Entropy and evolution

PZ fisks the creationist’s old chestnut about evolution violating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The bottom line:

To spell it out, there’s about a trillion times more entropy flux available than is required for evolution. The degree by which earth’s entropy is reduced by the action of evolutionary processes is miniscule relative to the amount that the entropy of the cosmic microwave background is increased.

Of course the creationist’s argument was always stupid (hint: closed system), but it’s nice to quantify the stupidity. And the comments are delightful; for example, Matt Heath:

Exactly! If you read discussions of extra-terrestrial life (say Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot) “life” is more or less defined as “that which locally pumps away entropy” (at least if we treat machines as extensions of the life forms that built them). So, for example, if we found a planet with oxygen and methane in the atmosphere, whatever was replenishing them (however odd to us) would be worth of the name “life”.

I really like that definition of life. Concise, measurable.
UPDATE: Jason Rosenhouse has a nice follow-up piece, in which he notes “… that the second law plays only a rhetorical role in creationist argumentation. They are happy to use the language of thermodynamics, but they never do the calculations that would be necessary to make a proper argument.”

Illicit (1931)

Film of the week: Illicit (1931).Illicit From IMDB:

The film is interesting because it’s early Stanwyck, but also because of the independent woman angle which soon will fade from view with the ushering in of the code. Once the ’40s hit, the independent woman became an uptight career woman wearing a tailored suit, her hair up, and sporting a stern attitude. Young, carefree non-virgins became a thing of the past. But these precode films are what helped mold the strong images of Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck…

Barbara Stanwyck is superb in this: young, playful, beautiful, extraordinarily strong and very sensual. She gives a very modern performance that wouldn’t have been out of place 60 or 70 years later. The ending is a bit of a cop-out, but I imagine that the studios insisted on it; it doesn’t spoil the film.
And why now? Well, on a whim, I programmed my DVR to record it a couple of months ago, but I didn’t get around to watching it until last night. Check it out.

Airline consolidation we can believe in


The Cranky Flier considers the consequences of Lufthansa’s acquisition of bmi, and decides that the most likely outcome is:

Take the London slots, merge with Virgin Atlantic, and create a very strong London brand that’s far greater than what Virgin has now. Oh, and yes, bring Virgin Atlantic into Star Alliance. Virgin is clearly interested.

I’d be delighted by this, particularly if Virgin goes ahead with its plans to serve Seattle in the next year or two. (But didn’t that depend on the availability of 787s? Bummer….) I’ve always liked flying on Virgin, and this would give me a direct Star Alliance route to LHR. Of course it’s a bit hypocritical of Virgin to revive their NO WAY BA/AA campaign in view of this possibility.
(And Cranky, it’s €400 Million, not €400. But what’s six orders of magnitude between friends.)

Remembering Gene Saunders

The memorial service for Gene Saunders took place this afternoon at the Sun Microsystems office in Dallas.

Gene Saunders
Gene Saunders
There were about 40 people there; several of us spoke at length, and others added their perspectives. There were photographs of Gene at all ages, Powerpoint Keynote and iPhoto slide shows, and even one of the conference calls that Gene always hated. (Just kidding, George: your talk went really well.) The setting was a conference room, decorated with many items of Gene memorabilia: T-shirts, hats, license plates, Spam(!), beer, audio CDs, political fridge magnets, and more. (Photos tomorrow.) There were stories, revelations, memories, jokes, surprises, tears, and many laughs.
Thank you to all of you who made this possible — Paula, George, Roger, Jill, and Sandra — and to everyone who attended and contributed their memories of Gene. I think he would have approved, although I suspect that some of the photos would have struck him as opportunities for Photoshopping…

More Than A Mere Man…

Alex Massie draws our attention to what is probably the most over-the-top description of John McCain yet written. This is from David Gelernter in the Weekly Standard:

There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity. But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik–a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness. If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue.

Who knew? But doesn’t this sound just a little bit… oh, I don’t know, elitist?!

DUB-LHR-ORD-SEA

Yesterday I flew home from Dublin. The day started at 6am with a taxi to the airport, discussing EPFL managers and their bizarre strategies with the driver. The first flight was from Dublin to Heathrow on British Midland, which was scheduled to be operated by an Airbus A319. I’d checked in online the day before, and chosen seat 6F, near the front of the economy section. When I boarded, I discovered that they had substituted a larger A320, and 6F was now in the last row of business class. But economy was full, and business was mostly empty, so the flight attendant told me to stay where I was, and I got business class service (cooked breakfast and free beverages, rather than the pay-for-every-single-item service in economy).
The next flight was Heathrow to Chicago on a United 767. I had to check in with a human being at Heathrow, because the website wouldn’t allow me to check in online, and the self-service kiosk wouldn’t scan my “green card”. I think that the agent took pity on me, because she tagged my boarding pass for complimentary lounge access. ((There is no Red Carpet Club in Terminal 1; instead there’s a Star Alliance lounge, which is rather nicer than most RCCs)) .Boarding was delayed by 25 minutes because of a maintenance issue, and strong headwinds compounded the problem. We arrived at Chicago at 4pm, 40 minutes late, and when I turned on my iPhone the first email message that I saw was an alert from United telling me that they’d rebooked me on the 8:40pm flight to Seattle. Presumably they had decided that I wouldn’t be able to clear customs and immigration and get to the C concourse in time to make my 5:20pm connection.
Hah!
I breezed through immigration and customs ((I hadn’t checked any bags.)), muscled my way onto the inter-terminal train ((And yes, the escalator at concourse B is still broken.)), found the shortest security line, raced through the tunnel between concourses B and C, and boarded my original flight with 10 minutes to spare. I even got my original seat, because the flight was less than half full.
The final stretch from Chicago to Seattle was a little tedious. The same headwinds kind of that had delayed LHR-ORD were at work, and in spite of pushing back 5 minutes early, we reached Seattle 15 minutes late.
Thoughts on the trip overall? From a work perspective, it was very productive. From the point of view of the air traveller, it was OK. No upgrades (except the inadvertent bump up on the BMI leg from DUB to LHR). One free lounge admission, so I didn’t have to use any of my RCC coupons. The most comfortable (and spacious) seats were actually on the United 757 on the final leg; Economy Plus on the 757 seems more generous than on the 767. ((Perhaps the 767’s bulky IFE equipment under the seat is the culprit.)) Terminal 5 at Heathrow is really cool, and comparable to many of the other new airports that I’ve seen recently. Iasi has the tiniest international airport I’ve ever seen; it’s smaller than, say, Monterey in California. And Tarom wins the award for the strangest food service: a small, plastic-wrapped sandwich, consisting of a thin slice of bologna and an even thinner slice of cheese between two half-slices of dry, Wonderloaf-style, white bread.