Sometimes I forget why I once thought politics was an utter waste of time and energy.

And then there are times like these, when there's a debate about whether or not to promote a person who made the legal case for torture, and all we get out of our representatives is posturing, positioning and pandering.

It's nearly enough to make me swear off caring again.

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER asks 120 scientists :"What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?"

Carlo Rovelli, Italian physicist, answers:

I am convinced, but cannot prove, that time does not exist. I mean that I am convinced that there is a consistent way of thinking about nature, that makes no use of the notions of space and time at the fundamental level. And that this way of thinking will turn out to be the useful and convincing one.
I think that the notions of space and time will turn out to be useful only within some approximation. They are similar to a notion like 'the surface of the water' which looses meaning when we describe the dynamics of the individual atoms forming water and air: if we look at very small scale, there isn't really any actual surface down there. I am convinced space and time are like the surface of the water: convenient macroscopic approximations, flimsy but illusory and insufficient screens that our mind uses to organize reality.

I've thought this for a long time, so I'm glad to see an actual physicist wondering the same thing.

A lot of the other answers are pretty fascinating, too.

Sam Harris:

The difference between believing and disbelieving a statement—Your spouse is cheating on you; you've just won ten million dollars—is one of the most potent regulators of human behavior and emotion. The instant we accept a given representation of the world as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false, it remains a string of words.

What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God—to the degree that they are really believed—are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else. This is not to say that all of our representations of the world are acquired through language, or that all linguistic representations are on the same logical footing. ... What I do believe, however, is that the neural processes that govern the final acceptance of a statement as "true" rely on more fundamental, reward-related circuitry in our frontal lobes—probably the same regions that judge the pleasantness of tastes and odors. Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense. And false statements may, quite literally, disgust us.

I believe I'll read some more:

Jeffery Epstein:

The great breakthrough will involve a new understanding of time...that moving through time is not free, and that consciousness itself will be seen to only be a time sensor, adding to the other sensors of light and space.

Something a little closer to my wallet:
Charles Simonyi:

I believe that we are writing software the wrong way. There are sound evolutionary reasons for why we are doing what we are doing—that we can call the "programming the problem in a computer language" paradigm, but the incredible success of Moore's law blinded us to being stuck in what is probably an evolutionary backwater.

Freeman Dyson:

Numbers that are exact powers of two are 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 and so on. Numbers that are exact powers of five are 5, 25, 125, 625 and so on. Given any number such as 131072 (which happens to be a power of two), the reverse of it is 270131, with the same digits taken in the opposite order. Now my statement is: it never happens that the reverse of a power of two is a power of five.

And, one of my favorites:

Chris W. Anderson:

The Intelligent Design movement has opened my eyes. I realize that although I believe that evolution explains why the living world is the way it is, I can't actually prove it. At least not to the satisfaction of the ID folk, who seem to require that every example of extraordinary complexity and clever plumbing in nature be fully traced back (not just traceable back) along an evolutionary tree to prove that it wasn't directed by an invisible hand. If the scientific community won't do that, then the arguments goes that they must accept a large red "theory" stamp placed on the evolution textbooks and that alternative theories, such as "guided" evolution and creationism, be taught alongside.

So, by this standard, virtually everything I believe in must now fall under the shadow of unproveability. Most importantly, this includes the belief that democracy, capitalism and other market-driven systems (including evolution!) are better than their alternatives. Indeed, I suppose I should now refer to them as the "theory of democracy" and the "theory of capitalism", to join the theory of evolution, and accept the teaching of living Marxism and fascism as alternatives in high schools.

Note to the person whispering three cubicles over:

If I can hear you while listening to my iPod through headphones, you're forgetting the most important part of what whispering is supposed to accomplish.

Over at The American Street, they held a poetry contest: build a poem around Rumsfeld's infamous "You Go To War With What You Have" line. And now, the winners have been posted. Go read them.

My entry, while clearly deserving it, was not awarded any honors save for an "honorable mention" - something all non-winning entries received. Harrumph.

Here, unbelievers, judge the fruit of my labor for yourself:

Into the morgue, a truism strode
Nobody turned to look
"You go to war with what you have!"
Eyes stayed closed, hands cold

Who could question that this is satisfactory in every way, exceeds all reasonable expectations and undoubtably merits high marks for rhyme, meter and imagery ? Who ? And, while the winning entries are surely adequate and worthy of, ahem, recognition, once again, we find that true genius begs at the back door, while peers and pretenders pat their full bellies by the fire. I'm sure the judges' failure to count it among the top three was due to the pernicious pro-length bias that's all too common among common poetry judges these days, and not for any shortcoming in my splendid verse. After all, it is quite well-established among serious thinkers that poems in excess of 8 lines favor flourish before finesse.

Read all the entries, here.

There's a comet out right now. We could see it pretty well with binoculars last night, so I thought I'd try taking a picture of it - my first star image! Well, that was a dumb idea.

This was probably a 15 second exposure, but even that's enough for the stars (actually, the earth) to move quite a bit; and yet it's not quite enough to get any detail in the comet itself (the fuzzy thing in the top half of the image). On top of that, the lens (the biggest I have) isn't really long enough, so the comet ends up too small; so even though it would still be blurred by the motion of the earth if I had a bigger lens, you can't see any detail - this is a crop from a much larger image.

Alas.

And, here's a 20 second exposure of the Pleiades. Note how much they move in just 20 seconds.

Maybe I should get a bigger lens, or a telescope, before i try anymore star shots.

Programmers and engineers should go read the amazing story of The Graphing Calculator:

In October, when we thought we were almost finished, engineers who had been helping us had me demonstrate our software to their managers. A dozen people packed into my office. I didn't expect their support, but I felt obliged to make a good-faith effort to go through their official channels. I gave a twenty-minute demonstration, eliciting 'oohs' and 'ahhs.' Afterward, they asked, 'Who do you report to? What group are you in? Why haven't we seen this earlier?' I explained that I had been sneaking into the building and that the project didn't exist. They laughed, until they realized I was serious. Then they told me, 'Don't repeat this story.'

Remember, all: nothing changes, on New Year's day.

CNN thinks we should know: Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays.

Possibly 100,000 dead.

Amazon.com has set up a way to donate to the Red Cross using your Amazon account - one click is all it takes.