First, the bad news :
"It's quite common now for people to stop and help a turtle across the road rather than run over it," said project co-ordinator, Rick Levick. But a separate study, using dummy rubber turtles and snakes, had also shown that some drivers deliberately tried to hit the animals.
Such people should have their driving licenses permanently revoked and examined for psychological problems.
And then the good news :
The last of the turtle crossings were installed earlier this year - and the study is claiming a major improvement. "The average number of turtles venturing on to the road has dropped by 89% and snake numbers are down 28%," said Chantel Markle, a biologist at McMaster University.
And then more bad news - the good news hasn't been at all easy to achieve :
So rather than urging drivers to be more careful, the big challenge has been stopping turtles getting on to the road in the first place. Culverts were dug below the surface to allow turtles and snakes to cross safely, and fences and barriers were constructed along the road to force them to use these underpasses.
This was not straightforward. In some parts of the road it was sometimes difficult to put in adequate fencing, such as where the land was very marshy. And the study found that partial fencing could be worse than being completely unfenced, with animals in large numbers going through the gaps.
Regular concrete was too cold, so a specially adapted type of warmer polymer material was used, with a design allowing in enough light to make the animals confident that there really was light at the end of the tunnel. They also had to be no more than 150m apart, because any more would be beyond the roaming range of the lumbering turtles. Radio-tagged turtles were followed to find the best combinations of materials and locations.
I predict the next step will be a turtle-seeking drone that lifts the unfortunate animals to safety.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40088879
Wednesday, 31 May 2017
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
The cost of EU membership put in perspective
The twitter account this comes from has been suspended, but fortunately I was able to download the image from a Google Plus post.
https://twitter.com/lesbonner/status/869457498109087744
Dude, where's my policy ?
Ouch.
Jeremy Corbyn was unable to put a cost on Labour's plan for free childcare for 1.3m youngsters during an interview with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. "It will cost... it will obviously cost a lot to do so, we accept that," he said, before agreeing with host Emma Barnett that the figure was £5.3bn. The stumble came as the Labour leader and Theresa May resumed election campaigning following a live TV debate.
The childcare part of the interview began with Mr Corbyn being asked whether he had the figure for its cost and replying: "Yes, I do." Pressed to give the number, he said: "I'll give you the figure in a moment."
"You don't know it? You're logging into your iPad here - you've announced a major policy and you don't know how much it will cost?" presenter Emma Barnett said.
"Can I give you the exact figure in a moment, please?" the Labour leader said.
Asked whether this indicated that voters should not trust Labour with their money, he answered: "Not at all."
[As a rule, you should at least know how much your policy costs on the day you announce it. And if you don't, have the guts to admit that - say you're mind's gone blank, anything, but don't try and fool people so brazenly.]
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40090520
Jeremy Corbyn was unable to put a cost on Labour's plan for free childcare for 1.3m youngsters during an interview with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. "It will cost... it will obviously cost a lot to do so, we accept that," he said, before agreeing with host Emma Barnett that the figure was £5.3bn. The stumble came as the Labour leader and Theresa May resumed election campaigning following a live TV debate.
The childcare part of the interview began with Mr Corbyn being asked whether he had the figure for its cost and replying: "Yes, I do." Pressed to give the number, he said: "I'll give you the figure in a moment."
"You don't know it? You're logging into your iPad here - you've announced a major policy and you don't know how much it will cost?" presenter Emma Barnett said.
"Can I give you the exact figure in a moment, please?" the Labour leader said.
Asked whether this indicated that voters should not trust Labour with their money, he answered: "Not at all."
[As a rule, you should at least know how much your policy costs on the day you announce it. And if you don't, have the guts to admit that - say you're mind's gone blank, anything, but don't try and fool people so brazenly.]
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40090520
Monday, 29 May 2017
60 million people and these idiots are the best we could manage
Summary of the non-debate between Corbyn and May :
Option A : the Grand High Witch. Doesn't have a clue about anything. Happy to appeal to the stupidity of people who think Brexit is a good idea and we can somehow threaten the EU to just leave. What we're supposed to be threatening them with is anyone's guess.
Option B : a smug sanctimonious git who claims to be straight talking and repeatedly defends statements on the grounds that they shouldn't be taken literally, is probably a terrorist sympathiser, treats everyone like children and thinks that money can just be conjured magically out of the air.
Yippee.
Option A : the Grand High Witch. Doesn't have a clue about anything. Happy to appeal to the stupidity of people who think Brexit is a good idea and we can somehow threaten the EU to just leave. What we're supposed to be threatening them with is anyone's guess.
