“The next thing is to try and figure out how do we achieve very rapid reuse with minimal refurbishment, and without any sort of hardware changes on the vehicle,” Musk said. “Our aspiration will be zero hardware changes (with) a reflight in 24 hours, and the only thing that changes is we reload propellant,” Musk said. “We might get there toward the end of this year, but if not this year, I’m confident we’ll get there next year.”
Officials have not disclosed how much of a discount SES received to be the first customer to fly on one of SpaceX’s reused boosters. Musk aims for a 100-fold reduction in launch costs in the long run, but the pricing effects will be more modest in the beginning. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said last year the company will initially offer a 10 percent discount to clients willing to put their payloads on previously-flown rockets.
“It will be a meaningful discount,” Musk said, without citing a number. “We’ll figure out some way to pay off the development costs of reusability, so the price discount won’t be as much as the cost savings because we need to repay the massive development cost. But it will certainly be less than the price of our current rockets, and will be far lower than any other rocket in the world,” Musk added.
SpaceX says a regular commercial launch of a Falcon 9 rocket now costs about $62 million, already making it the least expensive option in its lift category.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/03/31/spacex-flies-rocket-for-second-time-in-historic-test-of-cost-cutting-technology/
Friday 31 March 2017
Callicles was a jerk
You're a jerk, Callicles, a complete jerk and I don't like you. Yes, I know you're dead. So you're a dead jerk.
Fake news is not something we have to accept
I think this article has some good as well as bad points.
The main bad one is that it tends towards a Nirvana fallacy : regulation won't be perfect, so (by inference) let's not do any. That is not the relevant question. The relevant question is : does regulation make things overall better or worse ? I further disagree with the strong implication that because it's very difficult to determine what's really "fake news" and what's parody and/or opinion, it's impossible to remove the worst content in a way which overall does more good than harm. Of course mistakes will be made in the process. Of course removing clickbait isn't a magic bullet. That is obvious, but the author seems convinced that's what everyone's expecting.
On the other hand :
"much of the most insidious content out there isn’t in your face. It’s not spread widely, and certainly not by people who are forwarding it to object. It’s subtle content that is factually accurate, biased in presentation and framing, and encouraging people to make dangerous conclusions that are not explicitly spelled out in the content itself."
This is a much better point. If you look at the Daily Mail, for example, although there are clearly many cases where their statements are factually inaccurate, much of the content is subtler. It's biased reporting presented as objective truth with no attempt to examine the alternative viewpoints. It's not that they confuse opinions and facts (though this is also a problem) it's that they're selective in their reporting of the facts.
Certainly, this is much harder to regulate than which results Google and Facebook prioritise with their search algorithms. I further agree that "we’re all trapped up in a larger system that’s deeply flawed." Yet I think this underestimates the extent to which the media influence our lives. It's true that, "hate will continue to breed unless you address the issues at the source" is correct, but I think that in many cases the source of that hatred is the media. No-one is born believing that foreigners are evil or that Muslims are all terrorists. They learn that through the media : in this respect the media create social ills where none would otherwise exist.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/02/on-sharp-pointy-objects.html
Now, the extent to to which people are susceptible to believing in scapegoats in the first place is much harder to address. It's likely a combination of factors : strong media bias towards normalising hatred, poor education in teaching critical thinking skills, and under-regulation of capitalist policies leading to an unjust wealth increase for those at the top at the cost of hurting - literally hurting - those at the bottom. No amount of media regulation will solve this completely, but I do think it would be a good start.
Final point :
"In my head, the design imperative that we need to prioritize is clear: Develop social, technical, economic, and political structures that allow people to understand, appreciate, and bridge different viewpoints."
Yes, to a degree I think this works very well. If you have people saying, " I think we need to regulate business more strongly" as opposed to, "I think we should reduce the regulations", then bridging viewpoints works. However it does not work if one or both sides are saying, "LOCK THEM UP ! BURN ALL THE CAPITALISTS/SOCIALISTS !". "Appreciating" different viewpoints does you no good if the other viewpoint is, in fact, mad.
Rant over.
'Let’s start with a common “fix” that I’ve heard in the solutionist mindset: Force Facebook and Google to “solve” the problem by identifying “fake news” and preventing it from spreading. Though I appreciate the frustration over technology companies’ ability to mirror and magnify long-standing social dynamics, regulating or pressuring them to find a silver bullet solution isn’t going to work.'
https://backchannel.com/google-and-facebook-cant-just-make-fake-news-disappear-48f4b4e5fbe8
The main bad one is that it tends towards a Nirvana fallacy : regulation won't be perfect, so (by inference) let's not do any. That is not the relevant question. The relevant question is : does regulation make things overall better or worse ? I further disagree with the strong implication that because it's very difficult to determine what's really "fake news" and what's parody and/or opinion, it's impossible to remove the worst content in a way which overall does more good than harm. Of course mistakes will be made in the process. Of course removing clickbait isn't a magic bullet. That is obvious, but the author seems convinced that's what everyone's expecting.
On the other hand :
"much of the most insidious content out there isn’t in your face. It’s not spread widely, and certainly not by people who are forwarding it to object. It’s subtle content that is factually accurate, biased in presentation and framing, and encouraging people to make dangerous conclusions that are not explicitly spelled out in the content itself."
This is a much better point. If you look at the Daily Mail, for example, although there are clearly many cases where their statements are factually inaccurate, much of the content is subtler. It's biased reporting presented as objective truth with no attempt to examine the alternative viewpoints. It's not that they confuse opinions and facts (though this is also a problem) it's that they're selective in their reporting of the facts.
Certainly, this is much harder to regulate than which results Google and Facebook prioritise with their search algorithms. I further agree that "we’re all trapped up in a larger system that’s deeply flawed." Yet I think this underestimates the extent to which the media influence our lives. It's true that, "hate will continue to breed unless you address the issues at the source" is correct, but I think that in many cases the source of that hatred is the media. No-one is born believing that foreigners are evil or that Muslims are all terrorists. They learn that through the media : in this respect the media create social ills where none would otherwise exist.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/02/on-sharp-pointy-objects.html
Now, the extent to to which people are susceptible to believing in scapegoats in the first place is much harder to address. It's likely a combination of factors : strong media bias towards normalising hatred, poor education in teaching critical thinking skills, and under-regulation of capitalist policies leading to an unjust wealth increase for those at the top at the cost of hurting - literally hurting - those at the bottom. No amount of media regulation will solve this completely, but I do think it would be a good start.
Final point :
"In my head, the design imperative that we need to prioritize is clear: Develop social, technical, economic, and political structures that allow people to understand, appreciate, and bridge different viewpoints."
Yes, to a degree I think this works very well. If you have people saying, " I think we need to regulate business more strongly" as opposed to, "I think we should reduce the regulations", then bridging viewpoints works. However it does not work if one or both sides are saying, "LOCK THEM UP ! BURN ALL THE CAPITALISTS/SOCIALISTS !". "Appreciating" different viewpoints does you no good if the other viewpoint is, in fact, mad.
Rant over.
'Let’s start with a common “fix” that I’ve heard in the solutionist mindset: Force Facebook and Google to “solve” the problem by identifying “fake news” and preventing it from spreading. Though I appreciate the frustration over technology companies’ ability to mirror and magnify long-standing social dynamics, regulating or pressuring them to find a silver bullet solution isn’t going to work.'
https://backchannel.com/google-and-facebook-cant-just-make-fake-news-disappear-48f4b4e5fbe8
Wealth is created from the bottom-up
I don't agree with all of this; I think it falls victim to a common fallacy of painting the current world as being simply unbearably awful, when in most respects life for individuals in the Western world has never been better. That's still true despite Trump and Brexit Breakit, though whether that continues to be true remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it's worth reading.
These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have “made it”. By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world. Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.
In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as “successful” and “innovative” are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it’s a non-issue.
There is no longer a sharp dividing line between working and rentiering. In fact, the modern-day rentier often works damn hard. Countless people in the financial sector, for example, apply great ingenuity and effort to amass “rent” on their wealth. Even the big innovations of our age – businesses like Facebook and Uber – are interested mainly in expanding the rentier economy. The problem with most rich people therefore is not that they are coach potatoes. Many a CEO toils 80 hours a week to multiply his allowance. It’s hardly surprising, then, that they feel wholly entitled to their wealth.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer regularly unveil new drugs, yet most real medical breakthroughs are made quietly at government-subsidised labs. Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we’ve already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years. In other words, the vast revenues of the pharmaceutical industry are the result of a tiny pinch of innovation and fistfuls of rent.
The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society’s best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it’s insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/wealth-banks-google-facebook-society-economy-parasites?CMP=share_btn_fb
These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have “made it”. By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world. Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.
In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as “successful” and “innovative” are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it’s a non-issue.
There is no longer a sharp dividing line between working and rentiering. In fact, the modern-day rentier often works damn hard. Countless people in the financial sector, for example, apply great ingenuity and effort to amass “rent” on their wealth. Even the big innovations of our age – businesses like Facebook and Uber – are interested mainly in expanding the rentier economy. The problem with most rich people therefore is not that they are coach potatoes. Many a CEO toils 80 hours a week to multiply his allowance. It’s hardly surprising, then, that they feel wholly entitled to their wealth.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer regularly unveil new drugs, yet most real medical breakthroughs are made quietly at government-subsidised labs. Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we’ve already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years. In other words, the vast revenues of the pharmaceutical industry are the result of a tiny pinch of innovation and fistfuls of rent.
The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society’s best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it’s insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/wealth-banks-google-facebook-society-economy-parasites?CMP=share_btn_fb
Re-usable rockets are finally starting to make a difference
All doubts addressed ? No, but it's a big, impressive step in the right direction.
Famously, Nasa's space shuttle system was partially re-usable. Its white solid-fuel strap-on boosters, for example, would parachute into the Atlantic after each launch. The casings of these boosters were then refurbished and re-used numerous times.
And yet the complexities of servicing the shuttle system after every flight swamped any savings. SpaceX hopes its simpler Falcon 9 rocket can finally deliver a practical commercial solution. It believes its technology will eventually permit rapid turnaround, with boosters flying perhaps 10 times before being retired; maybe even up to 100 times with a certain level of refurbishment.
"With this being the first re-light we were incredibly paranoid about everything," Mr Musk said. "The core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same - but any auxiliary components that we thought might be slightly questionable, we changed out. Now our aspiration will be zero hardware changes, re-flight in 24 hours - the only thing that changes is that we reload propellant."
Word on the street is that this launch saved about 30% of the normal cost. Which is nice, but hardly a game-changer. If and only if it gets the cost down to the level of something close to just refuelling and basic maintenance - say, $1 million per launch instead of ~$50 million per launch - will it have a serious impact. And that still won't be enough to open up space for the likes of you or I, but it might get us to the level where we can talk about a serious space industry in the same way we use that term on the ground. There's a long way to go before we get there.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39451401
Famously, Nasa's space shuttle system was partially re-usable. Its white solid-fuel strap-on boosters, for example, would parachute into the Atlantic after each launch. The casings of these boosters were then refurbished and re-used numerous times.
And yet the complexities of servicing the shuttle system after every flight swamped any savings. SpaceX hopes its simpler Falcon 9 rocket can finally deliver a practical commercial solution. It believes its technology will eventually permit rapid turnaround, with boosters flying perhaps 10 times before being retired; maybe even up to 100 times with a certain level of refurbishment.
"With this being the first re-light we were incredibly paranoid about everything," Mr Musk said. "The core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same - but any auxiliary components that we thought might be slightly questionable, we changed out. Now our aspiration will be zero hardware changes, re-flight in 24 hours - the only thing that changes is that we reload propellant."
