Some species have a signature whistle, which, like a name, is a unique sound that allows other dolphins to identify it. Dolphins also communicate using touch and body postures. By human definition, there is currently no evidence that dolphins have a language. But we’ve barely begun to record all their sounds and body signals let alone try to decipher them.
At Kewalo Basin Marine Laboratory in Hawaii, Lou Herman and his team set about testing a dolphin’s ability to comprehend our language. They developed a sign language to communicate with the dolphins, and the results were remarkable. Not only do the dolphins understand the meaning of individual words, they also understand the significance of word order in a sentence.
One of their star dolphins, Akeakamai, has learned a vocabulary of more than 60 words and can understand more than 2,000 sentences. Particularly impressive is the dolphins’ relaxed attitude when new sentences are introduced. For example, the dolphins generally responded correctly to “touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it”. This has the characteristics of true understanding, not rigid training.
I'd be amazed if at least some animals don't have a true language, and not very surprised if a good fraction of them turn out to be more intelligent and discussing more interesting topics than some political "leaders".
All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean. Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.
"One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/03/research.science
Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Steve Bannon's political career appears to be dead, thank goodness
Steve Bannon's fall from power is now complete. He was first stripped of his top White House job. Now he has been cashiered from his position atop a media empire he helped create. As he surveys the rubble, he has no-one to blame but himself.In both instances, his decision to speak his mind publicly was his undoing. He criticised administration policies and, in an even greater transgression, took aim at Donald Drumpf's own family in sharply personal terms.
When the White House made it clear last week it was time to pick sides between Mr Drumpf and Mr Bannon, the choice for most conservatives was clear. Now Mr Bannon's hopes of funding insurgent candidates against incumbent Republican senators in 2018, and boosting their candidacies through his media megaphone, have been dashed. And Rebekah Mercer, a wealthy benefactor of Mr Bannon, said at the weekend she had ended her support for his political efforts.
God knows what the Mercers will get up to next...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42628201
When the White House made it clear last week it was time to pick sides between Mr Drumpf and Mr Bannon, the choice for most conservatives was clear. Now Mr Bannon's hopes of funding insurgent candidates against incumbent Republican senators in 2018, and boosting their candidacies through his media megaphone, have been dashed. And Rebekah Mercer, a wealthy benefactor of Mr Bannon, said at the weekend she had ended her support for his political efforts.
God knows what the Mercers will get up to next...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42628201
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
A long history of scientific misnomers
This is actually a very nice little read about the Fermi Paradox, but perhaps my favourite bit is this :
Many – if not most – concepts in astronomy are misnomers; in an ancient science that has always possessed so much dynamism, it is perhaps to be expected. Let me offer just a few examples most people would emphatically not agree to as correct. Apparent, absolute, visual and other MAGNITUDES of celestial bodies, especially stars, are not really magnitudes (the word meaning bigness or size); all stars were point-like sources until very recently. There is no Ocean of Storms or Sea of Tranquillity, since LUNAR MARIA are not seas, in spite of being thus named. PLANETARY NEBULAE have nothing whatsoever to do with planets; NOVA (and especially SUPERNOVA) is not, contrary to its Latin meaning since the time of Tycho, a new star, but an old one. The usage of METALS (and derivatives like METALLICITY) to denote carbon or oxygen or sulphur is likely to make any physical chemist cry, since they exhibit no metallic properties whatsoever. EARLY- and LATE-TYPE GALAXIES form neither chronological nor evolutionary sequence and therefore are neither early nor late.
And, of course, cosmology is rife with such misnomers. The celebrated HUBBLE CONSTANT is variable in most cosmological models, including the realistic one. VOIDS are not really devoid of matter, and the EPOCH OF RECOMBINATION did not, in contrast to laboratory plasmas, mean recombining of electrons and nuclei, since they had never been together in the first place. A Gray-like project of excising misnomers would have to insist on renaming it the epoch of combination – not an appealing proposal to most cosmologists. The ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE has nothing to do with man (ἄνθρωπος), but deals instead with the observation-selection effects common to any observer. Speaking about paradoxes, OLBERS’ PARADOX can hardly bear scrutiny, since Digges, Kepler, Halley, and Cheseaux have all had better claim on it than H. W. Olbers.
I agree with everything written here about Fermi, in particular :
The locution "Fermi’s paradox“ should not – if we wish to have a substantive discussion of ideas and not just a scholastic discussion about words – be used literally for Fermi’s lunchtime remarks, whose exact content is anyway unknown with certainty, but as synonymous with the more general and precise Great Silence paradox (Brin 1983; Dirkovid 2009). The Great Silence paradox has nothing in particular to do with exploration or conquest, and even less with any form of human psychology or history; it does not necessarily have anything to do with the feasibility of interstellar travel either. Instead, the Great Silence paradox has to do with the general detectability of other intelligent species.
