An early and spectacular attempt to measure parallax

Then came the Monument. It was supposed to be a grand acknowledgement of the fire, but at the time, “what Hooke really wanted was to build a very long telescope” says Maria Zack, a mathematician at Nazarene University, California. In the end, he decided to combine both.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London consists of a towering, 202-foot (61-metre) stone column, decorated with dragons and topped with a flaming golden orb. On the inside, a striking spiral staircase stretches all the way to the top, twisting up like the peel of an apple carved in a single, continuous ribbon.

Back in the 17th Century, scientists were still arguing about whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or the other way around. Like all rational people today, Hooke was thoroughly convinced by the latter. But no one could prove it. In theory, it should have been easy, thanks to “astronomical parallax”, an apparent shift in the position of one object, against a backdrop of another.

If the Earth changes its position relative to the stars, while circling the Sun – then they should appear to jump from one place to another over the course of a year.

The catch is just how tiny these movements are. Take Gamma Draconis, a giant orange-coloured star around 900 trillion miles (1.4 quadrillion km) away. Instead of measuring the movement of objects in the sky, from planets to satellites, in metres or inches, astronomers divide up the heavens like the face of an imaginary clock. Every six months, the star moves north or south in the sky at a scale equivalent to the hands moving 22 ten-thousandths of a second. To magnify parallax enough to see it, you need a very large telescope indeed.

“He was trying to keep the two lenses aligned, 200ft apart, with only limited ways to anchor them to the telescope,” says Zack. Worse still, the Monument is next to Fish Street Hill, which was the main route to London Bridge at the time. This was one of the busiest roads in London, mere metres from his highly sensitive scientific experiment. In the end, vibrations from the traffic ruined everything.


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170810-the-medieval-lab-hidden-inside-a-famous-monument

Goldfish survive frozen lakes by getting themselves drunk

I guess this would explain their three-second memory spans, if that wasn't a complete myth.

Scientists have decoded the secrets behind a goldfish's ability to survive in ice-covered lakes. They've worked out how and why the fish turn lactic acid in their bodies into alcohol, as a means of staying alive. Some goldfish were found to have levels well above legal drink-driving limits in many countries.

Thank goodness they don't know how to drive, then.

In most animals there is a single set of proteins that channel carbohydrates towards the mitochondria, which are the power packs of cells. In the absence of oxygen, the consumption of carbohydrates generates lactic acid, which the goldfish can't get rid of and which kills them in minutes.

Luckily, these fish have evolved a second set of proteins that take over in the absence of oxygen and convert the lactic acid to alcohol, which can then be dispersed through the gills. "The second pathway is only activated through lack of oxygen," author Dr Michael Berenbrink from the University of Liverpool, UK, told BBC News.

"The ice cover closes them off from the air, so when the pond is ice-covered the fish consumes all the oxygen and then it switches over to the alcohol." The longer they are in freezing, airless conditions the higher the alcohol levels in the fish become. "If you measure them in the field the blood alcohol goes up above 50mg per 100 millilitres, which is the drink-drive limit in Scotland and northern European countries," said Dr Berenbrink. "So they are really 'under the influence'."

They may not know how to drive, but they sure know how to live !

Scientists have also calculated for fun, how long it would take to produce an alcoholic drink from the fish excretions. "If you put them in a beer glass and closed them off, it would take 200 days to get it up to 4%," said Dr Berenbrink. "In nature, it just would not happen."

By next year that'll have replaced the avocado smoothie as the drink of choice for all self-respecting hipsters, I guarantee it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40899192

The accidental Illuminati conspiracy was an attempt to promote critical thinking

At the time, Wilson worked for the men’s magazine Playboy. He and Thornley started sending in fake letters from readers talking about this secret, elite organisation called the Illuminati. Then they would send in more letters – to contradict the letters they had just written.

