There’s this new movie called Alpha, about the first ever pet dog. It looks like another of those movies that is going straight for heartwarming, without any big stars or promises of explosions or special effects. I don’t know how it got a summer release instead of going straight to download. Or straight to the Walmart $5 DVD bin that somehow just keeps going no matter how many people abandon DVD’s.
And, of course, it has dogs, which can carry a movie all on its own.
I was wondering if it even had religious overtones. I know that seems like a stretch, but in today’s movie industry, if a movie doesn’t have stars, action, comedy, or art house chic, it’s a mystery how it even exists. I start to wonder if it’s an extension of some brand that’s really popular in the American-Christian subculture.
But then it hit me: this movie is set — according to the ads — 20,000 years ago. Apparently, that’s based on some guesswork, since dogs might have been domesticated before or after that date. But still, 20,000 years. That’s an American family movie taking place 20,000-screw-you-Young-Earth-Creationists-years-ago. So it’s not just non-religious, it’s going to be offending the super-Christian. That’s kind of surprising. I’m sure that for entertainment aimed at the entirety of American culture, they would probably choose to take science’s side and assume that the Christian Fundamentalist boycott wouldn’t amount to much. But for family-friendly entertainment I would think that they would rather have hard-core religious families on side, and just let Neil DeGrasse Tyson rant about the inaccuracies. That’s especially given that this movie is going to have appeal to people who aren’t really in love with the usual Hollywood fare.
So this is kind of a weird concept: heartwarming family science. And I just read a review that pointed out that the stars in the sky are accurate even taking into account the drift of stars over those twenty millennia. So now I’m picturing Neil DeGrasse Tyson in the theatre weeping along with everyone else, having never seen such scientific accuracy in a movie.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Sunday, July 16, 2017
How Do We Stand When Our Pants Are Burning?
This week, The Guardian had an article about how the post-truth era will come to an end because Elon Musk is building the world's biggest battery. Huh? See the battery is going to be part of the power grid in the state of South Australia, so they can store electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind. And the article makes the case that this will be the final nail in the coffin for dirtier energy sources like coal: the costs of renewals have gone down, and now they'll have reliability on their side too.
Keep in mind that Australia has lots of coal, and has made lots of money selling it to China and other countries that need to ramp up their energy supplies quickly. Thus, Australians have been torturing logic and ignoring reality to convince themselves that coal isn't really that bad.
Personally, I don't think that a compelling case for renewables will be enough to stop post-truth discourse. There are lots of forces pushing people to believe falsehoods, and convenience is only one. There's also the need to save face; people have invested their reputations in arguments, so they won't just admit they were wrong and go away. And of course they've invested plenty of money too. Coal companies and their hired guns won't just give up when there's so much money at stake. And then there's tradition. There's plenty of inertia behind the way things are. Just look at how Donald Trump scored points by promising to bring coal jobs back. That energized people in a way that promises of growing future technology never could.
But still, this article does bring up a point that I - and I'm sure many others - had wondered about: what is the post-truth endgame? I mean, you can pretend all you want, but eventually reality asserts itself. Another great example of that came up recently, and it's also from Australia. (What is going on down there?) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was discussing encrypted communications, when he said,
Of course, this has lead to a global lambasting online. But the point is that however ignorant he and his laws are, at some point the rubber has to hit the road. The fact is that the only known way of breaking modern encryption is by time-consumingly impractical brute force methods. Eventually the government will be faced with the alternatives of changing the laws or attesting people for not doing the impossible, like a scene from Kafka or Italy.
Of course, most post-truth situations are less immediate. On, say, global warming, you could picture the deniers hanging on to their beliefs all the way down. Long-term trends can be easily ignored, and there will always be an excuse or alternate explanation for noticable things like sea levels. And in the case of competing power sources, people can always invent excuses why our past experience isn't representative ("If they'd just use the best way of burning coal, it would be better") or create unverifiable reasons things aren't as they seem ("the government is covering up the facts.") So I don't think anyone is going land a knockout in any post-truth argument, at least not by simply overwhelming the opponent's ability to delude.
Keep in mind that Australia has lots of coal, and has made lots of money selling it to China and other countries that need to ramp up their energy supplies quickly. Thus, Australians have been torturing logic and ignoring reality to convince themselves that coal isn't really that bad.
Personally, I don't think that a compelling case for renewables will be enough to stop post-truth discourse. There are lots of forces pushing people to believe falsehoods, and convenience is only one. There's also the need to save face; people have invested their reputations in arguments, so they won't just admit they were wrong and go away. And of course they've invested plenty of money too. Coal companies and their hired guns won't just give up when there's so much money at stake. And then there's tradition. There's plenty of inertia behind the way things are. Just look at how Donald Trump scored points by promising to bring coal jobs back. That energized people in a way that promises of growing future technology never could.
But still, this article does bring up a point that I - and I'm sure many others - had wondered about: what is the post-truth endgame? I mean, you can pretend all you want, but eventually reality asserts itself. Another great example of that came up recently, and it's also from Australia. (What is going on down there?) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was discussing encrypted communications, when he said,
“Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,"
Of course, this has lead to a global lambasting online. But the point is that however ignorant he and his laws are, at some point the rubber has to hit the road. The fact is that the only known way of breaking modern encryption is by time-consumingly impractical brute force methods. Eventually the government will be faced with the alternatives of changing the laws or attesting people for not doing the impossible, like a scene from Kafka or Italy.
Of course, most post-truth situations are less immediate. On, say, global warming, you could picture the deniers hanging on to their beliefs all the way down. Long-term trends can be easily ignored, and there will always be an excuse or alternate explanation for noticable things like sea levels. And in the case of competing power sources, people can always invent excuses why our past experience isn't representative ("If they'd just use the best way of burning coal, it would be better") or create unverifiable reasons things aren't as they seem ("the government is covering up the facts.") So I don't think anyone is going land a knockout in any post-truth argument, at least not by simply overwhelming the opponent's ability to delude.
Friday, March 3, 2017
Survival Of Whoever
Evolution and Capitalism have a lot in common. They can produce highly efficient solutions to problems, they're ruthless, and they act slowly. It's also weird what they each choose to hone to ultimate efficiency. Did you know that an eagle's eyeball is warped slightly so that whatever is at the centre of its field of vision appears magnifed? But on the other hand, manatees.
And what about peacocks? Five million years ago, one female had a tail-feather fetish; now look at them. Meanwhile, they're are so many living things that obviously need fixing. You just have to look at your own body for examples (asuming my blog is only read by humans.) As any sports fan can tell you, the human knee could use a good redesign.
But it's the same with capitalism. It can produce efficient solutions to problems. There are companies like Amazon and Walmart that have developed highly efficient systems to move items around the world. But then there's that phone cases and printer cartriges kiosk at the mall that no one ever seems to buy anything from. It's capitalism's panda, eating one plant, not really interested in breeding, yet somehow hanging on and surviving.
And both capitalism and evolution can be agonizingly slow. A lot of human health problems, from knee injuries to sinus infections, are a result of our bodies not being adapted to walking upright, even though we started doing that five million years ago. And there are so many products that need work. Like, when you buy a package of six muffins at the local grocery store, they come in a plastic tray. The label has a sticker wrapped around it. But because the plastic case doesn't have flat sides, the sticky side of the label is exposed in several places. That means it ends up sticking to any bread or produce bags that come near it.