The lack of any detectable activities or manifestations or traces of extraterrestrial civilizations in our past light cone is incompatible with the multiplicity of such civilizations and conventional assumptions about their capacities.
My only small amendment would be that perhaps the notion of interstellar travel and expansion is the most important aspect of the paradox. I can accept that isolated civilisations would be exceedingly hard to detect, but not galaxy-spanning empires. I know, there's a whole bunch of sort-of possible reasons why we're not part of a Great Galactic Empire, but I just don't find any of them at all convincing.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.09801
Many – if not most – concepts in astronomy are misnomers; in an ancient science that has always possessed so much dynamism, it is perhaps to be expected. Let me offer just a few examples most people would emphatically not agree to as correct. Apparent, absolute, visual and other MAGNITUDES of celestial bodies, especially stars, are not really magnitudes (the word meaning bigness or size); all stars were point-like sources until very recently. There is no Ocean of Storms or Sea of Tranquillity, since LUNAR MARIA are not seas, in spite of being thus named. PLANETARY NEBULAE have nothing whatsoever to do with planets; NOVA (and especially SUPERNOVA) is not, contrary to its Latin meaning since the time of Tycho, a new star, but an old one. The usage of METALS (and derivatives like METALLICITY) to denote carbon or oxygen or sulphur is likely to make any physical chemist cry, since they exhibit no metallic properties whatsoever. EARLY- and LATE-TYPE GALAXIES form neither chronological nor evolutionary sequence and therefore are neither early nor late.
And, of course, cosmology is rife with such misnomers. The celebrated HUBBLE CONSTANT is variable in most cosmological models, including the realistic one. VOIDS are not really devoid of matter, and the EPOCH OF RECOMBINATION did not, in contrast to laboratory plasmas, mean recombining of electrons and nuclei, since they had never been together in the first place. A Gray-like project of excising misnomers would have to insist on renaming it the epoch of combination – not an appealing proposal to most cosmologists. The ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE has nothing to do with man (ἄνθρωπος), but deals instead with the observation-selection effects common to any observer. Speaking about paradoxes, OLBERS’ PARADOX can hardly bear scrutiny, since Digges, Kepler, Halley, and Cheseaux have all had better claim on it than H. W. Olbers.
I agree with everything written here about Fermi, in particular :
The locution "Fermi’s paradox“ should not – if we wish to have a substantive discussion of ideas and not just a scholastic discussion about words – be used literally for Fermi’s lunchtime remarks, whose exact content is anyway unknown with certainty, but as synonymous with the more general and precise Great Silence paradox (Brin 1983; Dirkovid 2009). The Great Silence paradox has nothing in particular to do with exploration or conquest, and even less with any form of human psychology or history; it does not necessarily have anything to do with the feasibility of interstellar travel either. Instead, the Great Silence paradox has to do with the general detectability of other intelligent species.
The lack of any detectable activities or manifestations or traces of extraterrestrial civilizations in our past light cone is incompatible with the multiplicity of such civilizations and conventional assumptions about their capacities.
My only small amendment would be that perhaps the notion of interstellar travel and expansion is the most important aspect of the paradox. I can accept that isolated civilisations would be exceedingly hard to detect, but not galaxy-spanning empires. I know, there's a whole bunch of sort-of possible reasons why we're not part of a Great Galactic Empire, but I just don't find any of them at all convincing.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.09801
Michael Foale's efforts to save the ISS
Well I mean it's very cool and all, but I'd still rather see the money going in to (manned) exploration, if I had to choose.
Funding by the various space agencies involved is only agreed until 2024. This means in just six years’ time, the most expensive structure ever built will be pushed out of orbit by a Progress spacecraft to disintegrate over the Pacific.
“Year by year, Russia is launching the fuel to fill up the tanks of the ISS service module to enable the space station to be deorbited,” says Foale. “That’s the current plan – I think it’s a bad plan, a massive waste of a fantastic resource. These various projects compete for the money. They can’t go to the Moon or Mars and also continue to supply the ISS with crews, cargo, food and supplies.”
“I’m hoping that commercial space can come up with a business plan that allows part of the ISS to be maintained in space, without sinking it into the Pacific Ocean,” he says. “You have to come up with innovative ways of keeping it in space.”
The ISS already supports some commercial operations. A private company, NanoRacks, operates experiments in equipment racks on the station for private clients. The station is increasingly also being used to launch small satellites into orbit, carried up in commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX’s Dragon robotic supply ship. The Russian space agency takes tourists to the station and has even suggested it might build a hotel module.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180105-the-astronaut-fighting-to-save-our-home-in-space
Funding by the various space agencies involved is only agreed until 2024. This means in just six years’ time, the most expensive structure ever built will be pushed out of orbit by a Progress spacecraft to disintegrate over the Pacific.