“So, the concept behind this was that if you give enough contrary points of view on a story, in theory – idealistically – the population at large start looking at these things and think, ‘hang on a minute’,” says Bramwell. “They ask themselves, ‘Can I trust how the information is presented to me?’ It’s an idealistic means of getting people to wake up to the suggested realities that they inhabit – which of course didn’t happen quite in the way they were hoping.”

Today, it’s one of the world’s most widely punted conspiracy theories; even celebrities like Jay-Z and Beyoncé have taken on the symbolism of the group themselves, raising their hands into the Illuminati triangle at concerts. It’s hardly instigated the mind-blowing epiphany – the realisation that it’s all fake – which the proponents of Discordianism had originally intended.

“Particularly in South Asia, conspiracy theories have been a mechanism for the government to control the people. In the West, it’s typically been the opposite; they’ve been the subject of people who lack agency, who lack power, and it’s their lacking of power that gives rise to conspiracy theories to challenge the government. Like with 9/11. If people lack power, conspiracy theories can sow the seeds of social protest and allow people to ask questions. The big change now is that politicians, particularly Donald Drumpf, are starting to use conspiracies to mobilise support.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170809-the-accidental-invention-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy

Indiana Jones, successful archaeologist

If we ignore the Siva Stones, which Jones seems to have always planned to return to the village from which they were stolen, Jones’ success rate at converting “this object is probably mythical” into “this object is part of a publicly accessible museum collection” rises to one in five. His methods may be unorthodox by modern standards, but 20% is a lot higher than average, considering that we remember the names of archaeologists who do this even once.

Jones, who we’re led to believe works at an old-money institution, if not an Ivy than a near-Ivy, has a classroom of at least two-thirds women...Suggesting all those women are in Jones’ class because they want to sleep with him—a common assertion—rejects out of hand the possibility that these women are legitimately excited about archaeology as Jones presents it, which seems like a skeevy and disrespectful move to me.

Bwahahahah !

Another anecdote: I’ve had wonderful professors, I’ve had brilliant professors, but without doubt the most badass professor I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with was Doctor Kimberly Bowes, a late classical archaeologist who spent a year teaching what amounts to introductory Mediterranean political science and history. Dr. Bowes knew a billion languages and she spent her fieldwork being lowered down pits into buried villages and subterranean temples of blood-drinking cults (I mean, Christian churches, but, you know, same diff). Having swallowed the “real archaeologists aren’t Indiana Jones” pill along with every skeptical kid my age, I thought she must be the exception, the Sole Awesome Archaeologist. Then a colleague of hers arrived one day to watch her class—he rode in on his motorcycle, with leather boots and a lanky figure and the kind of five-o-clock shadow actors pay people to help them fake.

Wonderful.

http://www.tor.com/2017/08/09/defending-indiana-jones-archaeologist/

Google's sexist memo is sexist, says biologist

Here we have a genuine expert in the field presenting their commentary. An evolutionary biologist, not a certain popular female theoretical physicist. Here's the TLDR from the article, but it's well worth reading in its entirety.

Yes, men and women are biologically different — which doesn’t mean what the author thinks it does.

The article perniciously misrepresents the nature and significance of known sex differences to advance what appears to be a covert alt-right agenda. More specifically, it :
-argues for biologically determined sex differences in personality based on extremely weak evidence
-completely fails to understand the current state of research on sex differences, which is based in neuroscience, epigenetics and developmental biology
-argues that cognitive sex differences influence performance in software engineering, but presents no supporting evidence. Available evidence does not support the claim.
-fails to acknowledge ways in which sex differences violate the narrative of female inferiority; this shows intellectual dishonesty
-assumes effective meritocracy in its argument, ignoring both a mountain of conflicting scientific literature and its own caveats (which I can only assume were introduced to placate readers, since their incompatibility with the core thesis is never resolved)
-makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy
-distorts and misuses moral foundations theory for rhetorical purposes
-contains hints of racism
-paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it.
-ultimately advocates rejecting all morality insofar as it might compromise the interests of a group.

https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin

Brexit means...