Eventually, the design will be fixed. But that's only motivated by the supermarket losing enough business, just like evolution is only motivated by creatures' survival rates. So our sinuses might cause us pain, but it won't change unless it causes people to die. Say, they get eaten by a lion because they were distracted by pain. But even that might be faster than lost sales causing a change in the muffin tray design. So put some thought into the products you choose; you're helping businesses evolve.
And what about peacocks? Five million years ago, one female had a tail-feather fetish; now look at them. Meanwhile, they're are so many living things that obviously need fixing. You just have to look at your own body for examples (asuming my blog is only read by humans.) As any sports fan can tell you, the human knee could use a good redesign.
But it's the same with capitalism. It can produce efficient solutions to problems. There are companies like Amazon and Walmart that have developed highly efficient systems to move items around the world. But then there's that phone cases and printer cartriges kiosk at the mall that no one ever seems to buy anything from. It's capitalism's panda, eating one plant, not really interested in breeding, yet somehow hanging on and surviving.
And both capitalism and evolution can be agonizingly slow. A lot of human health problems, from knee injuries to sinus infections, are a result of our bodies not being adapted to walking upright, even though we started doing that five million years ago. And there are so many products that need work. Like, when you buy a package of six muffins at the local grocery store, they come in a plastic tray. The label has a sticker wrapped around it. But because the plastic case doesn't have flat sides, the sticky side of the label is exposed in several places. That means it ends up sticking to any bread or produce bags that come near it.
Eventually, the design will be fixed. But that's only motivated by the supermarket losing enough business, just like evolution is only motivated by creatures' survival rates. So our sinuses might cause us pain, but it won't change unless it causes people to die. Say, they get eaten by a lion because they were distracted by pain. But even that might be faster than lost sales causing a change in the muffin tray design. So put some thought into the products you choose; you're helping businesses evolve.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
I Am A Dropout, Like My Father Before Me
There's an interesting new study that suggests people are getting - very slowly - less apt for education. It's based on research in Iceland; its small, long-isolated population makes it a goldmine of genetic research. It probably applies to other populations too, but for now we can only be sure of Iceland's slow decline. Now, if you agree that Björk was better than Of Monsters and Men, you have some scientific backing.
This is the sort of study that is destined to be misinterpreted and exaggerated for years to come. No doubt there are dozens of anti-Millennial essays being pounded out right now on hundreds of Baby Boomers' manual typewriters. But the truth is that the effect is tiny - less than an IQ point a decade.
But still, it's an interesting idea. It's easy to imagine how this could happen. Natural Selection works when factors affect a creature's likelihood to reproduce, and there are still plenty of factors that affect human reproduction rates, even if they're no longer sabre-toothed factors. And unlike past natural selection, this may not reward good qualities. In the education example, the thinking is that people who dedicate a lot of their life to their education will probably have less time to have kids. Say you take a masters, you won't graduate until well into your twenties. Your counterparts who got real jobs after their bachelors have a few years headstart on starting a family. And folks who just did high school have already been going forth and multiplying for the better part of a decade. Any genes that encourage education get passed to fewer members of the next generation.
Who knows how many other things could affect your reproduction? The type of job you have, the food you buy, the place you live. It's important to realize that these effects are not just small and slow, they're also dwarfed by individual differences. So you'll find plenty of prolific parents doing post-docs, and childless high school dropouts. Thus, these findings don't have much short-term practical use. And talk of overall strength of genetics will remind people of eugenics. But I like my science dangerous, useless and misleading. It's enlightening to demonstrate how natural selection works using relatively tangible things.
This is the sort of study that is destined to be misinterpreted and exaggerated for years to come. No doubt there are dozens of anti-Millennial essays being pounded out right now on hundreds of Baby Boomers' manual typewriters. But the truth is that the effect is tiny - less than an IQ point a decade.
But still, it's an interesting idea. It's easy to imagine how this could happen. Natural Selection works when factors affect a creature's likelihood to reproduce, and there are still plenty of factors that affect human reproduction rates, even if they're no longer sabre-toothed factors. And unlike past natural selection, this may not reward good qualities. In the education example, the thinking is that people who dedicate a lot of their life to their education will probably have less time to have kids. Say you take a masters, you won't graduate until well into your twenties. Your counterparts who got real jobs after their bachelors have a few years headstart on starting a family. And folks who just did high school have already been going forth and multiplying for the better part of a decade. Any genes that encourage education get passed to fewer members of the next generation.
Who knows how many other things could affect your reproduction? The type of job you have, the food you buy, the place you live. It's important to realize that these effects are not just small and slow, they're also dwarfed by individual differences. So you'll find plenty of prolific parents doing post-docs, and childless high school dropouts. Thus, these findings don't have much short-term practical use. And talk of overall strength of genetics will remind people of eugenics. But I like my science dangerous, useless and misleading. It's enlightening to demonstrate how natural selection works using relatively tangible things.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Flu
I seem to be coming down with a cold. That's right, in July. Normally I get two colds a year: at the start of winter and the end of winter. So I'll just hope I'm getting the first one out of the way early.
This seasonally-inappropriate illness shouldn't be a surprise; scientists maintain that low temperatures don't affect the human body's ability to fight viruses. They're unsure why we get more colds in winter, but suggest it's because we spend more time indoors, and thus closer to other people. If that's true, then I suggest that we could be susceptable to summer colds in times like this when we have long periods of heat and humidity. That probably forces people indoors just as much as winter does.
Personally, I've always been skeptical of that idea that colds are communicated by people being indoors more in the winter. In the modern world, the amount of time we spend inside doesn't really change that much with the weather. Probably a better explanation would be schooling. That's one of the few places where we do bring together people from all over society in one place. It's always seemed to me that the colds start going around when school starts, not when the cold weather starts.
Well we're still a month away from the start of school, so what could currently bring together people from all over society to pass germs around? It's got to be Pokemon Go. It's clearly a plot to bring disease to geeks in the western world. I thought it was suspicious that a Japanese franchise game gets released in the U.S. weeks before Japan. It wasn't to improve the Japanese servers, it was to develop an antidote.
This seasonally-inappropriate illness shouldn't be a surprise; scientists maintain that low temperatures don't affect the human body's ability to fight viruses. They're unsure why we get more colds in winter, but suggest it's because we spend more time indoors, and thus closer to other people. If that's true, then I suggest that we could be susceptable to summer colds in times like this when we have long periods of heat and humidity. That probably forces people indoors just as much as winter does.
Personally, I've always been skeptical of that idea that colds are communicated by people being indoors more in the winter. In the modern world, the amount of time we spend inside doesn't really change that much with the weather. Probably a better explanation would be schooling. That's one of the few places where we do bring together people from all over society in one place. It's always seemed to me that the colds start going around when school starts, not when the cold weather starts.
Well we're still a month away from the start of school, so what could currently bring together people from all over society to pass germs around? It's got to be Pokemon Go. It's clearly a plot to bring disease to geeks in the western world. I thought it was suspicious that a Japanese franchise game gets released in the U.S. weeks before Japan. It wasn't to improve the Japanese servers, it was to develop an antidote.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Great Interest In All The Motorcrashes
Recently, there were some stories online about an Australian publicity stunt to promote car safety: they created a modified human body to survive car crashes. And they named him Graham. They described the project as the human body catching up to automobiles, since we really haven't had time to adapt to them. So in some hypothetical world where cars have been around for millions of years, we'd end up looking like Graham.
That's interesting, because I've always wondered how evolution would change modern humans. See, contrary to what you may have heard from your biology teacher or Marvel Comics, evolution doesn't make living things "better." It responds to their environment to make changes to make them more likely to survive. Or at least, to reproduce. For instance, a creature won't just suddenly become a faster runner unless there's some reason why running faster will make them more likely to live (say, by outrunning predators.)