Word on the street is that this launch saved about 30% of the normal cost. Which is nice, but hardly a game-changer. If and only if it gets the cost down to the level of something close to just refuelling and basic maintenance - say, $1 million per launch instead of ~$50 million per launch - will it have a serious impact. And that still won't be enough to open up space for the likes of you or I, but it might get us to the level where we can talk about a serious space industry in the same way we use that term on the ground. There's a long way to go before we get there.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39451401
Thursday 30 March 2017
A century-long time lapse of the Crab Nebula
This is surely a candidate both for the longest and coolest time lapse ever.
Image 1 was taken at the Lick observatory at the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.
Image 2 was taken with the 200-inch Hale telescope in 1950.
*Image 3 is a POSSII-Red plate from 1990.
Image 4 is the renowned Hubble image photographed in the year 2000.
Image 5 was take by Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona with a 32-inch telescope in 2012.
Taken by Peter Rosén on March 29, 2017 @ Centra Stockholm, Sweden :
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=134317
Tadpoles with working eyes on their tails, for science
As weird as it sounds.
Blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes grafted onto their tails after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug that augmented innervation, integration, and function of the transplanted organs, according to a paper published online today by researchers at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in npj Regenerative Medicine, a Nature Research journal. The work, which used a pharmacological reagent already approved for use in humans, provides a potential road map for promoting innervation -- the supply of nerves to a body part -- in regenerative medicine.
http://dlvr.it/Nm8pyR
Blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes grafted onto their tails after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug that augmented innervation, integration, and function of the transplanted organs, according to a paper published online today by researchers at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in npj Regenerative Medicine, a Nature Research journal. The work, which used a pharmacological reagent already approved for use in humans, provides a potential road map for promoting innervation -- the supply of nerves to a body part -- in regenerative medicine.
http://dlvr.it/Nm8pyR
Selling politicians browser histories is deliciously evil but clearly impossible
""This GoFundMe [campaign] will pay to purchase the data of Donald Drumpf and every congressperson who voted for SJR34, and to make it publicly available."
This struck me as a crazy possibility, and apparently even the Drumpf administration isn't that crazy.
But several reports suggested the plans were technically illegal. The US Telecommunications Act prohibits the sharing of "individually identifiable" customer information except under specific circumstances. Marketers may access user browsing data, but only in aggregate, for the purposes of targeted advertising. And internet service providers (ISPs) would suffer huge brand damage if they sold off identifiable personal data.
Mike Masnick, founder of the Techdiret blog, said: "Here's the real problem: you can't buy congress's internet data. You can't buy my internet data. You can't buy your internet data. That's not how this works."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39443161
This struck me as a crazy possibility, and apparently even the Drumpf administration isn't that crazy.
But several reports suggested the plans were technically illegal. The US Telecommunications Act prohibits the sharing of "individually identifiable" customer information except under specific circumstances. Marketers may access user browsing data, but only in aggregate, for the purposes of targeted advertising. And internet service providers (ISPs) would suffer huge brand damage if they sold off identifiable personal data.
Mike Masnick, founder of the Techdiret blog, said: "Here's the real problem: you can't buy congress's internet data. You can't buy my internet data. You can't buy your internet data. That's not how this works."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39443161
Wednesday 29 March 2017
Regular politics has failed
Can we temporarily revert to classical Roman realpolitik, intercept the letter and burn it ? Pretty please ?
Someone said recently that it's important to follow intelligent media you disagree with. In this I fully agree. The problem is that for Brexit there really doesn't appear to be any intelligent media; they are all mad as clams and don't make sense. This is what the Prime Minister - supposedly an intelligent woman, but actually a mad old bat, had to say :
"And, now that the decision has been made to leave the EU, it is time to come together."
An lo, my stock responses prepared for arguing with idiots on the internet are entirely applicable :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html#cantwealljustgetalong
And then, a campaigner on national frickin' media has this pearl of wisdom to impart :
"Unpatriotic, pro-EU fanatics will continue to try to derail or, at the very least, delay Brexit," the group's co-chairman, Richard Tice, warned.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html#hateymchateface
And people wonder why I'm angry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39422353
Someone said recently that it's important to follow intelligent media you disagree with. In this I fully agree. The problem is that for Brexit there really doesn't appear to be any intelligent media; they are all mad as clams and don't make sense. This is what the Prime Minister - supposedly an intelligent woman, but actually a mad old bat, had to say :
"And, now that the decision has been made to leave the EU, it is time to come together."
An lo, my stock responses prepared for arguing with idiots on the internet are entirely applicable :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html#cantwealljustgetalong
And then, a campaigner on national frickin' media has this pearl of wisdom to impart :
"Unpatriotic, pro-EU fanatics will continue to try to derail or, at the very least, delay Brexit," the group's co-chairman, Richard Tice, warned.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html#hateymchateface
And people wonder why I'm angry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39422353
Tuesday 28 March 2017
From the Daily Fail
"Is there a rule that says political coverage must be dull or has a po-faced BBC and left-wing commentariat, so obsessed by the Daily Mail, lost all sense of humour… and proportion?"
Wait, what ? You just said that Brexit was less important than politician's legs... and you're saying your critics have lost a sense of proportion ? Lordy.
He added: "It appeared in an 84-page paper disgusting rag packed with important news manipulative drivel and analysis racist opinions, a front page exclusive on cost-cutting in the NHS [that was given much less space than the "legs-it" headline] and a health supplement devoted to women's health issues [which are usually little better than homoeopathic twaddle].
Ed Miliband quipped: "The 1950s called and asked for their headline back. #everydaysexism".
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39416554
Wait, what ? You just said that Brexit was less important than politician's legs... and you're saying your critics have lost a sense of proportion ? Lordy.
He added: "It appeared in an 84-page paper disgusting rag packed with important news manipulative drivel and analysis racist opinions, a front page exclusive on cost-cutting in the NHS [that was given much less space than the "legs-it" headline] and a health supplement devoted to women's health issues [which are usually little better than homoeopathic twaddle].
Ed Miliband quipped: "The 1950s called and asked for their headline back. #everydaysexism".
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39416554
Science as an end in itself
Worth reading just for this :
The President’s budget reflects a consistent and fundamental vision about American strength that is fundamentally at odds with a vision presented by almost 50 years ago by the physicist Robert Wilson, the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago at which a large particle accelerator was being built. When testifying before Congress about the machine and its cost, Wilson was asked if it completion would aid in the defence of the nation. His answer is striking.
"No Sir…I don’t believe so…. It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture... It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."
And yet...
Whether future historians will view the United States as a truly great nation will not depend upon our military strength or our ability to successfully assimilate immigrants, any more than we celebrate the greatness of ancient Greece or Rome by counting their military victories.
I suppose strictly speaking no, not by counting their military victories, that would be silly. But without military victories there would have been no Greece or Rome in the first place.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/killing-science-and-culture-doesnt-make-the-nation-stronger/
The President’s budget reflects a consistent and fundamental vision about American strength that is fundamentally at odds with a vision presented by almost 50 years ago by the physicist Robert Wilson, the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago at which a large particle accelerator was being built. When testifying before Congress about the machine and its cost, Wilson was asked if it completion would aid in the defence of the nation. His answer is striking.
"No Sir…I don’t believe so…. It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture... It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."
And yet...
Whether future historians will view the United States as a truly great nation will not depend upon our military strength or our ability to successfully assimilate immigrants, any more than we celebrate the greatness of ancient Greece or Rome by counting their military victories.
I suppose strictly speaking no, not by counting their military victories, that would be silly. But without military victories there would have been no Greece or Rome in the first place.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/killing-science-and-culture-doesnt-make-the-nation-stronger/
Seals that have sex with penguins
Huh.
All four known sexual incidents followed a common pattern. Each time a seal chased, captured and mounted the penguin. The seal then attempted copulation several times, lasting about five minutes each, with periods of rest in between. In three of the four recorded incidents the seal let the penguin go. But on one of the more recent occasions, the seal killed and ate the penguin after trying to mate with it.
"Perhaps it is a release of sexual frustration, given the hormonal surges during seal breeding season. It is very unlikely to be failed mate recognition - i.e. the misidentification of the penguin as a female seal. All in all it's difficult to say really," he admits.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117-why-seals-have-sex-with-penguins
All four known sexual incidents followed a common pattern. Each time a seal chased, captured and mounted the penguin. The seal then attempted copulation several times, lasting about five minutes each, with periods of rest in between. In three of the four recorded incidents the seal let the penguin go. But on one of the more recent occasions, the seal killed and ate the penguin after trying to mate with it.
"Perhaps it is a release of sexual frustration, given the hormonal surges during seal breeding season. It is very unlikely to be failed mate recognition - i.e. the misidentification of the penguin as a female seal. All in all it's difficult to say really," he admits.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117-why-seals-have-sex-with-penguins
Monday 27 March 2017
Simple ignorance is what keeps science funding low
Via Prof. J. P. Sheerin.
First, participants were asked to estimate what percentage of the federal budget was spent on scientific research. Once they’d guessed, half of the participants were told the actual amount that the federal government allocates for nondefense spending on research and development. In 2014, that figure was 1.6 percent of the budget, or about $67 billion. Finally, all the participants were asked if federal spending on science should be increased, decreased or kept the same.
The majority of participants had no idea how much money the government spends on science, and wildly overestimated the actual amount. About half of the respondents estimated federal spending for research at somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the budget. A quarter of participants estimated that figure was 20 percent of the budget — one very hefty chunk of change. The last 25 percent of respondents estimated that 1 to 2 percent of federal spending went to science.
When participants received no information about how much the United States spent on research, only about 40 percent of them supported more funding. But when they were confronted with the real numbers, support for more funding leapt from 40 to 60 percent.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/most-americans-science-and-are-willing-pay-it
First, participants were asked to estimate what percentage of the federal budget was spent on scientific research. Once they’d guessed, half of the participants were told the actual amount that the federal government allocates for nondefense spending on research and development. In 2014, that figure was 1.6 percent of the budget, or about $67 billion. Finally, all the participants were asked if federal spending on science should be increased, decreased or kept the same.
The majority of participants had no idea how much money the government spends on science, and wildly overestimated the actual amount. About half of the respondents estimated federal spending for research at somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the budget. A quarter of participants estimated that figure was 20 percent of the budget — one very hefty chunk of change. The last 25 percent of respondents estimated that 1 to 2 percent of federal spending went to science.
When participants received no information about how much the United States spent on research, only about 40 percent of them supported more funding. But when they were confronted with the real numbers, support for more funding leapt from 40 to 60 percent.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/most-americans-science-and-are-willing-pay-it
Sunday 26 March 2017
Barnacles are scary as hell
Isn't nature lovely ?
The microscopic larva of Sacculina seeks out an unsuspecting crab. It then settles on a part of the crab where its armours is most vulnerable, usually on the membrane at the base of one of the crab's hair. The larvae then transforms itself into afacehugger kind of living hypodermic syringe (called a kentrogon). This syringe stabs the base of the crab's hair and injects the next stage of the parasite – a microscopic blob called the vermigon – into the crab's bloodstream. This blob will eventually grow into a parasite that takes over the crab's entire body. Its tendrils spread throughout the crab's insides and the only part of the parasite which is visible on the outside is the externa: the female reproductive organ which protrudes from the crab's abdomen. Sacculina takes over the host in both body and mind – it castrates the crab, then turns it into a doting babysitter that grooms and aerates the barnacle's brood, tending the next generation of baby-snatchers as if they were its own babies.
https://phys.org/news/2014-05-crab-castrating-parasite-zombifies-prey.html
The microscopic larva of Sacculina seeks out an unsuspecting crab. It then settles on a part of the crab where its armours is most vulnerable, usually on the membrane at the base of one of the crab's hair. The larvae then transforms itself into a
https://phys.org/news/2014-05-crab-castrating-parasite-zombifies-prey.html
Stock responses
I'm tired of arguing with Brexiteers because they keep raising the same flawed arguments over and over again. So here is a set of stock responses; they each have independent internal page links so they can be read separately as necessary. Jenny Winder may find this useful.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/03/brexit-faqs.html
Saturday 25 March 2017
There goes UKIP's MP
:)
UKIP's Douglas Carswell is quitting the party to become an independent MP and says he is doing so "amicably". The party's only MP defected from the Conservatives in 2014. Former leader Nigel Farage recently called on Mr Carswell to quit, accusing him of "actively working against UKIP". Party leader Paul Nuttall said Mr Carswell was "committed to Brexit, but was never a comfortable Ukipper". There are now calls within UKIP for the Clacton MP to call a by-election.
