishop Ussher and the work of latter-day creation scientists, so I'll ignore it.

Second story---every fading military empire pays mercenaries to fight its battles. This is an even worse sign.

Bemused by your generalization. Everybody remembers that the late Roman Empire did all sorts of deals with Goths to settle/protect their Danube frontier, and that this led to disasters like Adrianople. In the next century, Gothic dynasties gradually succeeded, piecemeal, to various large pieces of the empire.

But my reading of Roman history suggests that the use of "mercenary" troops (there could be some discussion about exactly what that term means; I'm using it in a broad sense to cover all auxiliary forces and native military settlements granted to protect frontiers) were a major component of Rome's power long, long before the Roman Empire started to stress out in the third century. This Wikipedia article traces the use of auxiliaries back to at least 200 B.C.E., and says that by 200 C.E., auxiliaries made up 3/5 of Roman forces. The Romans used military settlements to buttress their enormous European/Illyrian/Danubian boundaries beginning as early as Caesar, who gladly did land-for-loyalty deals with many Gallic tribes.

If you think about it, it could hardly be otherwise: more than 90% of the population of the empire was non-Roman. How could you ever defend/keep order in such a vast, variegated area without drawing on that native manpower? Which, in turn, meant co-opting the peoples involved, with defense alliances, land grants, treaties guaranteeing traditional freedoms, trading rights, subsidies, bribes to leaders, etc. Isn't that pretty much the same toolkit we're trying to use in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The history of Rome (and, I think other ancient empires--certainly China) suggests that such techniques are indispensible in building and maintaining imperial (or, like us, quasi-imperial) power. When, in the third century, the Roman imperial structure began to break down for a variety of political, economic and cultural reasons, the power held by non-Romans did start to morph into an increasing weakness. But that was more a symptom than a cause of decay. Rome had held the loyalty--in the mercenary sense--of vast numbers of non-Roman peoples for several centuries. It seems to me the significance of that accomplishment outweighs that of the non-Roman element in the two centuries of Rome's death spiral.

but thanks.

My comment about Afghanistan reflects a hope for a sensible way out, that's all. Not paying them to become American proxies (not a political 'statement', reflects a belief that it would have zero chance of working), paying them to accept some sort of power-sharing arrangement.

to let their daughters go to school and their women go to work?

cuz I would give money to that cause

that's part of it. We're not going to win. Do we want to lose like this

again? Because then you have no positive legacy.

So you go for something in between. Compromise. Power sharing. Money. Keep your enemies close. One thing: the Taliban ain't going nowhere (double double), not for awhile.

Perhaps we could pay them to grow something besides Opium while we are at it.

My biggest fear is that the money we pay them will eventually make its way into an attack on us.

What was it Butch said?..."If they'd just give us the money they're paying those guys to get us to stop robbing them, I'd stop robbing them."