Found on the internet.

Putting yourself in other people's shoes is racist, apparently

FaceApp has removed a feature which changed people's ethnicity in selfies less than 24 hours after updating it.The app, which launched in early 2017, changes photos with filters to make users look older, younger or swap gender. But its latest feature was criticised for being racist within minutes of going live. It allowed people to change their faces to look more black, Asian, Indian or Caucasian in photos.

I kindof want to try this.... I mean, being able to see what I'd look like if I was another race or gender seems like a fundamentally good thing for diversity. Granted, though, calling it a "blackface" app (if that's what they did, that word only appears in the headline) and a " "hot" filter which lightens skin tones" are clearly racist, shite marketing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/40887229/faceapp-launches-blackface-feature-then-deletes-it-after-social-backlash

Refugees and the dangers of self-fulfilling prophecies

I got to visit Noura Bittar at her home only after I promised to ignore the mess. She is a proud woman, and, in fact, her small flat in Copenhagen seemed pretty tidy, given that she runs a catering business from here, while also looking after a new-born baby. And yet, it was easy to understand Noura's need to retain a sense of dignity.

She fled to Denmark from the civil war in Syria, and is troubled by the way people often perceive those classed as "refugees". "You have that stereotyping… that we came here to take their jobs and money. And I just want to say, 'No, that's not us.'"

Noura set out to dispel that image, despite still reeling from the fighting back in her home town of Homs, where friends were killed and close family members injured. She set up a catering business, hoping it would introduce more Danes to the cuisine of her homeland, while making her financially self-sufficient in the process. But even while she was building up the company, and not yet turning a profit, Noura began offering free cookery classes to Danish women who had been victims of rape or domestic abuse. "Danish society gave us security. It gave us a place to stay. I wanted to say thank you."

... Watching this development was a young academic researcher, Conor Clancy. He was doing a master's thesis on management and entrepreneurship, and came up with an idea that was, to say the least, going against the grain. He thought the new refugee arrivals should be seen as a resource, not a burden. "Our research showed that when they're in the camps, [refugees] show a lot of entrepreneurial attributes," he says. "They come with passion and drive."

Mr Clancy formed Refugee Entrepreneurs Denmark, which helps new arrivals such as Noura to start their own business, supporting them with information, advice and general encouragement. He hopes this will enable refugees to become independent, no longer the "burden" some Danes seem to fear. And, more ambitiously, he believes these businesses will eventually create jobs that employ local Danes. "This will put more tax into the system," he says, "but also help break down the wall between refugees and their host nation."

Martin Henriksen believes refugees are already getting too much support. An MP for the nationalist Danish People's Party, he took me for a stroll round the Norrebro area of Copenhagen, where many refugees have settled. "A lot of people here have a different cultural background, religious background - they speak another language," he says, pointing out the number of homes with drawn curtains. He takes this as symbolic of separate lives that some foreign-born residents lead.

The DPP came second in the last Danish election, on a platform of opposing immigration and the granting of asylum. Mr Henriksen rejects the idea that refugees can be a resource. "The majority don't have the will," he says.

What do you imagine these people were doing in their home country before they trekked thousands of miles to reach northern Europe ? Are you worried that you have somehow acquired the world's most hard-working, determined benefit cheats ? People who have walked thousands of miles rather than find a job... ?

You can either try and help these people integrate and become upstanding tax-paying members of society, or you can shun them. The latter is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you refuse to let them integrate, then they won't. They'll become the foreign parasites you fear so much not because of their nature, but because you refused to believe they could be anything else.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40803432

Where did all these stupid people come from ?