“Year by year, Russia is launching the fuel to fill up the tanks of the ISS service module to enable the space station to be deorbited,” says Foale. “That’s the current plan – I think it’s a bad plan, a massive waste of a fantastic resource. These various projects compete for the money. They can’t go to the Moon or Mars and also continue to supply the ISS with crews, cargo, food and supplies.”
“I’m hoping that commercial space can come up with a business plan that allows part of the ISS to be maintained in space, without sinking it into the Pacific Ocean,” he says. “You have to come up with innovative ways of keeping it in space.”
The ISS already supports some commercial operations. A private company, NanoRacks, operates experiments in equipment racks on the station for private clients. The station is increasingly also being used to launch small satellites into orbit, carried up in commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX’s Dragon robotic supply ship. The Russian space agency takes tourists to the station and has even suggested it might build a hotel module.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180105-the-astronaut-fighting-to-save-our-home-in-space
The eagles are coming !
A golden eagle caused a flap after landing on the windowsill of a house in Rhondda Cynon Taff. Rebekah Norton, from Ton Pentre, published pictures on Facebook of the huge bird of prey staring through her window. Appealing for information, she posted: "Has anyone lost a MASSIVE bird? Currently sitting on my window."
In an update, she later said: "Apparently it's a golden eagle. Owner found." In the pictures the eagle can be seen wearing leather anklets used in falconry. According to the RSPB, golden eagles can have a wingspan of up to 2.2m (7ft 2in) and weigh up to 6.6kg (14lb 9oz).
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-42618159
In an update, she later said: "Apparently it's a golden eagle. Owner found." In the pictures the eagle can be seen wearing leather anklets used in falconry. According to the RSPB, golden eagles can have a wingspan of up to 2.2m (7ft 2in) and weigh up to 6.6kg (14lb 9oz).
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-42618159
Virgin Trains will not sell the Daily Fail
Virgin Trains has announced that it is going to stop selling the Daily Mail newspaper on its West Coast trains. A spokesperson for Virgin said it regularly reviewed products sold on its trains, adding that "after listening to feedback from our people" it decided to stop stocking copies of the paper. The Virgin spokesperson added that when it stocked the paper, it only sold one copy for every four trains.
And Drew McMillan, head of colleague communication and engagement at Virgin, told the ASLEF union's monthly magazine: "Thousands of people choose to read the Daily Mail every day. But they will no longer be reading it courtesy of VT. There's been considerable concern raised by colleagues about the Mail's editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights and unemployment. We've decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs."
The Daily Mail spokesman hit back, saying that at a time when fares were rising it was "disgraceful" that Virgin was announcing that "for political reasons it is censoring the choice of newspapers it offers to passengers". He added: "It is equally rich that Virgin chose to launch this attack on free speech in the ASLEF trade union journal."
Yeah, err, umm, what ? Every retailer must offer every paper now ? You can't force people to listen, for goodness' sake.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42621425
And Drew McMillan, head of colleague communication and engagement at Virgin, told the ASLEF union's monthly magazine: "Thousands of people choose to read the Daily Mail every day. But they will no longer be reading it courtesy of VT. There's been considerable concern raised by colleagues about the Mail's editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights and unemployment. We've decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs."
The Daily Mail spokesman hit back, saying that at a time when fares were rising it was "disgraceful" that Virgin was announcing that "for political reasons it is censoring the choice of newspapers it offers to passengers". He added: "It is equally rich that Virgin chose to launch this attack on free speech in the ASLEF trade union journal."
Yeah, err, umm, what ? Every retailer must offer every paper now ? You can't force people to listen, for goodness' sake.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42621425
Monday, 8 January 2018
Referendum results need careful handling, not absolutist rhetoric
Love this quote :
And as everyone knows it is a challenge to reason people out of views that they were not reasoned into.
However, I have some quibbles with the rest.
The first is that the June 23 referendum was not a democratically binding decision on EU membership. It was held under the terms of the (poorly drafted) 2015 Referendum Act as an explicitly advisory referendum – a test of opinion – only. The fact that a number of MPs regard the decision as binding is astonishing for a number of reasons, but the first of them is that not only was the exercise intended as advisory,
Technically true but it was never presented as advisory; it was well-understood that the result would be followed. Now, this was incredibly stupid, because (among other things) as the article rightly goes on to describe, the questionwas shite oversimplified a massively complex issue and no conditions of the size of the turnout or margin of victory were specified. So we've got a really stupid issue to deal with, but deal with it we must. What's particularly unfair is that a Remain victory by this same small margin would not have been seen as decisive by anyone, but a Leave victory is apparently the end of the whole process.
