Unlike the comments in the article, I don't have a moral problem with this. But damn, this is off-the-scale weird.
Meet Arran Lee Wright, 36, from North Wales, who spent about $4,700 developing a specialized, hyper-realistic sex robot whom he calls “Samantha.” He was recently interviewed along with his wife by co-hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the British morning show “This Morning” about how he has incorporated this robotic-sounding sex machine into their family life.
“She can talk about lots of things,” Arran said of the doll that is primarily programmed to simulate sex acts. “She can talk about animals, she can talk about philosophy, she can talk about science,” he said, patting the doll’s hand.
He says that his children, who are 5 and 3, are used to seeing the doll around the house and ask, “Where’s Samantha?” when she’s not around. She can normally be found sitting on the couch with his children or even riding in the car, and is like “a member of the family” according to Arran and his wife. Arran’s wife, Hannah Nguyen, 38, even confirmed she was more than happy for the doll to join them in bed.
http://fightthenewdrug.org/uk-dad-sex-robot-samantha-this-morning-show/
Saturday 30 September 2017
Bloodhound prepares to let rip
It's taking a blooming long time, but land speed records can't be rushed. How ironic.
The Bloodhound supersonic car has been fired up for the first time - and worked a treat. Engineers turned over the vehicle's Eurofighter jet engine in a "tie-down" test at Cornwall's Newquay airfield on Friday. It worked flawlessly, sending a big orange flame out of the rear nozzle. The intention is for the car to begin some "slow-speed" running - about 200mph (320km/h) - at the end of next month.
"It's given us huge confidence going forward. We now know the engine has no limits just because it's in a car. It is an EJ200 with the full performance envelope available to us, under all conditions, from stationary onwards."
October's slow-speed running should have paved the way for an attempt on the world land speed record in 2018, but it looks now as though the project will have to slip another year. In part, this is because there are still technical challenges to do with Bloodhound's rocket motor. This is coming from the Norwegian aerospace company Nammo, and the development work must fit in around the firm's commercial business, which has extended the timeline.
But the Bloodhound project also has to function within its privately generated budget, and although some big sponsorship deals have been signed recently, engineering can only proceed at the rate cash comes into the venture. The decision has therefore been made to wait until 2019 to begin the assault on the land speed record.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41446557
The Bloodhound supersonic car has been fired up for the first time - and worked a treat. Engineers turned over the vehicle's Eurofighter jet engine in a "tie-down" test at Cornwall's Newquay airfield on Friday. It worked flawlessly, sending a big orange flame out of the rear nozzle. The intention is for the car to begin some "slow-speed" running - about 200mph (320km/h) - at the end of next month.
"It's given us huge confidence going forward. We now know the engine has no limits just because it's in a car. It is an EJ200 with the full performance envelope available to us, under all conditions, from stationary onwards."
October's slow-speed running should have paved the way for an attempt on the world land speed record in 2018, but it looks now as though the project will have to slip another year. In part, this is because there are still technical challenges to do with Bloodhound's rocket motor. This is coming from the Norwegian aerospace company Nammo, and the development work must fit in around the firm's commercial business, which has extended the timeline.
But the Bloodhound project also has to function within its privately generated budget, and although some big sponsorship deals have been signed recently, engineering can only proceed at the rate cash comes into the venture. The decision has therefore been made to wait until 2019 to begin the assault on the land speed record.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41446557
Friday 29 September 2017
New Star Trek does everything wrong
Dear new "Star Trek"
I don't think we can be friends. You're not as bad as the Jar Jar Abrahams reboots, but ya ain't Star Trek. Not by a long shot.
Your choice of casting of James Frain as Sarek was a good move. So was your decision to have the Klingons be all about racial purity, an apt theme indeed for the current political situation. That moral element to the show is very fitting and I approve.
However, you seem to fail at just about everything else. You've turned the Klingons into orcs. Literally orcs. You could swap the two between their respective franchises and no-one would notice. Hell, I bet you're already being sued for copyright violations on that one.
For some reason - God knows why - you insist on the Klingons speaking Klingon constantly. Why ?!?! Their language is an ugly pile of shite, like listening to a baboon that's being repeatedly jabbed with pain sticks by a sexually enraged silverback gorilla. It's just a series of bizarre monkey noises. No-one wants to hear that. No-one. Especially when it's well-established practise within the franchise to use native alien languages sparingly. Instead you've decided to go for the Star Wars Holiday Special approach. Sigh.
Then there are the humans. It's hard to tell if they're interesting or not, because honestly there's so much lens flare I can't see anything so I've no idea who's speaking. Your instruction to the cinematography department must have been something like, "make it a big glowy thing" for every single scene. You've also dropped the ensemble cast approach of all other Star Trek series, focusing very heavily on just a few characters (who weren't particularly interesting and weren't in the least bit charismatic) at the utter expense of the others.
In keeping with the big glowy thing approach, you insist on angling the camera in a jaunty and highly distracting fashion. I mean, 1995 called and said they want their wonky tripod back. The slightly unsteady cam doesn't work either. Neither does doing a 360 flyaround of cast members - it just makes me dizzy. What's that all about ? Must you supersaturate my senses at all times in case I get so bored that my leg drops off or something ? And, just in case you weren't aware, I hate to tell you but space is mostly black. It isn't full of giant glowy things all over the place. Kindof sucks the meaning of "space" if you're going to cram it chock-full of stuff everywhere as far as the eye can see.
I understand the need to redesign some aspects of the ships, uniforms and aliens of the period. Fair enough. But your choices just don't work. Iconic, memorable designs tend to be clear and simple. The Shenzhou is alright, I suppose, ghastly internal lighting notwithstanding. It looks more-or-less in keeping with basic established Federation ships. The Klingons though... good grief. I'm gonna say this again : they're not orcs. The bat'leth is not a design that needs fundamental altering, nor is a Bird of Prey. They need modernising, sure, but not discarding utterly. As with the cinematography, the approach appears to be, "cram as much stuff on the screen at all times as possible in case anyone actually looks at anything !". This approach is flawed because it doesn't make any sense.
Similarly your storytelling is, simply put, all wrong. You open with an overly-dramatic pair of episodes that might (suitably edited) have worked if they were at the end of the season. You can't start with the high drama, because at this stage absolutely no-one cares about any of the characters. How could they ? There hasn't been time to get to know them yet; they're just ephemeral glowy blob things on a screen. And the violence is somewhat excessive for my tastes : I'm a Game of Thrones fan, but dammit, Star Trek is fundamentally a family show. It's supposed to be primarily about exploration and morality : epic battle scenes and even occasional brutal violence have their place, but not at this level and not so soon. And this is your starting point. Hmmm.
Let us not speak of the court scene where the judges appear as silhouettes behind bright spotlights. Actually yes, let's do that, because it shows very well how heavy-handed your storytelling is. Instead of showing us things that would happen in space in a fictional universe, you're showing us dramatic interpretations of things with extra glowy things. Now, TOS was much more theatrical than the other series, but it abandoned this for the movies. Re-inventing this approach might work, with more subtlety and less glowy things. But since you completely lack subtlety it just made the emphasis on shoddy storytelling all the stronger.
I'm not sure how the rest of the series will proceed, but at the moment it feels like watching an extended movie. I don't want that. I want stories. You didn't give me any of those, you have me a single extended sequence rent with flashbacks. You never bothered to introduce the crew, you just dumped them on us in the middle of a mission. There's a reason no other Star Trek series has tried that. Because it's silly. It's bad storytelling and I don't like it.
Toodle-oo.
I don't think we can be friends. You're not as bad as the Jar Jar Abrahams reboots, but ya ain't Star Trek. Not by a long shot.
Your choice of casting of James Frain as Sarek was a good move. So was your decision to have the Klingons be all about racial purity, an apt theme indeed for the current political situation. That moral element to the show is very fitting and I approve.
However, you seem to fail at just about everything else. You've turned the Klingons into orcs. Literally orcs. You could swap the two between their respective franchises and no-one would notice. Hell, I bet you're already being sued for copyright violations on that one.
For some reason - God knows why - you insist on the Klingons speaking Klingon constantly. Why ?!?! Their language is an ugly pile of shite, like listening to a baboon that's being repeatedly jabbed with pain sticks by a sexually enraged silverback gorilla. It's just a series of bizarre monkey noises. No-one wants to hear that. No-one. Especially when it's well-established practise within the franchise to use native alien languages sparingly. Instead you've decided to go for the Star Wars Holiday Special approach. Sigh.
Then there are the humans. It's hard to tell if they're interesting or not, because honestly there's so much lens flare I can't see anything so I've no idea who's speaking. Your instruction to the cinematography department must have been something like, "make it a big glowy thing" for every single scene. You've also dropped the ensemble cast approach of all other Star Trek series, focusing very heavily on just a few characters (who weren't particularly interesting and weren't in the least bit charismatic) at the utter expense of the others.
In keeping with the big glowy thing approach, you insist on angling the camera in a jaunty and highly distracting fashion. I mean, 1995 called and said they want their wonky tripod back. The slightly unsteady cam doesn't work either. Neither does doing a 360 flyaround of cast members - it just makes me dizzy. What's that all about ? Must you supersaturate my senses at all times in case I get so bored that my leg drops off or something ? And, just in case you weren't aware, I hate to tell you but space is mostly black. It isn't full of giant glowy things all over the place. Kindof sucks the meaning of "space" if you're going to cram it chock-full of stuff everywhere as far as the eye can see.