Good article overall, but would have been better with about half the number of anecdotes. Far too long to attempt a summary, so I will just add a few key points about the scientific, materialist, rational world view :

- The basic assumption is that the world is objective, measurable, and real. Our knowledge of the world is imperfect and incomplete, but out measurements are still meaningful. Everything else has to be understood within the framework of this assumption. And yes, it is an assumption. That does not invalidate it.
- Scientific findings are evidenced-based and provisional because of this imperfect knowledge. Explanatory mechanisms are subject to revision pending new evidence, but this does not mean that all ideas are equal. It doesn't even mean that some ideas can't be rejected or accepted absolutely, within the basic overarching assumption.
- Consensus is achieved not through democratic vote but through independently attacking ideas as far as is reasonable. The primary goal is which idea is best, not which is right or wrong. Those cases, though possible, are much harder to establish.
- People ask, "Who watches the watchers ? Why do scientific ideas deserve this exalted position ? Don't we need to know which idea is really true to proceed - surely "best" just isn't good enough ?" as though this were complicated. It is not. Who watches your doctor ? Who watches your aeronautical engineer ? How does an atomic bomb work ? The answers are that everyone watches everyone else, public and experts alike, but more weight is given to expert opinions. It may not seem sensible that we can proceed on a "best guess" basis... but it works. Incomplete understanding does not mean no understanding at all; you don't have to know the name of your local librarian's aunt's cat to work out how to take out a book, and you don't need to know everything about atomic physics to work out how to wipe out a city. You can see the effects for yourself every time you get medical treatment, fly on an aeroplane, or right now while you're reading this on the internet. If you prefer the evidence of your own mind to your senses, then you are lost.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

The rocket scientist who was also a witch

This should be one to watch. I've read the book, the show sounds promising.

Jack Parsons’ pioneering efforts in rocket science ultimately led to his co-founding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the outskirts of Pasadena, CA. As George Pendle, who wrote the book on which this series is based, explains in Motherboard, “JPL is not part of some Joss Whedon-esque occult-industrial complex. It does not mingle science with the supernatural. Yet one of its founders did.”

When Parsons died in 1952 at the young age of 37 in a chemical explosion, newspapers particularly focused on some of the odder elements of his history: notably, that it seemed like he wanted to fuse technology and the particulars of his spiritualism. Beyond the aspects of Parson’s life that spark cultural amusement (and maybe a bit of fear), he also happened to be among the key figures paving the way for space travel. But of course the more bizarre and salacious components of his story are the types of things that could make for excellent television: and so, yes, Parsons was very actively involved in Ordo Templi Orientis, the society led by Aleister Crowley, founder of the libertarian-adjacent religion Thelema, and proponent of “sex magick.” This magick manifested in orgiastic “Gnostic Masses,” wherein, incidentally, cakes made from menstrual blood were consumed. Eventually, Parsons became the society’s West Coast leader, and held massive parties at his mansion that was dubbed the Parsonage.

Motherboard quotes a letter from him to another member of OTO:
"It has seemed to me that if I had the genius to found the jet propulsion field in the US, and found a multi-million dollar corporation and a world renowned research laboratory, then I should also be able to apply this genius in the magical field."

When some of Parsons’ more unruly professional characteristics were seen as a security threat, he was bought out of Aerojet, the company he created, and expelled from JPL. He began to drop his focus on rockets and move more fervently into magic-centricity — to a point that even made some members of the OTO worried. But therein, he became the perfect friend to the sci-fi novelist who’d develop a penchant for monetizing odd tales as expensive religions: L. Ron Hubbard.

So, yeah, it’s sort of astonishing that this hasn’t been made into a series yet, which brings us back to the Lowery project. According to Indiewire, CBS All Access announced at the Television Critics Association press tour that the series is titled Strange Angel, the same as Pendle’s book. Which part of Parsons’ crazy, ripe-for-TV-adaptation history Heyman will decide to focus on remains to be seen. But honestly, I’d watch any of it.

It's likely not been made into a series previous because Scientologists do not react well to criticism. This should be interesting.

http://flavorwire.com/608866/a-ghost-story-director-david-lowery-is-making-a-tv-series-about-rocket-scientistoccultist-party-animal-jack-parsons