Ancient Histories

Survived another ‘week’ of gym. Got to sleep in this morning. Almost feel rested. And just in time to celebrate.

Today is the birthday anniversary of William Whewell, the daddy rabbit of modern science. Admittedly, he was a bit of an anal retentive. His view of science was that the scientist had to be widely and deeply educated and trained, quite at odds from he and his contemporaries who made it up as they went. I always suspected it was more that he was an information junkie and wanted everyone else to be the same before he would grant them respectable notice. He was also down on accidental discovery. And he had the thought, firmly held that science and religion were easily reconciled and that the state of science was stationary.

But at least he got past the arrogance of the Restoration crowd, Newton and Boyle and Young and the like. In fact we can argue that Whewell was the first historically attended nerd, given his problems with women. No, nothing out of the ordinary. In fact totally ordinary and archetypical, at least from the nerdish standpoint.

I also read, in a rather poorly supported article, [Link] that the Gates of Tartarus, or Plutonion, has been found. Just another cave with psychoactive gas seepage, evidently.

Intriguingly, the original shrine was destroyed by Christianists in the sixth century CE – with some aid from an earthquake. Of course by then the ruler of the “underworld” had become the villain.

And lastly, we have a lovely rant [Link] about the evils of fast food restaurants, in particular, McDougal’s. Sadly the rant is one pony, whipping only on the calorie overages and totally ignoring more subtle things like fats and sodium. Ah well, what do we expect from modern journalists? Accuracy? Depth? Completeness? Probably as little as we expect from modern corporations in general.

Of course there’s nothing actually new here, just a rehash to fill page space and sell papers. Of course given the numbers of folks who eat at fast food restaurants we have to questions what difference any honesty and integrity make and whether the species isn’t already doomed to extinction?

humans, science, religion, history, health

Pedaling, not Driving

Two day and the gym still moderately sparse. And while the podcast episodes today – Science – were not particularly sticky – except Smolin’s discourse on time – I did come to a couple of pre-Wednesday realizations:

• Corporations are Predators;
• Adverticement is Falsehood; and most significantly,
• Consensus is NOT Causality.

That’s all, folks!

society, civilization, insight, science

Great Fysix?

Saturn day and the weather beavers are foretelling day long rain. Maybe. Somewhere. But no ominousness of tornadoes. Or UFO attacks.  After yesterday I would like a bit of insulation from the world. Or perhaps after this week.

Anyway I am in a rather oblique mood this morning so there is no telling what is going to come out here.

First, I have been rather distressed with Scientific American this week. They seem to be slipping back into their stupid behavior cycle that arose twenty or so years ago and continued until a year or so ago. Or at least on the latter so I hoped. Earlier this week they had a bit about the synthesis of the last Lanthanide (Actinide? I have to confess to forgetting which is which after all these years.) and the impending demise of the Periodic Table.

This is not new. I got lectured in senior inorganic class that something of this sort occurred back in the days prior to L&A when the basic chart was filled in. One of those no more problems to solve. Poppycock! Balderdash!

Then there have been all sorts of  recent efforts to formulate a “new” periodic table. This draws from the basic reality of the PT. It is a visual representation and it as utility only so long as that visualization conveys the reality to the perceiver. (Don’t try to tell this to bogs; they think its a building block art piece.) The reality, at least to me, is electronic structure – quantum mechanics – associated with the principal and azimuthial quantum numbers. And the representation is poor. Not just in the current PT but in all attempts at PT. Because they are trying to map a multidimensionality (degrees of freedom) into two dimensions. So the PT is never anything more than a memory crutch or anchor. But if we learn it at an early enough age it serves its purpose fairly well and is thereby successful.

But the only collapse or failure is when it doesn’t do that. And that failure has nothing to do with synthesizing a “LAST” element.

Next, I ran across [Link] yesterday an article in SA about who is the “Greatest” American physicist? Horrible article. All fuzzy and unscientific. Analogy: Why is George Washington the father of the country? Answer: He started the French and Indian War which led to the revolution and the eviction of the British. Barely.

Point is there is no metric for this. It’s all subjective. And while I agree that the argument that Josiah Willard Gibbs was number one was better than fair, I found it irrelevant and trite.

Besides, they didn’t mention the Founding Grandfather – Benjamin Franklin. Case rested.

And I ran across [Link]

this cartoon and t struck me as not all that bad physics. Maybe not great physics, but not altogether bad physics. And it is stellar philosophy.

Tootle Pip and Deity save the Tyrant!

science, rubbish, humans, humor

Shule Show

Two day, and the gum was relatively deserted. Must be getting close enough to summer for the denials to mount up. Science podcasts today and aside from a rather extended discussion of dark energy on one of the NPR ‘casts, not particularly sticky. So unsticky in fact that I find myself at a loss to offer comments on anything.

Except a rather naive segment on a road show aimed at exposing high shule students to climate change. The come-on is that climate change isn’t taught in public shules. Thud. Flat.