I understand the need to redesign some aspects of the ships, uniforms and aliens of the period. Fair enough. But your choices just don't work. Iconic, memorable designs tend to be clear and simple. The Shenzhou is alright, I suppose, ghastly internal lighting notwithstanding. It looks more-or-less in keeping with basic established Federation ships. The Klingons though... good grief. I'm gonna say this again : they're not orcs. The bat'leth is not a design that needs fundamental altering, nor is a Bird of Prey. They need modernising, sure, but not discarding utterly. As with the cinematography, the approach appears to be, "cram as much stuff on the screen at all times as possible in case anyone actually looks at anything !". This approach is flawed because it doesn't make any sense.
Similarly your storytelling is, simply put, all wrong. You open with an overly-dramatic pair of episodes that might (suitably edited) have worked if they were at the end of the season. You can't start with the high drama, because at this stage absolutely no-one cares about any of the characters. How could they ? There hasn't been time to get to know them yet; they're just ephemeral glowy blob things on a screen. And the violence is somewhat excessive for my tastes : I'm a Game of Thrones fan, but dammit, Star Trek is fundamentally a family show. It's supposed to be primarily about exploration and morality : epic battle scenes and even occasional brutal violence have their place, but not at this level and not so soon. And this is your starting point. Hmmm.
Let us not speak of the court scene where the judges appear as silhouettes behind bright spotlights. Actually yes, let's do that, because it shows very well how heavy-handed your storytelling is. Instead of showing us things that would happen in space in a fictional universe, you're showing us dramatic interpretations of things with extra glowy things. Now, TOS was much more theatrical than the other series, but it abandoned this for the movies. Re-inventing this approach might work, with more subtlety and less glowy things. But since you completely lack subtlety it just made the emphasis on shoddy storytelling all the stronger.
I'm not sure how the rest of the series will proceed, but at the moment it feels like watching an extended movie. I don't want that. I want stories. You didn't give me any of those, you have me a single extended sequence rent with flashbacks. You never bothered to introduce the crew, you just dumped them on us in the middle of a mission. There's a reason no other Star Trek series has tried that. Because it's silly. It's bad storytelling and I don't like it.
Toodle-oo.
This new Star Trek, then...
(Spoiler free, please keep any comments likewise)
I just finished the first episode. I'm not sure about it yet. I think I was completely distracted by the ludicrously angled screenshots (something I've not seen since the 2005 Doctor Who), weird camera movements and blinding amounts of lens flare. And why have the Klingons turned into Orcs ? Do we really need twenty minutes of Klingons speaking Klingon with subtitles ? I don't think we do. I don't think they need to be so ornate either. I quite like the Federation ship though, even if the uniforms and aliens have blatantly been stolen from Galaxy Quest.
And dammit, Michael is a boy's name and you won't convince me otherwise.
Right, on to episode 2...
I just finished the first episode. I'm not sure about it yet. I think I was completely distracted by the ludicrously angled screenshots (something I've not seen since the 2005 Doctor Who), weird camera movements and blinding amounts of lens flare. And why have the Klingons turned into Orcs ? Do we really need twenty minutes of Klingons speaking Klingon with subtitles ? I don't think we do. I don't think they need to be so ornate either. I quite like the Federation ship though, even if the uniforms and aliens have blatantly been stolen from Galaxy Quest.
And dammit, Michael is a boy's name and you won't convince me otherwise.
Right, on to episode 2...
Elon Musk is neither a villain nor a hero
Big Frickin' RocketyMcRocketface
That's obviously what BFR stands for, right ?
I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Elon. If you're more of the fanboy type, may I suggest watching this alone in a darkened room. If you're more cynically inclined, then this probably won't win you over.
Thing is, I reckon you're all right. Musk is a sort of cross between Reid Malenfant and Moist von Lipwig. He continuously raises the stakes, distracting from the fact that once-promising plans have now been abandoned for the umpteenth time. But the new message is always better and more inspiring than the one that went before, so all is forgiven. His nervous style of speaking lends him massive nerd-cred.
I'm not convinced that all of his nerves are genuine; some of the mannerisms of his oratory are pretty damn odd. It's like he tries to be inspirational, or wistful, but it falls flat. Rhetoric is delivered without force. Sudden thoughts occur in the middle of a speech as though it had just occurred to him. The tone varies between tempered enthusiasm and... well, a bit dull, in a very strange and unpredictable way. It's all so strange that it begins to feel contrived, at least sometimes.
Nor am I convinced that changing long-term plans so often and so dramatically is necessarily a very sensible way of doing things. But, dang it, the vision is there. Is it just the smoke and mirrors of a charlatan ? Probably some of it is - a wilful attempt to deceive and distract. But not all - re-usable rockets are now very much a thing, whereas not so very long ago they were a seemingly distant dream. Despite the continuous plan changes, Musk has a track record of getting stuff done - sometimes with radical departures from how he originally stated it, but the core of the promise is there.
In any case, this is worth 40 minutes of your time. Well, unless you don't like rockets, in which case I can guarantee that this isn't for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4FY894HyF8
That's obviously what BFR stands for, right ?
I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about Elon. If you're more of the fanboy type, may I suggest watching this alone in a darkened room. If you're more cynically inclined, then this probably won't win you over.
Thing is, I reckon you're all right. Musk is a sort of cross between Reid Malenfant and Moist von Lipwig. He continuously raises the stakes, distracting from the fact that once-promising plans have now been abandoned for the umpteenth time. But the new message is always better and more inspiring than the one that went before, so all is forgiven. His nervous style of speaking lends him massive nerd-cred.
I'm not convinced that all of his nerves are genuine; some of the mannerisms of his oratory are pretty damn odd. It's like he tries to be inspirational, or wistful, but it falls flat. Rhetoric is delivered without force. Sudden thoughts occur in the middle of a speech as though it had just occurred to him. The tone varies between tempered enthusiasm and... well, a bit dull, in a very strange and unpredictable way. It's all so strange that it begins to feel contrived, at least sometimes.
Nor am I convinced that changing long-term plans so often and so dramatically is necessarily a very sensible way of doing things. But, dang it, the vision is there. Is it just the smoke and mirrors of a charlatan ? Probably some of it is - a wilful attempt to deceive and distract. But not all - re-usable rockets are now very much a thing, whereas not so very long ago they were a seemingly distant dream. Despite the continuous plan changes, Musk has a track record of getting stuff done - sometimes with radical departures from how he originally stated it, but the core of the promise is there.
In any case, this is worth 40 minutes of your time. Well, unless you don't like rockets, in which case I can guarantee that this isn't for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4FY894HyF8
Medieval dolphin burial
"The big puzzle from an archaeological point of view is that it really does look like a grave cut for a human — exactly like we would find in a medieval cemetery," De Jersey told Live Science. "So, it was a bit of a surprise to start excavating it and find a sea creature in there instead."
De Jersey added that he hasn't heard of any similar archaeological findings, saying, "It’s just a strange thing to do, and it would have taken a lot of effort."
Another possibility is that the animal was butchered for food, then packed with salt as a form of preservation and buried in the pit, he said.
"There is literary evidence from the 13th and 14th centuries which mentions that porpoise was definitely eaten at that time," De Jersey said. "And the implication is that it wasn't eaten fresh, so there must have been some way to preserve it, by drying it or salting it in some way," he added. "So, we've wondered whether this was a pit filled with salt, and they've put the animal in, and for whatever reason, it was never retrieved."
I prefer the interpretation that it was a medieval Flipper, helping monks rescue stranded sailors at sea and fighting off pirates and suchlike.
https://www.livescience.com/60522-dolphin-bones-unearthed-in-medieval-grave.html
De Jersey added that he hasn't heard of any similar archaeological findings, saying, "It’s just a strange thing to do, and it would have taken a lot of effort."
Another possibility is that the animal was butchered for food, then packed with salt as a form of preservation and buried in the pit, he said.
"There is literary evidence from the 13th and 14th centuries which mentions that porpoise was definitely eaten at that time," De Jersey said. "And the implication is that it wasn't eaten fresh, so there must have been some way to preserve it, by drying it or salting it in some way," he added. "So, we've wondered whether this was a pit filled with salt, and they've put the animal in, and for whatever reason, it was never retrieved."
I prefer the interpretation that it was a medieval Flipper, helping monks rescue stranded sailors at sea and fighting off pirates and suchlike.
https://www.livescience.com/60522-dolphin-bones-unearthed-in-medieval-grave.html
Arecibo has survived with only minor wounds
So basically it was like that bit in the Matrix where Neo first tries to dodge bullets. He doesn't quite make it, but he gets away with a flesh wound instead of a shot to the heart. 15 panels damaged but thousands intact ! I guess the line feed must have hit the surface almost vertically.
No idea what that big grey splodge on the right side of the dish is, though.
Originally shared by Vladimir Pecha
The Arecibo Observatory will be back online as soon as this Friday.
Maria damages some 15 plates of the Observatory of Arecibo
They hope that this Friday they will be able to resume the scientific activities of the installation
Although it is located in one of the highest areas of Arecibo, the hurricane winds of Maria did not cause havoc in the Arecibo Observatory , and as soon as this Friday, scientific activities should be normalized there.
"We had some minor damage ... We were very lucky," said the director of the Observatory's Center for Geospatial Studies, Tony Van Eyken.
He explained that the telescope platform was not damaged, only an antenna that can be repaired was affected.
"Some pieces (of the tower) fell on the surface of the plate, but they are interchangeable plates and you can remove and put a new one," said the official of the observatory Angel Vazquez.
"The damages for what was Hurricane Maria, were minimal," he added.
In total, 15 plate plates were damaged. The maintenance team was already working on these repairs, so the investigations should not have major disadvantages.
