Turkeys are turning to Satan

These are the end times.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/turkeys-circle-dead-cat-viral-video/

Everything that's wrong with the Daily Mail, in one headline

This encapsulates pretty much everything that's wrong with the Daily Fail rather nicely. Headline is from October 2016. The original article is as ludicrous as piece of political jingoism as you'll find anywhere; about it's only saving grace is that it's clearly labelled as a "comment", i.e. an opinion. Still, there's far too much in the "article" to go through, so let's concentrate on the headline.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3833496/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Whingeing-Contemptuous-Unpatriotic-Damn-Bremoaners-plot-subvert-British-people.html

1) "Damn". Off to a good start by instantly attacking anyone who holds a certain view. Yes, let's make enemies and foster hatred. Curses be upon you ! How marvellous !
2) "Unpatriotic". What utter bollocks. I love my country; I see Brexit as a means to causing it severe harm. Even supposing that I'm wrong, how does campaigning to stop such a course of action make me unpatriotic ? Is it, perhaps, because I don't see that loving one's country means hating other countries too ? Hmm, I wonder...
3) "Bremoaners". Yes, I'm moaning - see reason 2. It's rather a lot more than moaning, given the scale of the problem. And as per reason 1, oh yes, attack the people not the ideas - great to see this coming for a national newspaper.
4) A "plot" you say ? Ooohhhh, delicious irony. This from a paper which is little more than propaganda.
5) "Subvert" ? Yes, alright, I'll give you that one. I do want to overturn the results of the vote, using every legal means and these pesky things called "facts".
6) "The will of the British people" (which is even "emphatic" according to the article). Hahah, very droll. The voting question asked about leaving the EU. Nothing else. To infer anything else and insist that you know what that vote means - i.e. get out of the EU at any cost, as the article flagrantly does - is anti-democratic. Not to mention that the Leave vote is 37% of the electorate (27% of the population), wasn't legally binding, most other polls showed a different result, and voters are able to do this crazy thing called, "thinking" which some have it "is just a fancy word for changing your mind".

Good grief.

https://twitter.com/nickreeves9876/status/837238174812340224?s=09

Do SpaceX actually have a re-usable rocket or not ?

In terms of any large project it's better to think of "guidelines" rather than "deadlines". I don't think anyone takes the 2018 target as likely.

But SpaceX are beginning to worry me more and more. Yes, they've successfully developed (almost) routine cargo deliveries to the ISS. Yes, they've developed a rocket which can fly back to Earth and land vertically. That's very impressive indeed. But that rocket has yet to be re-used, despite repeated claims that it's ready to do so and that static ground tests have confirmed that. If that's the case, why wait so long ? Launch the bloody thing already. There's absolutely no point in a re-usable rocket if you don't re-use it. Worse, if all that investment in clever technology doesn't actually get you a faster turnaround between launches, or cut your overall costs significantly, then reusability begins to look like fool's gold. And their latest scheme is dramatic and inspiring, right enough, but... tourists around the Moon ? Before having launched any astronauts at all ? Come on.

I wouldn't say I'm skeptical just yet, but I'm definitely worried.

On Monday, SpaceX announced plans to send two space tourists around the Moon next year. The audacious, week-long flight would take place using a Falcon Heavy rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft and be the first time humans have been beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.

Some media outlets have compared the mission to Apollo 8, humanity's first crewed mission to lunar space, which happened in 1968. In terms of traveling to a vantage point where Earth is a small blue-and-white orb dangling in darkness of space, that's certainly true. Apollo 8, however, slowed down and entered orbit, whereas the Crew Dragon would use a "free-return" trajectory, whipping around the far side of the Moon to slingshot back toward Earth.

A more accurate mission comparison, therefore, is Apollo 13.

It's hard to say whether these two SpaceX customers could work themselves out of an Apollo 13-esque crisis. They have asked not to be identified; all we can really say about them is that they must have a lot of money. SpaceX isn't saying how much the duo will pay for tickets, but some available cost comparisons include the amount tourists have paid to fly on Russian rockets (at least $20 million), the average cost of a SpaceX or Boeing seat to ship an astronaut to the ISS ($58 million, according to one report), and the amount NASA currently pays Russia for Soyuz seats ($80 million).

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2017/20170302-spacex-tourists-2018.html

Why Arecibo's radar is important

I was asked to distribute this, so I will.

To prevent over-publication, give papers better labels

Here's my naive and simple idea as to how to reform peer review so as to reduce the "publish or perish" culture without stifling ideas, increase reproducibility of studies and generally make the world a nicer place without spending any money. I guess this one isn't particularly timely - it's been sat in the draft folder for quite a while. I've mentioned this before; I really just wanted to have a slightly more fully-developed and permanent record.