So, for modern humans, it's hard to say which way evolution will take us. To use that running example, it's unlikely we'd evolve to be better runners, since we rarely have to outrun predators anymore. However, if you can run fast, you'll be successful at athletics, which will increase your likelihood to reproduce.
To be clear, I realize that this discussion is moot. It would take tens of thousands of years for any evolution to be noticeable, and it's increasingly clear that long before that we'll have either destroyed ourselves or transcended biology.
But it's interesting to contemplate, because there's all kinds of ways modern life might change us, and not necessarily in positive ways. For instance, it takes a certain maturity and forethought to make the decision to use birth-control. And people who have that maturity and forethought will be less likely to reproduce, thus breeding it out of the human race.
And Graham's creators have a point: since car crashes are one of the things most likely to kill a person before they can reproduce, surviving them would probably be a big influence on our evolutionary path. The only other factor that would have such an impact on our chances of reproducing would be impressing the opposite sex in high school. And I think the idea the idea that we would evolve to become a fifteen-year-old's ideal is even more horrifying than Graham. Suddenly the choice between apocalypse and uploading our consciousness to computers doesn't seem so bad.
That's interesting, because I've always wondered how evolution would change modern humans. See, contrary to what you may have heard from your biology teacher or Marvel Comics, evolution doesn't make living things "better." It responds to their environment to make changes to make them more likely to survive. Or at least, to reproduce. For instance, a creature won't just suddenly become a faster runner unless there's some reason why running faster will make them more likely to live (say, by outrunning predators.)
So, for modern humans, it's hard to say which way evolution will take us. To use that running example, it's unlikely we'd evolve to be better runners, since we rarely have to outrun predators anymore. However, if you can run fast, you'll be successful at athletics, which will increase your likelihood to reproduce.
To be clear, I realize that this discussion is moot. It would take tens of thousands of years for any evolution to be noticeable, and it's increasingly clear that long before that we'll have either destroyed ourselves or transcended biology.
But it's interesting to contemplate, because there's all kinds of ways modern life might change us, and not necessarily in positive ways. For instance, it takes a certain maturity and forethought to make the decision to use birth-control. And people who have that maturity and forethought will be less likely to reproduce, thus breeding it out of the human race.
And Graham's creators have a point: since car crashes are one of the things most likely to kill a person before they can reproduce, surviving them would probably be a big influence on our evolutionary path. The only other factor that would have such an impact on our chances of reproducing would be impressing the opposite sex in high school. And I think the idea the idea that we would evolve to become a fifteen-year-old's ideal is even more horrifying than Graham. Suddenly the choice between apocalypse and uploading our consciousness to computers doesn't seem so bad.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
What An Adorable Little Starship
One thing I missed in the past week was the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an effort to send the first space probe to another star. Mini-spacecraft going to Alpha Centauri. Didn't see that one coming.
The main difficulty with traveling anywhere in space is weight. Here on earth, we're used to the idea that you can make something faster just by giving it a bigger engine. Sure, you'll be going through fuel faster, but that just means you'll have to stop to refuel more often; you'll still be faster overall. But in space, there's nowhere to refuel; you have to carry it all with you.
That's a limitation you just can't get around: more powerful engines mean that you'll need to carry more fuel, which will weigh down your spaceship and nullify the advantage of the more powerful engines. So with current rocket technology, there's really no way to get to Mars in less than about 18 months, or to Alpha Centauri in less than ten thousand years.
The only way to go faster is to come up with new technology that gets more energy per pound of fuel. Nuclear power would help, though not as much as you might hope. You'd still need a huge amount of fuel, requiring a huge ship. Some people have tried to get around the weight problem by not carrying the fuel with you. One such concept is the Bussard Ramjet. It would scoop up the very few atoms hanging around space and shove them into a nuclear reactor to generate power. Unfortunately, this would require a huge ship, and no one is entirely sure the concept will work.
Another possibility is to provide the energy from elsewhere. That's how this proposal works. For a while people have suggested the idea of a "solar sail." In that concept, the ship would be pushed by the miniscule force of the sunlight hitting it. Of course, because the force is so small, you would need big sails, and even then the force wouldn't be great; but it would be persistent, and over the course of weeks or months, it would add up to great speed, possibly faster than conventional rockets.
But solar sails will only work in the inner solar system. To go further, you'd need some artificial source of light. Of course, to accelerate any reasonably-sized spacecraft, it would have to be an incredibly powerful laser, beyond what we could currently build.
And that's where this proposal comes in: it takes advantage of the fact that we can make the ship very small, and thus very light, so that we could build lasers big enough to accelerate it to high speeds. When you think about it, that's quite symbolic of how our technology works today: in the past, we imagined that we would build starships by creating huge new power sources. We haven't had much luck making those, but we have done better than we ever expected at miniaturizing machines. So it appears we're going to use those technologies to our advantage.
One thing that's surprised me about this story is just how many people are clueless about astronomy. Sure, as a geek who occasionally interacts with non-geeks, I'm aware that many people know words like "galaxy" and "nebula" only from movies, but have no idea what they mean. But I always assumed that in any small group of people, at least one will have seen enough episodes of Cosmos to be astronomically literate.
Yet I saw two different news programs say that this proposal was to send a probe to the nearest galaxy. I can understand a flustered host who was hired mostly for his voice making that mistake, but these were in a recorded voice-over and a bottom-of-the-screen title. That means it would have passed a few people without anyone noticing how embarrassingly inaccurate it was.
The main difficulty with traveling anywhere in space is weight. Here on earth, we're used to the idea that you can make something faster just by giving it a bigger engine. Sure, you'll be going through fuel faster, but that just means you'll have to stop to refuel more often; you'll still be faster overall. But in space, there's nowhere to refuel; you have to carry it all with you.
That's a limitation you just can't get around: more powerful engines mean that you'll need to carry more fuel, which will weigh down your spaceship and nullify the advantage of the more powerful engines. So with current rocket technology, there's really no way to get to Mars in less than about 18 months, or to Alpha Centauri in less than ten thousand years.
The only way to go faster is to come up with new technology that gets more energy per pound of fuel. Nuclear power would help, though not as much as you might hope. You'd still need a huge amount of fuel, requiring a huge ship. Some people have tried to get around the weight problem by not carrying the fuel with you. One such concept is the Bussard Ramjet. It would scoop up the very few atoms hanging around space and shove them into a nuclear reactor to generate power. Unfortunately, this would require a huge ship, and no one is entirely sure the concept will work.
Another possibility is to provide the energy from elsewhere. That's how this proposal works. For a while people have suggested the idea of a "solar sail." In that concept, the ship would be pushed by the miniscule force of the sunlight hitting it. Of course, because the force is so small, you would need big sails, and even then the force wouldn't be great; but it would be persistent, and over the course of weeks or months, it would add up to great speed, possibly faster than conventional rockets.
But solar sails will only work in the inner solar system. To go further, you'd need some artificial source of light. Of course, to accelerate any reasonably-sized spacecraft, it would have to be an incredibly powerful laser, beyond what we could currently build.
And that's where this proposal comes in: it takes advantage of the fact that we can make the ship very small, and thus very light, so that we could build lasers big enough to accelerate it to high speeds. When you think about it, that's quite symbolic of how our technology works today: in the past, we imagined that we would build starships by creating huge new power sources. We haven't had much luck making those, but we have done better than we ever expected at miniaturizing machines. So it appears we're going to use those technologies to our advantage.
