I'm calling this one done. There's plenty more that could be done, but this is a good place to stop. The next step is to turn this into a paper and become a computational sociologist. Because no-one in history has ever claimed the title of Nazi space farming computational sociologist astronomer before... but I digress.
Anyway, I've gone through and redone a bunch of the earlier simulations so that the figures are now (mostly) consistent. I also wondered if the wealth fraction plots were misleading, since they select the agents of a specified wealth fraction independently at each timestep rather than following the fortunes of a fixed group of agents. Tests reveal that actually this makes very little difference.
For those who have no idea what this is, here's an abstract...
Last year there was a paper claiming that the role of luck may be underestimated. The authors claim that abilities are known to follow a Gaussian distribution whereas wealth is a power law. They demonstrated through a numerical, agent-based model that one way to get the financial power law from the Gaussian talent distribution is through luck, with no correlation between ability and money. Agents, with varying ability levels, wander around a world intersecting events which cause them to alter their wealth levels depending somewhat on their talent.
What I did was to recreate their code in Python (link's in the document). We all know that correlation doesn't equal causation. Well, it turns out their model actually provides an example of lack of correlation not equalling a lack of causation... In their model, talent only allows agents to exploit lucky events. This is a pretty weak effect but it should show up. The reason it doesn't is because their sample size was too small (so it doesn't contain enough agents with extreme high/low talents) and doesn't compare agents who experience the same levels of events. Basically, in their model, the mediocre people are more likely to get lucky compared to the genius simply because their are far more of them. If you compare populations of similar ability levels who experience similar numbers of events, the most talented always win.
I also found two ways to alter this model which produce a genuine model while still being in keeping with the spirit of the original. The first is to allow talent to have stronger effects on the outcome of events. The second is to allow talent to encourage agents to move towards areas where there are more good events and less bad ones. And a third, weird option is to allow talent to vary... but this turns out to be perverse : a talent-wealth correlation emerges, but it's only because wealth drives talent rather than the other way around.
I also discuss the ethics of meritocracies and why they're not necessarily very nice.
Enjoy...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TD1PCW1IG2BlBQ27GPe5Nqi5phjg4qXwhpgEfJAgbBw/edit?usp=sharing
Wednesday 30 January 2019
Racing to the bottom
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Tuesday's vote had "overturned a defeat of 230 into a victory", referring to the crushing defeat of Mrs May's deal in the Commons earlier this month. "Yes, I can confirm, according to the Guinness Book Of World Records I am indeed the stupidest man alive."
There, fixed it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47052227
There, fixed it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47052227
Tuesday 29 January 2019
An intelligent (but still unconvincing) case for panpsychism
Excellent. This ties together a lot of different ideas I've heard about previously in a much more coherent way than I've seen before. For my part, I have no problem with accepting a non-physical component to reality (https://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2018/09/this-equation-shows-you-cant-quantify.html). I do not accept the conclusion presented herein of panpsychism (I am not in the least convinced by it), but the article presents the case in a far more intelligent way than I've seen previously.
No matter how precisely we could specify the mechanisms underlying, for example, the perception and recognition of tomatoes, we could still ask: Why is this process accompanied by the subjective experience of red, or any experience at all? Why couldn’t we have just the physical process, but no consciousness? The hard problem of consciousness would seem to persist even given knowledge of every imaginable kind of physical detail.
One might wonder how physical particles are, independently of what they do or how they relate to other things. What are physical things like in themselves, or intrinsically? Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related. Otherwise, the relation is empty—a show that goes on without performers, or a castle constructed out of thin air. In other words, physical structure must be realized or implemented by some stuff or substance that is itself not purely structural. Otherwise, there would be no clear difference between physical and mere mathematical structure, or between the concrete universe and a mere abstraction. But what could this stuff that realizes or implements physical structure be, and what are the intrinsic, non-structural properties that characterize it? The philosopher Galen Strawson has called it the hard problem of matter.
What is the hardware that implements the software of Newton’s equations? One might think the answer is simple: It is implemented by solid particles. But solidity is just the behaviour of resisting intrusion and spatial overlap by other particles—that is, another mere relation to other particles and space. The hard problem of matter arises for any structural description of reality no matter how clear and intuitive at the structural level.
The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or “qualia,” may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.
This suggests that consciousness—of some primitive and rudimentary form—is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on. The physical world can be conceived of as a structure of conscious experiences. Our own richly textured experiences implement the physical relations that make up our brains. Some simple, elementary forms of experiences implement the relations that make up fundamental particles. Take an electron, for example. What an electron does is to attract, repel, and otherwise relate to other entities in accordance with fundamental physical equations. What performs this behavior, we might think, is simply a stream of tiny electron experiences.
Dual-aspect monism comes in moderate and radical forms. Moderate versions take the intrinsic aspect of matter to consist of so-called protoconscious or “neutral” properties: properties that are unknown to science, but also different from consciousness. The nature of such neither-mental-nor-physical properties seems quite mysterious. Like the aforementioned quantum theories of consciousness, moderate dual-aspect monism can therefore be accused of merely adding one mystery to another and expecting them to cancel out.
The most radical version of dual-aspect monism takes the intrinsic aspect of reality to consist of consciousness itself. This is decidedly not the same as subjective idealism, the view that the physical world is merely a structure within human consciousness, and that the external world is in some sense an illusion. According to dual-aspect monism, the external world exists entirely independently of human consciousness. But it would not exist independently of any kind of consciousness, because all physical things are associated with some form of consciousness of their own, as their own intrinsic realizer, or hardware.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/is-matter-conscious
No matter how precisely we could specify the mechanisms underlying, for example, the perception and recognition of tomatoes, we could still ask: Why is this process accompanied by the subjective experience of red, or any experience at all? Why couldn’t we have just the physical process, but no consciousness? The hard problem of consciousness would seem to persist even given knowledge of every imaginable kind of physical detail.
One might wonder how physical particles are, independently of what they do or how they relate to other things. What are physical things like in themselves, or intrinsically? Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related. Otherwise, the relation is empty—a show that goes on without performers, or a castle constructed out of thin air. In other words, physical structure must be realized or implemented by some stuff or substance that is itself not purely structural. Otherwise, there would be no clear difference between physical and mere mathematical structure, or between the concrete universe and a mere abstraction. But what could this stuff that realizes or implements physical structure be, and what are the intrinsic, non-structural properties that characterize it? The philosopher Galen Strawson has called it the hard problem of matter.
What is the hardware that implements the software of Newton’s equations? One might think the answer is simple: It is implemented by solid particles. But solidity is just the behaviour of resisting intrusion and spatial overlap by other particles—that is, another mere relation to other particles and space. The hard problem of matter arises for any structural description of reality no matter how clear and intuitive at the structural level.
The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or “qualia,” may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.
This suggests that consciousness—of some primitive and rudimentary form—is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on. The physical world can be conceived of as a structure of conscious experiences. Our own richly textured experiences implement the physical relations that make up our brains. Some simple, elementary forms of experiences implement the relations that make up fundamental particles. Take an electron, for example. What an electron does is to attract, repel, and otherwise relate to other entities in accordance with fundamental physical equations. What performs this behavior, we might think, is simply a stream of tiny electron experiences.
Dual-aspect monism comes in moderate and radical forms. Moderate versions take the intrinsic aspect of matter to consist of so-called protoconscious or “neutral” properties: properties that are unknown to science, but also different from consciousness. The nature of such neither-mental-nor-physical properties seems quite mysterious. Like the aforementioned quantum theories of consciousness, moderate dual-aspect monism can therefore be accused of merely adding one mystery to another and expecting them to cancel out.
The most radical version of dual-aspect monism takes the intrinsic aspect of reality to consist of consciousness itself. This is decidedly not the same as subjective idealism, the view that the physical world is merely a structure within human consciousness, and that the external world is in some sense an illusion. According to dual-aspect monism, the external world exists entirely independently of human consciousness. But it would not exist independently of any kind of consciousness, because all physical things are associated with some form of consciousness of their own, as their own intrinsic realizer, or hardware.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/is-matter-conscious
This is not normal
I believe we've now reached the point beyond stupidity where words have been replaced by mere bursts of air escaping from the lungs. The clown show continues.
Theresa May has told MPs she will seek to re-open negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland backstop. The PM said she would go back to Brussels to get a "significant and legally binding change" to the controversial proposal, which aims to stop the return of border checks. The EU has said it will not change the legal text agreed with the UK PM. Mrs May said she knew there was a "limited appetite" in the EU, but she believed she could "secure" it.
That's just aaargh. What in the world makes her think she could do that ? Has the EU shown the slightest hint that they would be willing to change on that ? Of course not, because if they did, they'd be treating Ireland unfairly through no fault of its own. Brexit on the other hand is Britain's fault; what causes problems for us is not really the EU's problem. This continued insistence that "they need us more than we need them" is Flat Earth level of heroic stupidity.
Mrs May said the vote later would be a chance to "send a clear message" to EU on the backstop... Mrs May said backing it would "give the mandate I need to negotiate with Brussels an arrangement that commands a majority in this House - not a further exchange of letters, but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement".
Da fuq ? The EU isn't going to change stance, because it can't. What Britain wants is of little consequence. Brexiteers are still acting as though Brexit is some sort of threat we can scare the EU with, somehow. Unless there's some actual, credible alternative to the backstop, then May is little more than an oxygen thief.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mrs May herself was the "obstacle to a solution"...
Of fer cryin' out loud... NO SHE ISN'T. She's a daft old bat, but she isn't the problem. The problem is Brexit itself. In two years, no-one has proposed a workable solution, because there isn't one. The whole thing is an unnecessary, omnishambolic and farcical solution to a purely fictitious problem conjured as a scapegoat to Tory policies, advocated by demagogues and endorsed by the (sometimes wilfully) ignorant. It is wholly and utterly a self-destructive act of stupidity.
"... and that, whatever happened in the votes later, it had "now become inevitable" that the government would have to extend Article 50 - the mechanism which means the UK leaves the EU on 29 March."
Well, I can't disagree with that, at least in principle. The government clearly should extend Article 50 at the absolute minimum. But will they ? They seem hell-bent on always adopting the stupidest option possible. And it gets worse :
However, Mr Corbyn, told the Commons they wanted a shorter window of three months to allow time for a deal to be finalised.
AAAAAAAARGHHHH.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47037365
Theresa May has told MPs she will seek to re-open negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland backstop. The PM said she would go back to Brussels to get a "significant and legally binding change" to the controversial proposal, which aims to stop the return of border checks. The EU has said it will not change the legal text agreed with the UK PM. Mrs May said she knew there was a "limited appetite" in the EU, but she believed she could "secure" it.
That's just aaargh. What in the world makes her think she could do that ? Has the EU shown the slightest hint that they would be willing to change on that ? Of course not, because if they did, they'd be treating Ireland unfairly through no fault of its own. Brexit on the other hand is Britain's fault; what causes problems for us is not really the EU's problem. This continued insistence that "they need us more than we need them" is Flat Earth level of heroic stupidity.
Mrs May said the vote later would be a chance to "send a clear message" to EU on the backstop... Mrs May said backing it would "give the mandate I need to negotiate with Brussels an arrangement that commands a majority in this House - not a further exchange of letters, but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement".
Da fuq ? The EU isn't going to change stance, because it can't. What Britain wants is of little consequence. Brexiteers are still acting as though Brexit is some sort of threat we can scare the EU with, somehow. Unless there's some actual, credible alternative to the backstop, then May is little more than an oxygen thief.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mrs May herself was the "obstacle to a solution"...
Of fer cryin' out loud... NO SHE ISN'T. She's a daft old bat, but she isn't the problem. The problem is Brexit itself. In two years, no-one has proposed a workable solution, because there isn't one. The whole thing is an unnecessary, omnishambolic and farcical solution to a purely fictitious problem conjured as a scapegoat to Tory policies, advocated by demagogues and endorsed by the (sometimes wilfully) ignorant. It is wholly and utterly a self-destructive act of stupidity.
"... and that, whatever happened in the votes later, it had "now become inevitable" that the government would have to extend Article 50 - the mechanism which means the UK leaves the EU on 29 March."
Well, I can't disagree with that, at least in principle. The government clearly should extend Article 50 at the absolute minimum. But will they ? They seem hell-bent on always adopting the stupidest option possible. And it gets worse :
However, Mr Corbyn, told the Commons they wanted a shorter window of three months to allow time for a deal to be finalised.
AAAAAAAARGHHHH.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47037365
Using pigeons as drones
Nowadays, some birds are trained to take down pesky drones. Back before drones became a cheap and easy way to acquire aerial imagery, a German inventor proposed using pigeons to capture photographs of the earth from above.
Curious to see where his pigeons were flying, he devised a way to capture pictures of their flight path. In the early 1900s Julius Neubronner developed an aluminum breast harness to which a lightweight camera was attached. The camera was equipped with a timer that would take a picture every thirty seconds. This contraption was attached to a homing pigeon in order to capture aerial photographs. While aerial photographs taken from balloons and kites had been taken some 20-30 years earlier, the perspective of seeing the landscape from above was still a novel and exciting view for most people. The unreliability of flight paths and quality of the aerial photographs compared to made the pigeon aerial invention a short-lived strategy.
As eloquently noted in Popular Science Monthly, volume 88, 1872, p.30-31 :
Curious to see where his pigeons were flying, he devised a way to capture pictures of their flight path. In the early 1900s Julius Neubronner developed an aluminum breast harness to which a lightweight camera was attached. The camera was equipped with a timer that would take a picture every thirty seconds. This contraption was attached to a homing pigeon in order to capture aerial photographs. While aerial photographs taken from balloons and kites had been taken some 20-30 years earlier, the perspective of seeing the landscape from above was still a novel and exciting view for most people. The unreliability of flight paths and quality of the aerial photographs compared to made the pigeon aerial invention a short-lived strategy.
As eloquently noted in Popular Science Monthly, volume 88, 1872, p.30-31 :
"It is a strange medley, the air-ship, the last and most daring invention of man's brain, rising in the early dawn to search out and photograph the foe's movements, and the graceful pigeon, so frequently mentioned in the stories of early days, soaring, perhaps at the same moment, to act as an aerial scout."