With fierce competition for jobs, it's inevitable that employers resort to using very simple methods to assess candidates : largely publication rate, hence the "publish or perish" guideline. Hence the obvious tactic : publish lots of mediocre papers. And a publication is a publication. There's no way to judge by glancing at a C.V. whether that research was really top-grade or just plain mediocre. But what if there was ?

What I'm proposing is that we try and label the papers as a guideline by which employers can quickly assess performance based on something more than sheer number of publications. I say "label" rather than "grade" because this can be a complex non-linear system. It might, for instance, be useful to label papers according to content. Most regular journals already have a main journal plus a "letters" section which publishes much shorter, timely articles. Why not extend this further ? Instead of just MNRAS Letters, also have MNRAS Observational Catalogues, MNRAS Numerical Simulations, MNRAS Serendipitous Discoveries, MNRAS Data Mining, MNRAS Clickbait, MNRAS Essays, MNRAS Breakthroughs, MNRAS Replication Studies, MNRAS Things I Just Thought Up Off The Top Of My Head While I Was On The Toilet, MNRAS Things Some Bloke In A Pub Said Last Tuesday, etc.

Papers could be labelled not only by content but also review rigour - not to be confused with research quality, because that's not the same thing. Indeed this might be necessary under the new system. If more complex papers are to be seen as more valuable, they'll need more careful review. All levels of peer review are going to need some basic guidelines, which will require some thinking about what we want journal-based peer review to actually mean. Currently, reviewers are given a free hand to request whatever changes they like.

For instance, the lowest level of review (for an "essay" paper, maybe) might be a single referee doing a check to make sure there are no internal inconsistencies, known problems with the methodology, factual errors etc. For the highest level, there might be three or more independent reviewers checking everything with a fine-toothed comb, and they'd be expected to check everything.

Replication studies are a time-consuming procedure, with a high potential just to confirm the previous findings and not learn anything new.One way to offset this would be to award replication studies an extra level of prestige : insist that these studies be subject to the highest level of review possible. Getting such a paper accepted would be a real challenge and recognised as such. So there would be a motivational balance of glory on the one hand, difficulty and low likelihood of new discoveries on the other. A successful replication study could also have a transformative effect on the original paper, changing it from a merely interesting result to one that deserves strong attention. That in turn encourages everyone to publish research which can be replicated in the first place.

This Is Not The Crisis You're Looking For

There's no such thing as perfect research. Consequently there's no perfect way to review research either. Yet there seems to be no shortage of " peer review scandal" articles which, taken out of context, can give the erroneous impression that we're in the middle of some sort of crisis.

No commenting unless you take this short quiz

This is an interesting idea which should probably be extended to elections as well. Every time there's a vote you have to take a short quiz with a mixture of questions about the issue in hand but also general politics. That way your vote would not only be informed but it would be hard to cheat by cramming for that specific issue. But of course that would go against democracy because will of the people idiots blah blah blah.... .

The tech section of its site, NRKBeta, is trying a simple experiment. You can't leave a comment unless you've read the story. How will they know? There's a test! "If you spend 15 seconds on it, those are maybe 15 seconds that take the edge off the rant mode when people are commenting," suggested the site's editor, Marius Arneson, in Nieman Lab's interview.

It's only being trialled on a small number of stories at the moment - typically tech stories that have broken out into the main news agenda. The quizzes are written by the reporters, and the questions aren't too taxing, just enough to show you've at least glanced at the text before rushing to the bottom. "We thought we should do our part to try and make sure that people are on the same page before they comment," said Stale Grut, one of the site's journalists.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39137193

Scientists must be given trust, not authority

Experts cannot compel civic engagement, and they must accept that their advice, which might seem obvious and right to them, will not always be taken in a democracy that may not value the same things they do. The job of mediating those values and policies lies with elected officials, not with scientists or other experts. The knowers cannot—and in a constitutional republic, should not—be the deciders.

At the same time, experts cannot withdraw from a public arena increasingly controlled by opportunistic demagogues who seek to discredit empiricism and rationality. Instead, the expert community must help to lead laypeople, who find the modern world intimidating and even frightening, back along the road to a better day when the citizens of the United States valued scientists and other professionals as essential parts of the American story. Experts must continue, as citizens, to advocate for those things they believe to be in the public interest, but the most important role they can play is defend a stark but empathetic insistence on science and reason as the foundation for public policy.