One thing that's surprised me about this story is just how many people are clueless about astronomy. Sure, as a geek who occasionally interacts with non-geeks, I'm aware that many people know words like "galaxy" and "nebula" only from movies, but have no idea what they mean. But I always assumed that in any small group of people, at least one will have seen enough episodes of Cosmos to be astronomically literate.
Yet I saw two different news programs say that this proposal was to send a probe to the nearest galaxy. I can understand a flustered host who was hired mostly for his voice making that mistake, but these were in a recorded voice-over and a bottom-of-the-screen title. That means it would have passed a few people without anyone noticing how embarrassingly inaccurate it was.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
I Wanna Grok
There's a principle you may have heard of that if you truly understand something, you should be able to explain it to a six-year-old. If you can't, then you don't really understand it as well as you think you do.
Personally, I think that's a bit harsh. After all, if it were true, we'd have much more educated six-year-olds. It would be more accurate to say that you should be able to explain something to another adult. Of course, that doesn't reflect well on our university professors: Their job is essentially to understand things and explain them to others. Given their success at the latter, it doesn't give me confidence to the former.
That brings me to a sudden realization: I don't believe in String Theory. No, it’s not based on emperical evidence or esoteric mathematics. It's because I don't believe anyone really understands it, because no one seems to be able to explain it.
I know, it's complicated, it's hard to wrap your head around. But there are lots of things that are hard to understand. The Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics: those are also hard to explain. But it can be done; I've seen people do it. But not String Theory. I've seen and read dozens of explanations, and here's what I've learned:
Science is all about figuring out how the world works. So the joy of learning about science is to gain a greater understanding of our surroundings. I don't want to hear a few disjointed facts; I want to acquire a mental model of the processes of nature. For whatever reason, String Theory proponents haven't put much effort into this. It's probably just that there isn't much incentive for explaining bleeding-edge physics well. But until someone puts some effort into it, I'm going to assume that String Theory is a massive Emperor's New Clothes situation, where no one wants to admit that none of them get it.
Unfortunately, this kind of explanation-that-isn't seems all too common these days. There's an assumption that if you give the context of a thing, together with some ideas you can drop at parties, that's considered explaining it. But really you haven't learned anything useful: you just know enough to sound intellectual during a superficial discussion, assuming you're talking with other people who don't understand it either. It's really unfortunate that in a society where we can communicate information so easily, we're still not good at spreading understanding.
Personally, I think that's a bit harsh. After all, if it were true, we'd have much more educated six-year-olds. It would be more accurate to say that you should be able to explain something to another adult. Of course, that doesn't reflect well on our university professors: Their job is essentially to understand things and explain them to others. Given their success at the latter, it doesn't give me confidence to the former.
That brings me to a sudden realization: I don't believe in String Theory. No, it’s not based on emperical evidence or esoteric mathematics. It's because I don't believe anyone really understands it, because no one seems to be able to explain it.
I know, it's complicated, it's hard to wrap your head around. But there are lots of things that are hard to understand. The Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics: those are also hard to explain. But it can be done; I've seen people do it. But not String Theory. I've seen and read dozens of explanations, and here's what I've learned:
- All the fundamental particles in the universe are actually strings.
- The strings vibrate.
- Somehow this means that there are lots of other dimensions, but they're really small.
- How does this help us understand how particles behave?
- What do the vibrations do?
- Okay smartass, what are the strings made of?
- For that matter, why are you explaining something simple (particles that are just little points) with something more complicated (strings)?
Science is all about figuring out how the world works. So the joy of learning about science is to gain a greater understanding of our surroundings. I don't want to hear a few disjointed facts; I want to acquire a mental model of the processes of nature. For whatever reason, String Theory proponents haven't put much effort into this. It's probably just that there isn't much incentive for explaining bleeding-edge physics well. But until someone puts some effort into it, I'm going to assume that String Theory is a massive Emperor's New Clothes situation, where no one wants to admit that none of them get it.
Unfortunately, this kind of explanation-that-isn't seems all too common these days. There's an assumption that if you give the context of a thing, together with some ideas you can drop at parties, that's considered explaining it. But really you haven't learned anything useful: you just know enough to sound intellectual during a superficial discussion, assuming you're talking with other people who don't understand it either. It's really unfortunate that in a society where we can communicate information so easily, we're still not good at spreading understanding.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
The Wishful Thinking Is Out There
The question of whether or not aliens exist is an awkward one. On the one hand, some people will answer that question with any number of bizarre answers:
Because of this, many people who are sensible (but not particularly knowledgeable) will answer the question with an emphatic no, congratulating themselves on their sensibility. It seems to make sense: You haven’t seen aliens, and their existence seems to be far beyond anything we’ve actually experienced.
But then you’ll get a different answer from someone who is sensible and more knowledgeable. If we take someone like myself - who saw Cosmos and now thinks he’s an astronomy expert - and ask them if aliens exist, they’ll tell you that they most certainly do. After all, space is really big. So yes, even though life is surely unlikely to arise on any particular planet, there are so many possibilities, that life must exist somewhere out there. And if you ask the follow-up question, where are they (smartass)? They will refer you back to the “space is really big” principle.
But there’s a problem with that space-is-big, many-possibilities argument. See, space is not only big, it’s also old. It’s about four times older than life on earth, or 70,000 times older than modern humans. On the one hand, that fact adds to the lots-of-chances argument: not only are there lots of planets on which life could have arisen, but there’s been plenty of time for life to arise on them too.
The problem is when it begs that follow-up: Where are they? If the universe is so old, then not only must there be lots of alien races out there, but some of them must have been around for a long time. So even though space is big, they’ve had plenty of time to spread out, explore, and build lots of things. Even if we’re assuming that there’s no way to travel faster than the speed of light, and it will take years just to get to the nearest stars, a race could spread throughout our galaxy in, say, a million years. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t make sense that we haven’t seen any evidence of alien civilizations.
That’s called Fermi’s Paradox. We can’t explain why we can’t find any evidence of aliens, but we also can’t explain how there could not be aliens. There's a long list of interesting explanations for the paradox.
Why rehash this? The Kepler Space Telescope has found a star that appears to have thousands of objects orbiting it. That’s not unusual: a newly created star would have that. Over time, the matter surrounding it would accumulate into bigger and bigger chunks which would turn into planets. Anyone observing our sun five billion years ago would have seen the same thing. But this isn’t a new star, it’s “mature,” like ours. So it should only have a few planets orbiting it. No one has seen anything like this, and we aren’t sure what we’re looking at.
So if science can’t explain it, why not try some wild speculation? People have speculated that a really advanced civilization, with tremendous technology and voracious energy requirements, might build a Dyson Sphere. (Named for physicist Freeman Dyson, not the vacuum cleaner guy.) Essentially the idea is to build a shell around the star to collect all its energy, rather than just settle for the tiny little amount that falls on one planet.
In science fiction, this is often depicted as, literally, a big shell, where your people would live on the inside surface of the shell, with the star essentially above them. Yes, that’s right, there was one on a Star Trek episode once. But there’s a bunch of reasons why that probably wouldn’t work. So if an advanced civilization really wanted to make maximum use of their star’s energy, they’d more likely build something closer to what Dyson actually specified: a “swarm” of small structures of planetlets. They would all orbit the star, absorbing as much of its energy as possible.
So even though there’s probably some rational, boring explanation for this unusual star system, it does seem to resemble what we imagine a Dyson Sphere would look like. And it would provide an answer to Fermi’s Paradox, since this is the sort of thing we would expect to see, given how many really old, presumably advanced civilizations should be out there.