Earlier this month, Mr Carswell vowed to "absolutely" fight the next general election as a UKIP candidate.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39393213
UKIP's Douglas Carswell is quitting the party to become an independent MP and says he is doing so "amicably". The party's only MP defected from the Conservatives in 2014. Former leader Nigel Farage recently called on Mr Carswell to quit, accusing him of "actively working against UKIP". Party leader Paul Nuttall said Mr Carswell was "committed to Brexit, but was never a comfortable Ukipper". There are now calls within UKIP for the Clacton MP to call a by-election.
Earlier this month, Mr Carswell vowed to "absolutely" fight the next general election as a UKIP candidate.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39393213
Does the backfire effect even exist ?
Apparently, the backfire effect - where people tend to believe more strongly in something when presented with opposing evidence - just doesn't exist, or at least has been hugely overstated. I find it unlikely that it doesn't exist at all, because anecdotally it most certainly does. Overstated is much more plausible - as the article describes, there are other reasons why simple fact-presenting may still not work in (political) practise. E.g. if you hear the facts once but the lies a dozen times; the power of a fact to reduce belief may not necessarily translate into changing votes; I suppose there could also be a "hard core" who do suffer the backfire effect and then go on to promote lies more vigorously as a result, etc.
Still, it's tough to argue with this given that the authors of the original 2010 study are on board with it. But what this article doesn't address is why the studies produced such very different results. Did the original have some methodological flaw or suffer some unintended selection effect ? Was the sample size just too low ? Could it simply be due to how the information was presented ? Intriguingly :
“Across all experiments,” the researchers write, “we found only one issue capable of triggering backfire: whether WMD were found in Iraq in 2003.” Even there, changing the wording of the item in question eliminated the backfire effect.
See also : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/ct66PL7rdW7
First described in a 2010 paper by the political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, the idea is simple: If someone believes something that’s false, and you present them with a correction, in many situations rather than update their belief they will double down, holding even tighter to that initial belief.
Two new upcoming studies of the backfire effect call into question its very existence. These studies collected far more subjects than the original backfire study, and both find effectively no backfire effect at all. And unlike the original study, the subjects in these new ones weren’t just college students — they were thousands of people, of all ages, from all around the country.
If this new finding holds up, this is a very important, well, correction: It suggests that overall, fact-checking may be more likely to cause people, even partisans, to update their beliefs rather than to cling more tightly to them. And part of the reason we now know this is that Nyhan and Reifler put their money where their mouths were: When a team of two young researchers approached them suggesting a collaboration to test the backfire effect in a big, robust, public way, they accepted the challenge. So this is partly a story about a potentially important new finding in political science and psychology — but the story within the story is about science being done right.
As the paper notes, the experiments were set up in ways designed to maximize the chances of a backlash effect being observed. Many of the issues the respondents were asked about are extremely politically charged — abortion and gun violence and illegal immigration — and the experiment was conducted during one of the most heated and unusual presidential elections in modern American history. The idea was something like, Well, if we can’t find the backfire effect here, with a big sample size under these sorts of conditions, then we can safely question whether it exists.
And that’s what happened. “Across all experiments,” the researchers write, “we found only one issue capable of triggering backfire: whether WMD were found in Iraq in 2003.” Even there, changing the wording of the item in question eliminated the backfire effect.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/theres-more-hope-for-political-fact-checking.html
Still, it's tough to argue with this given that the authors of the original 2010 study are on board with it. But what this article doesn't address is why the studies produced such very different results. Did the original have some methodological flaw or suffer some unintended selection effect ? Was the sample size just too low ? Could it simply be due to how the information was presented ? Intriguingly :
“Across all experiments,” the researchers write, “we found only one issue capable of triggering backfire: whether WMD were found in Iraq in 2003.” Even there, changing the wording of the item in question eliminated the backfire effect.
See also : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/ct66PL7rdW7
First described in a 2010 paper by the political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, the idea is simple: If someone believes something that’s false, and you present them with a correction, in many situations rather than update their belief they will double down, holding even tighter to that initial belief.
Two new upcoming studies of the backfire effect call into question its very existence. These studies collected far more subjects than the original backfire study, and both find effectively no backfire effect at all. And unlike the original study, the subjects in these new ones weren’t just college students — they were thousands of people, of all ages, from all around the country.
If this new finding holds up, this is a very important, well, correction: It suggests that overall, fact-checking may be more likely to cause people, even partisans, to update their beliefs rather than to cling more tightly to them. And part of the reason we now know this is that Nyhan and Reifler put their money where their mouths were: When a team of two young researchers approached them suggesting a collaboration to test the backfire effect in a big, robust, public way, they accepted the challenge. So this is partly a story about a potentially important new finding in political science and psychology — but the story within the story is about science being done right.
As the paper notes, the experiments were set up in ways designed to maximize the chances of a backlash effect being observed. Many of the issues the respondents were asked about are extremely politically charged — abortion and gun violence and illegal immigration — and the experiment was conducted during one of the most heated and unusual presidential elections in modern American history. The idea was something like, Well, if we can’t find the backfire effect here, with a big sample size under these sorts of conditions, then we can safely question whether it exists.
And that’s what happened. “Across all experiments,” the researchers write, “we found only one issue capable of triggering backfire: whether WMD were found in Iraq in 2003.” Even there, changing the wording of the item in question eliminated the backfire effect.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/11/theres-more-hope-for-political-fact-checking.html
Friday 24 March 2017
Stupidity really is a bottomless pit
Eh ??
Police in Poland have detained at least 11 people after a naked demonstration at the Auschwitz museum, on the site of the former Nazi death camp. The museum said "a group of people killed a sheep, undressed and chained themselves together". The incident took place beneath the main gate, which bears the infamous slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work sets you free"). The motive behind the demonstration was unclear, officials said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39383988
Police in Poland have detained at least 11 people after a naked demonstration at the Auschwitz museum, on the site of the former Nazi death camp. The museum said "a group of people killed a sheep, undressed and chained themselves together". The incident took place beneath the main gate, which bears the infamous slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work sets you free"). The motive behind the demonstration was unclear, officials said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39383988
"Leaving the EU bad for Britain", says UKIP
Oh, you're a special kind of stupid, aren't you ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_D2XKRbYmM
A UKIP Welsh Assembly Member says rural communities must not lose out as a result of Brexit and access to the European single market is a "critical priority" once Britain leaves. Mark Reckless is chairman of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, which has been looking at the potential impact leaving the EU will have on the sector.
In the report Mr Reckless says:
For over four decades, the way in which agricultural produce is farmed, sold and financially supported has been decided primarily at a European level. Following the referendum outcome last June, Wales now has a chance to mould those policies closer to home.
But we can only take advantage of this opportunity to reinvigorate our rural communities by ensuring that we, in Wales, do not lose out as a result of the vote to leave. In the shorter term we have heard clear evidence that access to the Single Market place, continuation of financial support and assurances over migrant labour are critical priorities.
I mean, if you thought that leaving would hurt the economy, then you f*@%ing shouldn't have done it, should you ?
http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2017-03-24/ukip-access-to-european-single-market-critical-for-welsh-farmers-post-brexit/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_D2XKRbYmM
A UKIP Welsh Assembly Member says rural communities must not lose out as a result of Brexit and access to the European single market is a "critical priority" once Britain leaves. Mark Reckless is chairman of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, which has been looking at the potential impact leaving the EU will have on the sector.
In the report Mr Reckless says:
For over four decades, the way in which agricultural produce is farmed, sold and financially supported has been decided primarily at a European level. Following the referendum outcome last June, Wales now has a chance to mould those policies closer to home.
But we can only take advantage of this opportunity to reinvigorate our rural communities by ensuring that we, in Wales, do not lose out as a result of the vote to leave. In the shorter term we have heard clear evidence that access to the Single Market place, continuation of financial support and assurances over migrant labour are critical priorities.
I mean, if you thought that leaving would hurt the economy, then you f*@%ing shouldn't have done it, should you ?
http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2017-03-24/ukip-access-to-european-single-market-critical-for-welsh-farmers-post-brexit/
Electric planes : a real advance, or just the new Zeppelins ?
I mean "new Zeppelins" in the sense of "any day now..."
A new start-up says that it intends to offer an electric-powered commercial flight from London to Paris in 10 years. Its plane, yet to go into development, would carry 150 people on journeys of less than 300 miles. Wright Electric said by removing the need for jet fuel, the price of travel could drop dramatically.
British low-cost airline Easyjet has expressed its interest in the technology. "Easyjet has had discussions with Wright Electric and is actively providing an airline operator's perspective on the development of this exciting technology," the airline told the BBC.
However, significant hurdles need to be overcome if Wright Electric is to make the Wright One, pictured above, a reality. The company is relying heavily on innovation in battery technology continuing to improve at its current rate. If not, the firm will not be able to build in enough power to give the plane the range it needs.
Industry experts are wary of the company's claims. Graham Warwick, technology editor of Aviation Weekly, said such technology was a "long way away". "The battery technology is not there yet," he told the BBC. "It's projected to come but it needs a significant improvement. Nobody thinks that is going to happen anytime soon. And there's all the [safety] certification - those rules are yet to be created, and that takes time."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39350058
A new start-up says that it intends to offer an electric-powered commercial flight from London to Paris in 10 years. Its plane, yet to go into development, would carry 150 people on journeys of less than 300 miles. Wright Electric said by removing the need for jet fuel, the price of travel could drop dramatically.
British low-cost airline Easyjet has expressed its interest in the technology. "Easyjet has had discussions with Wright Electric and is actively providing an airline operator's perspective on the development of this exciting technology," the airline told the BBC.
However, significant hurdles need to be overcome if Wright Electric is to make the Wright One, pictured above, a reality. The company is relying heavily on innovation in battery technology continuing to improve at its current rate. If not, the firm will not be able to build in enough power to give the plane the range it needs.
Industry experts are wary of the company's claims. Graham Warwick, technology editor of Aviation Weekly, said such technology was a "long way away". "The battery technology is not there yet," he told the BBC. "It's projected to come but it needs a significant improvement. Nobody thinks that is going to happen anytime soon. And there's all the [safety] certification - those rules are yet to be created, and that takes time."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39350058
Thursday 23 March 2017
Wednesday 22 March 2017
Dating Constable's paintings with rainbows
Art, science and basic humanity all rolled into one.
Constable had a passion for understanding the science of the skies that inspired his art. Between 1820 and 1822, when he was living at Hampstead, he painted more than 100 studies of the sky, including detailed oil sketches of clouds accompanied by notes on the time of day and direction of the wind. He also wrote about the geometry of rainbows and analysed their shapes and colours in diagrams... "“Constable said we see nothing truly until we understand it. And the rainbow is a case in point. You don't see a rainbow properly until you understand how it's formed.”
“Constable had a real knowledge of meteorology – probably as good as any contemporary meteorologist at that time,” Thornes says. “He studied rainbow science and had some quite mathematical friends who we think taught him about rainbows.”
