Changing stylesheet
I'm going to work on a new stylesheet for this newly resurrected* blog.
*I use the word "resurrected" here in the strictly secular sense. This blog shall always remain a non-prophet enterprise.
a lowly engineer 's attempt at hard science reporting and digressions into a childhood ecstacy not yet lost
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Climate Change vs. Global Climate Change?
Americans at large are really wishy-washy about the subject of global climate change. Currently, belief in the fact of Global Climate Change is on the wane, as the northern hemisphere had a cold winter. No matter that November 2013 was the hottest November on record. I think that this is due to many factors.
The first is pretty obvious. Americans do not know the difference between 'weather' and 'climate.' We certainly had a cold winter in North America this last season. That's weather, not climate.
Secondly, since Americans know so little math and science, they fall prey to notions that they want to believe. This isn't really the fault of scientist's(more about that in a bit). It has much more to do with the non-scientist cum climate change expert casting doubts on the fact of global warming as being specious. Oft cited things have been resoundingly answered by real climate scientists, but it's the first message that garners all the attention. A sound bite is easy, science is far more nuanced, and hence takes much longer to explain.
Third, the scientific community needs to be much more vocal. The data is in. Anthropogenic global warming is a fact. No one likes this fact, but not liking a fact doesn't falsify it.
I'll add one more. It is perhaps not in the best interest of entrenched businesses to embrace the seismic shift that they must undertake in order to thrive in the new reality. These legacy businesses are both huge and powerful. It is perhaps these interests that have done the most to cast doubt about the reality of global warming. They have paid for bad science in an attempt to overturn mountains of date that point in one direction. The direction for climate change occurring even as these studies are being paid for ought to be criminal.
NYT Blog Post on American views of Global Climate Change
THE most important website on the Internet: Real Climate: Climate science from climate scientists
Real Climate is more important than Google by orders of magnitude. Go and learn.
The first is pretty obvious. Americans do not know the difference between 'weather' and 'climate.' We certainly had a cold winter in North America this last season. That's weather, not climate.
Secondly, since Americans know so little math and science, they fall prey to notions that they want to believe. This isn't really the fault of scientist's(more about that in a bit). It has much more to do with the non-scientist cum climate change expert casting doubts on the fact of global warming as being specious. Oft cited things have been resoundingly answered by real climate scientists, but it's the first message that garners all the attention. A sound bite is easy, science is far more nuanced, and hence takes much longer to explain.
Third, the scientific community needs to be much more vocal. The data is in. Anthropogenic global warming is a fact. No one likes this fact, but not liking a fact doesn't falsify it.
I'll add one more. It is perhaps not in the best interest of entrenched businesses to embrace the seismic shift that they must undertake in order to thrive in the new reality. These legacy businesses are both huge and powerful. It is perhaps these interests that have done the most to cast doubt about the reality of global warming. They have paid for bad science in an attempt to overturn mountains of date that point in one direction. The direction for climate change occurring even as these studies are being paid for ought to be criminal.
NYT Blog Post on American views of Global Climate Change
THE most important website on the Internet: Real Climate: Climate science from climate scientists
Real Climate is more important than Google by orders of magnitude. Go and learn.
Friday, May 30, 2014
400 Parts Per million..and rising
400 PPM and Rising!
While largely a symbolic figure, symbolism is the level at which most of my fellow countrymen ever seem delve into an issue. Climate Change deniers will be will us while they bake, drown, starve, or freeze. The simple fact it that atmospheric CO2 is at levels not seen since at least 800 thousands years ago. Estimates now range that levels have not been where they now reside for at least 2 million years.
Even the staunchest climate change denier cannot think that the experiment we're performing on the planet is a good thing.
If the predicted El Nino(~75% probability) hots the northern hemisphere this year, there will me an exodus of people AGAIN believing in global climate change. The masses in the US are so utterly propagandized that they cannot hold--at least en masse--a long term position where even predicted extremes of weather events reinforce, rather than nullify, the reality of global warming.
I'm sure to revisit this issue again and again, so no need to waste more your time today.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Quantum Mechanics in the news!
Stephen Weinberg and Gerard ’t Hooft(a pair of Noble Laureates that helped deepen the strangeness of QM) are further roiling our lack of understanding of quantum phenomena. Since the article from whence I pulled the names of two of the movers and shakers of 20th century QM does a reasonable job of misunderstanding these two new interpretations of QM, I'll merely provide links.