"Faster, better, cheaper" was a basically good space policy
The "faster better cheaper" idea probably suffered (I guess) from two related things :
1) A (not wholly unjustified) belief that "failure is not an option", though in fact failure is part and parcel of research, especially risky research.
2) While missions were relatively cheap, they still required serious levels of money. Certainly, if your $10 million mission explodes this is not as bad as if your $200 million mission dies a fiery death. But who's willing even to risk $10 million ? It's a heck of a lot of money and required time invested to tell people, "well, it might all just go kerblamo, but we'll see".
And a possible third point : the overall savings are hard to compare at the time. Only after a considerable period of implementation can you evaluate which method is more economical. And even if the savings were evident, this might not be terribly comforting if you were working on a project that exploded and all your work was wasted.
The article mentions cubesats at the end, which are cheap enough to dodge this scary-number threshold. I would cautiously add that, thanks to SpaceX's sequence of spectacular first-stage failures (whilst also successfully delivering the payloads to orbit, thus giving the best of both worlds), the mantra of failure as acceptable might be more acceptable. Won't work for manned missions but it might for robotic probes.
In an effort to correct the planetary science community’s impression and memory of FBC, here are some facts that changed my perception of the era.
-The Viking mission to Mars in 1976 cost $1.06 billion in real-year dollars and took 6 years to develop. The Pathfinder team was instructed to send a lander AND rover (Sojourner) to Mars in half the time and 1/14 the budget. They succeeded.
-In fact, the Pathfinder lander cost less than the life detection experiment on Viking ($220 million, inflation-adjusted). The Sojourner rover only cost $25 million.
-Leveraging new CCD detector technology, the Pathfinder team spent $7.4 million to develop a new camera while the Viking team spent $27.3 million (inflation-adjusted) on their 2 cameras (1 for each lander). New CCD detector technology allowed a significant camera mass reduction.
-All 16 FBC missions combined cost less than the Viking missions.
-Cassini required 15 years for development; combined, all 16 FBC missions took 7 years.
-Lunar Prospector, which developed very little new technology yet discovered water ice on the Moon, only cost $63 million.
An obvious counter-argument is that the FBC spacecraft may have been cheap, but they were also a lot less capable than larger spacecraft with many more instruments. True. Cost reduction happens in part by reducing capability, e.g., Pathfinder didn’t have an orbiter, and Viking did. However, FBC missions resulted in more scientific publications (a proxy for science return) per dollar spent than traditionally managed missions (Dillon and Madsen 2015). The ability of the FBC approach to increase the science return from finite funding is a missing yet critical part of the space community’s narrative about the Faster, Better, Cheaper era.
http://www.elizabethafrank.com/colliding-worlds/fbc
1) A (not wholly unjustified) belief that "failure is not an option", though in fact failure is part and parcel of research, especially risky research.
2) While missions were relatively cheap, they still required serious levels of money. Certainly, if your $10 million mission explodes this is not as bad as if your $200 million mission dies a fiery death. But who's willing even to risk $10 million ? It's a heck of a lot of money and required time invested to tell people, "well, it might all just go kerblamo, but we'll see".
And a possible third point : the overall savings are hard to compare at the time. Only after a considerable period of implementation can you evaluate which method is more economical. And even if the savings were evident, this might not be terribly comforting if you were working on a project that exploded and all your work was wasted.
The article mentions cubesats at the end, which are cheap enough to dodge this scary-number threshold. I would cautiously add that, thanks to SpaceX's sequence of spectacular first-stage failures (whilst also successfully delivering the payloads to orbit, thus giving the best of both worlds), the mantra of failure as acceptable might be more acceptable. Won't work for manned missions but it might for robotic probes.
In an effort to correct the planetary science community’s impression and memory of FBC, here are some facts that changed my perception of the era.
-The Viking mission to Mars in 1976 cost $1.06 billion in real-year dollars and took 6 years to develop. The Pathfinder team was instructed to send a lander AND rover (Sojourner) to Mars in half the time and 1/14 the budget. They succeeded.
-In fact, the Pathfinder lander cost less than the life detection experiment on Viking ($220 million, inflation-adjusted). The Sojourner rover only cost $25 million.
-Leveraging new CCD detector technology, the Pathfinder team spent $7.4 million to develop a new camera while the Viking team spent $27.3 million (inflation-adjusted) on their 2 cameras (1 for each lander). New CCD detector technology allowed a significant camera mass reduction.
-All 16 FBC missions combined cost less than the Viking missions.
-Cassini required 15 years for development; combined, all 16 FBC missions took 7 years.
-Lunar Prospector, which developed very little new technology yet discovered water ice on the Moon, only cost $63 million.
An obvious counter-argument is that the FBC spacecraft may have been cheap, but they were also a lot less capable than larger spacecraft with many more instruments. True. Cost reduction happens in part by reducing capability, e.g., Pathfinder didn’t have an orbiter, and Viking did. However, FBC missions resulted in more scientific publications (a proxy for science return) per dollar spent than traditionally managed missions (Dillon and Madsen 2015). The ability of the FBC approach to increase the science return from finite funding is a missing yet critical part of the space community’s narrative about the Faster, Better, Cheaper era.
http://www.elizabethafrank.com/colliding-worlds/fbc
By any other name
The shutdown was worth it, Trump insists, because the wall is necessary to stem the ceaseless tide of violence from the border. “The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized,”
But there’s one spike in violence that the president rarely acknowledges or even mentions, and it’s the rise in far-right terror that has accompanied his ascension to the White House.
On Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League released a report finding that attackers with ties to right-wing extremist movements killed at least 50 people in 2018. That was close to the total number of Americans killed by domestic extremists, meaning that the far right had an almost absolute monopoly on lethal terrorism in the United States last year.
_The number of fatalities is 35 percent higher than the previous year, and it marks the fourth-deadliest year for such attacks since 1970. In fact, according to the ADL, white supremacists are responsible for the majority of such attacks “almost every year.” The 2018 attacks include the one at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by a man who blamed Jews for the migrant caravan, the mass shooting at a yoga studio by an “incel” obsessed with interracial dating, and the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, carried out by a student who wished that “all the Jews were dead.”
From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists. In other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists. But they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/
But there’s one spike in violence that the president rarely acknowledges or even mentions, and it’s the rise in far-right terror that has accompanied his ascension to the White House.
On Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League released a report finding that attackers with ties to right-wing extremist movements killed at least 50 people in 2018. That was close to the total number of Americans killed by domestic extremists, meaning that the far right had an almost absolute monopoly on lethal terrorism in the United States last year.
_The number of fatalities is 35 percent higher than the previous year, and it marks the fourth-deadliest year for such attacks since 1970. In fact, according to the ADL, white supremacists are responsible for the majority of such attacks “almost every year.” The 2018 attacks include the one at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by a man who blamed Jews for the migrant caravan, the mass shooting at a yoga studio by an “incel” obsessed with interracial dating, and the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, carried out by a student who wished that “all the Jews were dead.”
From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists. In other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists. But they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/
Monday 28 January 2019
Smack not lest ye be smacked
Interesting :
Of the countries included in the study, 30 have passed laws fully banning physical punishment of children, both in schools and in homes. The rates of fighting among adolescents were substantially lower than in the 20 countries with no bans in place: by 69 percent for adolescent males and 42 percent less for females.
The other 38 countries in the study — which include the United States, Canada, and the U.K. — have partial bans, in schools only. In those countries, adolescent females showed a 56 percent lower rate of physical fighting, with no change among males.
The association held true even after accounting for such factors as the differences in the wealth of the countries and the nation's homicide rates, said Elgar. Even so, Elgar cautions, the study shows a correlation only, not a cause and effect.
"It could be that bans come into place in countries that have already generally accepted that spanking is not the best discipline method," he said, or there may be other cultural factors involved. "We haven't answered with certainty" the impact of the bans, he says, noting that more research is needed.
I propose we test this with two groups of politicians...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/10/25/660191806/what-happens-when-a-country-bans-spanking
Of the countries included in the study, 30 have passed laws fully banning physical punishment of children, both in schools and in homes. The rates of fighting among adolescents were substantially lower than in the 20 countries with no bans in place: by 69 percent for adolescent males and 42 percent less for females.
The other 38 countries in the study — which include the United States, Canada, and the U.K. — have partial bans, in schools only. In those countries, adolescent females showed a 56 percent lower rate of physical fighting, with no change among males.
The association held true even after accounting for such factors as the differences in the wealth of the countries and the nation's homicide rates, said Elgar. Even so, Elgar cautions, the study shows a correlation only, not a cause and effect.
"It could be that bans come into place in countries that have already generally accepted that spanking is not the best discipline method," he said, or there may be other cultural factors involved. "We haven't answered with certainty" the impact of the bans, he says, noting that more research is needed.
I propose we test this with two groups of politicians...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/10/25/660191806/what-happens-when-a-country-bans-spanking
Is Big Data causing a replication crisis ?
I'm a bit suspicious that any kind of "crisis" exists :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/aXz7V8xZMQn
While we can always improve on methods and statistics, the basic premise here that "lots of data => improbable events happening by chance" is not exactly obscure or difficult to guess. It's obvious as soon as you learn about Gaussian statistics or even earlier.
Suppose there are 100 ladies who cannot tell the difference between the tea, but take a guess after tasting all eight cups. There’s actually a 75.6 percent chance that at least one lady would luckily guess all of the orders correctly.
Now, if a scientist saw some lady with a surprising outcome of all correct cups and ran a statistical analysis for her with the same hypergeometric distribution above, then he might conclude that this lady had the ability to tell the difference between each cup. But this result isn’t reproducible. If the same lady did the experiment again she would very likely sort the cups wrongly – not getting as lucky as her first time – since she couldn’t really tell the difference between them.
This small example illustrates how scientists can “luckily” see interesting but spurious signals from a dataset. They may formulate hypotheses after these signals, then use the same dataset to draw the conclusions, claiming these signals are real. It may be a while before they discover that their conclusions are not reproducible. This problem is particularly common in big data analysis due to the large size of data, just by chance some spurious signals may “luckily” occur.
We do this in radio astronomy all the time. With >100 million data points per cube, the chance of getting at least one interesting-but-spurious detection is close to 1.0, especially when considering that the noise isn't perfectly Gaussian. We get around this by the simple process of doing repeat observations; I find it hard to believe that anyone is seriously unaware that correlation <> causation at this point. Charitably the article may be over-simplifying. While there are certainly plenty of weird, non-intuitive statistical effects at work, I don't believe "sheer size of data set" is causing anyone to panic.
https://theconversation.com/how-big-data-has-created-a-big-crisis-in-science-102835
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/aXz7V8xZMQn
While we can always improve on methods and statistics, the basic premise here that "lots of data => improbable events happening by chance" is not exactly obscure or difficult to guess. It's obvious as soon as you learn about Gaussian statistics or even earlier.
Suppose there are 100 ladies who cannot tell the difference between the tea, but take a guess after tasting all eight cups. There’s actually a 75.6 percent chance that at least one lady would luckily guess all of the orders correctly.
Now, if a scientist saw some lady with a surprising outcome of all correct cups and ran a statistical analysis for her with the same hypergeometric distribution above, then he might conclude that this lady had the ability to tell the difference between each cup. But this result isn’t reproducible. If the same lady did the experiment again she would very likely sort the cups wrongly – not getting as lucky as her first time – since she couldn’t really tell the difference between them.
This small example illustrates how scientists can “luckily” see interesting but spurious signals from a dataset. They may formulate hypotheses after these signals, then use the same dataset to draw the conclusions, claiming these signals are real. It may be a while before they discover that their conclusions are not reproducible. This problem is particularly common in big data analysis due to the large size of data, just by chance some spurious signals may “luckily” occur.
We do this in radio astronomy all the time. With >100 million data points per cube, the chance of getting at least one interesting-but-spurious detection is close to 1.0, especially when considering that the noise isn't perfectly Gaussian. We get around this by the simple process of doing repeat observations; I find it hard to believe that anyone is seriously unaware that correlation <> causation at this point. Charitably the article may be over-simplifying. While there are certainly plenty of weird, non-intuitive statistical effects at work, I don't believe "sheer size of data set" is causing anyone to panic.
https://theconversation.com/how-big-data-has-created-a-big-crisis-in-science-102835
These are not the sheep you're looking for
The perils of using context to define everything while understanding nothing.
Originally shared by Joerg Fliege
Our new neural network overlords say that this image has sheep in it.
It must have sheep in it, because the corresponding neural network was trained with pictures containing lush green scenery with sheeps. So every goddamn picture with some green landscape will be tagged with "sheep".
You want to imagine the future, Winston? Just think of landscape pictures, with sheep. Sheeps will be forever. Forever and ever and ever.
http://aiweirdness.com/post/171451900302/do-neural-nets-dream-of-electric-sheep
Originally shared by Joerg Fliege
Our new neural network overlords say that this image has sheep in it.
It must have sheep in it, because the corresponding neural network was trained with pictures containing lush green scenery with sheeps. So every goddamn picture with some green landscape will be tagged with "sheep".
You want to imagine the future, Winston? Just think of landscape pictures, with sheep. Sheeps will be forever. Forever and ever and ever.
http://aiweirdness.com/post/171451900302/do-neural-nets-dream-of-electric-sheep
Sunday 27 January 2019
Seeking Shackleton
A scientific expedition in the Antarctic is set to depart its current location to go in search of Sir Ernest Shackleton's lost ship. The team has been investigating the Larsen C Ice Shelf and the continent's biggest iceberg, known as A68. And this puts it just a few hundred km from the last recorded position of the famous British explorer's vessel, the Endurance. The polar steam-yacht was crushed in sea-ice and sank in November 1915.
The American geophysical survey company Ocean Infinity is part of the Weddell Sea Expedition group. It has a Kongsberg Hugin autonomous underwater vehicle that it will deploy to map a 20km by 20km grid square on the ocean floor. If it succeeds in locating the Endurance, a remotely operated vehicle will then be sent down to photograph the wreck site.