His theory is that Constable painted it in to commemorate his friendship with Fisher, who died about a year after the work was first displayed. Rainbows can be dated very precisely based on their position in relation to the sun, and Thornes' analysis revealed that this one would have graced the sky on 25 August 1832 – the date of Fisher's death. The end of the rainbow touches Fisher's house.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170321-why-this-striking-rainbow-may-carry-a-hidden-message
Constable had a passion for understanding the science of the skies that inspired his art. Between 1820 and 1822, when he was living at Hampstead, he painted more than 100 studies of the sky, including detailed oil sketches of clouds accompanied by notes on the time of day and direction of the wind. He also wrote about the geometry of rainbows and analysed their shapes and colours in diagrams... "“Constable said we see nothing truly until we understand it. And the rainbow is a case in point. You don't see a rainbow properly until you understand how it's formed.”
“Constable had a real knowledge of meteorology – probably as good as any contemporary meteorologist at that time,” Thornes says. “He studied rainbow science and had some quite mathematical friends who we think taught him about rainbows.”
His theory is that Constable painted it in to commemorate his friendship with Fisher, who died about a year after the work was first displayed. Rainbows can be dated very precisely based on their position in relation to the sun, and Thornes' analysis revealed that this one would have graced the sky on 25 August 1832 – the date of Fisher's death. The end of the rainbow touches Fisher's house.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170321-why-this-striking-rainbow-may-carry-a-hidden-message
Bring old astronomy data into the digital age
This looks useful.
Thousands of astronomy photos are mostly dead to science, and we aim to bring them fully back to life! Astronomy Rewind will take these “zombie images” — which have been scanned from the pages of dusty old journals — and make them searchable via digital sky atlases and catalogs. Anyone will then be able to find them online and compare them with electronic data from modern telescopes, making possible new studies of short- and long-term changes in the cosmos.
We’ll start simply: Your first task will be to identify what figure type(s) each journal page contains: photos of celestial objects with (or without) labeled axes? maps of planetary surfaces with (or without) coordinate grids? In a subsequent step you’ll view the figures in their celestial context within WorldWide Telescope, a powerful data-visualization tool and interactive sky map. For images that don’t have labeled axes, we’ll use the Astrometry.net service to automatically determine their scale, orientation, and position on the sky.
“There’s no telling what discoveries await,” says Astronomy Rewind co-founder Alyssa Goodman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). “Turning historical scientific literature into searchable, retrievable data is like turning the key to a treasure chest.”
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zooniverse/astronomy-rewind?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ARLaunch22Mar2017
Thousands of astronomy photos are mostly dead to science, and we aim to bring them fully back to life! Astronomy Rewind will take these “zombie images” — which have been scanned from the pages of dusty old journals — and make them searchable via digital sky atlases and catalogs. Anyone will then be able to find them online and compare them with electronic data from modern telescopes, making possible new studies of short- and long-term changes in the cosmos.
We’ll start simply: Your first task will be to identify what figure type(s) each journal page contains: photos of celestial objects with (or without) labeled axes? maps of planetary surfaces with (or without) coordinate grids? In a subsequent step you’ll view the figures in their celestial context within WorldWide Telescope, a powerful data-visualization tool and interactive sky map. For images that don’t have labeled axes, we’ll use the Astrometry.net service to automatically determine their scale, orientation, and position on the sky.
“There’s no telling what discoveries await,” says Astronomy Rewind co-founder Alyssa Goodman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). “Turning historical scientific literature into searchable, retrievable data is like turning the key to a treasure chest.”
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zooniverse/astronomy-rewind?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ARLaunch22Mar2017
Tuesday 21 March 2017
Non-Euclidean space in VR
OK, this looks mind-warpingly fun.
VR has the advantage that it reproduces the way in which light rays hit each eye. In Euclidean space, staring at a point at infinity means that the lines of sight of the two eyes track parallel lines. But in a hyperbolic world, those two paths would veer apart, says Segerman, forcing a different response from the viewer. “Here, if you look at a point at infinity, you have to cross your eyes slightly.” To our “Euclidean brain”, that makes everything feel kind of close, he says.
But the smallness is deceptive. One of the oddest facts about hyperbolic space is its sheer vastness. Whereas in Euclidean space the surface area within a given radius grows as fast as the square of the radius, and the volume grows as fast as its cube, in hyperbolic space areas and volumes grow much (exponentially) faster relative to the radius. One consequence is that a user roaming a planet in the hyperbolic world finds much more to visit within walking distance.
So far, there is not much to do in the eleVR world, apart from exploring tilings made of geometric shapes such as pentagons and dodecahedra. But the team plans to build hyperbolic houses and streets, as well as interactive experiences such as playing a non-Euclidean version of basketball. The researchers hope that their open-source software will become popular with science museums and the growing legion of consumer VR enthusiasts.
http://www.nature.com/news/mathematicians-create-warped-worlds-in-virtual-reality-1.21689?WT.mc_id=GPL_NatureNews
VR has the advantage that it reproduces the way in which light rays hit each eye. In Euclidean space, staring at a point at infinity means that the lines of sight of the two eyes track parallel lines. But in a hyperbolic world, those two paths would veer apart, says Segerman, forcing a different response from the viewer. “Here, if you look at a point at infinity, you have to cross your eyes slightly.” To our “Euclidean brain”, that makes everything feel kind of close, he says.
But the smallness is deceptive. One of the oddest facts about hyperbolic space is its sheer vastness. Whereas in Euclidean space the surface area within a given radius grows as fast as the square of the radius, and the volume grows as fast as its cube, in hyperbolic space areas and volumes grow much (exponentially) faster relative to the radius. One consequence is that a user roaming a planet in the hyperbolic world finds much more to visit within walking distance.
So far, there is not much to do in the eleVR world, apart from exploring tilings made of geometric shapes such as pentagons and dodecahedra. But the team plans to build hyperbolic houses and streets, as well as interactive experiences such as playing a non-Euclidean version of basketball. The researchers hope that their open-source software will become popular with science museums and the growing legion of consumer VR enthusiasts.
http://www.nature.com/news/mathematicians-create-warped-worlds-in-virtual-reality-1.21689?WT.mc_id=GPL_NatureNews
A new, more direct approach to politics
The rational, measured approach to the current political farce does not appear to be working. This is because it assumes that politicians are fundamentally rational and logical. They are not. Therefore I suggest an alternative approach. Continue writing letters to one's MP, however, instead of the time-consuming boring ones full of facts, let's try something like this :
Dear Theresa May,
You are a bloody nutter.
Sincerely,
Me.
Context :
Theresa May insists Donald Drumpf was "being a gentleman" when he held her hand during her US visit shortly after he became 45th president. In an interview with the style magazine American Vogue, she says: "We were about to walk down a ramp, and he said it might be a bit awkward." Asked what she made of Mr Drumpf, she adds: "I like to think we got on."
"I mean, obviously he has, uh... it was a stunning election victory, in that he's someone who has not been involved in politics." Pressed on whether she confronted the president about his comments about women, which she had previously described as "unacceptable", she replied: "Well, I don't... We don't comment on private conversations that take place. All I would say is, I've been very clear: I'm not afraid to raise issues and the nature of the relationship is such that we should be able to be frank and open with each other."
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39333131
Dear Theresa May,
You are a bloody nutter.
Sincerely,
Me.
Context :
Theresa May insists Donald Drumpf was "being a gentleman" when he held her hand during her US visit shortly after he became 45th president. In an interview with the style magazine American Vogue, she says: "We were about to walk down a ramp, and he said it might be a bit awkward." Asked what she made of Mr Drumpf, she adds: "I like to think we got on."
"I mean, obviously he has, uh... it was a stunning election victory, in that he's someone who has not been involved in politics." Pressed on whether she confronted the president about his comments about women, which she had previously described as "unacceptable", she replied: "Well, I don't... We don't comment on private conversations that take place. All I would say is, I've been very clear: I'm not afraid to raise issues and the nature of the relationship is such that we should be able to be frank and open with each other."
What a classic May answer, declaring that she's been clear as though that was somehow an answer. Total dribble.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39333131
Monday 20 March 2017
Using the humanities to teach critical thinking
Told you so.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/05/oh-humanities.html
A recent study by North Carolina State University researchers finds that teaching critical thinking skills in a humanities course significantly reduces student beliefs in "pseudoscience" that is unsupported by facts.
For this study, the researchers worked with 117 students in three different classes. Fifty-nine students were enrolled in a psychology research methods course, which taught statistics and study design, but did not specifically address critical thinking. The other 58 students were enrolled in one of two courses on historical frauds and mysteries - one of which included honours students, many of whom were majors in science, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
The psychology class served as a control group. The two history courses incorporated instruction explicitly designed to cultivate critical thinking skills. For example, students in the history courses were taught how to identify logical fallacies - statements that violate logical arguments, such as non sequiturs.
Some of the topics in the assessment, such as belief in Atlantis, were later addressed in the "historical frauds" course. Other topics, such as the belief that 9/11 was an "inside job," were never addressed in the course. This allowed the researchers to determine the extent to which changes in student beliefs stemmed from specific facts discussed in class, versus changes in a student's critical thinking skills.
The control group students did not change their beliefs - but students in both history courses had lower beliefs in pseudoscience by the end of the semester. Students in the history course for honours students decreased the most in their pseudoscientific beliefs; on average, student beliefs dropped an entire point on the belief scale for topics covered in class, and by 0.5 points on topics not covered in class. There were similar, but less pronounced, changes in the non-honours course.
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-critical-humanities-belief-pseudoscience.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/05/oh-humanities.html
A recent study by North Carolina State University researchers finds that teaching critical thinking skills in a humanities course significantly reduces student beliefs in "pseudoscience" that is unsupported by facts.
For this study, the researchers worked with 117 students in three different classes. Fifty-nine students were enrolled in a psychology research methods course, which taught statistics and study design, but did not specifically address critical thinking. The other 58 students were enrolled in one of two courses on historical frauds and mysteries - one of which included honours students, many of whom were majors in science, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
The psychology class served as a control group. The two history courses incorporated instruction explicitly designed to cultivate critical thinking skills. For example, students in the history courses were taught how to identify logical fallacies - statements that violate logical arguments, such as non sequiturs.
Some of the topics in the assessment, such as belief in Atlantis, were later addressed in the "historical frauds" course. Other topics, such as the belief that 9/11 was an "inside job," were never addressed in the course. This allowed the researchers to determine the extent to which changes in student beliefs stemmed from specific facts discussed in class, versus changes in a student's critical thinking skills.
The control group students did not change their beliefs - but students in both history courses had lower beliefs in pseudoscience by the end of the semester. Students in the history course for honours students decreased the most in their pseudoscientific beliefs; on average, student beliefs dropped an entire point on the belief scale for topics covered in class, and by 0.5 points on topics not covered in class. There were similar, but less pronounced, changes in the non-honours course.
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-critical-humanities-belief-pseudoscience.html
We warned you about Corbyn
I've said it before and I'll say it again, slightly more succinctly.
If the question is, "do you want to be right or do you want to win ?" then the only sensible answer is both. I support 90% of Corbyn's policies, but the man himself is a nasty piece of work. Anecdotal though this may be, I know too many lifelong Labour supporters who now despise him. It is universally accepted among my left-wing friends of all ages that Corbyn doesn't have a hope in hell of winning. So he may be right, but he's not going to win, ergo he's politically useless. Being right is of no benefit to anyone if you don't get to actually implement policy.
For me the defining moment came when he refused to step down after massively losing a vote of no confidence (and what's really depressing is that Labour tried every means at their disposal to force him out - they know he can't win, but they appear to be out of options). This is ludicrous. The point of the opposition is not just to hold the government to account but to also present a credible alternative government-in-waiting. If they can't do this, then they won't win - end of. A leader without the confidence of his MPs in opposition has exactly zero chance of having their confidence in government. Utter madness.
"I have a responsibility to the people who voted for me", quoth the Corbyn. Yes. A responsibility to from a credible opposition, which you haven't. It's nothing but an alternative way of saying, "I'm more important than anyone else in the party and even more unprincipled than the rest of you, because I won't abandon power even when I don't have any." Aaaaarrrgghh.