Quantum entanglement has always fascinated me since I first read about it as post-grad trying to get a better handle on the the physics behind the smallest semiconductor gates allowable. No, it was not part of the curriculum, but I am always unsatisfied in not knowing natural phenomena. I dived right into the heady brew of QE as fun. Even using Feynman diagrams(which were hugely beneficial in most other areas of QM) I had issues with QE. No treatment seemed satisfactory. Perhaps now that has changed. I'm not going to try and assimilate these new explanations into my now older and enfeebled mind. Perhaps after the dust has settled I may put a toe in the water.
I should point out that during my post-grad work I could only pass the physics tests where QM properties were found. It took several years of being in the field before I had any sense that this stuff was real, and how much of it fit together.
When my mind was engaged in something entirely unrelated the darkness became less so. I am still fascinated by what I feel is the greatest achievement of human thought; The Standard Model. Enough about geeky extra-curricular physics play. Here's the dope.
The article in Sci-News
Here's where the lifting gets heavy :)
Weinberg's Abstract
Hooft's Abstract
Given that Steven Weinberg is a lucid and engaging writer, there is likely to a book on his new paradigm at some future time. This humble blogger finds that popular treatments of QM are almost meaningless, unless the book or lecture gets into the underpinning mathematics. Really, who wants that? Only someone that has done the mathematics peculiar to QM would want that. This really defeats the purpose of popular treatments.
My two favorite physicist's that deepened our misunderstanding of QM are Richard Feynman ans Murray Gell-Mann. I owe more of my own misunderstanding of QM to these two giants of the field than perhaps all others combined.
Quantum entanglement has always fascinated me since I first read about it as post-grad trying to get a better handle on the the physics behind the smallest semiconductor gates allowable. No, it was not part of the curriculum, but I am always unsatisfied in not knowing natural phenomena. I dived right into the heady brew of QE as fun. Even using Feynman diagrams(which were hugely beneficial in most other areas of QM) I had issues with QE. No treatment seemed satisfactory. Perhaps now that has changed. I'm not going to try and assimilate these new explanations into my now older and enfeebled mind. Perhaps after the dust has settled I may put a toe in the water.
I should point out that during my post-grad work I could only pass the physics tests where QM properties were found. It took several years of being in the field before I had any sense that this stuff was real, and how much of it fit together.
When my mind was engaged in something entirely unrelated the darkness became less so. I am still fascinated by what I feel is the greatest achievement of human thought; The Standard Model. Enough about geeky extra-curricular physics play. Here's the dope.
The article in Sci-News
Here's where the lifting gets heavy :)
Weinberg's Abstract
Hooft's Abstract
Given that Steven Weinberg is a lucid and engaging writer, there is likely to a book on his new paradigm at some future time. This humble blogger finds that popular treatments of QM are almost meaningless, unless the book or lecture gets into the underpinning mathematics. Really, who wants that? Only someone that has done the mathematics peculiar to QM would want that. This really defeats the purpose of popular treatments.
My two favorite physicist's that deepened our misunderstanding of QM are Richard Feynman ans Murray Gell-Mann. I owe more of my own misunderstanding of QM to these two giants of the field than perhaps all others combined.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Ken Ham is still trying to warp facts around an already held conclusion
Creation Museum Fossil Claimed as Proof of Noah’s Flood.
Hard to know what to say. Ham--an Australian immigrant, more about that later--continues to make not only unsubstantiated claims, but claims that run contrary to all the evidence from science. I should note here that 'the sciences' do not operate independently, but are a series of overlapping disciplines that make predictions. Yes, even paleontology makes predictions as to where to look for new forms. See Tiktaalik for one of the most recent examples.
Ham is no scientist. The Bible isn't a science book. The Bible is an artifact of the knowledge base of the (presumably) men of their time. A time in which there was no science. Mere observation is not science.
Why do people still believe in the literal truth of the Bible when the Bible itself is not logically internally consistent? The answers to this puzzling anachronism are not in this humble blogger's purview. Evolutionary anthropologists, and psychologists can--and indeed have--given the topics a thorough treatment.
Ham has zero evidence to back up his claim. One has to wonder if Ham believes what he states. His interests are entirely tied up in the literal truth of Biblical scripture, although I missed the parts about humans interacting with carnosaurs.
The case here is that there is no case. Ham makes stuff up to keep people tithing at the gate.Does he believe this nonsense? I am doubtful.
There is zero evidence to support Ham's claims, and mountains of evidence that support the science side of things. Everything from radiometric dating to modern geology's understanding of the age of the earth to cosmology's age of the universe are independently derived--and quantifiable refututions--of the literal truth of the Bible. That all of these disciplines are in agreement doesn't prove anything. They only represent among the greatest acheivements of the human mind to date.
Now I said something about Ham's Aussie roots. There is another high profile immigrant from Oz that doesn't hide behind antiquated, and perhaps justly revered books, as a method of concealment. Yes, Rubert Murdoch of Fox media at least formerly would go into his news outlets and tell copy staffers what the truth was for the day.