"The antenna of the platform that was damaged only affects one of the branches of science that is done here, which is atmospheric science," said Edgard Rivera Valentin. The doctor stressed that in addition to atmospheric science from the Arecibo Observatory, planetary sciences and radio astronomy are being developed.
https://www.elnuevodia.com/ciencia/ciencia/nota/mariadanaunas15planchasdelobservatoriodearecibo-2360700/
Wednesday 27 September 2017
Good news !
Good news !
Initial reports, received via ham radio, indicated significant damage to some of the facility's scientific instruments. But Nicholas White, a senior vice president at the Universities Space Research Association, which helps run the observatory, tells NPR that the latest information is that a secondary 40-foot dish, thought destroyed, is still intact: "There was some damage to it, but not a lot," he says.
"So far, the only damage that's confirmed is that one of the line feeds on the antenna for one of the radar systems was lost," White says. That part was suspended high above the telescope's main 1,000-foot dish, which lost some panels when it shook loose and fell down.
AFAIK, the line feed is only used for atmospheric studies, not astronomy. Having more holes in the dish won't actually make a lot of difference for many studies - it's already got a 900 tonne platform blocking the aperture and plenty of holes anyway. Obviously it's not a good thing, but it does suggest that getting the astronomy side of things up and running again isn't crazy. What might be more limiting than the hardware is the staff availability given the widespread infrastructure damage to the rest of the island.
Originally shared by Vladimir Pecha
The Arecibo Observatory: Still standing after #HurricaneMaria! We suffered some damages, but nothing that can't be repaired or replaced! More updates to follow in the coming days as we complete our detailed inspections. We stand together with Puerto Rico as we recover from this storm.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/25/553594041/puerto-ricos-arecibo-radio-telescope-suffers-hurricane-damage
World's greatest man says Brexiteers don't understand facts
Listen to the nice man.
Brexiteers like Michael Gove who dismissed expert warnings "probably don't understand" the evidence and have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion, David Attenborough has said. In a video interview with Greenpeace's investigative and news platform, Unearthed, the 91-year-old broadcaster and naturalist compared Brexit to "spitting in each other's faces" and called the referendum "an abrogation of parliamentary democracy" because of a lack of facts.
He repeated his claim - first made in 2016 - that the government had subverted parliamentary democracy by leaving EU membership to be decided by a referendum. “The decision to call a referendum was an abrogation of parliamentary democracy in my view because we didn’t know the facts," he said. Attenborough acknowledged he wasn't an economist, but said: "Philosophically I would rather the people embrace one another than spat in one another’s face.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/09/david-attenborough-brexiteers-probably-dont-understand-facts
Brexiteers like Michael Gove who dismissed expert warnings "probably don't understand" the evidence and have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion, David Attenborough has said. In a video interview with Greenpeace's investigative and news platform, Unearthed, the 91-year-old broadcaster and naturalist compared Brexit to "spitting in each other's faces" and called the referendum "an abrogation of parliamentary democracy" because of a lack of facts.
He repeated his claim - first made in 2016 - that the government had subverted parliamentary democracy by leaving EU membership to be decided by a referendum. “The decision to call a referendum was an abrogation of parliamentary democracy in my view because we didn’t know the facts," he said. Attenborough acknowledged he wasn't an economist, but said: "Philosophically I would rather the people embrace one another than spat in one another’s face.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/09/david-attenborough-brexiteers-probably-dont-understand-facts
Snakey goodness
Baby Shai Hulud are adorable. Next it needs a miniature harvester and a some teeny-tiny Fremen warriors.
https://laughingsquid.com/snake-plays-in-sandbox/?utm_content=buffer699ff&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer
https://laughingsquid.com/snake-plays-in-sandbox/?utm_content=buffer699ff&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Saturday 23 September 2017
Arecibo caught in Hurricane Maria
Wow.
Though the initial reports are reliable, it will take a while for teams to reach the site and assess the extent of the hurricane’s impact, which includes the loss of a smaller, 12-meter dish as well as substantial damage to the main dish. (Find out why this hurricane season has been so catastrophic.)
That 12m dish took a long, long time to bring into operation. Horrible to hear that it's gone after so much effort and so many delays. [It turned out that this was not the case at all - the 12m is still there !]
Because of the storm, a 96-foot line feed antenna—which helps focus, receive, and transmit radio waves—broke in half and fell about 500 feet into the huge dish below, puncturing it in several places, says Pennsylvania State University’s Jim Breakall, who talked with Vazquez.
A fixture of the observatory since 1966, that line feed weighs about ten thousand pounds and is easily visible in images of the telescope as the pointy thing hanging off the platform. It was once used to detect mountains on the surface of Venus, and it is still crucial for studies of the part of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere, says former observatory director Frank Drake, who is also my dad.
“It allows the Arecibo telescope to achieve the most sensitivity of any radar telescope in the world,” Drake says, noting that it’s not clear how much time or money could be needed for repairs. “The end result is that the telescope will not be fully operative for some time at all wavelengths.”
Yikes.
On September 20, Hurricane Maria came ashore as a Category 4 storm and traversed Puerto Rico, flooding towns, toppling bridges, demolishing buildings and blasting the island with winds exceeding 150 miles an hour.
Even now, nearly 48 hours after Maria went through, reports from many parts of the island are devastatingly sparse. Electricity is nonexistent, phone lines are mostly down, and roads are blocked, complicating both communications and rescue operations.
Call me selfish if you wish, but I am really, really glad I decided to leave.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/arecibo-radio-telescope-damaged-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-science/
Though the initial reports are reliable, it will take a while for teams to reach the site and assess the extent of the hurricane’s impact, which includes the loss of a smaller, 12-meter dish as well as substantial damage to the main dish. (Find out why this hurricane season has been so catastrophic.)
That 12m dish took a long, long time to bring into operation. Horrible to hear that it's gone after so much effort and so many delays. [It turned out that this was not the case at all - the 12m is still there !]
Because of the storm, a 96-foot line feed antenna—which helps focus, receive, and transmit radio waves—broke in half and fell about 500 feet into the huge dish below, puncturing it in several places, says Pennsylvania State University’s Jim Breakall, who talked with Vazquez.
A fixture of the observatory since 1966, that line feed weighs about ten thousand pounds and is easily visible in images of the telescope as the pointy thing hanging off the platform. It was once used to detect mountains on the surface of Venus, and it is still crucial for studies of the part of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere, says former observatory director Frank Drake, who is also my dad.
“It allows the Arecibo telescope to achieve the most sensitivity of any radar telescope in the world,” Drake says, noting that it’s not clear how much time or money could be needed for repairs. “The end result is that the telescope will not be fully operative for some time at all wavelengths.”
Yikes.
On September 20, Hurricane Maria came ashore as a Category 4 storm and traversed Puerto Rico, flooding towns, toppling bridges, demolishing buildings and blasting the island with winds exceeding 150 miles an hour.
Even now, nearly 48 hours after Maria went through, reports from many parts of the island are devastatingly sparse. Electricity is nonexistent, phone lines are mostly down, and roads are blocked, complicating both communications and rescue operations.
Call me selfish if you wish, but I am really, really glad I decided to leave.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/arecibo-radio-telescope-damaged-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-science/
Monday 18 September 2017
Leaving the EU unforgivable, says Leave campaigner
At this rate even Farage will admit the whole thing was an omnishambolic disaster. Well, probably not, but one can dream.
The former director of the Vote Leave campaign has condemned the Government’s handling of Brexit and said that triggering Article 50 was a “historic, unforgivable blunder”. Dominic Cummings, one of the masterminds behind the infamous slogan claiming the UK sends the EU £350m a week, said the Government’s approach to Brexit had been a “shambles”.
Mr Cummings, an ally to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Michael Gove during the EU referendum, accused the Government of triggering Article 50 without a plan and said it was like “putting a gun in mouth and kaboom”. He claimed the Brexit Secretary David Davis and his team had “listened to bullsh** legal advice and led the British people like “lambs to the slaughter”.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-latest-triggering-article-50-was-historic-unforgivable-blunder-says-former-vote-leave-chief-a3637696.html
The former director of the Vote Leave campaign has condemned the Government’s handling of Brexit and said that triggering Article 50 was a “historic, unforgivable blunder”. Dominic Cummings, one of the masterminds behind the infamous slogan claiming the UK sends the EU £350m a week, said the Government’s approach to Brexit had been a “shambles”.
Mr Cummings, an ally to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Michael Gove during the EU referendum, accused the Government of triggering Article 50 without a plan and said it was like “putting a gun in mouth and kaboom”. He claimed the Brexit Secretary David Davis and his team had “listened to bullsh** legal advice and led the British people like “lambs to the slaughter”.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-latest-triggering-article-50-was-historic-unforgivable-blunder-says-former-vote-leave-chief-a3637696.html
Countering misinformation is more effective when providing an alternative explanation
I'm only online intermittently at the moment but this was quite interesting. Not enthralling, just quite interesting.
It's no use simply telling people they have their facts wrong. To be more effective at correcting misinformation in news accounts and intentionally misleading "fake news," you need to provide a detailed counter-message with new information—and get your audience to help develop a new narrative. Those are some takeaways from an extensive new meta-analysis of laboratory debunking studies published in the journal Psychological Science. The analysis, the first conducted with this collection of debunking data, finds that a detailed counter-message is better at persuading people to change their minds than merely labeling misinformation as wrong.
"The effect of misinformation is very strong," said co-author Dolores Albarracin, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "When you present it, people buy it. But we also asked whether we are able to correct for misinformation. Generally, some degree of correction is possible but it's very difficult to completely correct. Simply stating that something is false or providing a brief explanation is largely ineffective."