Why isn’t it taught? Probably for the same reason that evolution isn’t and mysticism is. Political pressure. It isn’t on the tests because politicians don’t want it on them. It’s one more symptom of what is wrong with the shules and our country.

But the question I want answered is why was the presentation permitted? Are there still rebels out there?

education, science, climate, politics, tyranny

Perpetuation of the Species

Ice Cream Day! And I am still desensitizing my newly exposed roots after oral surgery, so no frozen yogurt for me. There is however a promise of absence of precipitation from the weather beavers this day which is the holy day of maternity. And they also fortell a last coolness of spring before the early onset of torrid summer. 

Of all the holy days, this is one of the few that actually make sense. Never mind that it was invented by the greeting card industry to sell bad poetry and ugly paper, it still makes sense that we should acknowledge and honor the biological imperative of perpetuating the species. So while Easter and Christmas are sheer mysticism, Mother’s Day at least has some grounding in actuality.

While I’m on the azimuth of mysticism, I should mention a somewhat clumsy article [Link] arguing – that’s the clumsy part – that Android is the new “Windows”, as in the predominant OS. That’s not my criterion but I won’t quibble since the primary reason I cite the article, pointed to me by my erstwhile colleague Magnetic Inductance Force, is to quote

“When users can’t view several windows simultaneously, they must keep information from one window in short-term memory while they activate another window,” writes noted usability expert Jakob Nielsen. “This is problematic for two reasons. First, human short-term memory is notoriously weak, and second, the very task of having to manipulate a window—instead of simply glancing at one that’s already open—further taxes the user’s cognitive resources.”

This is an indictment of tile GUIs at the fundamental level of how humans operate. And it supports my independent (?) assessment that tile GUIs only work for people who work sequentially, not those who work cumulatively!

So micturate on you Unity, Gnome 3, and whatever MegaHard call Metro this week!

Next, some research from U Tel Aviv indicates that Facebook – and other social networking sites – may cause psychosis. [Link] I fear this has to be considered just official, i.e., academic, confirmation of what most nerds and geeks who use FaceBook already know, that there are a LOT of whack jobs on FB. Maybe all but one, maybe two, as in the Amish saying about weird.

Next, a study out of Nawth Carolinia State U that indicates that old coders are better than young coders. [Link] Duhhhhh! What you lose in endurance you more than make up for in guile and deceit. But it’s nice to put that to bed, or at least to strike a counter bow to young coder insecurity expressing itself. Deal with it pups, that’s how you get to be an old, good coder!

Along those same lines, a study from U Washington indicates that the dinosaurs became dominant because of opportunistic success after a major biodiversity crash. [Link] So the rise of mammals – and the demise of dinosaurs – after the Yucatan strike is fair game. And DUMB luck. Remember that homo sapiens!

On which note, a study out of U Colorado indicates that humans who hold extreme political views do so as a result of an illusion of understanding. [Link] This confirms what I have hypothesized for a long time: no one understands politics and those who think they do are wrong and deluded.

This is one of the reasons we need to do away with politics, or at least, political organizations. Firing parties for all members of such may be considered.

And lastly, an article [Link] about a rather telling argument that science and religion cannot be reconciled. Does this mean we can quit humoring the mystics?

humans, behavior, science, politics, religion

Bog Amerika 1

Inversion layer this morning, and a bit of fog, just enough to bring out the lemming death rush in the Bogs of Marshall County. But the gym was sparse in population, especially educationalists, and while the podcast episodes were mediocre and unmemorable, it was a fair session.

On which azimuth, I noted this sundae that the Pew folks and the Smithsonian, the American national museum paid for by English monies, have done a test to assess the science knowledge of the Amerikan public. [Link] I will discuss the survey results in a later blot. For today I want to talk about my taking the test, not as a part of the sample population but as an insight seeking effort. And, as it turns out a rather disappointing journey. [Link]

The test consists of thirteen questions, either true-false (in the vernacular) or multiple-guess. The questions were not really science questions in that they didn’t have anything to do with the substance of science, but rather dealt with factoids like which gas is most common in the atmosphere of Tellus. But I suppose these are the things one would expect a bog to be exposed to and perhaps learn.

Even given that, the questions were all pretty innocuous and placid with one exception. That question asked whether an electron was larger/smaller than an atom. The problem with this question, to me at least, was that I had to assume what they meant by size.

As it turned out, my assumption must have not been too bad because I got a full score – thirteen out of thirteen – correct in their frame. I have to admit that the questions were not all that challenging other than having ill defined context. If bogs primarily learn their science for mediaists then this may be a fitting ill definition.

But what was depressing was the distribution of scores. The web site gave me this bar graph

Next: comments on the state of Amerikan knowledge as represented by this test.

humans, knowledge, America, science

Life before Creation

Two day is science podcast day at gym and I have to admit that once more I walked away with scant recollection. But that was probably because the gym was sparsely populated and hence enjoyable.