Why aren't these two gents peddling their ideologies in their native Australia? Perhaps these ex-pats could not feed their tripe to the less propagandized Aussie populace? That's not even conjecture. I am simply really curious about why here? I think it's fair to state that US citizens are the most highly propagandized population on the planet. It is not a matter of KNOWING that we are so; it is the insidiousness of advertising from cradle to grave that instills in many a sense that we know what's really going on. The data on everything from the thrill some achieve from shopping as form of therapy, to belief of everything single-sourced without attributions point towards a well entertained, but shallow thinking country. The PR industry has won all the rounds to this point.
Let us take back our brains.
Hard to know what to say. Ham--an Australian immigrant, more about that later--continues to make not only unsubstantiated claims, but claims that run contrary to all the evidence from science. I should note here that 'the sciences' do not operate independently, but are a series of overlapping disciplines that make predictions. Yes, even paleontology makes predictions as to where to look for new forms. See Tiktaalik for one of the most recent examples.
Ham is no scientist. The Bible isn't a science book. The Bible is an artifact of the knowledge base of the (presumably) men of their time. A time in which there was no science. Mere observation is not science.
Why do people still believe in the literal truth of the Bible when the Bible itself is not logically internally consistent? The answers to this puzzling anachronism are not in this humble blogger's purview. Evolutionary anthropologists, and psychologists can--and indeed have--given the topics a thorough treatment.
Ham has zero evidence to back up his claim. One has to wonder if Ham believes what he states. His interests are entirely tied up in the literal truth of Biblical scripture, although I missed the parts about humans interacting with carnosaurs.
The case here is that there is no case. Ham makes stuff up to keep people tithing at the gate.Does he believe this nonsense? I am doubtful.
There is zero evidence to support Ham's claims, and mountains of evidence that support the science side of things. Everything from radiometric dating to modern geology's understanding of the age of the earth to cosmology's age of the universe are independently derived--and quantifiable refututions--of the literal truth of the Bible. That all of these disciplines are in agreement doesn't prove anything. They only represent among the greatest acheivements of the human mind to date.
Now I said something about Ham's Aussie roots. There is another high profile immigrant from Oz that doesn't hide behind antiquated, and perhaps justly revered books, as a method of concealment. Yes, Rubert Murdoch of Fox media at least formerly would go into his news outlets and tell copy staffers what the truth was for the day.
Why aren't these two gents peddling their ideologies in their native Australia? Perhaps these ex-pats could not feed their tripe to the less propagandized Aussie populace? That's not even conjecture. I am simply really curious about why here? I think it's fair to state that US citizens are the most highly propagandized population on the planet. It is not a matter of KNOWING that we are so; it is the insidiousness of advertising from cradle to grave that instills in many a sense that we know what's really going on. The data on everything from the thrill some achieve from shopping as form of therapy, to belief of everything single-sourced without attributions point towards a well entertained, but shallow thinking country. The PR industry has won all the rounds to this point.
Let us take back our brains.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
The Blog's resurrection(no, this one's not a myth), and different focus
Hello gentle reader!
I stopped blogging in earnest as other pursuits--like starting two businesses--came to take over my life(so called).
Well, I'm back. Political blogs are everywhere. I'm shifting the blog's focus to things you aren't likely to find on facebook.
That is, to say, anything of real depth.
Another prime motivator is that since the rise of the search engine, people think less deeply about nearly everything.
This post will not be about why that is a demonstrable fact having to do with neuroplasticity, but is a shot across anyone's bow that I'm no longer going to repeat blather garnered by media outlets.
As a workaday scientist(I am an electronic engineer masquerading as a computer scientist) I have special knowledge in only the fields of semiconductors(varied), medical imaging device design, and arcane mathematics. I'll admit to still not having a firm a grasp on QM as I'd like. But then, I'm hardly alone in this regard.
Enough about that. Since no political party represents functional anarchy as a platform, there is no longer a place in the political sphere for the likes of me. Hence the change. I haven't changed my political views, but since I am not crazy, well, most of the rest of what makes it from one person to another isn't quite sane.
The blog will now be a haven for my metaphysical naturalistic-and hence materialistic-views on science, mathematics, and why so few people can tell you how even a simple radio works. It really may as well be magic to most people. Oh, they may wax a bit about 'flowing electrons' but that's likely as far as my countrymen could go with anything like a semblance of accuracy.
I am not going to get into deep water here. This is, after all, merely a public blog.
I'll aim for one sciencey and mathy piece per day. But perhaps most importantly I'll try and illuminate the way that the media, punditry, get almost everything science, math and logic, related wrong to one degree or another.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)