today I will question authority.

1. I've thought about it long enough and I can't arrive at an answer with logic alone.

say the world is six billion years old. a big number with a large error value to be sure, but it's a starting point for sake of argument.

a vast, vast majority of all the carbon-14 (the isotope used in radiometric dating) now on the planet has been here since near the beginning. no current natural processes produce it in any substantial quantities. given that its half-life is 5730 years, there have been over a million of them since creation; therefore, of the original amount (call it A) of carbon-14 on the planet there now remains A*(2^-1000000), which is by any account as close to zero as makes no difference.

my first question is: since there is certainly more than zero carbon-14 lying around, where did it come from? solar wind? asteroids? (furthermore, did we get a lump-sum at one point, or like the intelligent lottery winner, did we spread our winnings out? how does this variable accumulation affect dating methods?)


2. a few years ago an object was found touted to be 'the oldest known piece of Earth.' fine, that's no problem.

here's a problem. imagine a roman blacksmith, 5 a.d., making a sword out of iron. the sword will be new at the time of forging, but the iron (specifically the carbon-14 in the iron) is as old as the earth. does that mean when we date the sword in the present day we will find it is 2000 years old, or like the crystal above, many billions of years old?

my second question: things are new, ingredients are not. since radiometric dating looks only at ingredients, how can it tell how old the thing itself is?



on an unrelated note, it occurs to me that we have not completed our tax return. my attention span has a half-life of OOOH we should go on a bike ride!

here's something creepy. do a google image search for gang-sines (the popular drew drawing), and the first result you will see is nothing unexpected.

that is, until you examine the url or click the link. it is this site, and I don't know why. not at all.

so to repeat the sentiments expressed so loudly in the title of this post, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET? I'm serious here. this is creeping me out. google is supposed to be flawless and infallible, and they're not. in a really strange way.

(speaking of really strange: this is)


DREW only your wisdom can shine through these dark times, we require that you tell us just what in the hell is going on.

I was so busy yesterday that it should count for two days.

ONE ha ha
TWO ha ha

the reason I was so busy gets approximately 50 magical miles per gallon and came with about four hours of paperwork. but it is ours and it valiantly protects both the environment and our checkbook from the evil oil companies. what a hero I am.

cheers, tree-huggers. and all the rest.



(this week, saturday arrived on a monday. how disorienting.)

I'm messed up, and will be for days. what a difference an hour makes. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you want more daylight in your day, you should simply get up earlier. wouldn't that have been easier than making the rest of us shift our system of measurement twice a year?

fascists.


sin city is visually stunning. it's just a shame I've never read the original(s)—as it was, the necessity of the continual violence was lost on me. but if you can stomach some intense CGI'd blood (now white, now red, now yellow), and if you like the eye candy as I do, it's a good flick. at least rent it. some day, people smarter in these matters than I am will probably say it was an 'important' film.


consumption of ben & jerry's dublin mudslide is my new favorite way of contributing to the heat death of the universe. oh sweet beautiful best of all possible worlds; I defy you to say it is not so whilst your mouth is full of this pure joy.


you sense the presence of monsters! you unstack your rod. … I know, just simply know, that if I download this my life will certainly fall apart. I'm already reading the book (see the list somewhere to your right) and it's taking all I can give to put it down once in a while to do things like speak to my wife. WIFE you saved me from a rush of blood from the head but can you save me from the radiant beauty of the silmarils?