I don't know whether to be cheering the prospect (though still remote) of an early election or cowering in fear of it. Currently the only two parties talking any sort of sense are the SNP and the Lib Dems. I mean that in as objective a sense as I can (being wholly biased toward the left, mind you) : the Tories have been rendered impotent by Brexit and UKIP have the organisational skills of a dead hamster (sure, they won a popular vote, but a popular vote doth not a credible opposition make). The SNP are at saturation point anyway (and last time I checked their economic policy was, "let's become "independent" so we can become a parasite of England !"). Plaid Cymru are still a bunch of nutters who harp on about "the people of Wales" every other bloomin' sentence - which conveniently leaves little time to discuss actual policy. The Greens ? Also have two much of a whiff of madness about them and uninspiring leadership. Labour could easily win me back, but not with Corbyn in charge.
Rant over.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/jeremy-corbyn-labour-threat-party-election-support?CMP=share_btn_fb
If the question is, "do you want to be right or do you want to win ?" then the only sensible answer is both. I support 90% of Corbyn's policies, but the man himself is a nasty piece of work. Anecdotal though this may be, I know too many lifelong Labour supporters who now despise him. It is universally accepted among my left-wing friends of all ages that Corbyn doesn't have a hope in hell of winning. So he may be right, but he's not going to win, ergo he's politically useless. Being right is of no benefit to anyone if you don't get to actually implement policy.
For me the defining moment came when he refused to step down after massively losing a vote of no confidence (and what's really depressing is that Labour tried every means at their disposal to force him out - they know he can't win, but they appear to be out of options). This is ludicrous. The point of the opposition is not just to hold the government to account but to also present a credible alternative government-in-waiting. If they can't do this, then they won't win - end of. A leader without the confidence of his MPs in opposition has exactly zero chance of having their confidence in government. Utter madness.
"I have a responsibility to the people who voted for me", quoth the Corbyn. Yes. A responsibility to from a credible opposition, which you haven't. It's nothing but an alternative way of saying, "I'm more important than anyone else in the party and even more unprincipled than the rest of you, because I won't abandon power even when I don't have any." Aaaaarrrgghh.
I don't know whether to be cheering the prospect (though still remote) of an early election or cowering in fear of it. Currently the only two parties talking any sort of sense are the SNP and the Lib Dems. I mean that in as objective a sense as I can (being wholly biased toward the left, mind you) : the Tories have been rendered impotent by Brexit and UKIP have the organisational skills of a dead hamster (sure, they won a popular vote, but a popular vote doth not a credible opposition make). The SNP are at saturation point anyway (and last time I checked their economic policy was, "let's become "independent" so we can become a parasite of England !"). Plaid Cymru are still a bunch of nutters who harp on about "the people of Wales" every other bloomin' sentence - which conveniently leaves little time to discuss actual policy. The Greens ? Also have two much of a whiff of madness about them and uninspiring leadership. Labour could easily win me back, but not with Corbyn in charge.
Rant over.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/jeremy-corbyn-labour-threat-party-election-support?CMP=share_btn_fb
Friday 17 March 2017
The two sides are not equal : fake and hyperpartisan news is much worse on the right
Our analysis challenges a simple narrative that the internet as a technology is what fragments public discourse and polarizes opinions, by allowing us to inhabit filter bubbles or just read “the daily me.” If technology were the most important driver towards a “post-truth” world, we would expect to see symmetric patterns on the left and the right. Instead, different internal political dynamics in the right and the left led to different patterns in the reception and use of the technology by each wing. While Facebook and Twitter certainly enabled right-wing media to circumvent the gatekeeping power of traditional media, the pattern was not symmetric.
The size of the nodes marking traditional professional media like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, surrounded by the Hill, ABC, and NBC, tell us that these media drew particularly large audiences. Their color tells us that Clinton followers attended to them more than Drumpf followers, and their proximity on the map to more quintessentially partisan sites—like Huffington Post, MSNBC, or the Daily Beast—suggests that attention to these more partisan outlets on the left was more tightly interwoven with attention to traditional media. The Breitbart-centered wing, by contrast, is farther from the mainstream set and lacks bridging nodes that draw attention and connect it to that mainstream.
Moreover, the fact that these asymmetric patterns of attention were similar on both Twitter and Facebook suggests that human choices and political campaigning, not one company’s algorithm, were responsible for the patterns we observe. These patterns might be the result of a coordinated campaign, but they could also be an emergent property of decentralized behavior, or some combination of both. Our data to this point cannot distinguish between these alternatives... The primary explanation of such asymmetric polarization is more likely politics and culture than technology.
What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible.
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php
The size of the nodes marking traditional professional media like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN, surrounded by the Hill, ABC, and NBC, tell us that these media drew particularly large audiences. Their color tells us that Clinton followers attended to them more than Drumpf followers, and their proximity on the map to more quintessentially partisan sites—like Huffington Post, MSNBC, or the Daily Beast—suggests that attention to these more partisan outlets on the left was more tightly interwoven with attention to traditional media. The Breitbart-centered wing, by contrast, is farther from the mainstream set and lacks bridging nodes that draw attention and connect it to that mainstream.
Moreover, the fact that these asymmetric patterns of attention were similar on both Twitter and Facebook suggests that human choices and political campaigning, not one company’s algorithm, were responsible for the patterns we observe. These patterns might be the result of a coordinated campaign, but they could also be an emergent property of decentralized behavior, or some combination of both. Our data to this point cannot distinguish between these alternatives... The primary explanation of such asymmetric polarization is more likely politics and culture than technology.
What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible.
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php
The invention of hetrosexuality
This article is far too long and far, far too good to attempt a summary, so I won't. I'll just go to my now-standard tactic of quoting Plato instead. It can seem strange, but it really does seem that sexuality is largely a social construct, owing little to natural tendencies.
The 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” It wasn’t until 1934 that heterosexuality was graced with the meaning we’re familiar with today: “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality.”
Most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history. What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence. Heterosexuality has not always “just been there.” And there’s no reason to imagine it will always be.
“Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.
And those categories have lingered to this day. “No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different,” wrote Wendell Ricketts, author of the 1984 study Biological Research on Homosexuality. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: “heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.”
If we’re uncomfortable with considering whether and how much power we have over our sexualities, why might that be? Similarly, why might we be uncomfortable with challenging the belief that homosexuality, and by extension heterosexuality, are eternal truths of nature?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality
Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort.
But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is like them.
And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saving. When they reach manhood they are loves of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children,-if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him.I suppose the article itself should get some quotes at least :
The 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” It wasn’t until 1934 that heterosexuality was graced with the meaning we’re familiar with today: “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality.”
Most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history. What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence. Heterosexuality has not always “just been there.” And there’s no reason to imagine it will always be.
“Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.
And those categories have lingered to this day. “No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different,” wrote Wendell Ricketts, author of the 1984 study Biological Research on Homosexuality. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: “heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.”
If we’re uncomfortable with considering whether and how much power we have over our sexualities, why might that be? Similarly, why might we be uncomfortable with challenging the belief that homosexuality, and by extension heterosexuality, are eternal truths of nature?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality
An odd name for a girl
Bob's a great name for a supernova though.
The supernova which was officially announced via Astronomer's Telegram after an excited tweet by Rachael Beaton at the the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, CA, and known as 2017cbv (though Beaton has nicknamed it Bob), the explosion was spotted in NGC 5643, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Lupus. The area of the sky it inhabits is also part of the area covered by the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey, a project aimed at gathering optical and near-infrared images of bright Southern Hemisphere galaxies. NGC 5643 was also the home galaxy of SN 2013aa, which occurred in early 2013.
http://astronomy.com/news/2017/03/supernova-ngc-5643
The supernova which was officially announced via Astronomer's Telegram after an excited tweet by Rachael Beaton at the the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, CA, and known as 2017cbv (though Beaton has nicknamed it Bob), the explosion was spotted in NGC 5643, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Lupus. The area of the sky it inhabits is also part of the area covered by the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey, a project aimed at gathering optical and near-infrared images of bright Southern Hemisphere galaxies. NGC 5643 was also the home galaxy of SN 2013aa, which occurred in early 2013.
http://astronomy.com/news/2017/03/supernova-ngc-5643
Thursday 16 March 2017
Too much politics at the moment
Mooooaaarrrrr entropy !
The UK government is to reject calls for a Scottish independence referendum before Brexit after Theresa May said "now is not the time". The prime minister said the focus should be on getting the best Brexit deal for the whole of the UK. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Nicola Sturgeon's demand for a vote by the spring of 2019 would be rejected "conclusively". Ms Sturgeon said blocking a referendum would be a "democratic outrage".
Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, told BBC Scotland: "It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39293513
The UK government is to reject calls for a Scottish independence referendum before Brexit after Theresa May said "now is not the time". The prime minister said the focus should be on getting the best Brexit deal for the whole of the UK. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Nicola Sturgeon's demand for a vote by the spring of 2019 would be rejected "conclusively". Ms Sturgeon said blocking a referendum would be a "democratic outrage".
Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, told BBC Scotland: "It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament.
Wednesday 15 March 2017
Lab-grown chicken
It's been a while since I heard of anything from the lab-grown meat industry, but it's been ticking along quietly in the background. Not yet ready for the next great agricultural revolution, but getting closer all the time. And it still involves killing cows, which somewhat misses the point ("fetal bovine serum is not that gross" - actually, I think you'll find that it is). But there's real progress here - fewer animals used per product, tastier meat, and much, much cheaper than that first $300,000 burger.
Memphis Meats was able to serve chicken to the two dozen or so attendees to yesterday’s event, and will continue scaling up its product. The Wall Street Journal cites a “1 pound of chicken meat for less than $9,000" cost estimate, but that cost is dropping rapidly with each new batch, Steve Myrick, the company’s vice president of business development, told Gizmodo. He hopes that by the time the slaughter-free meats hit stores by 2021, the cost matches that of regular meat.
http://gizmodo.com/startup-makes-the-first-lab-grown-chicken-tender-and-du-1793299025
Memphis Meats was able to serve chicken to the two dozen or so attendees to yesterday’s event, and will continue scaling up its product. The Wall Street Journal cites a “1 pound of chicken meat for less than $9,000" cost estimate, but that cost is dropping rapidly with each new batch, Steve Myrick, the company’s vice president of business development, told Gizmodo. He hopes that by the time the slaughter-free meats hit stores by 2021, the cost matches that of regular meat.
http://gizmodo.com/startup-makes-the-first-lab-grown-chicken-tender-and-du-1793299025
Almost a revere scuba suit
The world needs this.
A robot that takes a fish anywhere it wants to go and has a little umbrella so it doesn't get wet. This is the sort of thing that restores my faith in humanity.
http://www.gadgetify.com/robot-controlled-goldfish/
Freedom for stupid people is stupid, says Plato
Mixing a few nice quotes from Alcibiades here, because 1700 pages of Plato isn't entirely filled with strange discussions about shoes and horses.
This scheme you have in mind - teaching what you don't know and haven't bothered to learn - your scheme, my good fellow, is crazy. Because, my dear Alcibiades, when an individual or a city with no intelligence is at liberty to do what he or it wants, what do you think the likely result will be ? For example, if he's sick and has the power to do whatever he likes - without medical insight but with such a dictator's power that nobody criticises him - what's going to happen ? Isn't it likely his health will be ruined ? And in a ship, if someone were free to do what he liked, but was completely lacking in insight and skill in navigation, don't you see what would happen to him and his fellow sailors ? They would all die. You are wedded to stupidity, my good fellow, stupidity in the highest degree - our discussion and your own words convict you of it.
This scheme you have in mind - teaching what you don't know and haven't bothered to learn - your scheme, my good fellow, is crazy. Because, my dear Alcibiades, when an individual or a city with no intelligence is at liberty to do what he or it wants, what do you think the likely result will be ? For example, if he's sick and has the power to do whatever he likes - without medical insight but with such a dictator's power that nobody criticises him - what's going to happen ? Isn't it likely his health will be ruined ? And in a ship, if someone were free to do what he liked, but was completely lacking in insight and skill in navigation, don't you see what would happen to him and his fellow sailors ? They would all die. You are wedded to stupidity, my good fellow, stupidity in the highest degree - our discussion and your own words convict you of it.