"I think that if we locate the Endurance, the greater likelihood will be that her hull is semi-upright and still in a semi-coherent state," commented marine archaeologist Mensun Bound. "However, on the evidence of the only deep-water wooden wreck I have been privileged to study, I must concede that there is every possibility that she could have been wrenched wide open by impact (with the seafloor), thus exposing her contents like a box of chocolates," he wrote on his expedition blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47000896
The American geophysical survey company Ocean Infinity is part of the Weddell Sea Expedition group. It has a Kongsberg Hugin autonomous underwater vehicle that it will deploy to map a 20km by 20km grid square on the ocean floor. If it succeeds in locating the Endurance, a remotely operated vehicle will then be sent down to photograph the wreck site.
"I think that if we locate the Endurance, the greater likelihood will be that her hull is semi-upright and still in a semi-coherent state," commented marine archaeologist Mensun Bound. "However, on the evidence of the only deep-water wooden wreck I have been privileged to study, I must concede that there is every possibility that she could have been wrenched wide open by impact (with the seafloor), thus exposing her contents like a box of chocolates," he wrote on his expedition blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47000896
Saturday 26 January 2019
Escaping poverty requires luck, not merit
Excellent. First, on on how merit isn't enough to escape poverty - it takes luck in order to acquire the necessary skills to have merit in the first place. It is not simply a matter of choice. To reiterate what I was saying recently with regards to speech : yes, you can and do make choices and bear a measure of responsibility for them. But you do not bear the whole measure, because the opportunities and choices available to you are also down, in part, to the choices and opportunities that other people have made. Without the opportunity - the necessary luck - to acquire skills, you won't get anywhere.
My escape was made up of a series of incredibly unlikely events, none of which I had real control over... At age 14, I’d had eight years of trying to teach myself using photocopied handouts, without textbooks, lesson plans, aids, or even a teacher. I was desperate to get out and terrified of winding up like the people I saw around me at the Christian compound. So, I picked up the phonebook and started dialling trade schools, colleges, anything and anyone that might give me a new option. Randomly, unexpectedly, I reached the president of the local community college, Sherry Hoppe.
At that same college, I met Bruce Cantrell, a professor who wound up being like a father figure to me while I was navigating being 15 and poor... A few years later he ran for office and made me his campaign manager. We won and I got a priceless education in the reality of Roane County bare-knuckle politics. I’ll forever be grateful to Bruce and Sherry. With their help, I ultimately got my accredited college degree.
Did I show initiative? Sure. And there have been many people who have interpreted my escape from poverty as a confirmation of some foundational meritocracy that justifies the whole system. But the fact is hillbilly country is full of people just as desperate to get out as me, and taking just as inventive a set of measures. Yes, I am the exception that proves the rule—but that rule is that escape from poverty is a matter of chance, and not a matter of merit... The narrative in the neo-liberal west is that if you work hard, things work out. If things don’t work out, we have the tendency to blame the victim, leaving them without any choices.
Second, the science of how poverty affects the brain, not only long after it's been removed, but even down through the generations. There's more to heritability than genetics.
In human children, epigenetic changes in stress receptor gene expression that lead to heightened stress responses and mood disorders have been measured in response to childhood abuse. And last year, researchers at Duke University found that “lower socioeconomic status during adolescence is associated with an increase in methylation of the proximal promoter of the serotonin transporter gene,” which primes the amygdala—the brain’s center for emotion and fear—for “threat-related amygdala reactivity.” While there may be some advantages to being primed to experience high levels of stress (learning under stress, for example, may be accelerated), the basic message of these studies is consistent: Chronic stress and uncertainty during childhood makes stress more difficult to deal with as an adult.
Studies of mice and fruit flies have shown that epigenetic traits similar to the ones Meaney proposed can be passed down, and last for dozens of generations. The effects of things like diet and prenatal parental stress have been observed to be inherited, not just through histone modifications, but also through DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs. In one 2014 study, the offspring of a mouse trained to fear a particular smell were observed to also fear that smell, even with no previous exposure to it. The effect lasted for two generations. In humans, inheritable effects of stress have been observed through at least three generations from parents who survived mass starvation (Dutch Hunger Winter), a fluctuating food supply (the Överkalix cohort) and the Holocaust.
What kind of a bootstrap or merit-based game can we be left with if poverty cripples the contestants? Especially if it has intergenerational effects? The uglier converse of the bootstrap hypothesis—that those who fail to transcend their circumstances deserve them—makes even less sense in the face of the grim biology of poverty. When the firing gun goes off, the poor are well behind the start line.
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-poverty-is-like-a-disease
My escape was made up of a series of incredibly unlikely events, none of which I had real control over... At age 14, I’d had eight years of trying to teach myself using photocopied handouts, without textbooks, lesson plans, aids, or even a teacher. I was desperate to get out and terrified of winding up like the people I saw around me at the Christian compound. So, I picked up the phonebook and started dialling trade schools, colleges, anything and anyone that might give me a new option. Randomly, unexpectedly, I reached the president of the local community college, Sherry Hoppe.
At that same college, I met Bruce Cantrell, a professor who wound up being like a father figure to me while I was navigating being 15 and poor... A few years later he ran for office and made me his campaign manager. We won and I got a priceless education in the reality of Roane County bare-knuckle politics. I’ll forever be grateful to Bruce and Sherry. With their help, I ultimately got my accredited college degree.
Did I show initiative? Sure. And there have been many people who have interpreted my escape from poverty as a confirmation of some foundational meritocracy that justifies the whole system. But the fact is hillbilly country is full of people just as desperate to get out as me, and taking just as inventive a set of measures. Yes, I am the exception that proves the rule—but that rule is that escape from poverty is a matter of chance, and not a matter of merit... The narrative in the neo-liberal west is that if you work hard, things work out. If things don’t work out, we have the tendency to blame the victim, leaving them without any choices.
Second, the science of how poverty affects the brain, not only long after it's been removed, but even down through the generations. There's more to heritability than genetics.
In human children, epigenetic changes in stress receptor gene expression that lead to heightened stress responses and mood disorders have been measured in response to childhood abuse. And last year, researchers at Duke University found that “lower socioeconomic status during adolescence is associated with an increase in methylation of the proximal promoter of the serotonin transporter gene,” which primes the amygdala—the brain’s center for emotion and fear—for “threat-related amygdala reactivity.” While there may be some advantages to being primed to experience high levels of stress (learning under stress, for example, may be accelerated), the basic message of these studies is consistent: Chronic stress and uncertainty during childhood makes stress more difficult to deal with as an adult.
Studies of mice and fruit flies have shown that epigenetic traits similar to the ones Meaney proposed can be passed down, and last for dozens of generations. The effects of things like diet and prenatal parental stress have been observed to be inherited, not just through histone modifications, but also through DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs. In one 2014 study, the offspring of a mouse trained to fear a particular smell were observed to also fear that smell, even with no previous exposure to it. The effect lasted for two generations. In humans, inheritable effects of stress have been observed through at least three generations from parents who survived mass starvation (Dutch Hunger Winter), a fluctuating food supply (the Överkalix cohort) and the Holocaust.
What kind of a bootstrap or merit-based game can we be left with if poverty cripples the contestants? Especially if it has intergenerational effects? The uglier converse of the bootstrap hypothesis—that those who fail to transcend their circumstances deserve them—makes even less sense in the face of the grim biology of poverty. When the firing gun goes off, the poor are well behind the start line.
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-poverty-is-like-a-disease
Friday 25 January 2019
The earliest technology went viral because of its simple user interface
The athletes managed to throw their replicas over distances of 65 feet [almost 20 m]. That’s a far cry from modern javelin feats—the world record for men, set in 1996, is 323.1 feet [98.4 m]. But it’s twice what many scientists thought that primitive spears were capable of. It suggests that, contrary to popular belief, early spear-makers—Neanderthals, or perhaps other ancient species like Homo heidelbergensis—could probably have hunted their prey from afar.
But Steve Churchill, an anthropologist from Duke University, notes that the javelin-throwers only hit their target a quarter of the time, and less so at the farthest distances. He’s also unclear as to how many of those “hits” would have been strong enough to, say, penetrate an animal’s hide. In his own experience (and he freely admits that he’s not a trained thrower), Schöningen replicas wobble a lot and tend to strike targets at glancing angles. They might fly far, in other words, but do they fly true? “This is a very good study,” he says, but “I don’t see a lot here to convince me that the Schöningen spears were effective long-range weapons.”
Milks counters that professional javelin-throwers go for distance, and aren’t trained to hit targets. Despite that, some of them clearly got the sense that the heavy spears behave unusually, vibrating along their axis and flexing on impact. The more experienced athletes compensated for this by putting spin on the spears. “That brought home how important it is to use skilled throwers,” Milks says. “What I really want to do now is to go to hunter-forager groups and have them show us what these spears are capable of. They use spears from age 6, which is something I can’t replicate with javelin athletes.”
Spear-throwers and bows may have given their users an edge not because they launched projectiles farther or faster, but because they could be picked up more easily, by more members of a group. As technology, they weren’t inherently superior, just more user-friendly. “That’s an idea that’s worth going forward with,” Milks says.
That's abundantly true of modern technology as well. There's not much social media can do that you can't do with other methods, it's just a hell of a lot easier.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/neanderthal-spears-threw-pretty-well/581218/
But Steve Churchill, an anthropologist from Duke University, notes that the javelin-throwers only hit their target a quarter of the time, and less so at the farthest distances. He’s also unclear as to how many of those “hits” would have been strong enough to, say, penetrate an animal’s hide. In his own experience (and he freely admits that he’s not a trained thrower), Schöningen replicas wobble a lot and tend to strike targets at glancing angles. They might fly far, in other words, but do they fly true? “This is a very good study,” he says, but “I don’t see a lot here to convince me that the Schöningen spears were effective long-range weapons.”
Milks counters that professional javelin-throwers go for distance, and aren’t trained to hit targets. Despite that, some of them clearly got the sense that the heavy spears behave unusually, vibrating along their axis and flexing on impact. The more experienced athletes compensated for this by putting spin on the spears. “That brought home how important it is to use skilled throwers,” Milks says. “What I really want to do now is to go to hunter-forager groups and have them show us what these spears are capable of. They use spears from age 6, which is something I can’t replicate with javelin athletes.”
Spear-throwers and bows may have given their users an edge not because they launched projectiles farther or faster, but because they could be picked up more easily, by more members of a group. As technology, they weren’t inherently superior, just more user-friendly. “That’s an idea that’s worth going forward with,” Milks says.
That's abundantly true of modern technology as well. There's not much social media can do that you can't do with other methods, it's just a hell of a lot easier.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/neanderthal-spears-threw-pretty-well/581218/
Plants are really good at smelling
We already knew that plants can detect odours, of course. But apparently they might be really good at it, albeit slow.
"Plants can't run away, so of course they react to odours more slowly than animals. If plants can prepare for environmental change within the same day, that is probably fast enough for them," said Touhara.
Speed is unnecessary for plants, but they may be able to recognize a much greater variety of odour molecules.
"Humans have about 400 odour receptors. Elephants have about 2,000, the largest number in animals. But based on how many transcription factor genes are in plants, plants may be able to detect many more odors than animals," said Touhara.
https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/no-nose-no-problem-scientists-discover-that-plants-can-smell-314424
"Plants can't run away, so of course they react to odours more slowly than animals. If plants can prepare for environmental change within the same day, that is probably fast enough for them," said Touhara.
Speed is unnecessary for plants, but they may be able to recognize a much greater variety of odour molecules.
"Humans have about 400 odour receptors. Elephants have about 2,000, the largest number in animals. But based on how many transcription factor genes are in plants, plants may be able to detect many more odors than animals," said Touhara.
https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/no-nose-no-problem-scientists-discover-that-plants-can-smell-314424
"We underestimate the Neanderthals", says writer who underestimates the Neanderthals
The return of phrenology, and some confusing, contradictory statements on superiority versus suitability. Interesting nonetheless.
Neanderthals are generally considered to have been a distinct human species (Homo neanderthalensis) that once inhabited a region stretching from Siberia in the east to Iberia in the west, and from Britain in the north to Iraq in the south. They first appear around 450,000 years ago and then die out as our own species starts to settle in Eurasia, after 60,000 years ago. Not everyone agrees that they were separate species.
Discoveries from genetics over the last decade or so reveal that they didn't completely go extinct. Our ancestors (to some defined as the separate species Homo sapiens), mixed with them, so that today, around 2% of the genomes of non-African people alive today is Neanderthal.
You may also have noticed some recent headlines about our Neanderthal heritage and its influence on head shape. In particular, a study found that specific DNA sequences seem to be linked to the globular shape of our skulls. Sequences linked with reduced "globularity" (a measure of roundness) are present in Neanderthals and some living people. The researchers reportedly stressed that the effects of carrying the rare Neanderthal fragments were subtle and could not be detected in a person's head shape when you met them. That was reassuring given the current rise of xenophobia and the bad press that Neanderthals have had... The suggestion in this recent paper is that skull shape may represent rearrangements in the brain that may reflect differences in the way we think and act.
And so we have consistently mistaken survival and extinction with biological superiority or inferiority. That is why we have incessantly sought differences to explain our observations. We are here and they are not and so we must seek differences to explain the data.
Of course, part of the problem is that we are participants trying to explain a story in which we are actors and that will inevitably lead to bias in our favour. Having given the Neanderthals a name, we immediately conditioned ourselves to seeing them as something else.
They were not us. They were hardly human and we were certainly superior to them. After all, we are here to tell the story. It is one of history's ultimate distortions, perhaps the greatest of them all.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46988399
Neanderthals are generally considered to have been a distinct human species (Homo neanderthalensis) that once inhabited a region stretching from Siberia in the east to Iberia in the west, and from Britain in the north to Iraq in the south. They first appear around 450,000 years ago and then die out as our own species starts to settle in Eurasia, after 60,000 years ago. Not everyone agrees that they were separate species.