So please allow me to have my moment believing that this really is the sign of intelligent life we’ve always been looking for. Lots of people believe in things just because they want them to be true, and unlike them, at least I’m not voting based on it. And we could all use some good news: just when I was researching this, I found that most astrophysicists on social media were instead complaining about an astronomer given a slap on the wrist for serial sexual harassment. So let’s believe the aliens are there, and we have something better to aspire to.
“Yes, I sure hope they exist.”
“Yes, and the Loch Ness Monster too.”
“Of course. Why, my uncle Kenny’s been abducted twice in the last year alone.”
Because of this, many people who are sensible (but not particularly knowledgeable) will answer the question with an emphatic no, congratulating themselves on their sensibility. It seems to make sense: You haven’t seen aliens, and their existence seems to be far beyond anything we’ve actually experienced.
But then you’ll get a different answer from someone who is sensible and more knowledgeable. If we take someone like myself - who saw Cosmos and now thinks he’s an astronomy expert - and ask them if aliens exist, they’ll tell you that they most certainly do. After all, space is really big. So yes, even though life is surely unlikely to arise on any particular planet, there are so many possibilities, that life must exist somewhere out there. And if you ask the follow-up question, where are they (smartass)? They will refer you back to the “space is really big” principle.
But there’s a problem with that space-is-big, many-possibilities argument. See, space is not only big, it’s also old. It’s about four times older than life on earth, or 70,000 times older than modern humans. On the one hand, that fact adds to the lots-of-chances argument: not only are there lots of planets on which life could have arisen, but there’s been plenty of time for life to arise on them too.
The problem is when it begs that follow-up: Where are they? If the universe is so old, then not only must there be lots of alien races out there, but some of them must have been around for a long time. So even though space is big, they’ve had plenty of time to spread out, explore, and build lots of things. Even if we’re assuming that there’s no way to travel faster than the speed of light, and it will take years just to get to the nearest stars, a race could spread throughout our galaxy in, say, a million years. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t make sense that we haven’t seen any evidence of alien civilizations.
That’s called Fermi’s Paradox. We can’t explain why we can’t find any evidence of aliens, but we also can’t explain how there could not be aliens. There's a long list of interesting explanations for the paradox.
Why rehash this? The Kepler Space Telescope has found a star that appears to have thousands of objects orbiting it. That’s not unusual: a newly created star would have that. Over time, the matter surrounding it would accumulate into bigger and bigger chunks which would turn into planets. Anyone observing our sun five billion years ago would have seen the same thing. But this isn’t a new star, it’s “mature,” like ours. So it should only have a few planets orbiting it. No one has seen anything like this, and we aren’t sure what we’re looking at.
So if science can’t explain it, why not try some wild speculation? People have speculated that a really advanced civilization, with tremendous technology and voracious energy requirements, might build a Dyson Sphere. (Named for physicist Freeman Dyson, not the vacuum cleaner guy.) Essentially the idea is to build a shell around the star to collect all its energy, rather than just settle for the tiny little amount that falls on one planet.
In science fiction, this is often depicted as, literally, a big shell, where your people would live on the inside surface of the shell, with the star essentially above them. Yes, that’s right, there was one on a Star Trek episode once. But there’s a bunch of reasons why that probably wouldn’t work. So if an advanced civilization really wanted to make maximum use of their star’s energy, they’d more likely build something closer to what Dyson actually specified: a “swarm” of small structures of planetlets. They would all orbit the star, absorbing as much of its energy as possible.
So even though there’s probably some rational, boring explanation for this unusual star system, it does seem to resemble what we imagine a Dyson Sphere would look like. And it would provide an answer to Fermi’s Paradox, since this is the sort of thing we would expect to see, given how many really old, presumably advanced civilizations should be out there.
So please allow me to have my moment believing that this really is the sign of intelligent life we’ve always been looking for. Lots of people believe in things just because they want them to be true, and unlike them, at least I’m not voting based on it. And we could all use some good news: just when I was researching this, I found that most astrophysicists on social media were instead complaining about an astronomer given a slap on the wrist for serial sexual harassment. So let’s believe the aliens are there, and we have something better to aspire to.
Monday, March 9, 2015
XX: The Unknown
Yesterday was International Women's Day. It doesn't get a lot of publicity, but there seemed to be quite a few people and organizations making note of it. As someone interested in science and technology, a lot of my chosen media streams focussed on women's contributions to those fields. That's good, since those are often overlooked.
And generally, they did a good job getting publicity to women in science. By that, I mean that we're slowly discovering that there are women in science other than Marie Curie. I was also glad that Hedy Lamarr's contribution to communication technology was portrayed more accurately. In recent years, I've seen some people describe it as her inventing Wi-Fi in the 1940's.
But I have to take issue with the treatment of computer scientist Grace Hopper. Everyone focuses on her finding a moth in an early computer, leading to the terms, "bug" and "debugging." Yeah, that's nice and everything, but she also invented the compiler! Yes, I know hardly any non-programmers know what that means, but it doesn't change the fact that it's really important, and worth mentioning ahead of some cute anecdote. After all, we all know that Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, and endlessly quote E=mc2, even though hardly anyone one knows what it means.
Other than that, nice work. Maybe next year we can practice saying "Crick and Watson and Franklin."
And generally, they did a good job getting publicity to women in science. By that, I mean that we're slowly discovering that there are women in science other than Marie Curie. I was also glad that Hedy Lamarr's contribution to communication technology was portrayed more accurately. In recent years, I've seen some people describe it as her inventing Wi-Fi in the 1940's.
But I have to take issue with the treatment of computer scientist Grace Hopper. Everyone focuses on her finding a moth in an early computer, leading to the terms, "bug" and "debugging." Yeah, that's nice and everything, but she also invented the compiler! Yes, I know hardly any non-programmers know what that means, but it doesn't change the fact that it's really important, and worth mentioning ahead of some cute anecdote. After all, we all know that Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, and endlessly quote E=mc2, even though hardly anyone one knows what it means.
Other than that, nice work. Maybe next year we can practice saying "Crick and Watson and Franklin."
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Gutting It Out
I'm sick, and having trouble coming up with ideas to write about, but I'll try my best.
When did "gut" become a scientific term? I can understand people using a term like "gut bacteria" trying to make the topic seem more accessible. But now even scientific types are using it.
I remember a kid in about grade two using the word "gut" to describe the stomach, and the teacher tried in vain to make him say something more sophisticated. And now authorities are telling me to be concerned with my gut health.
On the other hand, the dancing bacteria on the American Express ad gets to go by its scientific name, Campylobacter jejuni. And according to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't even look like the cartoon, grass skirt or not. I was kind of disappointed in the article; often Wikipedia articles will have a section with a title like, "in popular culture," where they will list all the times the subject has been mentioned in books, TV, etc. For instance, the entry on Albuquerque, New Mexico, solemnly tells you about Bugs Bunny's frequent references to it. So I was hoping that the otherwise esoteric entry on c. jejuni would have such a note about the ad, but no.
When did "gut" become a scientific term? I can understand people using a term like "gut bacteria" trying to make the topic seem more accessible. But now even scientific types are using it.
I remember a kid in about grade two using the word "gut" to describe the stomach, and the teacher tried in vain to make him say something more sophisticated. And now authorities are telling me to be concerned with my gut health.