That last statement seems to be somewhat at odds with earlier findings that the backfire effect is eliminated most effectively by presenting just the facts.
The study found that "the more detailed the debunking message, the higher the debunking effect. But misinformation can't easily be undone by debunking. The formula that undercuts the persistence of misinformation seems to be in the audience. A detailed debunking message correlated positively with the debunking effect. Surprisingly, however, a detailed debunking message also correlated positively with the misinformation-persistence effect."
I wonder if that's just a selection effect. People who are willing to read longer articles tend to be the most interested, so tend to be either the most willing to debunk the debunking or support it. But perhaps they've accounted for that in their statistical analysis, I don't know.
However, Albarracin said the analysis also showed that debunking is more effective - and misinformation is less persistent - when an audience develops an explanation for the corrected information. "What is successful is eliciting ways for the audience to counterargue and think of reasons why the initial information was incorrect," she said. For news outlets, involving an audience in correcting information could mean encouraging commentary, asking questions, or offering moderated reader chats - in short, mechanisms to promote thoughtful participation.
.
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-debunking-ways-counter-misinformation-fake.html
It's no use simply telling people they have their facts wrong. To be more effective at correcting misinformation in news accounts and intentionally misleading "fake news," you need to provide a detailed counter-message with new information—and get your audience to help develop a new narrative. Those are some takeaways from an extensive new meta-analysis of laboratory debunking studies published in the journal Psychological Science. The analysis, the first conducted with this collection of debunking data, finds that a detailed counter-message is better at persuading people to change their minds than merely labeling misinformation as wrong.
"The effect of misinformation is very strong," said co-author Dolores Albarracin, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "When you present it, people buy it. But we also asked whether we are able to correct for misinformation. Generally, some degree of correction is possible but it's very difficult to completely correct. Simply stating that something is false or providing a brief explanation is largely ineffective."
That last statement seems to be somewhat at odds with earlier findings that the backfire effect is eliminated most effectively by presenting just the facts.
The study found that "the more detailed the debunking message, the higher the debunking effect. But misinformation can't easily be undone by debunking. The formula that undercuts the persistence of misinformation seems to be in the audience. A detailed debunking message correlated positively with the debunking effect. Surprisingly, however, a detailed debunking message also correlated positively with the misinformation-persistence effect."
I wonder if that's just a selection effect. People who are willing to read longer articles tend to be the most interested, so tend to be either the most willing to debunk the debunking or support it. But perhaps they've accounted for that in their statistical analysis, I don't know.
However, Albarracin said the analysis also showed that debunking is more effective - and misinformation is less persistent - when an audience develops an explanation for the corrected information. "What is successful is eliciting ways for the audience to counterargue and think of reasons why the initial information was incorrect," she said. For news outlets, involving an audience in correcting information could mean encouraging commentary, asking questions, or offering moderated reader chats - in short, mechanisms to promote thoughtful participation.
.
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-debunking-ways-counter-misinformation-fake.html
Wednesday 13 September 2017
National borders are useless
British workers haven’t been losing out to foreign labour and are unlikely to see job prospects dramatically improve because of Brexit immigration cuts, according to a survey of UK companies.
Well of course they haven't. Xenophobia is just so much nonsense. Foreigners, by that "reasoning", are universally (because every country is suspicious of every other country) either :
- a) A bunch of highly educated professionals that none of us lot can possibly compete with, coming over 'ere to steal our jobs because they're just so much better than us; or equally, devoted, hard-working labourers who will work 24/7 for practically peanuts in appalling conditions, forcing the good native worker to accept poorer standards and lower wages despite very clear minimum wage laws; i.e. again, they're just better workers than we are
- b) Good-for-nothing layabouts who just want to steal our benefits like the lazy parasites that they are, which is rather strikingly at odds with possibility (a).
Blair has said that there should be more curbs on migration and freedom of movement. No. If it were up to me, I'd open the borders completely, save for passport and criminal record checks. Let everyone work wherever the hell they like in whatever job they can get, so long as they follow the laws of the country and the the regulations of their employer. Give everyone equal benefits from day one, regardless of their permanent residence, whether they're sending money home or supporting a family who live elsewhere. No exceptions.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-latest-news-uk-workers-foriegn-labour-eu-nationals-survey-immigration-cuts-tory-ukip-a7944191.html
Well of course they haven't. Xenophobia is just so much nonsense. Foreigners, by that "reasoning", are universally (because every country is suspicious of every other country) either :
- a) A bunch of highly educated professionals that none of us lot can possibly compete with, coming over 'ere to steal our jobs because they're just so much better than us; or equally, devoted, hard-working labourers who will work 24/7 for practically peanuts in appalling conditions, forcing the good native worker to accept poorer standards and lower wages despite very clear minimum wage laws; i.e. again, they're just better workers than we are
- b) Good-for-nothing layabouts who just want to steal our benefits like the lazy parasites that they are, which is rather strikingly at odds with possibility (a).
Blair has said that there should be more curbs on migration and freedom of movement. No. If it were up to me, I'd open the borders completely, save for passport and criminal record checks. Let everyone work wherever the hell they like in whatever job they can get, so long as they follow the laws of the country and the the regulations of their employer. Give everyone equal benefits from day one, regardless of their permanent residence, whether they're sending money home or supporting a family who live elsewhere. No exceptions.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-latest-news-uk-workers-foriegn-labour-eu-nationals-survey-immigration-cuts-tory-ukip-a7944191.html
A homemade electric car made out of rubbish
The Phoenix is a homemade electric car made by hobbyists Eric Ludgren and Jehu Garcia. Ludgren is the owner of Waste Recycling and Disposal Company IT Asset Partners and Garcia is a youtuber, making videos where he turns old cars into electric vehicles and making DIY guides. The pair intend to beat the record of 700 miles by almost double with their homemade car, The Phoenix, made from recyclable materials.
“If we can do this, anybody can do this,” said Lundgren. “We’re not some mad scientists in a lab. We’re just trying to push this envelope to the max.”
The two men have created a car which, according to Ludgren and Garcia has already succeeded in breaking the standing record. So-called hypermiling is made possible by driving the car at low speeds to optimise the battery conditions. The attempt made in the Model achieved 669.8 miles, but Ludgren and Garcia claim the Phoenix has already reached 748 miles in similar conditions.
Would be nice to know how low the speeds are. There's a video, but it's 11 minutes long and I don't have time to watch it right now.
Eric Langden explained the process: “The batteries all came from cable boxes for your home TV that had little 18650 batteries in them. 2,800 milliamp, 18650 batteries. We used those. Then we used laptop batteries from a well-known brand that I called up and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if I use your laptop batteries?’ Then we used EV batteries that the EV industry said ‘Nope. They’re dead.’”
“What we found was, when you open up the pack, 80% of the actual batteries are perfectly working. They’re perfect. The problem is that once over 20% degradation occurs in the pack, in America we say it’s trash. We aggregated all these batteries and made this giant 130-kilowatt power battery pack.”
http://www.electrans.co.uk/homemade-ev-to-beat-tesla-record/
“If we can do this, anybody can do this,” said Lundgren. “We’re not some mad scientists in a lab. We’re just trying to push this envelope to the max.”
The two men have created a car which, according to Ludgren and Garcia has already succeeded in breaking the standing record. So-called hypermiling is made possible by driving the car at low speeds to optimise the battery conditions. The attempt made in the Model achieved 669.8 miles, but Ludgren and Garcia claim the Phoenix has already reached 748 miles in similar conditions.
Would be nice to know how low the speeds are. There's a video, but it's 11 minutes long and I don't have time to watch it right now.
Eric Langden explained the process: “The batteries all came from cable boxes for your home TV that had little 18650 batteries in them. 2,800 milliamp, 18650 batteries. We used those. Then we used laptop batteries from a well-known brand that I called up and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if I use your laptop batteries?’ Then we used EV batteries that the EV industry said ‘Nope. They’re dead.’”
“What we found was, when you open up the pack, 80% of the actual batteries are perfectly working. They’re perfect. The problem is that once over 20% degradation occurs in the pack, in America we say it’s trash. We aggregated all these batteries and made this giant 130-kilowatt power battery pack.”
http://www.electrans.co.uk/homemade-ev-to-beat-tesla-record/
Tuesday 12 September 2017
Britain's biggest rocket
The largest rocket to blast off from the British mainland has launched from Northumberland for a test flight, fuelling hopes that it could pave the way for commercial flights into space. Built and privately funded by the Manchester-based firm Starchaser, the Skybolt 2 successfully fired into the sky from the back of a converted flatbed truck in Otterburn, a village 31 miles north-east of Newcastle in the usually tranquil Northumberland national park.
Starchaser !!! Good God, the last time I heard that name was probably 15 years ago when they were setting the same record with another rocket. Nice to know they're still around.
The rocket will now tour thousands of schools as part of an educational outreach programme. Bennett is shooting for the stars with his next project: Nova 2 is “a 12-metre rocket big enough to carry a person” and is intended to launch within the next 18 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/11/largest-rocket-to-blast-off-from-uk-mainland-paves-way-for-space-tourism
Starchaser !!! Good God, the last time I heard that name was probably 15 years ago when they were setting the same record with another rocket. Nice to know they're still around.
The rocket will now tour thousands of schools as part of an educational outreach programme. Bennett is shooting for the stars with his next project: Nova 2 is “a 12-metre rocket big enough to carry a person” and is intended to launch within the next 18 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/11/largest-rocket-to-blast-off-from-uk-mainland-paves-way-for-space-tourism
The best way to deal with an AT-AT statue
"Dismantled and put in storage..."...? HhWhhhaaaat ? No sir ! You put it on display somewhere, or you blast it to smithereens in a carefully controlled explosion, or topple it by whirling a cable around its legs !