Discoveries from genetics over the last decade or so reveal that they didn't completely go extinct. Our ancestors (to some defined as the separate species Homo sapiens), mixed with them, so that today, around 2% of the genomes of non-African people alive today is Neanderthal.
You may also have noticed some recent headlines about our Neanderthal heritage and its influence on head shape. In particular, a study found that specific DNA sequences seem to be linked to the globular shape of our skulls. Sequences linked with reduced "globularity" (a measure of roundness) are present in Neanderthals and some living people. The researchers reportedly stressed that the effects of carrying the rare Neanderthal fragments were subtle and could not be detected in a person's head shape when you met them. That was reassuring given the current rise of xenophobia and the bad press that Neanderthals have had... The suggestion in this recent paper is that skull shape may represent rearrangements in the brain that may reflect differences in the way we think and act.
And so we have consistently mistaken survival and extinction with biological superiority or inferiority. That is why we have incessantly sought differences to explain our observations. We are here and they are not and so we must seek differences to explain the data.
Of course, part of the problem is that we are participants trying to explain a story in which we are actors and that will inevitably lead to bias in our favour. Having given the Neanderthals a name, we immediately conditioned ourselves to seeing them as something else.
They were not us. They were hardly human and we were certainly superior to them. After all, we are here to tell the story. It is one of history's ultimate distortions, perhaps the greatest of them all.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46988399
Welsh waters host rare sharks
Scientists have found evidence that one of the world's rarest sharks is alive and well, living off the Welsh coast. Sightings from fishing boats suggest the mysterious angel shark is present in Welsh waters, although no-one knows exactly where. The shark's only established stronghold is the Canary Islands, where the animals have been filmed on the seabed.
Wales could be a key habitat for the critically endangered shark, which is from an ancient and unique family. "If we lose the angel shark, we lose a really important lineage of evolutionary history that we can't get from any other shark species," Joanna Barker, of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), told BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46972070
Wales could be a key habitat for the critically endangered shark, which is from an ancient and unique family. "If we lose the angel shark, we lose a really important lineage of evolutionary history that we can't get from any other shark species," Joanna Barker, of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), told BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46972070
Thursday 24 January 2019
If you want an out-of-touch elite, here they are.
If you want an out-of-touch elite, here they are.
Tory MP David Davis will earn £60,000 for 20 hours of work as an adviser to manufacturing company JCB. Mr Davis has also been made a board member of German manufacturing company Mansfelder Kupfer Und Messing for six months - from which he earned £36,085. The two wages are in addition to the £77,379 that Mr Davis earns as a basic salary for an MP.
MPs are not allowed to act as a "paid advocate", and have to declare their financial interests, including paid employment outside Parliament, in the Register of Members' Financial Interests - which Mr Davis has done. Cabinet members are not allowed other jobs and there are restrictions on the roles they can take up immediately after leaving office.
Since quitting his job as foreign secretary shortly after Mr Davis, Boris Johnson has received a number of large sums for jobs outside Parliament, including £94,507.85 from GoldenTree Asset Management for a two-hour speaking engagement.
I propose the current system be maintained, but any MP taking a job (or set of jobs) which earns them more than 10% of their salary in a year be immediately sentenced to community service. The number of hours to be based on how long it would take to earn their bonus at the current pay rate for that task.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46981440
Tory MP David Davis will earn £60,000 for 20 hours of work as an adviser to manufacturing company JCB. Mr Davis has also been made a board member of German manufacturing company Mansfelder Kupfer Und Messing for six months - from which he earned £36,085. The two wages are in addition to the £77,379 that Mr Davis earns as a basic salary for an MP.
MPs are not allowed to act as a "paid advocate", and have to declare their financial interests, including paid employment outside Parliament, in the Register of Members' Financial Interests - which Mr Davis has done. Cabinet members are not allowed other jobs and there are restrictions on the roles they can take up immediately after leaving office.
Since quitting his job as foreign secretary shortly after Mr Davis, Boris Johnson has received a number of large sums for jobs outside Parliament, including £94,507.85 from GoldenTree Asset Management for a two-hour speaking engagement.
I propose the current system be maintained, but any MP taking a job (or set of jobs) which earns them more than 10% of their salary in a year be immediately sentenced to community service. The number of hours to be based on how long it would take to earn their bonus at the current pay rate for that task.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46981440
Beneath the Antarctic seas
Under the Antarctic ice, in the pitch-black depths of the ocean, Australian scientists have discovered animals are evolving into strange and sometimes monstrous new shapes and forms. Life, these scientists believe, is using the frigid Antarctic waters to experiment, and animals there are evolving at a much faster pace than anywhere else in the world. And the weird creatures are riding deep-sea currents to migrate to other parts of the world.
Brittle stars look like terrifying relatives of starfish. They lack a brain or eyes, but can sense their prey in the water and swim toward it with their long, spiny arms. Some eat detritus; others use their spiked arms to catch any fish foolish enough to stray too close, pulling the fish in towards their mouths.
They found brittle stars appeared to be evolving much faster in the Antarctic than anywhere else in the world. If it is true of brittle stars, it is likely true of other species. Their dramatic finding, published in the Nature journal on Thursday, suggests there has been an explosion of life in the deep waters off Antarctica, with a new species being pumped out into the world's oceans. It upends the old assumption that evolution happens much faster in the warm tropics than the cold Antarctic.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/down-in-the-deep-beneath-the-antarctic-ice-a-new-strange-world-is-rapidly-forming-20190123-p50t2p.html
Brittle stars look like terrifying relatives of starfish. They lack a brain or eyes, but can sense their prey in the water and swim toward it with their long, spiny arms. Some eat detritus; others use their spiked arms to catch any fish foolish enough to stray too close, pulling the fish in towards their mouths.
They found brittle stars appeared to be evolving much faster in the Antarctic than anywhere else in the world. If it is true of brittle stars, it is likely true of other species. Their dramatic finding, published in the Nature journal on Thursday, suggests there has been an explosion of life in the deep waters off Antarctica, with a new species being pumped out into the world's oceans. It upends the old assumption that evolution happens much faster in the warm tropics than the cold Antarctic.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/down-in-the-deep-beneath-the-antarctic-ice-a-new-strange-world-is-rapidly-forming-20190123-p50t2p.html
Why are people like this and how can we stop them ?
I asked her if she had voted in the EU elections. She said there were no EU elections. I took out my phone and showed her there had been EU elections. She said that we weren’t allowed to vote in them. I asked her what evidence she had for that and what she thought an MEP was. She didn’t know. I asked her as politely as I could if she knew what the Schengen area was – she didn’t care – she was voting out.
On another occasion a woman in her sixties told me: “I don’t want us to join the EU.” When I explained that we already were in the EU she refused to believe me and as I impatiently set about proving otherwise – I realized that our cause was fucked. It was probably fucked anyway.
If the UK is to climb out of this insufferable mire, we need to stop treating the British public like nine year olds. Square number one on that journey is to tell them the truth. Namely, that most of them on both sides of the referendum no more understood the complexities of it than they understand Heraclitus in the original Greek.
Here's the problem. There are two competing factors :
- In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.
- In the age of information overload, ignorance is inevitable.
The second one is at least somewhat valid. Certain information - especially complex political information - is not at all easy to obtain when you have to wade through hyperpartisan sources and outright fake news in order to find it. And yet when it comes to the very basics, the first statement is much more applicable. It is trivial to find out who your MP is or what voting system is in place. The only way to remain ignorant of the absolute basics is indeed through choice, or stupendous levels of indoctrination.
Which raises two not entirely separate questions : 1) Why do people do this ? 2) What do we do about it ?
The first one is tricky. It's tempting to agree with the sentiment that if we empower people and give them more responsibility to make their own choices, then they will feel more motivated and more likely to behave responsibly; if we treat them like decent people then they should behave like decent people. And yet the sheer willful ignorance expressed here implies that there must be more to it than that : there is absolutely nothing stopping them from looking up basic information they could find in 30 seconds or less that requires zero intelligence or effort, nothing to stop them fact-checking claims and (seemingly) plenty of sources telling them not to take things at face value. So it seems that treating them as responsible doesn't mean they'll behave appropriately. Which implies the reverse of the sentiment is true - that they're being treated like idiots because they keep behaving like idiots in the first place. Only a truly, innately, irredeemably stupid person could remain ignorant in the face of so many easily available sources of basic information.
(Much, much more on the interplay between knowledge and actions and the spread of information here : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/izrupauy1it)
The second question is probably easier to answer. In the long term, cutting the available sources of misinformation will help. As far as the level of ignorance in the anecdotal examples above goes, it's hard not to share Plato's opinion that the only way to deal with such people is through deliberate manipulation rather than getting them to become better at critical thinking, a task that appears to be hopeless. So reduction of misinformation must be accompanied by emotional, persuasive rhetoric rather than trying to make them more coolly analytical. In the short term, one has to wonder why in the world such people are allowed to vote. As I've said before, some sort of fact-based quiz would probably do a lot more good than harm.
The major caveat to all this is that the extent of such profound ignorance is hard to judge. I would very much like to believe that these people are a tiny minority, but experience indicates otherwise.
https://thepinprick.com/2019/01/21/the-majority-of-british-people-dont-know-who-their-mp-is-so-how-can-they-be-expected-to-understand-brexit/
On another occasion a woman in her sixties told me: “I don’t want us to join the EU.” When I explained that we already were in the EU she refused to believe me and as I impatiently set about proving otherwise – I realized that our cause was fucked. It was probably fucked anyway.
If the UK is to climb out of this insufferable mire, we need to stop treating the British public like nine year olds. Square number one on that journey is to tell them the truth. Namely, that most of them on both sides of the referendum no more understood the complexities of it than they understand Heraclitus in the original Greek.
Here's the problem. There are two competing factors :
- In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.
- In the age of information overload, ignorance is inevitable.
The second one is at least somewhat valid. Certain information - especially complex political information - is not at all easy to obtain when you have to wade through hyperpartisan sources and outright fake news in order to find it. And yet when it comes to the very basics, the first statement is much more applicable. It is trivial to find out who your MP is or what voting system is in place. The only way to remain ignorant of the absolute basics is indeed through choice, or stupendous levels of indoctrination.
Which raises two not entirely separate questions : 1) Why do people do this ? 2) What do we do about it ?
The first one is tricky. It's tempting to agree with the sentiment that if we empower people and give them more responsibility to make their own choices, then they will feel more motivated and more likely to behave responsibly; if we treat them like decent people then they should behave like decent people. And yet the sheer willful ignorance expressed here implies that there must be more to it than that : there is absolutely nothing stopping them from looking up basic information they could find in 30 seconds or less that requires zero intelligence or effort, nothing to stop them fact-checking claims and (seemingly) plenty of sources telling them not to take things at face value. So it seems that treating them as responsible doesn't mean they'll behave appropriately. Which implies the reverse of the sentiment is true - that they're being treated like idiots because they keep behaving like idiots in the first place. Only a truly, innately, irredeemably stupid person could remain ignorant in the face of so many easily available sources of basic information.
(Much, much more on the interplay between knowledge and actions and the spread of information here : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/izrupauy1it)
The second question is probably easier to answer. In the long term, cutting the available sources of misinformation will help. As far as the level of ignorance in the anecdotal examples above goes, it's hard not to share Plato's opinion that the only way to deal with such people is through deliberate manipulation rather than getting them to become better at critical thinking, a task that appears to be hopeless. So reduction of misinformation must be accompanied by emotional, persuasive rhetoric rather than trying to make them more coolly analytical. In the short term, one has to wonder why in the world such people are allowed to vote. As I've said before, some sort of fact-based quiz would probably do a lot more good than harm.
The major caveat to all this is that the extent of such profound ignorance is hard to judge. I would very much like to believe that these people are a tiny minority, but experience indicates otherwise.
https://thepinprick.com/2019/01/21/the-majority-of-british-people-dont-know-who-their-mp-is-so-how-can-they-be-expected-to-understand-brexit/
Plumbing the icy depths
UK scientists have succeeded in cutting a 2km hole through the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to its base. It's the deepest anyone has gone in the region using a hot-water drill. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) pulled up sediment from the bottom of the hole and deployed a series of instruments. The researchers hope the project's data can help them work out how quickly the White Continent might lose its ice in a warming world.
The scientists are interested in the behaviour of Rutford because it's a pretty typical, fast-flowing, West Antarctic ice stream. Almost 300km long and 25km wide, it drains a lot of ice into the Weddell Sea. Researchers want to better understand how it all moves and to do this they need to know the nature of the sediments on which the ice is sliding and how much water might be lubricating its path to the coast.
To retrieve this information, the BAS team grabbed some sediments from the bottom of the hole and positioned instruments that can report back on the speed of the ice stream at its base. The data will be used to constrain the computer models that seek to predict future Antarctic melting under various warming scenarios.
News has arrived in the past couple of days that a second hole has now been drilled alongside the first. The desire is to drill a total of four, says team-member Dr Keith Makinson, which will enable the maximum number of instruments to be deployed. "It's not possible to put them all down a single hole," he told BBC News. "We're going for two holes at two sites. That's to look at different sediment types. There's one site where the sediments are much stiffer and harder, and the other where they're much softer. We want to look at the different properties."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46978496
The scientists are interested in the behaviour of Rutford because it's a pretty typical, fast-flowing, West Antarctic ice stream. Almost 300km long and 25km wide, it drains a lot of ice into the Weddell Sea. Researchers want to better understand how it all moves and to do this they need to know the nature of the sediments on which the ice is sliding and how much water might be lubricating its path to the coast.
To retrieve this information, the BAS team grabbed some sediments from the bottom of the hole and positioned instruments that can report back on the speed of the ice stream at its base. The data will be used to constrain the computer models that seek to predict future Antarctic melting under various warming scenarios.