On the other hand, the dancing bacteria on the American Express ad gets to go by its scientific name, Campylobacter jejuni. And according to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't even look like the cartoon, grass skirt or not. I was kind of disappointed in the article; often Wikipedia articles will have a section with a title like, "in popular culture," where they will list all the times the subject has been mentioned in books, TV, etc. For instance, the entry on Albuquerque, New Mexico, solemnly tells you about Bugs Bunny's frequent references to it. So I was hoping that the otherwise esoteric entry on c. jejuni would have such a note about the ad, but no.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
All Of These Things Are Just Like The Others
You may have seen a recent article about the "Hipster Effect." That is, a scientist has mathematically explained why hipsters look the same, even though they are trying to be individual.
The explanation is this: assume that everyone in a community wants to avoid any trend. You also assume that, like most people, it takes a while for an individual to realize that a trend exists (that is, you don't assume there is a trend to wear red suspenders just because you saw one person wearing red suspenders; it takes a while to notice a pattern.) When you simulate such a community, they eventually fall into a rhythm where everyone realizes there's a trend, switches to the opposite of the trend, notices that trend, switches, and so on.
It's an interesting concept: it's a lesson in how patterns can have very non-obvious causes, and a lesson in how difficult it is for an individual in a large population to avoid being part of large movements. But I don't think it alone explains the phenomena of individualistic people looking the same.
In a world where you can easily distinguish yourself in a myriad of different ways, it's not likely you'd create a trend that way. That is, if you're tired of everyone wearing white, wearing black isn't the only way to distinguish yourself; you could start wearing 1970's style rollerskates. Or wear an ironic neckerchief. Or carry a clarinet around.
Okay, there is the possibility that avoiding trends itself becomes a trend. That is, you might try to avoid clothing trends by choosing your clothing based only on practicality and comfort. If enough people do that, then comfortable, practical clothing might be seen as a trend, and adopted by people who choose their clothing based on fashion. That's sort of what happened with Grunge era fashion.
I remember a Sociology prof observing that loners often look like other loners, though he explained it in terms of psychology: everyone has a need for both individuality and belonging, but different people have different amounts of each need. So individualistic people don't completely reject membership in any group, they just have less of a need than most people. So for them, the ideal solution is to join a smaller group. If you're in a subculture, you can feel individual while still maintaining a sense that you belong to something.
That seems to be a better explanation than some sort of comedy of errors in which people end up the same in an attempt to be different. That sounds like something that would be the premise of an SNL sketch or a Twilight Zone episode.
The explanation is this: assume that everyone in a community wants to avoid any trend. You also assume that, like most people, it takes a while for an individual to realize that a trend exists (that is, you don't assume there is a trend to wear red suspenders just because you saw one person wearing red suspenders; it takes a while to notice a pattern.) When you simulate such a community, they eventually fall into a rhythm where everyone realizes there's a trend, switches to the opposite of the trend, notices that trend, switches, and so on.
It's an interesting concept: it's a lesson in how patterns can have very non-obvious causes, and a lesson in how difficult it is for an individual in a large population to avoid being part of large movements. But I don't think it alone explains the phenomena of individualistic people looking the same.
In a world where you can easily distinguish yourself in a myriad of different ways, it's not likely you'd create a trend that way. That is, if you're tired of everyone wearing white, wearing black isn't the only way to distinguish yourself; you could start wearing 1970's style rollerskates. Or wear an ironic neckerchief. Or carry a clarinet around.
Okay, there is the possibility that avoiding trends itself becomes a trend. That is, you might try to avoid clothing trends by choosing your clothing based only on practicality and comfort. If enough people do that, then comfortable, practical clothing might be seen as a trend, and adopted by people who choose their clothing based on fashion. That's sort of what happened with Grunge era fashion.
I remember a Sociology prof observing that loners often look like other loners, though he explained it in terms of psychology: everyone has a need for both individuality and belonging, but different people have different amounts of each need. So individualistic people don't completely reject membership in any group, they just have less of a need than most people. So for them, the ideal solution is to join a smaller group. If you're in a subculture, you can feel individual while still maintaining a sense that you belong to something.
That seems to be a better explanation than some sort of comedy of errors in which people end up the same in an attempt to be different. That sounds like something that would be the premise of an SNL sketch or a Twilight Zone episode.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Hurry Hard!
For a number of years, there's been a strange phenomena in Death Valley, California. Specifically, it's in a place called Racetrack Playa (I have all his albums.)
There are rocks that move. At night, when no one's around, they apparently stroll around, and the next day they're found in a different place, with a trail of dirt where they've moved. The desert is flat, so they aren't just rolling, and the surface is so dry the ground is cracked, and there are no footprints around them.
I read about this mystery a few years ago, and it stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons. First is that it's just so bizarre; I've never known any rocks to behave that way. But secondly, the writer of the article seemed giddy with the idea that the phenomena was perplexing scientists. Not on the joy of a challenging mystery, but a vindictive enjoyment of the idea that the scientists couldn't explain something.
It's an attitude I've seen many times: a resentment at science's attempted explanation of nature. No, not the anger people have when science's explanations don't match religious or political beliefs (though that is its own annoyance.) I'm talking about people getting frustrated with science for trying to explain things, rather than leave mysteries to be mysterious.
This attitude usually comes with a misunderstanding of scientists' motivations. There's a belief that scientists are motivated by some anal-retentive need to eliminate the world's uncertainty and mystery. Hence people's joy at their perplexment when they fail.
But the truth is that scientists are not just comfortable with mystery, but thrive on it. After all, their job is all about facing mystery. Where they differ from most of us is that:
Of course I'm writing this because scientists have the last laugh on this one: this week, they solved the mystery of the wandering rocks. It's because of a rare combination of ice and wind. So with that solved, you'll have to find something else in the entirety of the universe and human experience to wonder at.
There are rocks that move. At night, when no one's around, they apparently stroll around, and the next day they're found in a different place, with a trail of dirt where they've moved. The desert is flat, so they aren't just rolling, and the surface is so dry the ground is cracked, and there are no footprints around them.
I read about this mystery a few years ago, and it stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons. First is that it's just so bizarre; I've never known any rocks to behave that way. But secondly, the writer of the article seemed giddy with the idea that the phenomena was perplexing scientists. Not on the joy of a challenging mystery, but a vindictive enjoyment of the idea that the scientists couldn't explain something.
It's an attitude I've seen many times: a resentment at science's attempted explanation of nature. No, not the anger people have when science's explanations don't match religious or political beliefs (though that is its own annoyance.) I'm talking about people getting frustrated with science for trying to explain things, rather than leave mysteries to be mysterious.
This attitude usually comes with a misunderstanding of scientists' motivations. There's a belief that scientists are motivated by some anal-retentive need to eliminate the world's uncertainty and mystery. Hence people's joy at their perplexment when they fail.
But the truth is that scientists are not just comfortable with mystery, but thrive on it. After all, their job is all about facing mystery. Where they differ from most of us is that:
- They don't believe a mystery must remain permanently unsolved in order for it to be meaningful to us
- They are confident that we won't run out of mysteries. Probably because they've noticed that answers tend to lead to more questions.
Of course I'm writing this because scientists have the last laugh on this one: this week, they solved the mystery of the wandering rocks. It's because of a rare combination of ice and wind. So with that solved, you'll have to find something else in the entirety of the universe and human experience to wonder at.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Hollywood, You Got Some Splainin' To Do
I can't believe there's another movie about technology making a person all-powerful by harnessing the power of the mind. I already complained about Transcendence, where Johnny Depp is uploaded into a computer, watched over by Morgan Freeman. And now there's Lucy, where Scarlett Johansson is given a drug to let her use all of her brain, watched over by Morgan Freeman. So apparently this is Freeman's latest typecasting: providing exposition when someone becomes an superhuman ultramind. How many character ruts has he been in now? Grizzled detective investigating a serial-killer, thoughtful supporting character giving the star life advice, God, narrator.