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-northamptonshire-41237682/giant-star-wars-at-at-model-built-in-front-garden
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-northamptonshire-41237682/giant-star-wars-at-at-model-built-in-front-garden
Scientific revolutions are seldom born of lone geniuses
Nice little summary. I fully agree. There are geniuses, and there are scientific revolutions, but they rarely (if ever) come from a single "lone wolf". They're born in at least equal measure by the slow, methodical, tedious work of legions of mostly forgotten researchers.
What would have happened if Einstein fell under a tram in 1900? What difference would it have made, for how long? Not a lot, Poincaré was almost there and others were working on the various problems. I’d guess at most a ten-year delay. So are there any true examples of ‘great men’ or is science all over-determined?
...Without going into a lot of detail it should be clear that Einstein is solving problems on which a number of other people are working and making important contributions. He is not pulling new physics out of a hat but solving problems over-determined by the field of physics itself.
So what about Newton?As should be well known Leibnitz and Newton both developed calculus roughly contemporaneously, even more important, as I explained here, they were both building on foundations laid down by other leading seventeenth-century mathematicians. Newton was anticipated in his colour theory of white light by the Bohemian scholar Jan Marek Marci. Newton was only one of three people who developed a reflecting telescope in the 1660s. Robert Hooke anticipated and probably motivated Newton on the theory of universal gravity and Newton’s work on dynamics built on the work of many others beginning with Tartaglia and Benedetti in the sixteenth century. His first law of motion was from Isaac Beeckman via Descartes and the second from Christiaan Huygens from whose work he also derived the law of gravity. Once again we have a physicist working on problem of his time that were being worked actively on by other competent scholars.
[I should add that in Timaeus, Plato describes the First Law of motion perfectly :
For it is difficult, or rather impossible, for something to be moved without something to set it in motion, or something to set a thing in motion without something to be moved by it. When either is absent, there is no motion, but [when they are present] it is quite impossible for them to be uniform.
This also hints at the Second Law, that applying a force changes uniform motion, though of course only qualitatively.]
Put simply it is not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the quality and depth of it that makes these researchers great men.
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/
What would have happened if Einstein fell under a tram in 1900? What difference would it have made, for how long? Not a lot, Poincaré was almost there and others were working on the various problems. I’d guess at most a ten-year delay. So are there any true examples of ‘great men’ or is science all over-determined?
...Without going into a lot of detail it should be clear that Einstein is solving problems on which a number of other people are working and making important contributions. He is not pulling new physics out of a hat but solving problems over-determined by the field of physics itself.
So what about Newton?As should be well known Leibnitz and Newton both developed calculus roughly contemporaneously, even more important, as I explained here, they were both building on foundations laid down by other leading seventeenth-century mathematicians. Newton was anticipated in his colour theory of white light by the Bohemian scholar Jan Marek Marci. Newton was only one of three people who developed a reflecting telescope in the 1660s. Robert Hooke anticipated and probably motivated Newton on the theory of universal gravity and Newton’s work on dynamics built on the work of many others beginning with Tartaglia and Benedetti in the sixteenth century. His first law of motion was from Isaac Beeckman via Descartes and the second from Christiaan Huygens from whose work he also derived the law of gravity. Once again we have a physicist working on problem of his time that were being worked actively on by other competent scholars.
[I should add that in Timaeus, Plato describes the First Law of motion perfectly :
For it is difficult, or rather impossible, for something to be moved without something to set it in motion, or something to set a thing in motion without something to be moved by it. When either is absent, there is no motion, but [when they are present] it is quite impossible for them to be uniform.
This also hints at the Second Law, that applying a force changes uniform motion, though of course only qualitatively.]
Put simply it is not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the quality and depth of it that makes these researchers great men.
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/
Monday 11 September 2017
Taking back control of patriotism
As usual, accept the fact that the New Statesman is an angry ranty blog rather than proper journalism and move on. Because sometimes angry ranty blogs are correct.
If ministers really wanted us to believe it’s on our side, they probably should have spent less time calling us saboteurs, citizens of nowhere, terrorist sympathisers or whatever else it thought might get the Daily Mail and its readers to start frantically fanning themselves on any given day.
The government would have a stronger claim to be “us” if it actually had a mandate, of course, but, for entirely hilarious reasons, it doesn’t. Leave keep demanding we respect the will of the people, and fair enough – but if June’s election taught us anything, it’s that the will of the people was very specifically not to give the government a blank cheque to do whatever the hell it wants. Alas, however, Theresa May views political opposition with the mixture of bafflement, scorn and blind terror that tech bros reserve for women, so instead of reasoned argument intended to bring the country together, we get a bunch of nonsense like this.
Here’s the thing, though – even if Remain supporters were actively supporting the EU in negotiations in some way, that would be completely and utterly fine. Partly because this is still a free country, at least for the moment; partly because patriotism isn’t mandatory. But mostly because patriotism does not in fact mean “my country, right or wrong”, it just means wanting the best for it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/09/remind-me-why-i-have-support-useless-bloody-government-brexit-negotiations-again
If ministers really wanted us to believe it’s on our side, they probably should have spent less time calling us saboteurs, citizens of nowhere, terrorist sympathisers or whatever else it thought might get the Daily Mail and its readers to start frantically fanning themselves on any given day.
The government would have a stronger claim to be “us” if it actually had a mandate, of course, but, for entirely hilarious reasons, it doesn’t. Leave keep demanding we respect the will of the people, and fair enough – but if June’s election taught us anything, it’s that the will of the people was very specifically not to give the government a blank cheque to do whatever the hell it wants. Alas, however, Theresa May views political opposition with the mixture of bafflement, scorn and blind terror that tech bros reserve for women, so instead of reasoned argument intended to bring the country together, we get a bunch of nonsense like this.
Here’s the thing, though – even if Remain supporters were actively supporting the EU in negotiations in some way, that would be completely and utterly fine. Partly because this is still a free country, at least for the moment; partly because patriotism isn’t mandatory. But mostly because patriotism does not in fact mean “my country, right or wrong”, it just means wanting the best for it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/09/remind-me-why-i-have-support-useless-bloody-government-brexit-negotiations-again
The evolution of a miniature cold-blooded goat
Well that's just weird.
The goat, Myotragus balearicus, lived on what is now Majorca, a Spanish island. The island had scarce resources not yet become a thriving tourist haven, and there was no way for the goats to leave, and so scientists wondered how they had thrived for so long. A recently published research paper reveals the extinct goat survived by adjusting its growth rate and metabolism to suit the available food, becoming cold-blooded like reptiles.
The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles, rather like the rings seen in tree trunks. Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles.
Myotragus are the first mammals ever known to have achieved the same flexibility, and hence survivability, as reptiles. They also saved energy by having a brain half the size of hoofed mammals its own size, and its eyes were only a third of the size.
https://phys.org/news/2009-11-extinct-goat-cold-blooded.html
The goat, Myotragus balearicus, lived on what is now Majorca, a Spanish island. The island had scarce resources not yet become a thriving tourist haven, and there was no way for the goats to leave, and so scientists wondered how they had thrived for so long. A recently published research paper reveals the extinct goat survived by adjusting its growth rate and metabolism to suit the available food, becoming cold-blooded like reptiles.
The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles, rather like the rings seen in tree trunks. Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles.
Myotragus are the first mammals ever known to have achieved the same flexibility, and hence survivability, as reptiles. They also saved energy by having a brain half the size of hoofed mammals its own size, and its eyes were only a third of the size.
https://phys.org/news/2009-11-extinct-goat-cold-blooded.html
The real Mrs Lothbrok.
I propose we call her Lagatha, or possibly Mrs Lothbrok.
"War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: "What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to be a woman"."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/su-aoa090817.php
"War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: "What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to be a woman"."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/su-aoa090817.php
Sunday 10 September 2017
Saturday 9 September 2017
Exit Brexit
At least not everyone is completely stupid. Can't say I was ever a fan of Cable, but he's dead right about this.
"They (the government) are not listening - they've got tin ear," he said. "They're making a complete mess of these negotiations - totally disunited, dysfunctional, a lack of preparation. Even if you believe in Brexit you must be in despair at the way they're approaching these negotiations." He said the Lib Dems would working with other MPs towards another vote - on an "exit from Brexit".
Bbrreexxiitt ? Brexexit ? Brexit 2 : The Quickening ?
Also nice to see that even the Tories aren't completely insane, even if their current "leader" is nearing foaming-at-the-mouth level of nuttery.
Tory peer Baroness Patience Wheatcroft told demonstrators that Remainers needed to keep campaigning to stay in the EU. She said: "We have to stop Brexit. Since we joined the EU we've had an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. It must be right to try and maintain that. It's not undemocratic to try to persuade the electorate to think again about Brexit. That's democracy at work."
Damn straight.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41212505
"They (the government) are not listening - they've got tin ear," he said. "They're making a complete mess of these negotiations - totally disunited, dysfunctional, a lack of preparation. Even if you believe in Brexit you must be in despair at the way they're approaching these negotiations." He said the Lib Dems would working with other MPs towards another vote - on an "exit from Brexit".
Bbrreexxiitt ? Brexexit ? Brexit 2 : The Quickening ?
Also nice to see that even the Tories aren't completely insane, even if their current "leader" is nearing foaming-at-the-mouth level of nuttery.
Tory peer Baroness Patience Wheatcroft told demonstrators that Remainers needed to keep campaigning to stay in the EU. She said: "We have to stop Brexit. Since we joined the EU we've had an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. It must be right to try and maintain that. It's not undemocratic to try to persuade the electorate to think again about Brexit. That's democracy at work."