This did however, give me some spare attention span-time to devote to consideration of a trail begun by the biologist blogger P. Z. Myers. [Link] He is rather critical of some work [Link] that advances, based on the “genome size” that life originated about 9 BYA (billion years ago,) which is about twice the age of Tellus. Myers claims that the authors cherry picked their data., which based on the graph displayed does not seem too implausible since I should expect there to be tons of near term data.

I have to admit to being sucked in on this by a “validation” of the model by looking at number of nerd publications and projecting back to an origin during the lifetime of Newton – when nerd journals were started, at least according to the history I learned.

My problem with this is that the model used is essentially linear, at least after being transformed via a logarithmic plot. Nothing wrong with such, that’s how one got through undergraduate physical chemistry in my day back before we have computers that did graphing and were small enough not to be enshrined in tech temples.

But I am a bit concerned about that linearity. I should like to see a detailed model that makes sense and is testable. So I may have to read the paper.

science, life, maths, model, linearity

Against Stupidity

Saturn’s day and the early summer has been bashed with a frost. Huzzah. But it is also time to begin ‘hawg’in tabs and so I may as well assay that.

First, courtesy of Michigan State U, [Link] p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } I find official (academic) confirmation that the science teachers in our public shules are incompetent. This is not news but it is, as said, official confirmation. Courtesy of Every Child Left Behind and teach-to-the-test, science has effectively been dropped from the curriculum in public shules in Amerika. Add to that the increasing number of states that mandate the teaching of superstition, mysticism, and outright inaccuracy as science. But more critically, people with education degrees are not competently knowledgeable to teach science, especially in high shule. And teacher workshops are not going to fix that.

 

Next, while we’re on malfeasance around science, I run across an article [Link] about a corporation that has set itself up to sell names of astronomical entities in defiance – blatant and illegal – of the IAU. And the horrible thing is that here in CORPORATE AMERIKA they will likely get away with it instead of getting the firing party they deserve.

And speaking of science that won’t get taught in whack job states that mandate mysticism and superstition instruction, I see [Link] indications that the development of the hand axe 1.7 MYA generated evolutionary selection that led to the hand and wrists of modern humans. I shan’t comment about the effect hand axes would have in improving science education if used properly.

In a related matter, [Link] boffins have determined that Australopithecus Sediba was pigeon toed and could not run. This rather reminds me of some overweight girls I knew in UG shule. They all belonged to the same sorority which evidently specialized in chubby girls. They did however, have much more attractive skeletons than Australopithecus Sediba.

FD SCP is off playing mother/grandmother so I am lacking adult supervision again this morning. Since it is Saturn’s day that means I get to play with the clothes washing appliances. Not as much fun as the plasma cannon but good sources of imagination if one stares through the windows long enough.

science, academia, teachers, humans, stupidity

Fascist Morality

What’s the difference between science and scholarship? Simple answer is lots of things but the crucial one is testability – experimentation that is limited only by ability to do the experiment. I make this distinction up front to permit a bit of savor.

The podcast this morning was a CBC “Best of Ideas” episode about the science of morality. [Link] It was actually the second part and it finally got to the point of actually wrestling (a very SMALL bit) with whether there can be a science of morality or just science in morality. There was a bit of a debate but in my perspective the “of” side got their time counting machine sanitized.

But having said that I find myself rather in ambiguous agreement with much of the discussion. In particular, I rather liked the argument that if morality exists then the deity’s role in morality is specious and unnecessary. And I even agreed that while morality is patently subjective we have to be careful not to permit it to become so subjective that we have none. The latter is rather important to me because I used to argue that ethics was more important than morality because of its focus.

But the idea that morality may transcend subjectivity is the telling piece. And fundamentally it comes down to the fact that while there may be science information that is relevant to morality, morality itself is not science because of that absence of testability. Which is good because if there were a science of morality I suspect that morality would fail on an argukent along the lines of the irrelevancy of the deity to morality.

On which note, I was pleased that I did not have to observe the educationalists driving their motorcars at speed considerably above the “legal” “limit”. Somehow I have to question their morality – how can they be mentors of children if they blatantly display criminal behavior? I am baffled by this? Are they just arrogant, or oblivious, or even just mindlessly religionist? In any instance, why do we permit them to be in the shules? But then, morality is subjective and their’s probably does not see the rot.

humans, behavior, morality, science, stupidity

Singing Lessons

Yesterday I ran across this cartoon [Link]

and it struck me as rather indicative of the whole outreach thing. Given my attitude to proselyting Linux just previously, this attitude isn’t really surprising. Especially with all the success the social engineering aristocrats are enjoying right now.

As I said the, there are some slaves that can’t be freed. And there are some bogs – most, I fear – who will never see science except as another kind of magic than their mystical religionism.

So while I don’t condone this type of foolery, I also think that trying to teach science to bogs is a case, almost always, of irritating the pig.

humans, behavior, stupidity, science