Farming Isn't What It Used To Be

Underwater farms...protected by robot shepherds

...that guard their flocks autonomously

...by shooting attackers with lasers! 

The twenty-first century is here and it's awesome!

Cavendish

In 1797, Henry Cavendish performed one of the ten most clever science experiments in history by "weighing the earth".

Last month, John Walker recreated it in his basement.

A Winter Jacket

...in winter, a spring jacket in spring.

Red Dwarf and the Seven Snow & Wets

Visiting Other Stars

The Breakthrough Starshot project has a realistic plan for humans to have a spacecraft inside another solar system in 20-30 years. Their idea is to make a swarm of tiny vehicles. They would be thrown into space somehow and propelled onward using a lightsail. Power for the lightsail doesn't need to be stored on the ship. These ones would get little power from the sun. The light would come from a massive laser on earth. The physicists figure they can  achieve speeds of 1/5 the speed of light or 60,000 km/s.

Each ship would have a mass of a gram or two. It would be a couple of cm in size but have a light sail that folds out to an area of 4m x 4m.

There are a lot of challenges: powering a computer for 30 years; recording, storing and transmitting photographs and video; cosmic rays; dissipating waste heat and impacts with space debris.

Ultimately, after all that journey, the craft would spend about two days travelling the distance of the earth's orbit.

If you want a ship that can take up orbit around the next star, that will take 100-150 years.

Bellyaching about Autism

Now there's a claim that gut bacteria is related to autism.
Apparently gastrointestinal  problems are common among those with autism. This study claims that a transplant of fecal microbes reduces gastrointestinal problems 80%, not too surprising. More remarkable is that it improves social and sleep habits by 20%.

Dinosaurs Had Feathers

We have long imagined dinosaurs as mighty lizards: scales and all. Every once in a while it is good to be reminded just how little of what we know is fact and how much is speculation.

Our beliefs about dinosaurs are based on reconstructions of skeletons or parts of skeletons. No one has ever seen dinosaur skin. (Whoops, we have, or at least impressions of dinosaur skin.)

Only now, it seems we may have seen the tail of a dinosaur, down to the smallest detail of texture, possibly even some hints of coloring.

(Jun'17 - ...or maybe not.)

Cuban Life

There is a lot of romance about Cuba. At Castro's death, there has been an attempt to restart the flame. This article from travel journalist Michael Totten puts life for the average Cuban into perspective.

And it doesn't mention Concentration camps, executions, firing squads, the exodus, families fleeing by sea.

Kipling Readings

The Washington Post defends Rudyard Kipling from the fashionable haters. From my point of view it's a Reading list of Kipling, “the greatest short-story writer in English“.

Though I notice three major omissions: If, The Gods of the Copybook Headings * and Tommy.

Sometime in my twenties I noticed a trend.

• Favorite Walt Disney film: Jungle Book
• Most memorable poem from English 9: The Ballad of East and West
• Wondrously exotic and inspiring film: The Man Who Would Be King
• College roommate's most enthusiastic literary discovery: If
• Entertaining exposé of remembrance day condescension: Tommy**

The time has come to confess that I am an admirer.

(Feb'16) A real fan's guide

* And in song!
**not actually in twenties

Living in a Time of Wonders

Note that 1970 is just about exactly when your average North American decided that world poverty was a hopeless problem. 1990 was when international socialism collapsed.
Sept'16-Dierdre McCloskey hazards a guess as to why.

Slow Progress Expected for Zika

Above is an excerpt from an infographic for a Zika virus vaccine. It politely hints at the problem.

1. Zika most strongly affects pregnant women and their newborns.
2. Any tragedies, whether caused by the vaccine, unrelated to the vaccine or even mitigated by the vaccine will be blamed on the vaccine. There will be lawsuits and the damages will be astronomical.
3. Revenue will not be astronomical. 

 (July'16) I'm not sure I like where this is going.

Perceiving the Flow of Reality

It seems natural to say that we see the world as it is presented to us, a continuous flow of new situations and new information. On the other hand, if you've ever seen an optical illusion, you know that perception is imperfect. How do we interact with the world?
This study says that our perceptions come to us in the form of "'time slices' lasting only milliseconds." Our mind perceives the world as a moment: all at once for about a quarter of a second, then it goes on to perceive the next moment.
The description reminds me of Ridley Scott's filming technique in the most intense battle scenes of Gladiator. (starting at about 4 minutes)

(alternate source: Gladiator - Initial Battle Scene)

Professionalism and Professional Success

We like to think they go together. Here is an example of a doctor for whom they conflict.

“Why wouldn’t I give patients a Percocet prescription? It makes their life easier and my life easier.”

Do You See the Volcano Tornadoes?

The American Association of Physics Teachers has posted the results of its 2015 photo contest. Sure the pictures are great; even better are some of the explanations that go with the winners.

Robots and Jobs

Are Robots Going to Take My Job?

I don't have an answer for that. The evidence I can muster says yes. My intuition says no. Scary stories are so much more compelling, though.

TaxProfBlog explains some of my thoughts on the subject. The Lump-of-Labour fallacy he mentions is outlined here.

(Dec'16) Ridley  says  no.

Cyborg Drummer

This guy drums like no-one else. Literally. Cyborgs are coming.

DDT and the 100 Million

"In the last days of September 1943, as the U.S. Army advanced to the rescue of Italian partisans — some as young as nine — battling the Germans in the streets of Naples, the enraged Nazis, in a criminal act of revenge against their erstwhile allies, deployed sappers to systematically destroy the city’s aqueducts, reservoirs, and sewer system. This done, the supermen, pausing only to burn irreplaceable libraries, including hundreds of thousands of volumes and artifacts at the University of Naples — where Thomas Aquinas once taught — showed their youthful Neapolitan opponents their backs, and on October 1, to the delirious cheers of the Naples populace, Allied forces entered the town in triumph."

"But a city of over a million people had been left without sanitation, and within weeks, as the Germans had intended, epidemics broke out. [read on]"

Gravity Waves

The news says gravity waves have been discovered. The headlines say "Einstein proven right" though really, the physics world was not all that apprehensive. The excitement is that we now have a new way to look at the world.


Space.com has a good news release with a video on the implications. Ricochet explains the experiment for an adult layman audience. This Verge video has the background, like how Einstein's concept of gravity is like bending space instead of Newton's idea of a force.

Physics Olympics 2016

Wanna go?

Progress Towards Life on Mars

 A fungus from Antarctica has been proven to survive reasonably well in simulated Mars conditions.

This means that if we decide* to make Mars habitable, the technology to do so is at hand. We can send earth life that will survive and reproduce. If the photosynthetic species are also hardy enough, we can generate oxygen that would stabilize the atmosphere.

*That is to say, unless we have already sent it.
(June'18) Some promising cyanobacteria