Damn straight.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41212505
Legislation that bypasses Parliament
And the terrifying political news continues. Yay.
Via Stephen Phillips.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) agreed to help the Conservatives seize control of all Commons committees – despite losing their majority – when it struck the June deal to prop the Tories up in power. However, that crucial part of the deal, paving the way for ministers to force through up to 1,000 “corrections” to EU law ahead of Brexit, was not mentioned in the so-called “cash-for-votes” agreement.
Instead, control of committees will be secured in a late-night vote next Tuesday, when the DUP will back the Prime Minister – although it has refused to confirm that support publicly.
No 10 was thrown on the defensive, insisting it had a right to majorities on all committees because it had a “majority” in the Commons itself. That argument prompted allegations that Ms May was trying to rewrite the June result, refusing to recognise that the voters had removed her power to govern alone.
Tuesday’s motion will seek to rip up Commons rules so that “the Government shall have a majority” on committees and on the body making nominations to them, despite relying on the DUP deal for power.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-brexit-power-grab-plan-election-lost-majority-parliament-rig-a7937081.html
Via Stephen Phillips.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) agreed to help the Conservatives seize control of all Commons committees – despite losing their majority – when it struck the June deal to prop the Tories up in power. However, that crucial part of the deal, paving the way for ministers to force through up to 1,000 “corrections” to EU law ahead of Brexit, was not mentioned in the so-called “cash-for-votes” agreement.
Instead, control of committees will be secured in a late-night vote next Tuesday, when the DUP will back the Prime Minister – although it has refused to confirm that support publicly.
No 10 was thrown on the defensive, insisting it had a right to majorities on all committees because it had a “majority” in the Commons itself. That argument prompted allegations that Ms May was trying to rewrite the June result, refusing to recognise that the voters had removed her power to govern alone.
Tuesday’s motion will seek to rip up Commons rules so that “the Government shall have a majority” on committees and on the body making nominations to them, despite relying on the DUP deal for power.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-brexit-power-grab-plan-election-lost-majority-parliament-rig-a7937081.html
Hidden notes of the Hidden Figures
Awesome !
Via Isaac Calder.
More than 40 years before women gained the right to vote, women labored in the Harvard College Observatory as “computers” — astronomy’s version of NASA’s “Hidden Figures” mathematicians.
Between 1885 and 1927, the observatory employed about 80 women who studied glass plate photographs of the stars, many of whom made major discoveries. They found galaxies and nebulas and created methods to measure distance in space. In the late 1800s, they were famous: newspapers wrote about them and they published scientific papers under their own names, only to be virtually forgotten during the next century.
“We know there were at least 80 women who worked in this space on these glass plate photographs, which is a pretty amazing number considering women were still trying to get social approval to go to college, let alone work in the sciences,” Smith Zrull said.
In the Plate Stacks at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — the modern version of what was once called the Harvard College Observatory — Smith Zrull oversees a digitization project to make the glass plates available to the world. Since 2005, a custom-built scanner has been making its way through the collection of more than half a million plates from 1885 to 1993. The team scans 400 plates per day — they’re at about the halfway point now — and Smith Zrull estimates about three years of scanning remains.
Last fall Smith Zrull turned her attention to about 30 notebooks in the plate stacks belonging to the women computers. Smith Zrull found 118 boxes, each containing between 20 and 30 books. Inside were more notebooks from the women computers and notebooks from astronomers who predated photography and made hand-drawn sketches of planets and the moon.
“People didn’t know they existed when they were in storage,” Smith Zrull says. “As different curators came and went here, I suppose people forgot they were there. Now that we know they exist, we can make them accessible to the public, they can be cataloged in a library so people can come across them.”
The library has completed transcription of about 200 volumes. Right now, notebooks from two women are listed on the Smithsonian Transcription Center website. There are many more to come — nearly 2,300 out of a total 2,500 books — but the work has begun. Bouquin hopes the public will help transcribe the books, but anticipates it will still be years before everything is readable.
“You’ll be able to do a full-text search of this research,” Bouquin says. “If you search for Williamina Fleming, you’re not going to just find a mention of her in a publication where she wasn’t the author of her work. You’re going to find her work.”
http://www.metafilter.com/169191/people-forgot-they-were-there
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-27/team-women-are-unearthing-forgotten-legacy-harvard-s-women-computers
Via Isaac Calder.
More than 40 years before women gained the right to vote, women labored in the Harvard College Observatory as “computers” — astronomy’s version of NASA’s “Hidden Figures” mathematicians.
Between 1885 and 1927, the observatory employed about 80 women who studied glass plate photographs of the stars, many of whom made major discoveries. They found galaxies and nebulas and created methods to measure distance in space. In the late 1800s, they were famous: newspapers wrote about them and they published scientific papers under their own names, only to be virtually forgotten during the next century.
“We know there were at least 80 women who worked in this space on these glass plate photographs, which is a pretty amazing number considering women were still trying to get social approval to go to college, let alone work in the sciences,” Smith Zrull said.
In the Plate Stacks at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — the modern version of what was once called the Harvard College Observatory — Smith Zrull oversees a digitization project to make the glass plates available to the world. Since 2005, a custom-built scanner has been making its way through the collection of more than half a million plates from 1885 to 1993. The team scans 400 plates per day — they’re at about the halfway point now — and Smith Zrull estimates about three years of scanning remains.
Last fall Smith Zrull turned her attention to about 30 notebooks in the plate stacks belonging to the women computers. Smith Zrull found 118 boxes, each containing between 20 and 30 books. Inside were more notebooks from the women computers and notebooks from astronomers who predated photography and made hand-drawn sketches of planets and the moon.
“People didn’t know they existed when they were in storage,” Smith Zrull says. “As different curators came and went here, I suppose people forgot they were there. Now that we know they exist, we can make them accessible to the public, they can be cataloged in a library so people can come across them.”
The library has completed transcription of about 200 volumes. Right now, notebooks from two women are listed on the Smithsonian Transcription Center website. There are many more to come — nearly 2,300 out of a total 2,500 books — but the work has begun. Bouquin hopes the public will help transcribe the books, but anticipates it will still be years before everything is readable.
“You’ll be able to do a full-text search of this research,” Bouquin says. “If you search for Williamina Fleming, you’re not going to just find a mention of her in a publication where she wasn’t the author of her work. You’re going to find her work.”
http://www.metafilter.com/169191/people-forgot-they-were-there
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-27/team-women-are-unearthing-forgotten-legacy-harvard-s-women-computers
Republican media is better at persuasion than the Democrats
Terrifying.
“Fox is substantially better at influencing Democrats than MSNBC is at influencing Republicans," the authors find. While most Fox viewers are Republican, a sizeable minority aren't, and they're particularly suggestible to the channel's influence. In 2000, they estimate that 58 percent of Fox viewers who were initially Democrats changed to supporting the Republican candidate by the end of the election cycle; in 2004, the persuasion rate was 27 percent, and 28 percent in 2008. MSNBC, by contrast, only persuaded 8 percent of initial Republicans to vote Democratic in the 2008 cycle.
These are big effects, with major societal implications. The authors find that the Fox News effect translates into a 0.46 percentage point boost to the GOP vote share in the 2000 presidential race, a 3.59-point boost in 2004, and a 6.34-point boost in 2008; the boost increases as the channel's viewership grew. This effect alone is large enough, they argue, to explain all the polarization in the US public's political views from 2000 to 2008.
It’s really hard to estimate the effects of media outlets on individuals’ behaviour, as media consumption is a two-way street. Yes, media can change peoples’ opinions and behaviour, but people also choose to consume particular media because it aligns with their opinions and affirms stuff they’re doing already. So figuring out that a given media outlet is changing viewers’ minds, rather than merely reflecting their viewpoints back to them, is tricky. But Martin and Yurukoglu figured out an ingenious way around that problem: channel ordering.
It turns out that more people watch Fox News when it has a lower channel number. Fox News’s average channel number is around 38 to 41 (depending on which of Martin and Yurukoglu’s samples you're looking at) and lowering the channel number to 19 to 23 or thereabouts causes viewers to watch 2.5 more minutes per week of Fox News, on average. In practice, that could translate into no effect on most people and a bigger effect (like, an hour more viewing per week) among a minority of cable subscribers — 2.5 minutes is just the overall figure.
What’s more, it doesn't appear that cable or satellite TV providers make channel position decisions based on local politics; they don't lower Fox News' channel number in conservative towns or countries or raise it in liberal cities. So people in areas where Fox News has a low channel number watch more of the channel for reasons that are basically random, and unrelated to the viewer’s personal politics.
[I haven't ever watched MSNBC, but I have watched Fox and I don't understand why anyone would watch it for more than about 5 minutes at a stretch.]
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/8/16263710/fox-news-presidential-vote-study
“Fox is substantially better at influencing Democrats than MSNBC is at influencing Republicans," the authors find. While most Fox viewers are Republican, a sizeable minority aren't, and they're particularly suggestible to the channel's influence. In 2000, they estimate that 58 percent of Fox viewers who were initially Democrats changed to supporting the Republican candidate by the end of the election cycle; in 2004, the persuasion rate was 27 percent, and 28 percent in 2008. MSNBC, by contrast, only persuaded 8 percent of initial Republicans to vote Democratic in the 2008 cycle.
These are big effects, with major societal implications. The authors find that the Fox News effect translates into a 0.46 percentage point boost to the GOP vote share in the 2000 presidential race, a 3.59-point boost in 2004, and a 6.34-point boost in 2008; the boost increases as the channel's viewership grew. This effect alone is large enough, they argue, to explain all the polarization in the US public's political views from 2000 to 2008.