Option B : a smug sanctimonious git who claims to be straight talking and repeatedly defends statements on the grounds that they shouldn't be taken literally, is probably a terrorist sympathiser, treats everyone like children and thinks that money can just be conjured magically out of the air.
Yippee.
Falsification is over-rated
With all this stuff going around about some angry scientists writing a letter to some other angry scientists about how their science isn't really science, I thought I'd take a look at the popular topic of falsification. Being able to disprove your theory is certainly a good thing. You never make a theory worse if it's possible to disprove it. But is it absolutely essential ? I argue, "no" - and we're already in a era when in insisting on the possibility of falsification does more harm than good, at least in astronomy. "That's all there is to it" is, alas, woefully inadequate.
A simplified example : galaxies in very dense regions tend to have smooth, elliptical shapes, while those in less dense regions tend to be spirals and irregulars. We know there are varying processes which can act to change a galaxy's shape, but which one dominates ? We don't even want to try to falsify which ones happen - because we know they all do - it's just a case of establishing which one has the biggest effect. The effects of the different mechanisms are so complex (and observational errors so large) it's possible we could make any of them work, with enough effort. So which method gives the results closest to reality with the least amount of tweaking ? That's the question we try to answer, which has little or nothing to do with falsifying anything.
Here's another example - a computer claims to have proved an obscure mathematical theorem but its proof is far too long for any human to ever read. By necessity, this proof must be based on logical deductions, but if it's too long to check then is it really a proof ? This isn't really all that novel either - throughout history, stupid people have stubbornly refused to accept the proofs that cleverer people have come up with. Does that mean that clever people aren't being scientific if they can't explain their ideas to the mentally deficient ? With science becoming increasingly complex and requiring increasing amounts of time to fully understand, this is a real problem. And if scientists don't even fully understand their results, well...
Really extreme proponents of falsification often tend to be those of the anti-science ilk. Geology, astronomy and anything else which involves deep time, they say, are not really sciences because we can't actually prove anything - no-one left records for billions of years ago for us to check, and we can't wait around to see how galaxies evolve. In a very strict sense, the evolutionary history of life on Earth and the behaviour of stars over cosmic time really can't be falsified.
Such a way of thinking has many parallels with conspiracy theories. It's not that everyone is lying, exactly, it's just that they are demanding impossibly high standards from the evidence which can never be met. By demanding ludicrously high levels of confidence, by refusing to make even the most basic assumptions and give the data some rudimentary level of trust, in short by refusing to even entertain hypothesis for the sake of it, they prevent themselves from learning anything. And they rarely say why they have such confidence in their own senses, which is bizarre given the complexities and many, many demonstrable fallibilities of the human brain.
[What you want for a proper theory is not that it is falsifiable (though that is always nice) but testable. It should be able to make predictions which are different to other competing theories. Since real data has errors, it's often a case of deciding which model gets most results the closet to the observations, rather than choosing between one model which is right and one which is wrong. If your theory can't be tested against and compared with existing models, it should at least be mathematically rigorous and offer philosophical improvements over other theories. Such a theory would still be scientifically valid, in my view.]
A simplified example : galaxies in very dense regions tend to have smooth, elliptical shapes, while those in less dense regions tend to be spirals and irregulars. We know there are varying processes which can act to change a galaxy's shape, but which one dominates ? We don't even want to try to falsify which ones happen - because we know they all do - it's just a case of establishing which one has the biggest effect. The effects of the different mechanisms are so complex (and observational errors so large) it's possible we could make any of them work, with enough effort. So which method gives the results closest to reality with the least amount of tweaking ? That's the question we try to answer, which has little or nothing to do with falsifying anything.
Here's another example - a computer claims to have proved an obscure mathematical theorem but its proof is far too long for any human to ever read. By necessity, this proof must be based on logical deductions, but if it's too long to check then is it really a proof ? This isn't really all that novel either - throughout history, stupid people have stubbornly refused to accept the proofs that cleverer people have come up with. Does that mean that clever people aren't being scientific if they can't explain their ideas to the mentally deficient ? With science becoming increasingly complex and requiring increasing amounts of time to fully understand, this is a real problem. And if scientists don't even fully understand their results, well...
Really extreme proponents of falsification often tend to be those of the anti-science ilk. Geology, astronomy and anything else which involves deep time, they say, are not really sciences because we can't actually prove anything - no-one left records for billions of years ago for us to check, and we can't wait around to see how galaxies evolve. In a very strict sense, the evolutionary history of life on Earth and the behaviour of stars over cosmic time really can't be falsified.