Monday 13 March 2017
There's only one response to the Brexit bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_D2XKRbYmM
Parliament has passed the Brexit bill, paving the way for the government to trigger Article 50 so the UK can leave the European Union. Peers backed down over the issues of EU residency rights and a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal after their objections were overturned by MPs. The bill is expected to receive Royal Assent and become law on Tuesday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39262081
Parliament has passed the Brexit bill, paving the way for the government to trigger Article 50 so the UK can leave the European Union. Peers backed down over the issues of EU residency rights and a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal after their objections were overturned by MPs. The bill is expected to receive Royal Assent and become law on Tuesday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39262081
Parasites that turn their victims into zombies
Behold the glorious majesty of Nature !
Take, for instance, the parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles, which lays its eggs in the body of caterpillars. When the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae feed on the host caterpillar's bodily fluids before eating their way out and forming a cocoon nearby.
But the caterpillar, though damaged by this process, is still alive and remains in position as a sort of zombie bouncer that aggressively knocks away beetles that come near to – and might prey on – the cocoons. Researchers studying this have found that, with a zombie caterpillar guard in place, the number of predators approaching the cocoons can be halved – an obvious advantage for survival.
Another bizarre example can be found in the Japanese tree frogs of South Korea. In March 2016, Bruce Waldman at Seoul National University and his student, Deuknam An, published evidence for an extraordinary behavioural manipulation caused by a pathogenic fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
The fungus is a well-known threat to many frog species, but Japanese tree frogs in Asia do not seem to be dying off so suddenly when a population is infected. When Waldman and An listened to the mating calls of 42 male tree frogs, they realised that the nine that were infected with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis had calls that were faster and longer – making them more attractive to potential mates.
Matt Fisher says the amphibians may essentially have been turned into "sex zombies", whose subsequent interactions with mates only increase the likelihood of the fungus spreading further. "It's not a proven hypothesis by any means, but the data is fairly strong," he says.
Perhaps one of the most surprising examples of a real-life zombie in nature is not in animals whose behaviour goes awry – but in plants that are transformed into mutant versions of themselves. Hagenhout and her team discovered that the bacteria were secreting proteins that change molecular processes inside the plants. That is, they alter transcription factors: the plant's own proteins that control gene expression and help differentiate different parts of the organism, for example a leaf versus a flower versus a stem.
Flowers on the plant begin to morph into green flowers, essentially becoming leaves. The infection makes them more attractive to the insects that will pick up the bacteria and carry them to new plant hosts. The zombie plants are a particularly interesting example because the plant itself does not ultimately die as a result of the infection. It has simply been transformed into a useful vehicle for furthering contagion.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170313-real-life-zombies-that-are-stranger-than-fiction
Take, for instance, the parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles, which lays its eggs in the body of caterpillars. When the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae feed on the host caterpillar's bodily fluids before eating their way out and forming a cocoon nearby.
But the caterpillar, though damaged by this process, is still alive and remains in position as a sort of zombie bouncer that aggressively knocks away beetles that come near to – and might prey on – the cocoons. Researchers studying this have found that, with a zombie caterpillar guard in place, the number of predators approaching the cocoons can be halved – an obvious advantage for survival.
Another bizarre example can be found in the Japanese tree frogs of South Korea. In March 2016, Bruce Waldman at Seoul National University and his student, Deuknam An, published evidence for an extraordinary behavioural manipulation caused by a pathogenic fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
The fungus is a well-known threat to many frog species, but Japanese tree frogs in Asia do not seem to be dying off so suddenly when a population is infected. When Waldman and An listened to the mating calls of 42 male tree frogs, they realised that the nine that were infected with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis had calls that were faster and longer – making them more attractive to potential mates.
Matt Fisher says the amphibians may essentially have been turned into "sex zombies", whose subsequent interactions with mates only increase the likelihood of the fungus spreading further. "It's not a proven hypothesis by any means, but the data is fairly strong," he says.
Perhaps one of the most surprising examples of a real-life zombie in nature is not in animals whose behaviour goes awry – but in plants that are transformed into mutant versions of themselves. Hagenhout and her team discovered that the bacteria were secreting proteins that change molecular processes inside the plants. That is, they alter transcription factors: the plant's own proteins that control gene expression and help differentiate different parts of the organism, for example a leaf versus a flower versus a stem.
Flowers on the plant begin to morph into green flowers, essentially becoming leaves. The infection makes them more attractive to the insects that will pick up the bacteria and carry them to new plant hosts. The zombie plants are a particularly interesting example because the plant itself does not ultimately die as a result of the infection. It has simply been transformed into a useful vehicle for furthering contagion.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170313-real-life-zombies-that-are-stranger-than-fiction
Sunday 12 March 2017
Tim Berners Lee warns us about misuse of the internet
Political advertising online has rapidly become a sophisticated industry. The fact that most people get their information from just a few platforms and the increasing sophistication of algorithms drawing upon rich pools of personal data mean that political campaigns are now building individual adverts targeted directly at users.
One source suggests that in the 2016 US election, as many as 50,000 variations of adverts were being served every single day on Facebook, a near-impossible situation to monitor. And there are suggestions that some political adverts – in the US and around the world – are being used in unethical ways – to point voters to fake news sites, for instance, or to keep others away from the polls. Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?
Interjecting a Plato quote : "And when he addresses the Assembly, he will make the city approve a policy at one time as a good one, and reject it - the very same policy - as just the opposite at another."
These are complex problems, and the solutions will not be simple. But a few broad paths to progress are already clear... We must fight against government overreach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the “internet blind spot” in the regulation of political campaigning.
Yes, exactly. When I talk about regulating speech, people instantly and irrevocably get hung up on the idea of a "ministry of truth" or whatever crude silly notion they insist on. That's not it at all and completely misses the point. Sure, people can say whatever they want. But they cannot say whatever they want and be totally free of any consequences whatsoever in any circumstances : that is a logical inconsistency. The consequences are inevitably regulated (no, I don't necessarily mean by legislation, for crying out loud), whether you like it or not. On the internet the speech itself doesn't have to be regulated but the search algorithms do, by their very definition. Writing a search algorithm is a form of regulation in itself.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/02/on-sharp-pointy-objects.html
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/11/tim-berners-lee-web-inventor-save-internet?CMP=share_btn_gp
One source suggests that in the 2016 US election, as many as 50,000 variations of adverts were being served every single day on Facebook, a near-impossible situation to monitor. And there are suggestions that some political adverts – in the US and around the world – are being used in unethical ways – to point voters to fake news sites, for instance, or to keep others away from the polls. Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?
Interjecting a Plato quote : "And when he addresses the Assembly, he will make the city approve a policy at one time as a good one, and reject it - the very same policy - as just the opposite at another."
These are complex problems, and the solutions will not be simple. But a few broad paths to progress are already clear... We must fight against government overreach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the “internet blind spot” in the regulation of political campaigning.
Yes, exactly. When I talk about regulating speech, people instantly and irrevocably get hung up on the idea of a "ministry of truth" or whatever crude silly notion they insist on. That's not it at all and completely misses the point. Sure, people can say whatever they want. But they cannot say whatever they want and be totally free of any consequences whatsoever in any circumstances : that is a logical inconsistency. The consequences are inevitably regulated (no, I don't necessarily mean by legislation, for crying out loud), whether you like it or not. On the internet the speech itself doesn't have to be regulated but the search algorithms do, by their very definition. Writing a search algorithm is a form of regulation in itself.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2017/02/on-sharp-pointy-objects.html
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/11/tim-berners-lee-web-inventor-save-internet?CMP=share_btn_gp
A proper talk on climate change
Very nice, detailed, utterly hype-free talk. Hardly anyone will watch it though, because people prefer melodrama stated in a deep baritone voice - possibly against a backdrop of images of polar bears exploding and Satan eating small babies - to a clumsy scientist who (literally) forgets to plug his laptop in and realises his battery's about to die halfway through the talk.
https://youtu.be/8zqL6Rjacyk
https://youtu.be/8zqL6Rjacyk
Saturday 11 March 2017
Rewards can work for mediocre tasks, but damage creativity
More on the value of intrinsic motivation. Rewards work well for any purely mechanical tasks but can be detrimental when any level of thinking is required. The reason seems to be because (for whatever reason) they narrow the focus.
Link includes the video and the interactive transcript. Some highlights below :
Suppose I'm the experimenter. I bring you into a room. I give you a candle, some thumbtacks and some matches. And I say to you, "Your job is to attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table." Now what would you do?
Many people begin trying to thumbtack the candle to the wall. Doesn't work. I saw somebody kind of make the motion over here -- some people have a great idea where they light the match, melt the side of the candle, try to adhere it to the wall. It's an awesome idea. Doesn't work. And eventually, after five or ten minutes, most people figure out the solution, which you can see here.
The key is to overcome what's called functional fixedness. You look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the tacks. But it can also have this other function, as a platform for the candle. The candle problem.
A scientist named Sam Glucksberg gathered his participants and said: "I'm going to time you, how quickly you can solve this problem." To one group he said, "I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem." To the second group he offered rewards. He said, "If you're in the top 25% of the fastest times, you get five dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today, you get 20 dollars.
It took them [the second group], on average, three and a half minutes longer.
If-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind; that's why they work in so many cases. So, for tasks like this, a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there, zoom straight ahead to it, they work really well
But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be looking like this. The solution is on the periphery. You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility... Last month, just last month, economists at LSE looked at 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, inside of companies. Here's what they said: "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance." There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.
The good news is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, they're interesting, or part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en
Link includes the video and the interactive transcript. Some highlights below :
Suppose I'm the experimenter. I bring you into a room. I give you a candle, some thumbtacks and some matches. And I say to you, "Your job is to attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table." Now what would you do?
Many people begin trying to thumbtack the candle to the wall. Doesn't work. I saw somebody kind of make the motion over here -- some people have a great idea where they light the match, melt the side of the candle, try to adhere it to the wall. It's an awesome idea. Doesn't work. And eventually, after five or ten minutes, most people figure out the solution, which you can see here.
The key is to overcome what's called functional fixedness. You look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the tacks. But it can also have this other function, as a platform for the candle. The candle problem.
A scientist named Sam Glucksberg gathered his participants and said: "I'm going to time you, how quickly you can solve this problem." To one group he said, "I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem." To the second group he offered rewards. He said, "If you're in the top 25% of the fastest times, you get five dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today, you get 20 dollars.
It took them [the second group], on average, three and a half minutes longer.
If-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind; that's why they work in so many cases. So, for tasks like this, a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there, zoom straight ahead to it, they work really well
But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be looking like this. The solution is on the periphery. You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility... Last month, just last month, economists at LSE looked at 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, inside of companies. Here's what they said: "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance." There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.
The good news is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, they're interesting, or part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en
Friday 10 March 2017
Punishing people for being poor will keep them poor, not motivate them
If only people made better choices — if they worked harder, stayed in school, got married, didn’t have children they couldn’t afford, spent what money they had more wisely and saved more — then they wouldn’t be poor, or so the reasoning goes.
This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to prevent food stamp recipients from buying steak and lobster.
First, it’s founded on the assumption that the United States is a land of opportunity, where upward mobility is readily available and hard work gets you ahead... Second, to believe that poverty is a result of immorality or irresponsibility helps people believe it can’t happen to them.
Third — and Conveniently, perhaps, for people like Chaffetz or House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — this stubborn insistence that people could have more money or more health care if only they wanted them more absolves the government of having to intervene and use its power on their behalf. In this way of thinking, reducing access to subsidized health insurance isn’t cruel; it’s responsible, a form of tough love in which people are forced to make good choices instead of bad ones. This is both patronizing and, of course, a gross misreading of the actual outcome of laws like these.
Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/08/laziness-isnt-why-people-are-poor-and-iphones-arent-why-they-lack-health-care
This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to prevent food stamp recipients from buying steak and lobster.
First, it’s founded on the assumption that the United States is a land of opportunity, where upward mobility is readily available and hard work gets you ahead... Second, to believe that poverty is a result of immorality or irresponsibility helps people believe it can’t happen to them.
Third — and Conveniently, perhaps, for people like Chaffetz or House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — this stubborn insistence that people could have more money or more health care if only they wanted them more absolves the government of having to intervene and use its power on their behalf. In this way of thinking, reducing access to subsidized health insurance isn’t cruel; it’s responsible, a form of tough love in which people are forced to make good choices instead of bad ones. This is both patronizing and, of course, a gross misreading of the actual outcome of laws like these.
Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/08/laziness-isnt-why-people-are-poor-and-iphones-arent-why-they-lack-health-care
Prescient Plato is prescient
I was going to take a break after the first 500 pages of Plato, but I can't.
A sick man takes pleasure in anything that does not resist him, but sees anyone who is equal or superior to him as an enemy.
You can draw your own analogies from that, I'm sure.
A sick man takes pleasure in anything that does not resist him, but sees anyone who is equal or superior to him as an enemy.
You can draw your own analogies from that, I'm sure.
Fish have good memories and your attention span isn't getting shorter
I spoke to Prof Felicity Huntingford, who has spent almost half a century studying fish behaviour and just delivered a series of public lectures under the title, How Smart Are Fish? "Goldfish can perform all the kinds of learning that have been described for mammals and birds," she says.
"And they've become a model system for studying the process of learning and the process of memory formation, exactly because they have a memory and because they learn." She says there have been literally hundreds of scientific papers over the decades on goldfish learning and memory. I found a reference to a study on fish memory as early as 1908.
"That a species that's used by neuro-psychologists and scientists as a model for studying memory formation should be the very species that has this reputation - I think that's an interesting irony," she says. So goldfish don't have short attention spans or memories. There is no evidence human attentions spans are shrinking.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790
"And they've become a model system for studying the process of learning and the process of memory formation, exactly because they have a memory and because they learn." She says there have been literally hundreds of scientific papers over the decades on goldfish learning and memory. I found a reference to a study on fish memory as early as 1908.
"That a species that's used by neuro-psychologists and scientists as a model for studying memory formation should be the very species that has this reputation - I think that's an interesting irony," she says. So goldfish don't have short attention spans or memories. There is no evidence human attentions spans are shrinking.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790
SpaceX is finally going to start re-using their reusable rockets
About bloody time !
I guess we won't see much of a price drop with these early re-launches. I presume they've used all these months of having these supposedly ready-to-fly rockets to give them extra-careful checks to make sure they really can be re-used. But if, not too much further down the line, prices don't start to fall rather sharply, then the whole thing will have been a waste of time.
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. plans to launch a reused rocket for the first time in the coming weeks, a key step in bringing down space-travel costs for customers and future missions. SpaceX will take to the skies with a reusable rocket before the end of this month, Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said on a panel at Satellite 2017, an industry conference in Washington.
“SpaceX has been working on reusability since the get go,” Shotwell said Wednesday. “In order to make that work, you need to inspect it and make sure it is ready to fly again. Once we get really good at that, there will be downward pressure on price.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/spacex-reflying-rocket-this-month-in-step-toward-cheap-launches
I guess we won't see much of a price drop with these early re-launches. I presume they've used all these months of having these supposedly ready-to-fly rockets to give them extra-careful checks to make sure they really can be re-used. But if, not too much further down the line, prices don't start to fall rather sharply, then the whole thing will have been a waste of time.
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. plans to launch a reused rocket for the first time in the coming weeks, a key step in bringing down space-travel costs for customers and future missions. SpaceX will take to the skies with a reusable rocket before the end of this month, Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said on a panel at Satellite 2017, an industry conference in Washington.
“SpaceX has been working on reusability since the get go,” Shotwell said Wednesday. “In order to make that work, you need to inspect it and make sure it is ready to fly again. Once we get really good at that, there will be downward pressure on price.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/spacex-reflying-rocket-this-month-in-step-toward-cheap-launches
Thursday 9 March 2017
The universe is frickin' weird
The hell ?!?!?
I can't find an official press release...
Originally shared by Vladimir Pecha
Breathtaking snaps of Saturn´s moon
Cassini´s series of photos of small but very interesting moon Pan, captured on March 7 with incredible details!
Originally shared by Vladimir Pecha
Breathtaking snaps of Saturn´s moon
Cassini´s series of photos of small but very interesting moon Pan, captured on March 7 with incredible details!
The world's first robot lawyer is saving refugees
When Joshua Browder developed DoNotPay he called it "the world's first robot lawyer". It's a chatbot - a computer program that carries out conversations through texts or vocal commands - and it uses Facebook Messenger to gather information about a case before spitting out advice and legal documents. It was originally designed to help people wiggle out of parking or speeding tickets. But now Browder - a 20-year-old British man currently studying at Stanford University - has adapted his bot to help asylum seekers.
In the US and Canada, it's helping refugees complete immigration applications, and in the UK, it can aid asylum seekers in obtaining financial support from the government. Browder developed the chatbot through the help of lawyers from each of the countries.
"It works by asking a series of questions to determine if a refugee is eligible for asylum protection under international law," he tells BBC Trending, "for example: 'are you afraid of being subjected to torture in your home country?'
"Once it knows a user can claim asylum, it takes down hundreds of details and automatically fills in a completed immigration application. Crucially, all the questions that the bot asks are in plain English and artificial intelligence generated feedback appears during the conversation."
The bot suggests ways the asylum seeker can answer questions to maximise their chances of having applications accepted, for example: "The best answer for your situation will include a description of when the mistreatment started in your home country."
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39205935
In the US and Canada, it's helping refugees complete immigration applications, and in the UK, it can aid asylum seekers in obtaining financial support from the government. Browder developed the chatbot through the help of lawyers from each of the countries.
"It works by asking a series of questions to determine if a refugee is eligible for asylum protection under international law," he tells BBC Trending, "for example: 'are you afraid of being subjected to torture in your home country?'
"Once it knows a user can claim asylum, it takes down hundreds of details and automatically fills in a completed immigration application. Crucially, all the questions that the bot asks are in plain English and artificial intelligence generated feedback appears during the conversation."
The bot suggests ways the asylum seeker can answer questions to maximise their chances of having applications accepted, for example: "The best answer for your situation will include a description of when the mistreatment started in your home country."
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39205935
Gas removal means less gas, study finds
"On the contrary, those UDGs found in the richest environments should be depleted of HI gas due to the removal of this component."
Translation : galaxies without much gas don't have much gas because they don't have much gas. Have you considered joining the tautology club in order to join the tautology club because you want to join the tautology club ?
Translation : galaxies without much gas don't have much gas because they don't have much gas. Have you considered joining the tautology club in order to join the tautology club because you want to join the tautology club ?
Wednesday 8 March 2017
Plato explains why stupid people persist in remaining stupid
Why is it that no-one has ever said to me (paraphrasing Bill Bryson), "You've never read the Symposium ?! You must read it at once ! Here, take my car !". I mean here's a snippet, which is so close as makes no difference - it's the Dunning-Kruger effect about 23 centuries early :
"No one who is ignorant will love wisdom, either, or want to become wise. For what's especially difficult about being ignorant is that you are content with yourself, even though you're neither beautiful not good nor intelligent. If you don't think you need anything, of course you won't want what you don't think you need."
"No one who is ignorant will love wisdom, either, or want to become wise. For what's especially difficult about being ignorant is that you are content with yourself, even though you're neither beautiful not good nor intelligent. If you don't think you need anything, of course you won't want what you don't think you need."
Tuesday 7 March 2017
Optical illusions depend on your upbringing
The way you see the world literally depends on your upbringing.
The first hints that modernisation could change our vision came from the Victorian anthropologist WHR Rivers, who explored the islands of the Torres Strait, between Australia and Papua New Guinea at the turn of the 20th Century. As he met the locals, he offered them various sensory tests, including the following phenomenon, known as the Muller-Lyer illusion.
In reality, the lines are exactly the same, but if you ask people to estimate their size, most Westerners claim that the second line (with the 'feathers' pointing outwards) is around 20% longer than the top line. During his expedition to the Torres Strait, however, Rivers found that the locals were far more accurate – they just didn’t seem to be as susceptible to the illusion.
Westerners tend to see the central circle in the first picture as being smaller than the central circle in the second – when they are actually the same size. And just as Rivers had seen with the Muller Lyer illusion, Davidoff’s team found that the traditional Himba were far less susceptible than those of us living in modern societies.
The phenomenon seemed to reflect a basic bias towards “local processing” – they were more focused on the smaller details (the central circles) while ignoring the context (the surrounding ring) that warps your perception. More strikingly still, later experiments showed this enhanced focus also seemed to be reflected in their ability to hold their attention and ignore distraction: when they were asked to quickly search for shapes in a grid, for instance, they were less easily distracted by the movements of other objects on the screen. In fact, they appeared to be the most focused of any groups previously studied.
One explanation for their astonishing focus may come from the cattle rearing itself. Identifying each cow’s markings was apparently essential for their daily life – and this practice may perhaps train the eye with a focus and attention that was lacking in all modern societies. “I think that does come from their traditional lives – the powers to concentrate,” says Davidoff. But it could also be that modern life itself makes us more easily distracted by our surroundings. As Davidoff points out, urban environments are naturally more cluttered than the Kunene valley, with more objects vying for our attention. Just think about crossing the road, as your eyes dart from the traffic lights to the oncoming cars and the fellow pedestrians making their way towards you. Our attention needs to be more diffuse.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170306-the-astonishing-focus-of-namibias-nomads
The first hints that modernisation could change our vision came from the Victorian anthropologist WHR Rivers, who explored the islands of the Torres Strait, between Australia and Papua New Guinea at the turn of the 20th Century. As he met the locals, he offered them various sensory tests, including the following phenomenon, known as the Muller-Lyer illusion.
In reality, the lines are exactly the same, but if you ask people to estimate their size, most Westerners claim that the second line (with the 'feathers' pointing outwards) is around 20% longer than the top line. During his expedition to the Torres Strait, however, Rivers found that the locals were far more accurate – they just didn’t seem to be as susceptible to the illusion.
Westerners tend to see the central circle in the first picture as being smaller than the central circle in the second – when they are actually the same size. And just as Rivers had seen with the Muller Lyer illusion, Davidoff’s team found that the traditional Himba were far less susceptible than those of us living in modern societies.
The phenomenon seemed to reflect a basic bias towards “local processing” – they were more focused on the smaller details (the central circles) while ignoring the context (the surrounding ring) that warps your perception. More strikingly still, later experiments showed this enhanced focus also seemed to be reflected in their ability to hold their attention and ignore distraction: when they were asked to quickly search for shapes in a grid, for instance, they were less easily distracted by the movements of other objects on the screen. In fact, they appeared to be the most focused of any groups previously studied.
One explanation for their astonishing focus may come from the cattle rearing itself. Identifying each cow’s markings was apparently essential for their daily life – and this practice may perhaps train the eye with a focus and attention that was lacking in all modern societies. “I think that does come from their traditional lives – the powers to concentrate,” says Davidoff. But it could also be that modern life itself makes us more easily distracted by our surroundings. As Davidoff points out, urban environments are naturally more cluttered than the Kunene valley, with more objects vying for our attention. Just think about crossing the road, as your eyes dart from the traffic lights to the oncoming cars and the fellow pedestrians making their way towards you. Our attention needs to be more diffuse.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170306-the-astonishing-focus-of-namibias-nomads
Monday 6 March 2017
Science is a creative process
Despite its dependence on hard evidence, science is a creative discipline. That creativity needs nurturing, even in this age of performance targets and impact assessments. Scientist need to flex their imaginations, too.