It’s really hard to estimate the effects of media outlets on individuals’ behaviour, as media consumption is a two-way street. Yes, media can change peoples’ opinions and behaviour, but people also choose to consume particular media because it aligns with their opinions and affirms stuff they’re doing already. So figuring out that a given media outlet is changing viewers’ minds, rather than merely reflecting their viewpoints back to them, is tricky. But Martin and Yurukoglu figured out an ingenious way around that problem: channel ordering.
It turns out that more people watch Fox News when it has a lower channel number. Fox News’s average channel number is around 38 to 41 (depending on which of Martin and Yurukoglu’s samples you're looking at) and lowering the channel number to 19 to 23 or thereabouts causes viewers to watch 2.5 more minutes per week of Fox News, on average. In practice, that could translate into no effect on most people and a bigger effect (like, an hour more viewing per week) among a minority of cable subscribers — 2.5 minutes is just the overall figure.
What’s more, it doesn't appear that cable or satellite TV providers make channel position decisions based on local politics; they don't lower Fox News' channel number in conservative towns or countries or raise it in liberal cities. So people in areas where Fox News has a low channel number watch more of the channel for reasons that are basically random, and unrelated to the viewer’s personal politics.
[I haven't ever watched MSNBC, but I have watched Fox and I don't understand why anyone would watch it for more than about 5 minutes at a stretch.]
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/8/16263710/fox-news-presidential-vote-study
Friday 8 September 2017
Mr Fusion
"We are unveiling the first world-class controlled fusion device to have been designed, built and operated by a private venture. The ST40 is a machine that will show fusion temperatures - 100 million degrees - are possible in compact, cost-effective reactors. This will allow fusion power to be achieved in years, not decades."
ST40 is what's known as a tokamak reactor, which uses high-powered magnetic coils to control a core of scorching plasma in a toroidal shape. The next step is for a full set of those magnetic coils to be installed and tested within ST40, and later this year, Tokamak Energy will use them to aim to generate plasma at temperatures of 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit).
In 2018, the team hopes to achieve the fusion threshold of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit), and the ultimate goal is to provide clean fusion power to the UK grid by 2030.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor
ST40 is what's known as a tokamak reactor, which uses high-powered magnetic coils to control a core of scorching plasma in a toroidal shape. The next step is for a full set of those magnetic coils to be installed and tested within ST40, and later this year, Tokamak Energy will use them to aim to generate plasma at temperatures of 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit).
In 2018, the team hopes to achieve the fusion threshold of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit), and the ultimate goal is to provide clean fusion power to the UK grid by 2030.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-uk-has-just-switch-on-its-tokamak-nuclear-fusion-reactor
Inconvenient truths
Theresa May suppressed up to nine studies that found immigration does not hit the wages or jobs of UK workers, Vince Cable has alleged. The Prime Minister has repeatedly defended plans to impose tough curbs on EU workers after Brexit by arguing they are needed to protect Britons in lower-paid jobs.
But, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “When I was Business Secretary, there were up to nine studies that we looked at that took in all the academic evidence. It showed that immigration had very little impact on wages or employment. But this was suppressed by the Home Office under Theresa May, because the results were inconvenient.”
I agree with this rant :
Originally shared by Stephen Phillips
*Rant Alert ⚠*
There is so much in this. Okay, we only have the fractured memory of old man Vince as our source... But it's still big.
The idea that the leader of our government has suppressed academic research is equally horrifying and unsurprising.
When it came to Brexit, she chose not to air her views publicly, instead hiding away until the result and suddenly she is dead set against the EU.
Her populist agenda is reminiscent of how Trump chose his agenda to get elected.
That she chose to not just pick and chose supporting information, but that she actively suppressed information that didn't support her, leads us down a dark path where clear and open government is no longer in existence.
She is the most dangerous leader we've ever had.
*Rant over*
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-immigration-studies-suppress-uk-workers-wages-jobs-vince-cable-prime-minister-liberal-a7932001.html
But, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “When I was Business Secretary, there were up to nine studies that we looked at that took in all the academic evidence. It showed that immigration had very little impact on wages or employment. But this was suppressed by the Home Office under Theresa May, because the results were inconvenient.”
I agree with this rant :
Originally shared by Stephen Phillips
*Rant Alert ⚠*
There is so much in this. Okay, we only have the fractured memory of old man Vince as our source... But it's still big.
The idea that the leader of our government has suppressed academic research is equally horrifying and unsurprising.
When it came to Brexit, she chose not to air her views publicly, instead hiding away until the result and suddenly she is dead set against the EU.
Her populist agenda is reminiscent of how Trump chose his agenda to get elected.
That she chose to not just pick and chose supporting information, but that she actively suppressed information that didn't support her, leads us down a dark path where clear and open government is no longer in existence.
She is the most dangerous leader we've ever had.
*Rant over*
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-immigration-studies-suppress-uk-workers-wages-jobs-vince-cable-prime-minister-liberal-a7932001.html
Phrenology returns as automated gaydar for some reason
Behold the bizarre return of phrenology.
The research found that gay men and women tended to have “gender-atypical” features, expressions and “grooming styles”, essentially meaning gay men appeared more feminine and vice versa. The data also identified certain trends, including that gay men had narrower jaws, longer noses and larger foreheads than straight men, and that gay women had larger jaws and smaller foreheads compared to straight women.
Human judges performed much worse than the algorithm, accurately identifying orientation only 61% of the time for men and 54% for women. When the software reviewed five images per person, it was even more successful – 91% of the time with men and 83% with women. Broadly, that means “faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain”, the authors wrote.
It’s easy to imagine spouses using the technology on partners they suspect are closeted, or teenagers using the algorithm on themselves or their peers. More frighteningly, governments that continue to prosecute LGBT people could hypothetically use the technology to out and target populations. That means building this kind of software and publicizing it is itself controversial given concerns that it could encourage harmful applications.
https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/07/new-artificial-intelligence-can-tell-whether-youre-gay-or-straight-from-a-photograph
The research found that gay men and women tended to have “gender-atypical” features, expressions and “grooming styles”, essentially meaning gay men appeared more feminine and vice versa. The data also identified certain trends, including that gay men had narrower jaws, longer noses and larger foreheads than straight men, and that gay women had larger jaws and smaller foreheads compared to straight women.
Human judges performed much worse than the algorithm, accurately identifying orientation only 61% of the time for men and 54% for women. When the software reviewed five images per person, it was even more successful – 91% of the time with men and 83% with women. Broadly, that means “faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain”, the authors wrote.
It’s easy to imagine spouses using the technology on partners they suspect are closeted, or teenagers using the algorithm on themselves or their peers. More frighteningly, governments that continue to prosecute LGBT people could hypothetically use the technology to out and target populations. That means building this kind of software and publicizing it is itself controversial given concerns that it could encourage harmful applications.
https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/07/new-artificial-intelligence-can-tell-whether-youre-gay-or-straight-from-a-photograph
Thursday 7 September 2017
Food without farms
But seriously, this is really cool :
Researchers in Finland are developing a way to zap that simple recipe with electricity inside a bioreactor to create a powder that's about 50 percent protein and 25 percent carbohydrates.
The edible powder could be mixed into a shake or turned into a tofu-like food for people. It also could be transformed into feed for animals. Because it's processed inside in a bioreactor — similar to how beer and Quorn, a British meat substitute, is made — it doesn't require the tremendous amounts of land, water or other resources necessary for large-scale agriculture and doesn't emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
If solar power is used to produce the electricity, the process is about 10 times more efficient at producing food than conventional agriculture that relies on soil, says Ahola.
For this proof-of-concept endeavor, the bioreactor used was the size of a coffee cup, and the process to produce 1 gram of the protein took about two weeks. Ahola and colleague Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, a principal scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, say they are working on plans to build a larger bioreactor, about 6 liters (1.6 gallons) in size, by early next year. "We think that we would be able to scale it up rather soon now that we have got it working," says Pitkänen.
The first real application could be in the desert, feeding people in Africa," says Pitkänen.
http://trib.al/Za1vI5R
Tuesday 5 September 2017
The finance-based cult of Brexit
As I've said fifty bajillion times (that's a real number, trust me I'm a scientist) democracy, while itself an imperfect system, isn't at all the same as tyranny by majority. Brexiteers don't want democracy. They just want to whine and whine even though they're getting what they wanted, because they have no friggin' clue what it is they actually want. None. "Our politics is a masterclass in cynicism farce." It was fine for Nigel to say there could have been a second referendum in the event of a narrow loss for Leave, and who begrudged them that ? Exactly no-one at all. But God forbid voters should ever change their mind in the other direction, no no no no no, that's not allowed at all. The Brexit referendum is instead being used as the worst sort of stereotypical religion : the "thou shalt not question" variety, under the guise of sovereignty and freedom which are actually anathema to the goals of Brexiteers.
The real reason why repeated attempts to silence the argument against Brexit are so dangerous is that by claiming democratic authority for their position the Brexiteer faction – for that is what they remain – demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the nature of democracy itself.They reduce a democratic culture to the status of a transaction. The voters are asked a question; they provide an answer; go, do.
No democrat should entertain this diminished understanding of democracy for a single moment. Real life is lived in real time. Circumstances change; reality changes; opinions change. Democracy is the means by which the ministers who make these decisions are subject to constant challenge, and required to provide day by day explanation and justification for the actions they take in our name.
Far from improving the accountability of decision-makers, the effect of the EU referendum has been to provide ministers with a shield which prevents their decisions being questioned. The democratic question is who makes the decisions and how are they accountable?