News has arrived in the past couple of days that a second hole has now been drilled alongside the first. The desire is to drill a total of four, says team-member Dr Keith Makinson, which will enable the maximum number of instruments to be deployed. "It's not possible to put them all down a single hole," he told BBC News. "We're going for two holes at two sites. That's to look at different sediment types. There's one site where the sediments are much stiffer and harder, and the other where they're much softer. We want to look at the different properties."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46978496
Wednesday 23 January 2019
Shut up and choose
The problem is not just that no-one is willing to compromise, but that no-one is even willing to make a choice at all. There are options we could do, if only people would just bloody choose one. These include :
- Accept May's deal. This is already accepted by the rest of the EU and would prevent the economic cliff edge of a no deal scenario. Many of the provisions for the transition period are actually, almost unbelievably, not awful. Problem : the backstop risks contravening the Good Friday agreement and therefore raises the quite real (for evidence, see recent events) prospect of renewed terrorism in Northern Ireland. Additionally, the EU isn't willing to renegotiate it, so that, with some fairly high degree of certainty, is the best deal we're gonna get. Terrorist activity, that's the best we can hope for if we leave with a deal.
- Seek an extension on Article 50. This would give us time to decide on other options. Not unreasonable, since thus far it's been May's deal or bust (and even those who've tried to negotiate it have themselves quit because it's that shitty). The problem is that an extension requires the agreement of the other member states. Now if we can present a valid case, say, outlining how we're going to proceed and why we need more time to make the decision, this might work. It won't be easy but we could probably do it.
- Unilaterally revoke Article 50. Unlike an extension, Britain has the right to simply stop the whole process without permission from the other members. Then we stay in on current terms (which are exceedingly favourable because - God knows how - prior diplomats seem to have had some degree of negotiation skills). Of course, the Brexiteers (the hardcore - not to be confused with the 52% who voted for Brexit) won't be happy about this, but everyone else will be. Will there be riots ? Quite likely. This strategy only works long-term if we then seek to address the underlying grievances that led to Brexit, which I'm willing to bet in 99% of cases have nothing much to do with the EU at all. The EU is just a scapegoat, a victim of scaremongering and propaganda by a ludicrously unrestrained far-right press for the last few decades.
- Leave with no deal. This is the economic equivalent not of shooting ourselves in the foot but of shooting our legs off. As I understand it, this does not mean replacing the EU trade regulations we currently operate under, but renegotiating with every single other country independently. And Christ on a bike that's a stupid idea. Would this even keep the Brexiteers happy ? No, not at all. They will, after a brief euphoria, in fact be much less happy under the option they claim to prefer. Once the economic hardship kicks in still deeper, they'll keep on blaming someone else for their misfortune and we'll have a lot of angry, stupid, racist, empowered people on our hands. This is a singularly idiotic course of action.
Those, at present, are the choices we have to make. We must also decide how to make it. In principle, Parliament could do it right now, but they seem hell-bent on avoiding any actual decisions. That leaves two options :
- A general election. Sure, in principle, a brand-spanking new government could have a stronger mandate to choose which road to go down (or even open a new possibility if they were to propose one). But that would only happen if the parties were offering a different choice. Since they're singing identical tunes, the choice of government is absolutely meaningless. The Tories have done the best they can (believe it or not, it's probably unrealistic to expect a better deal than the shitty one we've ended up with). Labour say they can do better, but don't offer an iota of a clue as to what they'd do differently, or how. The only possible advantage to this would be if either side would at least say, "we need an extension on Article 50 to decide what to do next". But since they aren't even doing that, changing the particular set of lunatics in charge wouldn't get us anything much at all.
- A second referendum. This is the only option which has even the remote possibility of actually settling the issue. Realistically this should have three options : May's deal, no deal, or no Brexit. A fourth option of seeking a completely different arrangement might be possible. This would then require a third referendum as to which route we want, which probably means we'd be restricted to three options since no-one wants even more referenda. Of course, even the three-option choice could still end up leaving things as divided as ever. Complaints that it risks endless votes are not utterly baseless, but it is similarly wrong to suggest that a second vote is somehow undemocratic. If Brexit is, as has so often been shouted, truly the will of the people, then Brexiteers ought to have no qualms about testing that assertion. In order to make this work, all sides would have to agree that a second referendum - would be the end of the matter.
So even now, at this late stage, there are still sensible choices available (all of the amendments proposed are just window dressing; these are the choices we ultimately can't escape). The problem is that no-one has the courage to choose anything.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46971390
- Accept May's deal. This is already accepted by the rest of the EU and would prevent the economic cliff edge of a no deal scenario. Many of the provisions for the transition period are actually, almost unbelievably, not awful. Problem : the backstop risks contravening the Good Friday agreement and therefore raises the quite real (for evidence, see recent events) prospect of renewed terrorism in Northern Ireland. Additionally, the EU isn't willing to renegotiate it, so that, with some fairly high degree of certainty, is the best deal we're gonna get. Terrorist activity, that's the best we can hope for if we leave with a deal.
- Seek an extension on Article 50. This would give us time to decide on other options. Not unreasonable, since thus far it's been May's deal or bust (and even those who've tried to negotiate it have themselves quit because it's that shitty). The problem is that an extension requires the agreement of the other member states. Now if we can present a valid case, say, outlining how we're going to proceed and why we need more time to make the decision, this might work. It won't be easy but we could probably do it.
- Unilaterally revoke Article 50. Unlike an extension, Britain has the right to simply stop the whole process without permission from the other members. Then we stay in on current terms (which are exceedingly favourable because - God knows how - prior diplomats seem to have had some degree of negotiation skills). Of course, the Brexiteers (the hardcore - not to be confused with the 52% who voted for Brexit) won't be happy about this, but everyone else will be. Will there be riots ? Quite likely. This strategy only works long-term if we then seek to address the underlying grievances that led to Brexit, which I'm willing to bet in 99% of cases have nothing much to do with the EU at all. The EU is just a scapegoat, a victim of scaremongering and propaganda by a ludicrously unrestrained far-right press for the last few decades.
- Leave with no deal. This is the economic equivalent not of shooting ourselves in the foot but of shooting our legs off. As I understand it, this does not mean replacing the EU trade regulations we currently operate under, but renegotiating with every single other country independently. And Christ on a bike that's a stupid idea. Would this even keep the Brexiteers happy ? No, not at all. They will, after a brief euphoria, in fact be much less happy under the option they claim to prefer. Once the economic hardship kicks in still deeper, they'll keep on blaming someone else for their misfortune and we'll have a lot of angry, stupid, racist, empowered people on our hands. This is a singularly idiotic course of action.
Those, at present, are the choices we have to make. We must also decide how to make it. In principle, Parliament could do it right now, but they seem hell-bent on avoiding any actual decisions. That leaves two options :
- A general election. Sure, in principle, a brand-spanking new government could have a stronger mandate to choose which road to go down (or even open a new possibility if they were to propose one). But that would only happen if the parties were offering a different choice. Since they're singing identical tunes, the choice of government is absolutely meaningless. The Tories have done the best they can (believe it or not, it's probably unrealistic to expect a better deal than the shitty one we've ended up with). Labour say they can do better, but don't offer an iota of a clue as to what they'd do differently, or how. The only possible advantage to this would be if either side would at least say, "we need an extension on Article 50 to decide what to do next". But since they aren't even doing that, changing the particular set of lunatics in charge wouldn't get us anything much at all.
- A second referendum. This is the only option which has even the remote possibility of actually settling the issue. Realistically this should have three options : May's deal, no deal, or no Brexit. A fourth option of seeking a completely different arrangement might be possible. This would then require a third referendum as to which route we want, which probably means we'd be restricted to three options since no-one wants even more referenda. Of course, even the three-option choice could still end up leaving things as divided as ever. Complaints that it risks endless votes are not utterly baseless, but it is similarly wrong to suggest that a second vote is somehow undemocratic. If Brexit is, as has so often been shouted, truly the will of the people, then Brexiteers ought to have no qualms about testing that assertion. In order to make this work, all sides would have to agree that a second referendum - would be the end of the matter.
So even now, at this late stage, there are still sensible choices available (all of the amendments proposed are just window dressing; these are the choices we ultimately can't escape). The problem is that no-one has the courage to choose anything.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46971390
Attenborough on our future
He said that for a very long time people have viewed the natural world in opposition to the urban world. "It is not, we are all one world," he said, adding that global leaders are beginning to see that everything we do has implications. He said: "That fundamental, beautiful fact is now being recognised."
In his interview with the Duke of Cambridge, Sir David said it was "difficult to overstate" the climate change crisis. He added: "We are now so numerous, so powerful, so all pervasive, the mechanisms we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening that we can exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it. We have now to be really aware of the dangers that we are doing. And we already know that of course the plastics problem in the seas is wreaking appalling damage on marine life - the extent of which we don't yet fully know."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46957085
In his interview with the Duke of Cambridge, Sir David said it was "difficult to overstate" the climate change crisis. He added: "We are now so numerous, so powerful, so all pervasive, the mechanisms we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening that we can exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it. We have now to be really aware of the dangers that we are doing. And we already know that of course the plastics problem in the seas is wreaking appalling damage on marine life - the extent of which we don't yet fully know."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46957085
Ant construction operates without coordination
Bochynek and his team monitored colonies of leaf-cutter ants in the lab and in nature to see how fast they cleared a transit path through debris and how many ants pitched in at a given time. They also built a computer model to hypothesise a typical, randomised rate of clearance based on each ant's likelihood of encountering an obstruction by chance and then clearing it.
If the ants communicated specific commands between themselves to clear a particular blockage, the removal rates would speed up or slow down, depending on whether they were chatting it up or working together. But the opposite was true: the team found a virtually linear increase in the number of removed objects over time, something that would be "inexplicable" were the ants coordinating.
Originally shared by Joe Carter
The term "eusocial" was first introduced in 1966 by Suzanne Batra who used it to describe nesting behavior in Halictine bees. Eusociality, in a broad sense, is where some groups of individuals specialize behaviors that might be disadvantageous to the individuals or groups, but are a benefit the fitness of the whole group. These groups together act like social organs, nourishing and defending each other so that the entire community benefits.
Eusociality is the most advanced form of social organization and is the ecologically dominant role of social insects and humans. It could be called collateral altruism from a certain perspective. The entomologist, E.O. Wiilson argues that humans are eusocial because we exhibit the same kinds of specialization and corresponding group fitness, and as a result, realize the emergent benefits of such an arrangement.
From a certain perspective, eusociality is an extension same adaptive structural strategy involved in the evolution of eukaryotic cells, where various organelles operate as organs which behave on this principle of collective fitness, and the development of complex organs, each specialized unit operating under a common theme of the nourishment and defense of the whole community - some oriented primarily around nourishment (digestive system, etc.), some around defense (Immune system etc.). Eusociality coul dbe viewed as a self similar isomorph of this cooperative theme.
Our biological brethren, the ants, do certain things involving social organs that, while unconscious of the whole community, noinetheless oprtate to nourish and defend that communal whole, it seems out of the same emergent expressive group action that we do. Here's a closer look:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-ants-megaprojects.html
If the ants communicated specific commands between themselves to clear a particular blockage, the removal rates would speed up or slow down, depending on whether they were chatting it up or working together. But the opposite was true: the team found a virtually linear increase in the number of removed objects over time, something that would be "inexplicable" were the ants coordinating.
Originally shared by Joe Carter
The term "eusocial" was first introduced in 1966 by Suzanne Batra who used it to describe nesting behavior in Halictine bees. Eusociality, in a broad sense, is where some groups of individuals specialize behaviors that might be disadvantageous to the individuals or groups, but are a benefit the fitness of the whole group. These groups together act like social organs, nourishing and defending each other so that the entire community benefits.
Eusociality is the most advanced form of social organization and is the ecologically dominant role of social insects and humans. It could be called collateral altruism from a certain perspective. The entomologist, E.O. Wiilson argues that humans are eusocial because we exhibit the same kinds of specialization and corresponding group fitness, and as a result, realize the emergent benefits of such an arrangement.
From a certain perspective, eusociality is an extension same adaptive structural strategy involved in the evolution of eukaryotic cells, where various organelles operate as organs which behave on this principle of collective fitness, and the development of complex organs, each specialized unit operating under a common theme of the nourishment and defense of the whole community - some oriented primarily around nourishment (digestive system, etc.), some around defense (Immune system etc.). Eusociality coul dbe viewed as a self similar isomorph of this cooperative theme.
Our biological brethren, the ants, do certain things involving social organs that, while unconscious of the whole community, noinetheless oprtate to nourish and defend that communal whole, it seems out of the same emergent expressive group action that we do. Here's a closer look:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-ants-megaprojects.html
Conserving penguins with landmines
A new approach to conservation : landmines. Well screw you, Princess Diana ! And perhaps setting off a few more Chernobyls in selected area just for good measure. Unintended consequences indeed... Nature's pretty good at dealing with itself - it's mostly humans that are buggering everything up.
Overlaying the booming ocean is a comical honking noise coming from thousands of Magellanic penguins. One, guarding its burrow beside the path, stretches its neck up at me, then lets out an ear-splitting, wing-waggling bray of displeasure. I can see why these penguins are known locally as jackasses.
During the occupation, one of the Argentine military's first actions was to lay tens of thousands of land mines across the uncultivated countryside to slow a British counter-attack - especially a seaborne attack via the beaches around Stanley, including Yorke Bay.
Fortunately, the landmines aren't a problem for the penguins - at least, not the little Magellanics and Gentoos of Yorke Bay. "They don't seem to be heavy enough to set them off," says Esther Bertram, chief executive officer of Falklands Conservation. "Natural systems have returned to not quite a pristine state, but a state where you've reached climax communities in certain parts," says Paul Brickle, director of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute.
"The mines are horrible things, and very difficult to remove - you essentially have to get on your hands and knees to do that, remove bits of earth and dunes, and disrupt the ecosystem. There's a bit of a trade-off in thinking: what are the benefits of having them removed?" he asks.
"Falkland Islanders weren't enthused by the idea, to put it bluntly," says Barry Elsby, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly. "We would rather have left the minefields as they were. They are all clearly marked, clearly fenced. No civilian has ever been injured. We said to the British government, 'Don't spend the money here, go to some other country where they have a much greater need to free up farming land.'"
"Unfortunately," Elsby adds, "the British government have signed up to the Ottawa convention, which puts a duty on them to do this."