I still favour the "let's just not do this, it was a shitty decision" approach. However, if needs must, then I like Blair's attitude to a second referendum : asking whether we still want to go through with it when we know for real exactly what we're getting is sufficiently different that it wouldn't undermine the results of the first. "Yes, we want to leave.". Two years later : "Actually, naaah." Nothing undemocratic about that by anyone's standards.
Second, MPs and the decisions they reach are recallable. This is of the essence of democracy. It is this that constitutes the electorate’s continuing control of the democratic process. At the next election, if an MP has not done well in the eyes of his or her constituents, or if the government has not done well in the eyes of a plurality of the electorate, they can be replaced at the ballot box. They have given explicit undertakings on policy and legislation, and can be held to account for the outcomes. Elections are held periodically, at no greater interval than five years. The time frame and the recall principle are essential to the democratic process.
Yes, but MPs (except the Lib Dems) kept saying that they'd follow the result. So they wouldn't be good representatives if they suddenly changed their minds. And while the un-election option is fine in principle, in practise, who else do you actually have to vote for ? There just aren't that many serious political parties fielding plausible candidates in every constituency.
The voting age should have been 16,
I still favour some kind of test to determine if people actually understand what the hell they're voting on.
Originally shared by Chris Blackmore (The Walrus)
What Professor Grayling says is absolutely true; we cannot stop demanding #Brexit be stopped, because it is just not legal.
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/culture/a-c-grayling-s-five-reasons-why-the-uk-must-ignore-vote-1-4668860
And as everyone knows it is a challenge to reason people out of views that they were not reasoned into.
However, I have some quibbles with the rest.
The first is that the June 23 referendum was not a democratically binding decision on EU membership. It was held under the terms of the (poorly drafted) 2015 Referendum Act as an explicitly advisory referendum – a test of opinion – only. The fact that a number of MPs regard the decision as binding is astonishing for a number of reasons, but the first of them is that not only was the exercise intended as advisory,
Technically true but it was never presented as advisory; it was well-understood that the result would be followed. Now, this was incredibly stupid, because (among other things) as the article rightly goes on to describe, the question
I still favour the "let's just not do this, it was a shitty decision" approach. However, if needs must, then I like Blair's attitude to a second referendum : asking whether we still want to go through with it when we know for real exactly what we're getting is sufficiently different that it wouldn't undermine the results of the first. "Yes, we want to leave.". Two years later : "Actually, naaah." Nothing undemocratic about that by anyone's standards.
Second, MPs and the decisions they reach are recallable. This is of the essence of democracy. It is this that constitutes the electorate’s continuing control of the democratic process. At the next election, if an MP has not done well in the eyes of his or her constituents, or if the government has not done well in the eyes of a plurality of the electorate, they can be replaced at the ballot box. They have given explicit undertakings on policy and legislation, and can be held to account for the outcomes. Elections are held periodically, at no greater interval than five years. The time frame and the recall principle are essential to the democratic process.
Yes, but MPs (except the Lib Dems) kept saying that they'd follow the result. So they wouldn't be good representatives if they suddenly changed their minds. And while the un-election option is fine in principle, in practise, who else do you actually have to vote for ? There just aren't that many serious political parties fielding plausible candidates in every constituency.
The voting age should have been 16,
I still favour some kind of test to determine if people actually understand what the hell they're voting on.
Originally shared by Chris Blackmore (The Walrus)
What Professor Grayling says is absolutely true; we cannot stop demanding #Brexit be stopped, because it is just not legal.
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/culture/a-c-grayling-s-five-reasons-why-the-uk-must-ignore-vote-1-4668860
I want a rollable phone, not a TV
"If you don't need the display you just roll it down."
How about you turn it off instead ? I can see rollable screens being a big hit for mobile users but more of a niche product for the home. Maybe you'd want them in the kitchen, but most living rooms are planned around a fixed TV anyway. But having a larger screen I can carry around so I can, say, open it up on a plane and then fold back into my hand luggage, that I can see having mass appeal.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-42600884/ces-2018-lg-display-shows-off-large-rollable-tv-screen
How about you turn it off instead ? I can see rollable screens being a big hit for mobile users but more of a niche product for the home. Maybe you'd want them in the kitchen, but most living rooms are planned around a fixed TV anyway. But having a larger screen I can carry around so I can, say, open it up on a plane and then fold back into my hand luggage, that I can see having mass appeal.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-42600884/ces-2018-lg-display-shows-off-large-rollable-tv-screen
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