Such a way of thinking has many parallels with conspiracy theories. It's not that everyone is lying, exactly, it's just that they are demanding impossibly high standards from the evidence which can never be met. By demanding ludicrously high levels of confidence, by refusing to make even the most basic assumptions and give the data some rudimentary level of trust, in short by refusing to even entertain hypothesis for the sake of it, they prevent themselves from learning anything. And they rarely say why they have such confidence in their own senses, which is bizarre given the complexities and many, many demonstrable fallibilities of the human brain.
[What you want for a proper theory is not that it is falsifiable (though that is always nice) but testable. It should be able to make predictions which are different to other competing theories. Since real data has errors, it's often a case of deciding which model gets most results the closet to the observations, rather than choosing between one model which is right and one which is wrong. If your theory can't be tested against and compared with existing models, it should at least be mathematically rigorous and offer philosophical improvements over other theories. Such a theory would still be scientifically valid, in my view.]
I Told You He Was Tricksy
Absolutes are very comforting things : this is right, that is wrong. Once established, no further thought is required - indeed, an absolute fact can be used to refute anything that disagrees with it. This is extremely powerful, but also potentially very dangerous. What if you're just plain wrong about those facts ?
Sunday, 28 May 2017
Don't say I didn't warn you
Aaaarrgh. Urrrgh. Good God what the fuck is wrong with this country ? First time in my life I honestly can't decide if the Labour or Tory party would be more dangerous in government. Every time I see Corbyn I get more and more terrified. He's creepy, smug, uber-sanctimonious and weird as hell. He seems to be becoming more and more like Senator Palpatine every day. He literally makes my skin crawl. And people are being persuaded by this man ?!? I just... aaaarghhh.... what the fuck ?!?! NO !
I realise I'm being incredibly unsuccessful in trying to persuade anyone, so let's just say : if this man wins, don't you dare say I didn't warn you. Don't you dare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkbmKUiCP2k
I realise I'm being incredibly unsuccessful in trying to persuade anyone, so let's just say : if this man wins, don't you dare say I didn't warn you. Don't you dare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkbmKUiCP2k
Friday, 26 May 2017
Sunday, 21 May 2017
An air conditioner for your back
Powered by 4 AA batteries and lasts for 8 hours ? I want one.
http://www.japantrendshop.com/kucho-airconditioned-backpack-cooling-pack-p-3931.html
http://www.japantrendshop.com/kucho-airconditioned-backpack-cooling-pack-p-3931.html
Friday, 19 May 2017
An open admission of guilt is still not enough
The irony level is now at supersaturation and crystals of terminal honesty are condensing out of the truly bizarre and ungodly concoction.
US President Donald Drumpf told Russian officials that firing FBI director James Comey eased "great pressure" on him, US media report. The New York Times, citing a document summarising last week's meeting, says he called Mr Comey a "real nut job". Mr Comey had been running an inquiry into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Drumpf's election campaign.
"I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job," Mr. Drumpf said, according to the report. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
Donald Drumpf called the ongoing Russia investigation a "witch hunt", but reporters have just found a boiling cauldron and a closet full of broomsticks. The key takeaway from these latest blockbuster stories - there have been so many this week it's hard to keep count - is there's now further evidence of Mr Drumpf's intent to dismiss FBI Director James Comey because of his handling of the ongoing Russia investigation.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39983257
US President Donald Drumpf told Russian officials that firing FBI director James Comey eased "great pressure" on him, US media report. The New York Times, citing a document summarising last week's meeting, says he called Mr Comey a "real nut job". Mr Comey had been running an inquiry into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Drumpf's election campaign.
"I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job," Mr. Drumpf said, according to the report. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
Donald Drumpf called the ongoing Russia investigation a "witch hunt", but reporters have just found a boiling cauldron and a closet full of broomsticks. The key takeaway from these latest blockbuster stories - there have been so many this week it's hard to keep count - is there's now further evidence of Mr Drumpf's intent to dismiss FBI Director James Comey because of his handling of the ongoing Russia investigation.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39983257
Net neutrality under threat
Booo ! But it's not done yet :
The vote by the FCC commissioners is the first stage in the process of dismantling the net neutrality regulations. The agency is now inviting public comment on whether it should indeed dismantle the rules. Americans have until mid-August to share their views with the FCC. This call for comments is likely to attract a huge number of responses. Prior to the vote, more than 1 million statements supporting net neutrality were filed on the FCC site.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39973787
The vote by the FCC commissioners is the first stage in the process of dismantling the net neutrality regulations. The agency is now inviting public comment on whether it should indeed dismantle the rules. Americans have until mid-August to share their views with the FCC. This call for comments is likely to attract a huge number of responses. Prior to the vote, more than 1 million statements supporting net neutrality were filed on the FCC site.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39973787
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