The deminers are facing having to dig up the entire beach, perhaps with armoured machinery, and sift it all. The idea is to do that during the winter, while the penguins are out at sea. But their habitat, and the wider ecosystem, could be entirely destroyed.
So the Falklands is facing a head-on clash between the obligation to clear mines and the imperative for environmental conservation. Meanwhile the honking jackasses behind the Yorke Bay fences are thriving, ironically because of one of the worst things humanity can do - start a war.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39821956
Overlaying the booming ocean is a comical honking noise coming from thousands of Magellanic penguins. One, guarding its burrow beside the path, stretches its neck up at me, then lets out an ear-splitting, wing-waggling bray of displeasure. I can see why these penguins are known locally as jackasses.
During the occupation, one of the Argentine military's first actions was to lay tens of thousands of land mines across the uncultivated countryside to slow a British counter-attack - especially a seaborne attack via the beaches around Stanley, including Yorke Bay.
Fortunately, the landmines aren't a problem for the penguins - at least, not the little Magellanics and Gentoos of Yorke Bay. "They don't seem to be heavy enough to set them off," says Esther Bertram, chief executive officer of Falklands Conservation. "Natural systems have returned to not quite a pristine state, but a state where you've reached climax communities in certain parts," says Paul Brickle, director of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute.
"The mines are horrible things, and very difficult to remove - you essentially have to get on your hands and knees to do that, remove bits of earth and dunes, and disrupt the ecosystem. There's a bit of a trade-off in thinking: what are the benefits of having them removed?" he asks.
"Falkland Islanders weren't enthused by the idea, to put it bluntly," says Barry Elsby, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly. "We would rather have left the minefields as they were. They are all clearly marked, clearly fenced. No civilian has ever been injured. We said to the British government, 'Don't spend the money here, go to some other country where they have a much greater need to free up farming land.'"
"Unfortunately," Elsby adds, "the British government have signed up to the Ottawa convention, which puts a duty on them to do this."
The deminers are facing having to dig up the entire beach, perhaps with armoured machinery, and sift it all. The idea is to do that during the winter, while the penguins are out at sea. But their habitat, and the wider ecosystem, could be entirely destroyed.
So the Falklands is facing a head-on clash between the obligation to clear mines and the imperative for environmental conservation. Meanwhile the honking jackasses behind the Yorke Bay fences are thriving, ironically because of one of the worst things humanity can do - start a war.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39821956
Counterspeech
The surge of support was orchestrated by an organisation called #jagärhär (#Iamhere), a Facebook group of about 75,000 people, most of them in Sweden. Fed up with the rude, confrontational nature of online conversation and the way that a few bad mouths can ruin a discussion, they have made it their business to turn bad threads good. #Jagärhär mobilises members to add positive notes on comment sections where hatred and misinformation is being spread. This, they believe, rebalances the discussion online and disrupts Facebook’s algorithm.
After #jagärhär intervened in the comment sections talking about Claeson, the tone of the conversation improved palpably. The daily Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet even began moderating comments on its Facebook page, deleting the worst examples of hate speech.
Critics call #jagärhär censorship, but Dennert and the moderators on the group are quick to emphasise that #jagärhär never comes with an agenda. They don’t tell people what to say. They simply want to defend those who are being attacked online.
Well of course they do. The kind of people who write vitriolic criticism of energy-saving light bulbs (I'm looking at you, comments section on any BBC article on said bulbs) aren't remotely capable of really understanding anything very much.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/the-swedish-online-love-army-who-battle-below-the-line-comments
After #jagärhär intervened in the comment sections talking about Claeson, the tone of the conversation improved palpably. The daily Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet even began moderating comments on its Facebook page, deleting the worst examples of hate speech.
Critics call #jagärhär censorship, but Dennert and the moderators on the group are quick to emphasise that #jagärhär never comes with an agenda. They don’t tell people what to say. They simply want to defend those who are being attacked online.
Well of course they do. The kind of people who write vitriolic criticism of energy-saving light bulbs (I'm looking at you, comments section on any BBC article on said bulbs) aren't remotely capable of really understanding anything very much.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/the-swedish-online-love-army-who-battle-below-the-line-comments
Sunday 20 January 2019
What is life ?
Under any rational analysis it becomes apparent that living systems are not different in any fundamental way from the (notionally inorganic) patterns and processes of information and energy from which biology has emerged.
Discuss.
Originally shared by Event Horizon
Life is notoriously difficult to pin down and unambiguously define. Attempts to identify a unique set of essential or universal characteristics in living systems beyond generalised dynamical and logical patterns or material tendencies has proven serially problematic. Under any rational analysis it becomes apparent that living systems are not different in any fundamental way from the (notionally inorganic) patterns and processes of information and energy from which biology has emerged. The points of difference between organic and inorganic systems are generally reducible to factors composed in various ways of an essential orientation towards self-interested material continuity. The degree to which such an orientation and bias towards self-propagation is an emergent property of the logic and grammar of physics is perhaps only in our contemporary era becoming transparently self-evident but still finds itself as a principle in search of extensive articulation and popular communication beyond a scientific or specialist community.
What at a cognitive or subjective level appears as self-interested behaviour may also be the simple aggregate behavioural or complexity in material emergence of many sub-systems and material processes which each in their own way maintain (or autonomously seek) continuity through an interdependent gestalt of activity. If self-propagation is an axiomatic bias of physics or material systems; and the complex recombinatory activity of those systems provides fertile opportunity for the emergence, cultivation and production of further iteratively refined self-propagating patterns; then all emergent activity and behaviour in material, cognitive, cultural and technological systems is in essence a fractally self-replicating pattern of this axiomatic bias towards systems self-replication.
The essence of this is that all patterns of information and energy which exist (as expressed through physics) are biased towards the self-replication and self-propagation of those same patterns; the emergence of overtly biological systems is merely a branching of this same elementary logical pivot and bias towards the self-replication and self-propagation of systems continuity. The method and morphology of systems and systemic self-replication may not always be obvious but it remains as a material fact of the expression and instantiation or manifestation of the laws of physics and an underlying mathematical logic.
Discuss.
Originally shared by Event Horizon
Life is notoriously difficult to pin down and unambiguously define. Attempts to identify a unique set of essential or universal characteristics in living systems beyond generalised dynamical and logical patterns or material tendencies has proven serially problematic. Under any rational analysis it becomes apparent that living systems are not different in any fundamental way from the (notionally inorganic) patterns and processes of information and energy from which biology has emerged. The points of difference between organic and inorganic systems are generally reducible to factors composed in various ways of an essential orientation towards self-interested material continuity. The degree to which such an orientation and bias towards self-propagation is an emergent property of the logic and grammar of physics is perhaps only in our contemporary era becoming transparently self-evident but still finds itself as a principle in search of extensive articulation and popular communication beyond a scientific or specialist community.
What at a cognitive or subjective level appears as self-interested behaviour may also be the simple aggregate behavioural or complexity in material emergence of many sub-systems and material processes which each in their own way maintain (or autonomously seek) continuity through an interdependent gestalt of activity. If self-propagation is an axiomatic bias of physics or material systems; and the complex recombinatory activity of those systems provides fertile opportunity for the emergence, cultivation and production of further iteratively refined self-propagating patterns; then all emergent activity and behaviour in material, cognitive, cultural and technological systems is in essence a fractally self-replicating pattern of this axiomatic bias towards systems self-replication.
The essence of this is that all patterns of information and energy which exist (as expressed through physics) are biased towards the self-replication and self-propagation of those same patterns; the emergence of overtly biological systems is merely a branching of this same elementary logical pivot and bias towards the self-replication and self-propagation of systems continuity. The method and morphology of systems and systemic self-replication may not always be obvious but it remains as a material fact of the expression and instantiation or manifestation of the laws of physics and an underlying mathematical logic.
Widening the definition of living systems
Originally shared by Event Horizon
Cultural, technological and information systems may be considered as living entities. These emergent dynamical systems are generally oriented in essential ways of seeking self-propagation and continuity of existential tenure through the medium of their expression. The medium of transmission for cultural, technological and information systems is the aggregate field and dynamical of humanity itself. In as much as we may prefer to consider technology, information and culture as the medium, method and tool through which we express ourselves, it is quite logically sensible to state that the inverse is equally true - that human beings are the medium, method and tool through which culture, technology and information expresses itself. An ability to think in terms of systems holistically as participating in mutually reflexive causal interdependence can initially be a difficult abstraction and conceptual bridge to cross but it also reveals itself as a powerful way to understand real world systems and processes.
It is worth considering the consequences of thinking of a living system as considered to be a much broader range of entity, artefact and system than a classically linear or semi-isolated mechanistic object or process. Through extensive analysis it should probably not be surprising if non-subjective (i.e. non-agency, non-living) systems that would traditionally be considered inorganic actually demonstrate sufficient sophistication of organisational complexity and orientation towards self-propagation that we come to see them as distributed living systems of an entirely new class of entity. Cultural, technological or information-dynamical systems considered as living yet unconscious, undirected patterns or autonomous shockwaves passing through a transmission medium allow for new ways of seeing and understanding those more familiar and intimate living systems of ourselves, our own minds and bodies.
Cultural, technological and information systems may be considered as living entities. These emergent dynamical systems are generally oriented in essential ways of seeking self-propagation and continuity of existential tenure through the medium of their expression. The medium of transmission for cultural, technological and information systems is the aggregate field and dynamical of humanity itself. In as much as we may prefer to consider technology, information and culture as the medium, method and tool through which we express ourselves, it is quite logically sensible to state that the inverse is equally true - that human beings are the medium, method and tool through which culture, technology and information expresses itself. An ability to think in terms of systems holistically as participating in mutually reflexive causal interdependence can initially be a difficult abstraction and conceptual bridge to cross but it also reveals itself as a powerful way to understand real world systems and processes.
It is worth considering the consequences of thinking of a living system as considered to be a much broader range of entity, artefact and system than a classically linear or semi-isolated mechanistic object or process. Through extensive analysis it should probably not be surprising if non-subjective (i.e. non-agency, non-living) systems that would traditionally be considered inorganic actually demonstrate sufficient sophistication of organisational complexity and orientation towards self-propagation that we come to see them as distributed living systems of an entirely new class of entity. Cultural, technological or information-dynamical systems considered as living yet unconscious, undirected patterns or autonomous shockwaves passing through a transmission medium allow for new ways of seeing and understanding those more familiar and intimate living systems of ourselves, our own minds and bodies.
Saturday 19 January 2019
Friday 18 January 2019
Censoring content : Tumblr, yer doin' it wrong
Boobs are clearly very dangerous things and banning pictures of them will lead to everyone becoming fine, virtuous citizens who are in bed by 11 with a nice glass of warm milk. Whereas hate speech in support of violent Nazis is obviously a sacred part of free expression and actually doing anything about the spread of such material would be a horribly unfair thing to do, and anyway it would definitely just backfire horribly because denying people a prominent platform definitely makes it easier for them to spread their racist shit around the place, somehow.
See : https://decoherency.blogspot.com/2018/12/controlling-information-part-iii.html
One month ago, Tumblr made the wildly unpopular decision to ban pornography and adult content from its website. The move was greeted with outrage, particularly from those who had used the site as a way to discover their own gender identity and sexuality and connect with users from similarly marginalized groups. Critics accused the site of attempting to please larger tech corporations, like Google and Verizon (which owns Tumblr), at the expense of these groups. Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio, however, maintained that the changes were made to foster a more “inclusive” community.
One group Tumblr apparently has no problem continuing to host, however, is far-right extremists, who seemingly survived much of last month’s purge unscathed. The website is currently littered with pages promoting Nazism, white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and far-right terrorism. Despite their often flagrant violation of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, these pages remain largely active and easy to find.
A search of “James Mason Siege” yields other pages glorifying neo-Nazi extremism, including downloadable neo-Nazi pamphlets and recommended literature. Pages glorifying the Turner Diaries, a far-right piece of propaganda linked to over 200 murders, are also prevalent. Type in the name of Norwegian far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik or racist mass-murderer Dylann Roof and you can easily find pages glorifying them. The search results for Roof, in particular, open up a whole new rabbit hole that, as The Daily Beast previously reported, is awash with glorification of serial killers and mass shooters.
https://thinkprogress.org/far-right-content-survived-tumblr-purge-36635e6aba4b/
See : https://decoherency.blogspot.com/2018/12/controlling-information-part-iii.html
One month ago, Tumblr made the wildly unpopular decision to ban pornography and adult content from its website. The move was greeted with outrage, particularly from those who had used the site as a way to discover their own gender identity and sexuality and connect with users from similarly marginalized groups. Critics accused the site of attempting to please larger tech corporations, like Google and Verizon (which owns Tumblr), at the expense of these groups. Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio, however, maintained that the changes were made to foster a more “inclusive” community.
One group Tumblr apparently has no problem continuing to host, however, is far-right extremists, who seemingly survived much of last month’s purge unscathed. The website is currently littered with pages promoting Nazism, white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and far-right terrorism. Despite their often flagrant violation of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, these pages remain largely active and easy to find.
A search of “James Mason Siege” yields other pages glorifying neo-Nazi extremism, including downloadable neo-Nazi pamphlets and recommended literature. Pages glorifying the Turner Diaries, a far-right piece of propaganda linked to over 200 murders, are also prevalent. Type in the name of Norwegian far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik or racist mass-murderer Dylann Roof and you can easily find pages glorifying them. The search results for Roof, in particular, open up a whole new rabbit hole that, as The Daily Beast previously reported, is awash with glorification of serial killers and mass shooters.
https://thinkprogress.org/far-right-content-survived-tumblr-purge-36635e6aba4b/
Thursday 17 January 2019
Preaching to the anti-Brexit choir
They're wonderfully ironic and all, but wouldn't it make more sense to put them in pro-Leave areas rather than strongly pro-Remain London ? This seems to be a common mistake : simply preaching to the choir, trying to strengthen existing support rather than win new converts. Making Remainers believe even more strongly won't help - what's needed is to win the other side over.