And what's with having the hottest actors play the supermind characters? I know, that will sell tickets. And it makes sense that if you have a technology that gives someone great mental powers, you might as well use it on someone who's already above-average in other areas. But still, using attractive people in a movie about minds seems like casting porn based on intelligence.
It's also directed by Luc Besson, who has made a bunch of movies with strong female protagonists (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, Colombiana, and a Joan of Arc film.) So I'd love to hear a Freudian interpretation of that. Put him together with Joss Whedon and they might finally get a Wonder Woman movie made.
But what really bothers me about Lucy and its carpet-bomb advertising, is that it perpetuates the myth that we only use 10% of our brains. It's an especially frustrating misconception, since it likely began with psychologist William James complaining that people don't use their brains. So in a sense, his remark proves itself. And now that it's been hammered into our heads by a Hollywood marketing campaign, we'll never be rid of it. For all the interesting science and technology in the world, they have to make "science"-fiction movies based on things we know to be false, and once again, you'll come out of it knowing even less.
And what's with having the hottest actors play the supermind characters? I know, that will sell tickets. And it makes sense that if you have a technology that gives someone great mental powers, you might as well use it on someone who's already above-average in other areas. But still, using attractive people in a movie about minds seems like casting porn based on intelligence.
It's also directed by Luc Besson, who has made a bunch of movies with strong female protagonists (La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, Colombiana, and a Joan of Arc film.) So I'd love to hear a Freudian interpretation of that. Put him together with Joss Whedon and they might finally get a Wonder Woman movie made.
But what really bothers me about Lucy and its carpet-bomb advertising, is that it perpetuates the myth that we only use 10% of our brains. It's an especially frustrating misconception, since it likely began with psychologist William James complaining that people don't use their brains. So in a sense, his remark proves itself. And now that it's been hammered into our heads by a Hollywood marketing campaign, we'll never be rid of it. For all the interesting science and technology in the world, they have to make "science"-fiction movies based on things we know to be false, and once again, you'll come out of it knowing even less.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Domesticated Animals
I wonder: if a fly enters a house, does that increases its chances of survival? On the one hand, it will have access to food, and protection from the elements. But on the other, it is now locked in an enclosed space with one or more large mammals that will try to kill it.
I'm wondering this because we could be breeding them one way or the other. I've heard evolutionary biologists say that if a mutation helps a living thing survive even one in a thousand times, that will be enough for the mutation to become standard throughout the population. So given the short life-cycle of insects, you'd think that by now, we would have caused them to evolve either an aversion or attraction to our houses.
It's disappointing that humanity has caused so little evolution in animals. You'd think that:
I'm wondering this because we could be breeding them one way or the other. I've heard evolutionary biologists say that if a mutation helps a living thing survive even one in a thousand times, that will be enough for the mutation to become standard throughout the population. So given the short life-cycle of insects, you'd think that by now, we would have caused them to evolve either an aversion or attraction to our houses.
It's disappointing that humanity has caused so little evolution in animals. You'd think that:
- Squirrels would be more decisive, either running across the road or staying away, instead of going into the road and then becoming uncertain.
- Insects and spiders would become cuter, so we'd be less likely to squash them. Though it occurs to me that this could go the other way: the scarier they look, the more likely we are to run out of the room and hope they go away on their own.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Uncivil Twilight
That's it! I can't take it any more! Every daylight savings shift, people start saying we're just kidding ourselves, we're moving time around and thinking we're getting more. I've become accustomed to that, but I expect better from Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Sure, he's probably intellectually exhausted after weeks of talking Seth MacFarlane out of writing fart jokes into the new Cosmos. But still, usually he's the one convincing the great unwashed that experts know what they're doing. Now he's contributing to it.
So let me explain. Here's a chart showing how the hours of daylight change through the year. Daylight hours are in orange, night in blue. This is based on New York, but the principle is the same anywhere:
Now I'll overlay the typical person's waking hours (represented by the black striped hours.) I've picked 7:00am to 11:00pm.
As you can see, that has the effect that in the summer, there is a fair amount of daylight that goes by before this person even gets up. That's rather unfortunate, given that the person also has several waking hours after the sun goes down. How can we take advantage of that extra "wasted" daylight?
One way is to change your waking time through the year, getting up with the sun. But that's inconvenient, since we are creatures of habit, and many parts of our days can't be easily shifted (like working hours.)
Another way would be to shift our entire day forward. Wake up at, say, 4:00am each day throughout the year, then going to bed at 8:00pm, and splitting our non-working hours between before and after work. But that doesn't seem to fit human nature: for whatever reason, we have a strong preference to doing our work first and recreation afterwards.
So the only remaining approach is to shift our day forward in the middle of the year. That moves our waking hours earlier, so that we're awake for more of the daylight. Here's what that looks like, again with the black-striped area representing a typical set of waking hours:
See? Now less of the daylight hours goes unused.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying daylight savings time is perfect, or even that it's a good idea. For instance, one could argue that we should just shift the day an hour or two forward and leave it there all year, and we just learn to deal with getting up in the dark in the winter. Just stop it with the obtuse arguments that science/the government/Ben Franklin thinks we're getting free daylight.
What would aliens say if told that Earthlings shift clocks by an hour to fool themselves into thinking there's more sunlight
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 9, 2014
Sure, he's probably intellectually exhausted after weeks of talking Seth MacFarlane out of writing fart jokes into the new Cosmos. But still, usually he's the one convincing the great unwashed that experts know what they're doing. Now he's contributing to it.
So let me explain. Here's a chart showing how the hours of daylight change through the year. Daylight hours are in orange, night in blue. This is based on New York, but the principle is the same anywhere:
Now I'll overlay the typical person's waking hours (represented by the black striped hours.) I've picked 7:00am to 11:00pm.
As you can see, that has the effect that in the summer, there is a fair amount of daylight that goes by before this person even gets up. That's rather unfortunate, given that the person also has several waking hours after the sun goes down. How can we take advantage of that extra "wasted" daylight?
One way is to change your waking time through the year, getting up with the sun. But that's inconvenient, since we are creatures of habit, and many parts of our days can't be easily shifted (like working hours.)
Another way would be to shift our entire day forward. Wake up at, say, 4:00am each day throughout the year, then going to bed at 8:00pm, and splitting our non-working hours between before and after work. But that doesn't seem to fit human nature: for whatever reason, we have a strong preference to doing our work first and recreation afterwards.
So the only remaining approach is to shift our day forward in the middle of the year. That moves our waking hours earlier, so that we're awake for more of the daylight. Here's what that looks like, again with the black-striped area representing a typical set of waking hours:
See? Now less of the daylight hours goes unused.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying daylight savings time is perfect, or even that it's a good idea. For instance, one could argue that we should just shift the day an hour or two forward and leave it there all year, and we just learn to deal with getting up in the dark in the winter. Just stop it with the obtuse arguments that science/the government/Ben Franklin thinks we're getting free daylight.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Don't Worry, Ignorant Americans, I Got Your Back
You may have seen a report out about Americans' knowledge of science. It's been reported with headlines like:
After reading that, is "Americans are idiots" really the first thing that comes to mind? The South Koreans were the only ones to beat the Americans by any significant amount. The U.S. did better than the Japanese on almost every question (not the evolution one, of course.) And the Europeans were the worst on the signature astronomy question. Their number even came out at a nice headline-friendly one-in-three, yet that never got mentioned.