Indeed. But this will not help much unless experts advice is generally considered trustworthy : that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for following expert advice. Which in turn depends on how that information is communicated and disseminated :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/09/would-i-lie-to-you.html

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-does-the-public-rsquo-s-view-of-science-go-so-wrong/

The BBC is not happy about fake news

Speech must be regulated. Be that by law or otherwise, you cannot have totally unrestricted speech. That is simply utter, self-destructive, almost psychopathic madness.

The article is best read in its entirety.

When I checked Google, the first result – given special prominence in a box at the top of the page – informed me that the first black president was a man called John Hanson in 1781. Apparently, the US has had seven black presidents, including Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower. Other search engines do little better. The top results on Yahoo and Bing pointed me to articles about Hanson as well. Welcome to the world of “alternative facts”.

In some ways, it’s a challenge that trumps all others. Without a common starting point – a set of facts that people with otherwise different viewpoints can agree on – it will be hard to address any of the problems that the world now faces.

Working out who to trust and who not to believe has been a facet of human life since our ancestors began living in complex societies. Politics has always bred those who will mislead to get ahead. But the difference today is how we get our information. “The internet has made it possible for many voices to be heard that could not make it through the bottleneck that controlled what would be distributed before,” says Paul Resnick, professor of information at the University of Michigan. 

[And of course part of that information is truth suppressed by authorities for various reasons, some of them even halfway decent. Some of it is truth that is not suppressed but simply not widely disseminated through mainstream channels. But a very great portion is not truth at all : it is outright lies, bullshit, and claims about how untrustworthy the mainstream is and how you should only believe this one lunatic who can see the future by shaking a monkey's testicles or something.]

We need a new way to decide what is trustworthy. “I think it is going to be not figuring out what to believe but who to believe,” says Resnick. “It is going to come down to the reputations of the sources of the information. They don’t have to be the ones we had in the past.”


We’re seeing that shift already. The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper has been a trusted source of news for many people for decades. But last month editors of Wikipedia voted to stop using the Daily Mail as a source for information on the basis that it was “generally unreliable”.

“The major new challenge in reporting news is the new shape of truth,” says Kevin Kelly, a technology author and co-founder of Wired magazine. “Truth is no longer dictated by authorities, but is networked by peers. For every fact there is a counterfact. All those counterfacts and facts look identical online, which is confusing to most people.”

 “For the rumours we looked at, the number of followers of people who tweeted the rumour was much larger than the number of followers of those who corrected it,” he says. “The audiences were also largely disjointed. Even when a correction reached a lot of people and a rumour reached a lot of people, they were usually not the same people. The problem is, corrections do not spread very well.”

“We got a lot of feedback that people did not want to be told what was true or not,” he says. “At the heart of what they want, was actually the ability to see all sides and make the decision for themselves. A major issue most people face without knowing it is the bubble they live in. If they were shown views outside that bubble they would be much more open to talking about them.”

“By suggesting things to people that are outside their comfort zone but not so far outside they would never look at it you can keep people from self-radicalising in these bubbles,” says Lewandowsky. “That sort of technological solution is one good way forward. I think we have to work on that.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170301-lies-propaganda-and-fake-news-a-grand-challenge-of-our-age

Name that planet !

NASA Asks Twitter Users To Name Those Newly Discovered Planets. The Inevitable Happens.

My favourites :

This one
That one
The other one
No, that one
More to the left
To my left
Oh, forget it.


http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwu8qMuTQ

Give cash, not aid - let people decide for themselves what they need

People generally use it to buy things they need and their lives get better. Simple, really.

What is the best way of ensuring aid money is used effectively and efficiently? In Kenya, charities are experimenting with direct cash transfers, allowing individual recipients to spend the money on whatever they like. Some cash comes with conditions - allowing the bearer to buy only certain things for example, but there's a surge of support for unconditional direct cash transfers, because the research shows it can be incredibly effective.

Emily Aeino Otieno's new tin roof not only helps her collect runoff water when it rains, but it saves her the money she was using to repair thatch twice a year. "I'm happy because I'm not using any more money on my roof," she said. "I can use that money to buy my clothes, food, pay school fees and other expenses." And she also has a little business buying cooking fat in bulk and selling it off in small packets.

In the UK, there has been criticism of government aid payments - especially in relation to direct cash transfers - with suggestions people would waste it or abuse the system. "There is no evidence that recipients of cash transfers are using this cash on goods such as alcohol or tobacco," said Ms Bastagli from the Overseas Development Institute. "There's a common claim that cash transfers can make people lazy or make them work less, but there's no evidence to suggest cash transfers lead to a reduction in people working."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39038402