I would also suggest making them even more explicit, contrasting the then-and-now statements of the Brexiteers and pointing out how unprincipled they are. The character of the Brexiteers as over-privileged idiots needs to be exposed. People in deprived, austerity-hit areas ought to be shown the inconsistencies of those who are claiming to represent them (as well as making a more positive case for the EU, of course).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/16/billboard-campaign-reminds-voters-of-mps-brexit-promises
I would also suggest making them even more explicit, contrasting the then-and-now statements of the Brexiteers and pointing out how unprincipled they are. The character of the Brexiteers as over-privileged idiots needs to be exposed. People in deprived, austerity-hit areas ought to be shown the inconsistencies of those who are claiming to represent them (as well as making a more positive case for the EU, of course).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/16/billboard-campaign-reminds-voters-of-mps-brexit-promises
CERN's next big thing
Cern has published its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider, given the working name of Future Circular Collider (FCC). The Geneva based particle physics research centre is proposing an accelerator that is almost four times longer and ten times more powerful. The aim is to have the FCC hunting for new sub-atomic particles by 2050. It entails gradually building up to a 100km ring that is almost ten times more powerful than the LHC.
When physicists first proposed the construction of the LHC they knew that if the Standard Model was correct it would be capable of discovering the Higgs. They had hoped that it might also discover particles beyond the standard model. So far it has failed to do so. The difficulty with Cern's proposals for a larger Large Hadron Collider is that no one knows what energies will be needed to crash large hadrons together to discover the enigmatic, super particles that hold the keys to the new realm of particles.
Cern hopes that its step-by-step proposal, first using electron-positron and then electron-large hadron collisions will enable its physicists to look for the ripples created by the super particles and so enable them to determine the energies that will be needed to find the super particles.
Cern's director for accelerators and technology, Dr Frédérick Bordry, said that he did not think that £20bn was expensive for a cutting edge project, the cost of which would be spread among several international partners over 20 years. He added that spending on Cern had led to many technological benefits, such as the World Wide Web and the real benefits were yet to be realised.
"When I am asked about the benefits of the Higgs Boson, I say 'bosonics'. And when they ask me what is bosonics, I say 'I don't know'. "But if you imagine the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson in 1897, he didn't know what electronics was. But you can't imagine a world now without electronics."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46862486
When physicists first proposed the construction of the LHC they knew that if the Standard Model was correct it would be capable of discovering the Higgs. They had hoped that it might also discover particles beyond the standard model. So far it has failed to do so. The difficulty with Cern's proposals for a larger Large Hadron Collider is that no one knows what energies will be needed to crash large hadrons together to discover the enigmatic, super particles that hold the keys to the new realm of particles.
Cern hopes that its step-by-step proposal, first using electron-positron and then electron-large hadron collisions will enable its physicists to look for the ripples created by the super particles and so enable them to determine the energies that will be needed to find the super particles.
Cern's director for accelerators and technology, Dr Frédérick Bordry, said that he did not think that £20bn was expensive for a cutting edge project, the cost of which would be spread among several international partners over 20 years. He added that spending on Cern had led to many technological benefits, such as the World Wide Web and the real benefits were yet to be realised.
"When I am asked about the benefits of the Higgs Boson, I say 'bosonics'. And when they ask me what is bosonics, I say 'I don't know'. "But if you imagine the discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson in 1897, he didn't know what electronics was. But you can't imagine a world now without electronics."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46862486
The Moon potatoes are all dead
It's a metaphor for Brexit, or something.
The cotton plants that sprouted on the moon's far side aboard China's Chang'e 4 lander are dead, done in by the bitter cold of the lengthy lunar night, GBTimes reported today (Jan. 16).
But the canister apparently does not have a battery-powered heater, so the onset of the lunar night over the weekend spelled doom for the cotton sprouts, GBTimes reported. "Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside the 1-liter-capacity canister had reached minus 52 degrees Celsius [minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit] and the experiment had ended" after 212.75 hours, Andrew Jones wrote in the GBTimes story.
https://www.space.com/43025-china-moon-mission-plants-dead.html
The cotton plants that sprouted on the moon's far side aboard China's Chang'e 4 lander are dead, done in by the bitter cold of the lengthy lunar night, GBTimes reported today (Jan. 16).
But the canister apparently does not have a battery-powered heater, so the onset of the lunar night over the weekend spelled doom for the cotton sprouts, GBTimes reported. "Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside the 1-liter-capacity canister had reached minus 52 degrees Celsius [minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit] and the experiment had ended" after 212.75 hours, Andrew Jones wrote in the GBTimes story.
https://www.space.com/43025-china-moon-mission-plants-dead.html
A nice rant about the current ridiculous politics
Tom Peck gets it.
But Theresa May will go on to the end. She will defend the transparently indefensible, whatever the cost may be. And if this island, or a large part of it, were subjugated and starving... actually let’s not dwell on that bit. She is indestructible. She is the cockroach in nuclear winter. She is the algae that survives on sulphuric gas from sub-aquatic volcanoes, seven miles beneath the daylight. She is the Nokia 5210.
She has suffered the biggest defeat by any prime minister in the House of Commons history. She has thrown away her party’s parliamentary majority, and she stands singularly unable to deliver the only thing she is in office to do. But she ended the second apparently “historic” day in a row almost with a spring in her step.
Theresa May was secure. She lives to fight another day, in the style of, well, I can only think of one analogy. About 150 years ago, University College London embalmed the head of their founder, Jeremy Bentham, stuffed his body with hay, dressed it in his own clothes and put him in a glass box. He is still brought in to College Council meetings and holds voting rights.
Jeremy Corbyn did another angry, staccato attack on Theresa May’s “botched and damaging deal”. To listen to the man rise to his high conclusion is to hear The Flight of the Bumblebee played on a piano with a single key.
On the vanishingly unlikely chance he gets the general election he so craves, he still wouldn’t say what his policy on Brexit would be in that election. Only that “we are a democratic party and we would listen to the members”. The members want the second referendum you are fighting tooth and nail not to give them, Jeremy.
As Theresa May’s fate is laid bare, the wizard’s curtain behind which Jeremy Corbyn has hidden for so long is being pulled back in agonising slow motion. There’s nothing there. Just staccato anger, abstract nouns and absolutely no idea what to do.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/no-confidence-vote-theresa-may-brexit-deal-win-corbyn-debate-election-gove-watson-debate-a8731746.html
But Theresa May will go on to the end. She will defend the transparently indefensible, whatever the cost may be. And if this island, or a large part of it, were subjugated and starving... actually let’s not dwell on that bit. She is indestructible. She is the cockroach in nuclear winter. She is the algae that survives on sulphuric gas from sub-aquatic volcanoes, seven miles beneath the daylight. She is the Nokia 5210.
She has suffered the biggest defeat by any prime minister in the House of Commons history. She has thrown away her party’s parliamentary majority, and she stands singularly unable to deliver the only thing she is in office to do. But she ended the second apparently “historic” day in a row almost with a spring in her step.
Theresa May was secure. She lives to fight another day, in the style of, well, I can only think of one analogy. About 150 years ago, University College London embalmed the head of their founder, Jeremy Bentham, stuffed his body with hay, dressed it in his own clothes and put him in a glass box. He is still brought in to College Council meetings and holds voting rights.
Jeremy Corbyn did another angry, staccato attack on Theresa May’s “botched and damaging deal”. To listen to the man rise to his high conclusion is to hear The Flight of the Bumblebee played on a piano with a single key.
On the vanishingly unlikely chance he gets the general election he so craves, he still wouldn’t say what his policy on Brexit would be in that election. Only that “we are a democratic party and we would listen to the members”. The members want the second referendum you are fighting tooth and nail not to give them, Jeremy.
As Theresa May’s fate is laid bare, the wizard’s curtain behind which Jeremy Corbyn has hidden for so long is being pulled back in agonising slow motion. There’s nothing there. Just staccato anger, abstract nouns and absolutely no idea what to do.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/no-confidence-vote-theresa-may-brexit-deal-win-corbyn-debate-election-gove-watson-debate-a8731746.html
Quantifying the observable effects of Type 3 civilisations
Neat ! Weirdly the link instantly closes for me on Windows, but works under Linux.
With the Sunscreen computer program, we can also figure out what would happen if the aliens are more thrifty when building their megastructures. What would happen if they could cloak stars dimmer than a thousand Suns? Most galaxies roughly fall into two classes: blue galaxies that are still making stars, and red ones where only old stars still survive. In blue galaxies, most of the light comes from blue "dwarf" stars, and the brightest of these are the most blue. So if aliens could cloak all stars fainter than 1,000 Suns, the galaxy would appear bluer than most galaxies. In red galaxies, most of the light comes from red giants, and the brightest of these are also the reddest. Cloaking the fainter red giants makes these galaxies redder, redder than natural galaxies.
http://104.197.48.230/sunscreen/
With the Sunscreen computer program, we can also figure out what would happen if the aliens are more thrifty when building their megastructures. What would happen if they could cloak stars dimmer than a thousand Suns? Most galaxies roughly fall into two classes: blue galaxies that are still making stars, and red ones where only old stars still survive. In blue galaxies, most of the light comes from blue "dwarf" stars, and the brightest of these are the most blue. So if aliens could cloak all stars fainter than 1,000 Suns, the galaxy would appear bluer than most galaxies. In red galaxies, most of the light comes from red giants, and the brightest of these are also the reddest. Cloaking the fainter red giants makes these galaxies redder, redder than natural galaxies.
http://104.197.48.230/sunscreen/
Wednesday 16 January 2019
Poland and the Czech Republic are doing something very sensible for Brexit
Two more European Union states, Poland and the Czech Republic, have said they are preparing emergency laws to allow Britons to stay to work in their countries legally in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The Czechs say their draft law will mean the estimated 8,000 Britons living in the country are exempt from normal immigration laws until the end of the December 2020. With a 21-month exemption period, it appears to be the most generous of proposals made so far by any member state for Britons settled in the bloc.
Well that'd be nice, but...
However, it will only become effective if the UK reciprocates and guarantees the rights of about 40,000 Czech citizens living in Britain.
And who knows if that will happen ?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/15/poland-and-czech-republic-to-allow-britons-to-stay-if-uk-crashes-out-of-eu
Well that'd be nice, but...
However, it will only become effective if the UK reciprocates and guarantees the rights of about 40,000 Czech citizens living in Britain.
And who knows if that will happen ?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/15/poland-and-czech-republic-to-allow-britons-to-stay-if-uk-crashes-out-of-eu
Back to the Future shoes are now a real thing
"OK, Google, lace up all the shoes within 50 metres". Hours of fun.
Nike has launched self-lacing trainers, which fit themselves to the shape of the foot and are controlled via a smartphone. It is the latest iteration of the futuristic footwear, first referred to in the film Back to the Future Part II, and made reality by Nike in 2016. The latest version, called Nike Adapt, will cost $350 and will not require a physical button to activate the laces.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46876941
Nike has launched self-lacing trainers, which fit themselves to the shape of the foot and are controlled via a smartphone. It is the latest iteration of the futuristic footwear, first referred to in the film Back to the Future Part II, and made reality by Nike in 2016. The latest version, called Nike Adapt, will cost $350 and will not require a physical button to activate the laces.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46876941
May won't win the vote of confidence - she will just fail to lose
An accurate assessment. It's not that May will win the vote so much as it is she won't lose. It won't be a vote in favour of May - her whole administration are demonstrably useless, no-one has any confidence in them - as much as it will be against the current Labour numpties. Choosing two between sides you dislike by different amounts is not really the same as choosing between two sides you like to different degrees.
Originally shared by NewsThump
Theresa May will face a vote of no confidence in parliament this evening but is relieved the vote was called by the only MP in the houses of parliament with a lower approval rating than hers.
http://newsthump.com/2019/01/16/theresa-may-grateful-that-vote-of-no-confidence-was-called-by-only-mp-less-popular-than-she-is/
Originally shared by NewsThump
Theresa May will face a vote of no confidence in parliament this evening but is relieved the vote was called by the only MP in the houses of parliament with a lower approval rating than hers.
http://newsthump.com/2019/01/16/theresa-may-grateful-that-vote-of-no-confidence-was-called-by-only-mp-less-popular-than-she-is/
Tuesday 15 January 2019
The biggest government defeat in history
Well there we are then.
The government is defeated on its proposed Brexit deal by a majority of 230. The result of the vote is 202 in favour and 432 against. It means the prime minister has three sitting days before returning to Parliament to set out her response.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/46874049?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5c3e3626bbde15067cf7ffed%26Government+defeated+on+its+Brexit+deal%262019-01-15T19:39:30.100Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:824986cc-91aa-4d7b-89bf-8f8b9f2fd5a6&pinned_post_asset_id=5c3e3626bbde15067cf7ffed&pinned_post_type=share
The government is defeated on its proposed Brexit deal by a majority of 230. The result of the vote is 202 in favour and 432 against. It means the prime minister has three sitting days before returning to Parliament to set out her response.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/46874049?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5c3e3626bbde15067cf7ffed%26Government+defeated+on+its+Brexit+deal%262019-01-15T19:39:30.100Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:824986cc-91aa-4d7b-89bf-8f8b9f2fd5a6&pinned_post_asset_id=5c3e3626bbde15067cf7ffed&pinned_post_type=share
Potatoes on the Moon !
Seeds taken up to the Moon by China's Chang'e-4 mission have sprouted, says China National Space Administration. It marks the first time any biological matter has grown on the Moon, and is being seen as a significant step towards long-term space exploration.
Plants have been grown on the International Space Station before but never on the Moon. The Chinese Moon lander was carrying among its cargo soil containing cotton and potato seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs. The plants are in a sealed container on board the lander. The crops will try to form a mini biosphere - an artificial, self-sustaining environment.
The lunar mini biosphere experiment on the Chang'e-4 lander is designed to test photosynthesis and respiration - processes in living organisms that result in the production of energy. The whole experiment is contained within an 18cm tall, 3kg canister that was designed by 28 Chinese universities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46873526
Plants have been grown on the International Space Station before but never on the Moon. The Chinese Moon lander was carrying among its cargo soil containing cotton and potato seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs. The plants are in a sealed container on board the lander. The crops will try to form a mini biosphere - an artificial, self-sustaining environment.