The EU answer is that the Single Market, supported by the Customs Union, has allowed us to make these decisions in ways which balance different interests and create an open market across Europe for the resulting goods and services... it has underwritten both continued expansion of the economies of Western Europe, including our own, and the successful development of the economies of central Europe following the collapse of their Russian-inspired communist regimes at the end of the 1980s. It has also underwritten an unprecedented growth of trade between Europe and the rest of the world.
The result has been not merely the creation of the world’s largest free trade area but, much more importantly, the development for the first time in history of open liberal societies across the whole of Europe; and it has allowed Europe as a whole to play a full part in the development of liberal societies across the globe. By any normal political standards this would be regarded as a stunning success.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-eu-voters-must-be-allowed-to-change-their-mind-labour-policy-hammond-national-interest-a7929421.html
The real reason why repeated attempts to silence the argument against Brexit are so dangerous is that by claiming democratic authority for their position the Brexiteer faction – for that is what they remain – demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the nature of democracy itself.They reduce a democratic culture to the status of a transaction. The voters are asked a question; they provide an answer; go, do.
No democrat should entertain this diminished understanding of democracy for a single moment. Real life is lived in real time. Circumstances change; reality changes; opinions change. Democracy is the means by which the ministers who make these decisions are subject to constant challenge, and required to provide day by day explanation and justification for the actions they take in our name.
Far from improving the accountability of decision-makers, the effect of the EU referendum has been to provide ministers with a shield which prevents their decisions being questioned. The democratic question is who makes the decisions and how are they accountable?
The EU answer is that the Single Market, supported by the Customs Union, has allowed us to make these decisions in ways which balance different interests and create an open market across Europe for the resulting goods and services... it has underwritten both continued expansion of the economies of Western Europe, including our own, and the successful development of the economies of central Europe following the collapse of their Russian-inspired communist regimes at the end of the 1980s. It has also underwritten an unprecedented growth of trade between Europe and the rest of the world.
The result has been not merely the creation of the world’s largest free trade area but, much more importantly, the development for the first time in history of open liberal societies across the whole of Europe; and it has allowed Europe as a whole to play a full part in the development of liberal societies across the globe. By any normal political standards this would be regarded as a stunning success.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-eu-voters-must-be-allowed-to-change-their-mind-labour-policy-hammond-national-interest-a7929421.html
Sunday 3 September 2017
Friday 1 September 2017
Turning atmospheric carbon directly into plastic
The sheer quantity of pollutant matter in London is intimidating. In 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available, London released a fairly terrifying 37.8m metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere. That’s to say nothing of the particulates and other gases belching out into our streets.
But while coughing Londoners are busy converting dirty air to dirty tissues, designers and scientists have been finding better things to make from that pollution. They’re part of a revolution in thinking which extends the concept of recycling to the air we breathe – and could turn pollution from a dangerous problem to a desirable commodity.
I particularly like this one :
Californian plastic designers Newlight Technologies decided to reverse the process, pulling in those greenhouse gases to create plastic without the need for fossil fuels. CEO Mark Herrema explains: “On a continuous, large-scale basis, we’re converting greenhouse gases such as carbon and methane dioxide into biodegradable plastic, plastics that require no oil and no food crops”.
Perhaps most extraordinary is that it’s actually cheaper to produce than conventional plastic, thanks to a catalyst the firm has developed that works at nine times the power of previous technologies. The firm has already started making carbon-negative, biodegradable plastic packaging, and last year signed a contract to supply plastics to Ikea. So the cheap furniture your landlord gets you may soon originate from the air outside your window.
Sounds awesome but, silly question, wouldn't it be better if the plastic wasn't biodegradable ? Otherwise this is just carbon neutral rather than negative...
https://modrenscienc.blogspot.com/2017/09/here-are-five-other-things-we-could-do.html
But while coughing Londoners are busy converting dirty air to dirty tissues, designers and scientists have been finding better things to make from that pollution. They’re part of a revolution in thinking which extends the concept of recycling to the air we breathe – and could turn pollution from a dangerous problem to a desirable commodity.
I particularly like this one :
Californian plastic designers Newlight Technologies decided to reverse the process, pulling in those greenhouse gases to create plastic without the need for fossil fuels. CEO Mark Herrema explains: “On a continuous, large-scale basis, we’re converting greenhouse gases such as carbon and methane dioxide into biodegradable plastic, plastics that require no oil and no food crops”.
Perhaps most extraordinary is that it’s actually cheaper to produce than conventional plastic, thanks to a catalyst the firm has developed that works at nine times the power of previous technologies. The firm has already started making carbon-negative, biodegradable plastic packaging, and last year signed a contract to supply plastics to Ikea. So the cheap furniture your landlord gets you may soon originate from the air outside your window.
Sounds awesome but, silly question, wouldn't it be better if the plastic wasn't biodegradable ? Otherwise this is just carbon neutral rather than negative...
https://modrenscienc.blogspot.com/2017/09/here-are-five-other-things-we-could-do.html
Barring women from the military makes not a lick of sense
I'm currently reading John Man's Amazons. Female warriors are neither new nor somehow inferior to men. It's blindingly simple : set everyone the same entry requirements and if they meet them, let them join. Equal opportunity must be the goal, not equal numbers (which would be daft).
The Royal Air Force has become the first branch of the British military to open up every role to men and women. From Friday it will accept applications from women to join the RAF Regiment - its ground-fighting force. The Army and Navy will open also roles to all genders over the next 12-18 months.
The main role of the 2,000-strong RAF Regiment, which sustained casualties in Afghanistan, is to patrol and protect RAF bases and airfields. Women make up 14% of the air force as a whole - compared to 10% for the whole military.
BBC Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale says it is a significant moment because it means women can now apply for any RAF role, from fighter pilot to ground support.
The former head of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, told BBC Breakfast he "vehemently disagrees" that women should be serving in close combat roles - because of their physical capability. He said: "Once you have got through selection, you are subjecting yourself to a minimum of four years of intensive physical training, day in and day out, in barracks and out of barracks, which puts enough of a strain on a man's body."
Quoting statistics that women sustain around twice as many serious injuries as men do during training, Colonel Kemp added: "I think the reality is we will find many more women than men suffer injuries… and we will then undoubtedly see very significant compensation payments being made out of the defence budget.
Because women are totally incapable of understanding that, I suppose.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41119863
The Royal Air Force has become the first branch of the British military to open up every role to men and women. From Friday it will accept applications from women to join the RAF Regiment - its ground-fighting force. The Army and Navy will open also roles to all genders over the next 12-18 months.
The main role of the 2,000-strong RAF Regiment, which sustained casualties in Afghanistan, is to patrol and protect RAF bases and airfields. Women make up 14% of the air force as a whole - compared to 10% for the whole military.
BBC Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale says it is a significant moment because it means women can now apply for any RAF role, from fighter pilot to ground support.
The former head of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, told BBC Breakfast he "vehemently disagrees" that women should be serving in close combat roles - because of their physical capability. He said: "Once you have got through selection, you are subjecting yourself to a minimum of four years of intensive physical training, day in and day out, in barracks and out of barracks, which puts enough of a strain on a man's body."
Quoting statistics that women sustain around twice as many serious injuries as men do during training, Colonel Kemp added: "I think the reality is we will find many more women than men suffer injuries… and we will then undoubtedly see very significant compensation payments being made out of the defence budget.
Because women are totally incapable of understanding that, I suppose.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41119863
Flying cars won't be stopped because they're risky - nothing else ever was
Nice (but short) summary of the current state of the art.
Dubai is racing to be the first to put drone taxis in the air. In June, its Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) signed an agreement with a German start-up Volocopter to test pilotless air taxis towards the end of this year. The firm has received 25m euros (£22m; $30m) from investors, including German motor manufacturer Daimler, to develop the 18-rotor craft capable of transporting two passengers at a time.
Dubai's RTA has also teamed up with China's Ehang and is testing the drone maker's single passenger Ehang 184 "autonomous aerial vehicle".
In February, ride-sharing giant Uber poached Nasa chief technologist Mark Moore and set him to work heading their Project Elevate - "a future of on-demand urban air transportation". Airbus, the French aircraft maker, is also working on a prototype air taxi, Vahana, saying it will begin testing at the end of 2017 and have one ready by 2020.
"If one crashes, who's ever going to take a drone?"
Who's going to take a car if one crashes ? Or a balloon ? Or if a ship sinks ? The same thing was said about space tourism. Then the inevitable happened to Virgin Galactic, and people still press on. Deep down, we know that accidents happen. Truly zero risk is impossible. Trying to achieve it is completely counter-productive.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41088196
Dubai is racing to be the first to put drone taxis in the air. In June, its Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) signed an agreement with a German start-up Volocopter to test pilotless air taxis towards the end of this year. The firm has received 25m euros (£22m; $30m) from investors, including German motor manufacturer Daimler, to develop the 18-rotor craft capable of transporting two passengers at a time.
Dubai's RTA has also teamed up with China's Ehang and is testing the drone maker's single passenger Ehang 184 "autonomous aerial vehicle".
In February, ride-sharing giant Uber poached Nasa chief technologist Mark Moore and set him to work heading their Project Elevate - "a future of on-demand urban air transportation". Airbus, the French aircraft maker, is also working on a prototype air taxi, Vahana, saying it will begin testing at the end of 2017 and have one ready by 2020.
"If one crashes, who's ever going to take a drone?"
Who's going to take a car if one crashes ? Or a balloon ? Or if a ship sinks ? The same thing was said about space tourism. Then the inevitable happened to Virgin Galactic, and people still press on. Deep down, we know that accidents happen. Truly zero risk is impossible. Trying to achieve it is completely counter-productive.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41088196
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