[Under normal circumstances, scientific speculation is confined by both the prevailing wisdom and the available evidence. If it were not, it would be "so open its brains fell out" and not have a hope of making progress. But when an impasses is reached, when it is clear that a theory cannot be correct, no matter how well-accepted it is, then and only then does imagination get free reign.]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331153-800-to-advance-science-we-need-to-think-about-the-impossible/
[Under normal circumstances, scientific speculation is confined by both the prevailing wisdom and the available evidence. If it were not, it would be "so open its brains fell out" and not have a hope of making progress. But when an impasses is reached, when it is clear that a theory cannot be correct, no matter how well-accepted it is, then and only then does imagination get free reign.]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331153-800-to-advance-science-we-need-to-think-about-the-impossible/
Sunday 5 March 2017
Putin was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off
Definitely an interesting analysis.
If you are in the business of dethroning America as hegemon of the world liberal order, the last thing you want to do is actually to dethrone America, because then you have to confront the question of what happens next. Russia has long pretended to be America’s rival for power, while all along it has actually been America’s annoying little brother. Putin has only been able to do what he’s done because, in a scrap, America would always have his back in the playground. If that is no longer the case, Putin is in trouble.
I’ll explain. Putin did not start out as a world-strutting Bond villain. He began, in 1999, as an ex-spook from St Petersburg, newly arrived in Moscow, keen to make Russia great again, looking for all the help he could get... a committed multilateralist.
Putin’s clever diplomacy and firm grip on the reins, combined with a lucky spell of high oil prices, meant he could pay Russians their pensions on time, resurface the roads, defeat the Chechens, take on and defeat the over-mighty oligarchs. Russians travelled with their newly earned wealth, however, and they realised that, although Moscow had improved markedly, it was still a long way behind Paris, London or Berlin. And, ungrateful that they were, they blamed Putin for their straitened circumstances, as well as the friends of his who had become billionaires from the state contracts he tossed their way. In the winter of 2011, Muscovites protested and suddenly Putin looked unpopular, which he could not stand.
He needed someone to blame, so he blamed America... In the Kremlin’s telling, America opposed Putin not because he was an all-time kleptocrat, but because he was a rival for world power. Putin pitched himself as a global insurgent, a rival to the liberal order, and it proved remarkably popular with an electorate reared on the cold war.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/05/not-what-putin-planned-trump?CMP=share_btn_gp
If you are in the business of dethroning America as hegemon of the world liberal order, the last thing you want to do is actually to dethrone America, because then you have to confront the question of what happens next. Russia has long pretended to be America’s rival for power, while all along it has actually been America’s annoying little brother. Putin has only been able to do what he’s done because, in a scrap, America would always have his back in the playground. If that is no longer the case, Putin is in trouble.
I’ll explain. Putin did not start out as a world-strutting Bond villain. He began, in 1999, as an ex-spook from St Petersburg, newly arrived in Moscow, keen to make Russia great again, looking for all the help he could get... a committed multilateralist.
Putin’s clever diplomacy and firm grip on the reins, combined with a lucky spell of high oil prices, meant he could pay Russians their pensions on time, resurface the roads, defeat the Chechens, take on and defeat the over-mighty oligarchs. Russians travelled with their newly earned wealth, however, and they realised that, although Moscow had improved markedly, it was still a long way behind Paris, London or Berlin. And, ungrateful that they were, they blamed Putin for their straitened circumstances, as well as the friends of his who had become billionaires from the state contracts he tossed their way. In the winter of 2011, Muscovites protested and suddenly Putin looked unpopular, which he could not stand.
He needed someone to blame, so he blamed America... In the Kremlin’s telling, America opposed Putin not because he was an all-time kleptocrat, but because he was a rival for world power. Putin pitched himself as a global insurgent, a rival to the liberal order, and it proved remarkably popular with an electorate reared on the cold war.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/05/not-what-putin-planned-trump?CMP=share_btn_gp
Pain begets pain
I tend to agree. Not as an absolute, cos that's just silly, but in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qjy-ydl9QE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qjy-ydl9QE
Everything that's wrong with the Daily Mail, in one headline
This encapsulates pretty much everything that's wrong with the Daily Fail rather nicely. Headline is from October 2016. The original article is as ludicrous as piece of political jingoism as you'll find anywhere; about it's only saving grace is that it's clearly labelled as a "comment", i.e. an opinion. Still, there's far too much in the "article" to go through, so let's concentrate on the headline.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3833496/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Whingeing-Contemptuous-Unpatriotic-Damn-Bremoaners-plot-subvert-British-people.html
1) "Damn". Off to a good start by instantly attacking anyone who holds a certain view. Yes, let's make enemies and foster hatred. Curses be upon you ! How marvellous !
2) "Unpatriotic". What utter bollocks. I love my country; I see Brexit as a means to causing it severe harm. Even supposing that I'm wrong, how does campaigning to stop such a course of action make me unpatriotic ? Is it, perhaps, because I don't see that loving one's country means hating other countries too ? Hmm, I wonder...
3) "Bremoaners". Yes, I'm moaning - see reason 2. It's rather a lot more than moaning, given the scale of the problem. And as per reason 1, oh yes, attack the people not the ideas - great to see this coming for a national newspaper.
4) A "plot" you say ? Ooohhhh, delicious irony. This from a paper which is little more than propaganda.
5) "Subvert" ? Yes, alright, I'll give you that one. I do want to overturn the results of the vote, using every legal means and these pesky things called "facts".
6) "The will of the British people" (which is even "emphatic" according to the article). Hahah, very droll. The voting question asked about leaving the EU. Nothing else. To infer anything else and insist that you know what that vote means - i.e. get out of the EU at any cost, as the article flagrantly does - is anti-democratic. Not to mention that the Leave vote is 37% of the electorate (27% of the population), wasn't legally binding, most other polls showed a different result, and voters are able to do this crazy thing called, "thinking" which some have it "is just a fancy word for changing your mind".
Good grief.
https://twitter.com/nickreeves9876/status/837238174812340224?s=09
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3833496/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Whingeing-Contemptuous-Unpatriotic-Damn-Bremoaners-plot-subvert-British-people.html
1) "Damn". Off to a good start by instantly attacking anyone who holds a certain view. Yes, let's make enemies and foster hatred. Curses be upon you ! How marvellous !
2) "Unpatriotic". What utter bollocks. I love my country; I see Brexit as a means to causing it severe harm. Even supposing that I'm wrong, how does campaigning to stop such a course of action make me unpatriotic ? Is it, perhaps, because I don't see that loving one's country means hating other countries too ? Hmm, I wonder...
3) "Bremoaners". Yes, I'm moaning - see reason 2. It's rather a lot more than moaning, given the scale of the problem. And as per reason 1, oh yes, attack the people not the ideas - great to see this coming for a national newspaper.
4) A "plot" you say ? Ooohhhh, delicious irony. This from a paper which is little more than propaganda.
5) "Subvert" ? Yes, alright, I'll give you that one. I do want to overturn the results of the vote, using every legal means and these pesky things called "facts".
6) "The will of the British people" (which is even "emphatic" according to the article). Hahah, very droll. The voting question asked about leaving the EU. Nothing else. To infer anything else and insist that you know what that vote means - i.e. get out of the EU at any cost, as the article flagrantly does - is anti-democratic. Not to mention that the Leave vote is 37% of the electorate (27% of the population), wasn't legally binding, most other polls showed a different result, and voters are able to do this crazy thing called, "thinking" which some have it "is just a fancy word for changing your mind".
Good grief.
https://twitter.com/nickreeves9876/status/837238174812340224?s=09
Saturday 4 March 2017
Do SpaceX actually have a re-usable rocket or not ?
In terms of any large project it's better to think of "guidelines" rather than "deadlines". I don't think anyone takes the 2018 target as likely.
But SpaceX are beginning to worry me more and more. Yes, they've successfully developed (almost) routine cargo deliveries to the ISS. Yes, they've developed a rocket which can fly back to Earth and land vertically. That's very impressive indeed. But that rocket has yet to be re-used, despite repeated claims that it's ready to do so and that static ground tests have confirmed that. If that's the case, why wait so long ? Launch the bloody thing already. There's absolutely no point in a re-usable rocket if you don't re-use it. Worse, if all that investment in clever technology doesn't actually get you a faster turnaround between launches, or cut your overall costs significantly, then reusability begins to look like fool's gold. And their latest scheme is dramatic and inspiring, right enough, but... tourists around the Moon ? Before having launched any astronauts at all ? Come on.
I wouldn't say I'm skeptical just yet, but I'm definitely worried.
On Monday, SpaceX announced plans to send two space tourists around the Moon next year. The audacious, week-long flight would take place using a Falcon Heavy rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft and be the first time humans have been beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.
Some media outlets have compared the mission to Apollo 8, humanity's first crewed mission to lunar space, which happened in 1968. In terms of traveling to a vantage point where Earth is a small blue-and-white orb dangling in darkness of space, that's certainly true. Apollo 8, however, slowed down and entered orbit, whereas the Crew Dragon would use a "free-return" trajectory, whipping around the far side of the Moon to slingshot back toward Earth.
A more accurate mission comparison, therefore, is Apollo 13.
It's hard to say whether these two SpaceX customers could work themselves out of an Apollo 13-esque crisis. They have asked not to be identified; all we can really say about them is that they must have a lot of money. SpaceX isn't saying how much the duo will pay for tickets, but some available cost comparisons include the amount tourists have paid to fly on Russian rockets (at least $20 million), the average cost of a SpaceX or Boeing seat to ship an astronaut to the ISS ($58 million, according to one report), and the amount NASA currently pays Russia for Soyuz seats ($80 million).
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2017/20170302-spacex-tourists-2018.html
But SpaceX are beginning to worry me more and more. Yes, they've successfully developed (almost) routine cargo deliveries to the ISS. Yes, they've developed a rocket which can fly back to Earth and land vertically. That's very impressive indeed. But that rocket has yet to be re-used, despite repeated claims that it's ready to do so and that static ground tests have confirmed that. If that's the case, why wait so long ? Launch the bloody thing already. There's absolutely no point in a re-usable rocket if you don't re-use it. Worse, if all that investment in clever technology doesn't actually get you a faster turnaround between launches, or cut your overall costs significantly, then reusability begins to look like fool's gold. And their latest scheme is dramatic and inspiring, right enough, but... tourists around the Moon ? Before having launched any astronauts at all ? Come on.
I wouldn't say I'm skeptical just yet, but I'm definitely worried.
On Monday, SpaceX announced plans to send two space tourists around the Moon next year. The audacious, week-long flight would take place using a Falcon Heavy rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft and be the first time humans have been beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.
Some media outlets have compared the mission to Apollo 8, humanity's first crewed mission to lunar space, which happened in 1968. In terms of traveling to a vantage point where Earth is a small blue-and-white orb dangling in darkness of space, that's certainly true. Apollo 8, however, slowed down and entered orbit, whereas the Crew Dragon would use a "free-return" trajectory, whipping around the far side of the Moon to slingshot back toward Earth.
A more accurate mission comparison, therefore, is Apollo 13.
It's hard to say whether these two SpaceX customers could work themselves out of an Apollo 13-esque crisis. They have asked not to be identified; all we can really say about them is that they must have a lot of money. SpaceX isn't saying how much the duo will pay for tickets, but some available cost comparisons include the amount tourists have paid to fly on Russian rockets (at least $20 million), the average cost of a SpaceX or Boeing seat to ship an astronaut to the ISS ($58 million, according to one report), and the amount NASA currently pays Russia for Soyuz seats ($80 million).
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2017/20170302-spacex-tourists-2018.html
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