The lunar mini biosphere experiment on the Chang'e-4 lander is designed to test photosynthesis and respiration - processes in living organisms that result in the production of energy. The whole experiment is contained within an 18cm tall, 3kg canister that was designed by 28 Chinese universities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46873526
ALMA discovers a star with a polar disc
Binary stars are very common throughout the galaxy, but HD 98000 has a little something extra that made astronomers take special note. As observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), its protoplanetary disk doesn’t occupy the same plane as the binary orbit; it’s been flipped by 90 degrees over the orbital plane of the binary pair. Although such systems have been long believed to be theoretically possible, this is the first example that has been found.
Should there be a planetary body orbiting the stars on the inner edge of the disk, an observer would be met with a dramatic pillar of gas and dust towering into space with the two stars either side of it in the distance. As they orbit one another, the planetary observer would see them switch positions to either side of the pillar. It goes without saying that any planet orbiting two stars would have very different seasons than Earth. It will even have two different shadows cast across the surface.
http://astroengine.com/2019/01/14/this-weird-star-system-is-flipping-awesome/
Should there be a planetary body orbiting the stars on the inner edge of the disk, an observer would be met with a dramatic pillar of gas and dust towering into space with the two stars either side of it in the distance. As they orbit one another, the planetary observer would see them switch positions to either side of the pillar. It goes without saying that any planet orbiting two stars would have very different seasons than Earth. It will even have two different shadows cast across the surface.
http://astroengine.com/2019/01/14/this-weird-star-system-is-flipping-awesome/
Gamers are gonna get fit
Gamers are about the become the fittest group of people on the planet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-46865515/ces-2019-virtual-reality-shoes-are-exhausting-to-use
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-46865515/ces-2019-virtual-reality-shoes-are-exhausting-to-use
Monday 14 January 2019
May's hypocrisy in voting against the results of previous referenda
HAH !
In the original version of the speech given at a factory in Stoke-on-Trent before Tuesday’s Brexit vote in the Commons, the prime minister was due to say that the result of the narrowly won 1997 referendum to create a Welsh assembly was “accepted by both sides” and that the legitimacy of the vote was never questioned. But when the relevant bill was put to the Commons after the Welsh referendum, many Tory MPs, including the then newly elected May, voted against it.
More uncomfortable still for May’s arguments against a second EU referendum, the Conservatives went into the 2005 general election with a manifesto pledging a new vote for the people on Wales, to include an option to abolish the assembly.
The 2005 Conservative manifesto, under which May stood for re-election, with Michael Howard as party leader, stated: “In Wales we will work with the assembly and give the Welsh people a referendum on whether to keep the assembly in its current form, increase its powers or abolish it.”
Commentators noted that May and many other Conservatives also voted against the creation of a Scottish devolved assembly in 1997, despite the referendum on this being won by 74% to 26%.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/14/theresa-may-claim-that-all-parties-accepted-welsh-devolution-questioned
In the original version of the speech given at a factory in Stoke-on-Trent before Tuesday’s Brexit vote in the Commons, the prime minister was due to say that the result of the narrowly won 1997 referendum to create a Welsh assembly was “accepted by both sides” and that the legitimacy of the vote was never questioned. But when the relevant bill was put to the Commons after the Welsh referendum, many Tory MPs, including the then newly elected May, voted against it.
More uncomfortable still for May’s arguments against a second EU referendum, the Conservatives went into the 2005 general election with a manifesto pledging a new vote for the people on Wales, to include an option to abolish the assembly.
The 2005 Conservative manifesto, under which May stood for re-election, with Michael Howard as party leader, stated: “In Wales we will work with the assembly and give the Welsh people a referendum on whether to keep the assembly in its current form, increase its powers or abolish it.”
Commentators noted that May and many other Conservatives also voted against the creation of a Scottish devolved assembly in 1997, despite the referendum on this being won by 74% to 26%.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/14/theresa-may-claim-that-all-parties-accepted-welsh-devolution-questioned
Using Voyager 1 to search for tiny black holes
Cool use of old tech to test modern theories. When Voyager I was launched, dark matter wasn't even a thing - much less dark matter made of tiny black holes.
Tiny black holes weighing 10 billion metric tons should be hot enough to radiate electrons and positrons. Earth-bound detectors would not be able to spot those low-energy particles, as they would be deflected by the sun’s magnetic field. But Voyager 1 should be able to spot them from its position outside the sun’s magnetic bubble, the heliosphere.
In fact, since it exited the heliosphere in 2012, Voyager 1 has measured a small, consistent flux of positrons and electrons. But even if they all come from tiny black holes, there wouldn’t be enough black holes to account for more than 1% of the Milky Way’s dark matter, Boudaud and Cirelli calculate. Cummings says the energy spectrum of the particles suggests they all come from more mundane sources such as the remnants of supernova explosions.
Kudos on the legitimate description of exploding stars as "mundane".
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03075
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/aging-voyager-1-spacecraft-undermines-idea-dark-matter-tiny-black-holes
Tiny black holes weighing 10 billion metric tons should be hot enough to radiate electrons and positrons. Earth-bound detectors would not be able to spot those low-energy particles, as they would be deflected by the sun’s magnetic field. But Voyager 1 should be able to spot them from its position outside the sun’s magnetic bubble, the heliosphere.
In fact, since it exited the heliosphere in 2012, Voyager 1 has measured a small, consistent flux of positrons and electrons. But even if they all come from tiny black holes, there wouldn’t be enough black holes to account for more than 1% of the Milky Way’s dark matter, Boudaud and Cirelli calculate. Cummings says the energy spectrum of the particles suggests they all come from more mundane sources such as the remnants of supernova explosions.
Kudos on the legitimate description of exploding stars as "mundane".
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03075
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/aging-voyager-1-spacecraft-undermines-idea-dark-matter-tiny-black-holes
"That's just not good enough", says the Petitions Committee
An interesting update to the petition calling for a second referendum if the withdrawal bill is rejected. The government initially responded with "no". The update reads :
The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) met recently and considered the Government’s response to this petition. They felt that the response did not directly address the request of petition and have therefore written back to the Government to ask them to provide a revised response.
When the Committee have received a revised response from the Government, this will be published on the website and you will receive an email. If you would not like to receive further updates about this petition, you can unsubscribe below.
Unfortunately I hit the unsubscribe button by mistake. Of course, by tomorrow evening this may be obsolete anyway.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/232984
The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) met recently and considered the Government’s response to this petition. They felt that the response did not directly address the request of petition and have therefore written back to the Government to ask them to provide a revised response.
When the Committee have received a revised response from the Government, this will be published on the website and you will receive an email. If you would not like to receive further updates about this petition, you can unsubscribe below.
Unfortunately I hit the unsubscribe button by mistake. Of course, by tomorrow evening this may be obsolete anyway.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/232984
May finally responds to the suggestion of a second vote, though very badly
Only now, at the 11th hour, does May finally give meaningful responses to criticism of not abiding the result of the referendum. It too her two years, but she finally said something other than "we're leaving". Amazeballs.
Mrs May will say: "I ask MPs to consider the consequences of their actions on the faith of the British people in our democracy. Imagine if an anti-devolution House of Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule them. Or else force them to vote again."
Well obviously Owain Glyndwr would rise from his long slumber under the mountains, raise an army of zombie longbowmen and drive the English oppressors back into the sea shouting, "Farwolaeth i'r saesneg !". Or not, because it's Wales and no-one cares. We'd probably have had about 15 people chanting around Cardiff Castle and then six months later everyone would have forgotten the whole thing.
She is to give the example of the Welsh devolution referendum in 1997, when people voted by a margin of 0.3% to create the Welsh Assembly, arguing: "That result was accepted by both sides and the popular legitimacy of that institution has never seriously been questioned. Parliament understood this fact when it voted overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50. And both major parties did so too when they stood on election manifestos in 2017 that pledged to honour the result of the referendum."
The problem is that purpose of the vote matters. Creating a new political institution isn't really comparable to severing economic and political ties with the EU. And with the devolution referenda we knew roughly what we were getting : more politicians and about the same amount of money (barely distinguishable from the then status quo); it was obvious to anyone that the worst-case scenario couldn't possibly be unbearably awful. No such knowledge is possible with Brexit. How people respond does depend on how Parliament acts, but there's more to it than that.
[I would add that this result was so marginal, would anyone really have questioned the need for a second vote ? In the case of a thumping win then sure, repeated votes could certainly be seen as undemocratic. But if the result is marginal, that clearly indicates uncertainty, so further votes should not be unexpected. Of course it's a difficult question as to where precisely one draws the line, but that's exactly what politicians are supposed to deal with.]
"What if we found ourselves in a situation where Parliament tried to take the UK out of the EU in opposition to a remain vote?"
There's pretty decent evidence that that's exactly what's happening (in the sense of opinion polls showing a preference to remain). Yes, there are hardcore leavers. But hardcore racists will be unhappy come what may (pun intended). Indeed we've already seen the Brexit vote enabling a surge in hate crimes, albeit a brief one. Better to keep the country economically afloat than risk a bunch of racists who suddenly find their stomachs are now half-full.
There isn't any easy path ahead though : if we do stay, we still have to find a way to appease the people who wanted to leave. The referendum told us nothing about the relative strength of feeling on both sides (though the 27% of the electorate who didn't vote suggests at least some degree of apathy).
So we have to deal with the hardcore Brexiteers, Remainers, and the (somewhat) apathetic middle. If we leave, the hardcore Brexiteers will never be happy because now they'll be worse off, and it's unlikely the moderates will stay moderate in that situation. If we stay, the Brexiteers will be even more unhappy but the Remainers will be much happier. I see no reason, however, that in that situation the moderates will stay anything other than moderates. Parliament saying, "we're staying" doesn't have to - and shouldn't - be the same as saying, "Fuck y'all ya bunch of bastards". What it ought to be doing is recognising the damage austerity is doing and rectifying it.
I wish the divorce analogy that's sometimes used was more apt. Then we could have a trial separation : six months of hard Brexit to see what it's like without all the benefits of membership. That'd learn 'em.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46856149
Mrs May will say: "I ask MPs to consider the consequences of their actions on the faith of the British people in our democracy. Imagine if an anti-devolution House of Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule them. Or else force them to vote again."
Well obviously Owain Glyndwr would rise from his long slumber under the mountains, raise an army of zombie longbowmen and drive the English oppressors back into the sea shouting, "Farwolaeth i'r saesneg !". Or not, because it's Wales and no-one cares. We'd probably have had about 15 people chanting around Cardiff Castle and then six months later everyone would have forgotten the whole thing.
She is to give the example of the Welsh devolution referendum in 1997, when people voted by a margin of 0.3% to create the Welsh Assembly, arguing: "That result was accepted by both sides and the popular legitimacy of that institution has never seriously been questioned. Parliament understood this fact when it voted overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50. And both major parties did so too when they stood on election manifestos in 2017 that pledged to honour the result of the referendum."
The problem is that purpose of the vote matters. Creating a new political institution isn't really comparable to severing economic and political ties with the EU. And with the devolution referenda we knew roughly what we were getting : more politicians and about the same amount of money (barely distinguishable from the then status quo); it was obvious to anyone that the worst-case scenario couldn't possibly be unbearably awful. No such knowledge is possible with Brexit. How people respond does depend on how Parliament acts, but there's more to it than that.
[I would add that this result was so marginal, would anyone really have questioned the need for a second vote ? In the case of a thumping win then sure, repeated votes could certainly be seen as undemocratic. But if the result is marginal, that clearly indicates uncertainty, so further votes should not be unexpected. Of course it's a difficult question as to where precisely one draws the line, but that's exactly what politicians are supposed to deal with.]
"What if we found ourselves in a situation where Parliament tried to take the UK out of the EU in opposition to a remain vote?"
There's pretty decent evidence that that's exactly what's happening (in the sense of opinion polls showing a preference to remain). Yes, there are hardcore leavers. But hardcore racists will be unhappy come what may (pun intended). Indeed we've already seen the Brexit vote enabling a surge in hate crimes, albeit a brief one. Better to keep the country economically afloat than risk a bunch of racists who suddenly find their stomachs are now half-full.
There isn't any easy path ahead though : if we do stay, we still have to find a way to appease the people who wanted to leave. The referendum told us nothing about the relative strength of feeling on both sides (though the 27% of the electorate who didn't vote suggests at least some degree of apathy).
So we have to deal with the hardcore Brexiteers, Remainers, and the (somewhat) apathetic middle. If we leave, the hardcore Brexiteers will never be happy because now they'll be worse off, and it's unlikely the moderates will stay moderate in that situation. If we stay, the Brexiteers will be even more unhappy but the Remainers will be much happier. I see no reason, however, that in that situation the moderates will stay anything other than moderates. Parliament saying, "we're staying" doesn't have to - and shouldn't - be the same as saying, "Fuck y'all ya bunch of bastards". What it ought to be doing is recognising the damage austerity is doing and rectifying it.
I wish the divorce analogy that's sometimes used was more apt. Then we could have a trial separation : six months of hard Brexit to see what it's like without all the benefits of membership. That'd learn 'em.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46856149
The multi-generational migration of the dragonfly
Between February and March, the first generation of dragonflies emerges from ponds and lakes in the southern United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. Then those resilient first-gen bugs travel hundreds of miles north as, making it to New England or the upper Midwest by May. When they get there, they’ll lay their eggs and die.
The lives of the next generation are just as incredible. While some of those second generation insects will hang out and overwinter in ponds and lakes in the north during their nymph stage, many will reach maturity and head south between July and October.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dragonfly-undertakes-epic-multi-generational-migration-each-year-180971190/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia
The lives of the next generation are just as incredible. While some of those second generation insects will hang out and overwinter in ponds and lakes in the north during their nymph stage, many will reach maturity and head south between July and October.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dragonfly-undertakes-epic-multi-generational-migration-each-year-180971190/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia
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