But good on NPR. According to stereotype, you might expect them to feast on stories of American ignorance, but they were the only ones who noticed that other countries were worse off.
- One in four Americans 'do not know the Earth circles the Sun' (The Telegraph, UK)
- 1 in 4 Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun: poll (News.com.au, Australia) They also used the teaser link, "Finally, proof Americans are not very bright?"
- One in four Americans unaware that Earth revolves around Sun: poll (New Delhi Television, via Agence France-Presse)
- 1 in 4 Americans doesn't know Earth circles sun (USA Today)
- One in four Americans do not know the Earth circles the Sun and fewer than half know humans evolved from earlier species (Daily Mail, UK)
After reading that, is "Americans are idiots" really the first thing that comes to mind? The South Koreans were the only ones to beat the Americans by any significant amount. The U.S. did better than the Japanese on almost every question (not the evolution one, of course.) And the Europeans were the worst on the signature astronomy question. Their number even came out at a nice headline-friendly one-in-three, yet that never got mentioned.
But good on NPR. According to stereotype, you might expect them to feast on stories of American ignorance, but they were the only ones who noticed that other countries were worse off.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Paging Fred Bloggs
I came across news of a study from a few years ago that explores the possibility that people are slightly more likely to choose a career that reflects their name. You've probably seen a few examples of people whose profession lines up with their name; sprinter Usain Bolt is often given as an example.
Apparently, it's called an aptronym. Wikipedia has a list of some famous examples.
Interestingly, there's a person sharing my last name, James Roe, who is a rower. I'd never considered this way of finding a career before. The only time I've tried rowing was in a community dragon boat race once. I've never had an interest in fish eggs or Eurasian deer. Including the meaning behind "Jason," (healer) I should be a veterinarian specializing in deer. Other than an affinity for Bambi, that doesn't seem to fit my personality. So back to What Colour Is Your Parachute? it is then.
Apparently, it's called an aptronym. Wikipedia has a list of some famous examples.
Interestingly, there's a person sharing my last name, James Roe, who is a rower. I'd never considered this way of finding a career before. The only time I've tried rowing was in a community dragon boat race once. I've never had an interest in fish eggs or Eurasian deer. Including the meaning behind "Jason," (healer) I should be a veterinarian specializing in deer. Other than an affinity for Bambi, that doesn't seem to fit my personality. So back to What Colour Is Your Parachute? it is then.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Cool New Product
I just heard on the radio that scientists have created a reverse microwave. That is, a device that can chill things at speeds similar to a microwave. At least I'm hoping they have: The only online references I can find are at food sites and local radio, newspapers and TV stations that aren't usually the media outlets of record. You'd think technology sites would be all over this, but they don't seem to have reported it. And there's no mention of it on Wikipedia, so it doesn't exist. But then, neither does this blog, so I'm going to assume the reverse microwave exists.
And that's great, because I've wanted one of these for a while. I had always assumed that it would violate some of the laws of thermodynamics, so I had given up hope. It's being billed as a great alternative way of cooling drinks, since it would take less energy than keeping drinks cool continuously in a fridge. But that's not why I wanted it: I wanted it to cool hot food. In particular, food that's too hot because it came out of a microwave.
And that's the device I'm going to wish for now: a combination microwave/reverse-microwave. You can use the microwave function to heat the food, and if it turns out to be too hot, you just use the reverse microwave function to cool it. Of course, if the reverse-microwave function is as unpredictable as modern microwaves, you may end up overdoing it and making it cooler than you'd like. So you'll have to use the heating and cooling back and forth, trying to zero-in on your ideal temperature. You'll finally have food that's at the right temperature, and the only cost is using twice the power. Thanks science!
And that's great, because I've wanted one of these for a while. I had always assumed that it would violate some of the laws of thermodynamics, so I had given up hope. It's being billed as a great alternative way of cooling drinks, since it would take less energy than keeping drinks cool continuously in a fridge. But that's not why I wanted it: I wanted it to cool hot food. In particular, food that's too hot because it came out of a microwave.
And that's the device I'm going to wish for now: a combination microwave/reverse-microwave. You can use the microwave function to heat the food, and if it turns out to be too hot, you just use the reverse microwave function to cool it. Of course, if the reverse-microwave function is as unpredictable as modern microwaves, you may end up overdoing it and making it cooler than you'd like. So you'll have to use the heating and cooling back and forth, trying to zero-in on your ideal temperature. You'll finally have food that's at the right temperature, and the only cost is using twice the power. Thanks science!
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Scientific Proof This Blog Sucks
Psychologists say that in order to become really brilliant at something, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours doing that something. (To put that in perspective, that's about five years of 40-hour weeks.) I've always had my doubts about that. I bring this up because of a Wired article on the topic. Specifically, it's an excerpt from a book by abattoir designer extraordinaire/autism advocate, Temple Grandin.
The article complains that the 10,000 hours concept has been blown out of proportion by people. Rather than seeing these hours of practice as merely a prerequisite of genius, they've gotten the idea that you just need to put in all those hours and you'll be the best in the world. Unfortunately, it's not that easy: you need "nature" to go with all that "nurture."
If you think about that, it makes sense. Most of the workforce has at least five years of full-time experience in their current job, and not many of them are geniuses.
But it seems to me that there are plenty of other problems with this theory. For instance, the idea of spending 10,000 hours doing something to get good at it may make sense for, say, playing a musical instrument. But what about something harder to quantify. Take a writer. Does a writer have to spend 10,000 hours actually typing? Because they do spend a lot of time just thinking about what to write. And what about time reading? That contributes a lot to their writing prowess, does it count? Or scientists. I hope they don't have to spend 10,000 hours actually doing experiments. But if 10,000 hours thinking about science is enough, then just about everyone who has tried reading A Brief History Of Time would qualify.
And then there are activities you really can't rack up 10,000 hours at. Can anyone really be an expert skydiver? And that brings me to blogging. Assuming you only blog in your spare time, blogs haven't been around long enough for anyone to become an expert blogger. So what hope is there for the entire community? Consider that if there is a blogging genius out there, it's Perez Hilton.
The article complains that the 10,000 hours concept has been blown out of proportion by people. Rather than seeing these hours of practice as merely a prerequisite of genius, they've gotten the idea that you just need to put in all those hours and you'll be the best in the world. Unfortunately, it's not that easy: you need "nature" to go with all that "nurture."
If you think about that, it makes sense. Most of the workforce has at least five years of full-time experience in their current job, and not many of them are geniuses.
But it seems to me that there are plenty of other problems with this theory. For instance, the idea of spending 10,000 hours doing something to get good at it may make sense for, say, playing a musical instrument. But what about something harder to quantify. Take a writer. Does a writer have to spend 10,000 hours actually typing? Because they do spend a lot of time just thinking about what to write. And what about time reading? That contributes a lot to their writing prowess, does it count? Or scientists. I hope they don't have to spend 10,000 hours actually doing experiments. But if 10,000 hours thinking about science is enough, then just about everyone who has tried reading A Brief History Of Time would qualify.
And then there are activities you really can't rack up 10,000 hours at. Can anyone really be an expert skydiver? And that brings me to blogging. Assuming you only blog in your spare time, blogs haven't been around long enough for anyone to become an expert blogger. So what hope is there for the entire community? Consider that if there is a blogging genius out there, it's Perez Hilton.
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