The Poetry of Reality

Goodbye Blogger

2011-01-17T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I decided to try blogging again, but I think I am going to try a new format. You can find my new blog at the-cogitator.tumblr.com. Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

The master at his best

2010-10-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to produce any real content recently, but here is Hitchens, the verbal pugilist himself, doing some of his best work. After this week (big test on the horizon) I should be back up and running more smoothly.

Billy Corgan rat

2010-09-27T19:07:00.001-07:00

Catholics continue to suck balls.

2010-09-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

The Catholics have been busy lately. Allow me to break it down for you.

Catholics say atheists should apologize for Hitler and the Nazis. Except we shouldn't because Hitler endorsed and was endorsed by several religious organizations.

For reference, you can examine a list of burnable books for yourself.

The Pope made a speech equating atheists with Nazis.

Dawkins proceeds to open a six-pack of verbal whoop-ass.

My thoughts? I am happy you asked. The Catholic church's influence in today's world is damaging. It is not a force for good. It is an entity that exists solely to perpetuate itself, a task that it has become quite good at.

The church could use it's influence to promote realistic and effective ways to prevent the spread of AIDS. Instead, their lies cost people their lives and doom children born with AIDS to a short, and inexcusably short life. It is true that the Catholic church is not alone in this crime. Most Christian denominations share similar if not identical views on sexual health, as evidenced by crackpots like Christine O'Donnell. In any case, the Catholic church has decided that instead helping people learn about good sexual health, it would rather shackle them with guilt for actions that as humans they will inevitably commit.

Catholic priests have also anally raped hundreds of children. The church has covered it up at an institutional level. Let that thought-bomb detonate in your brain. Thousands of children have been raped. Priests fucked kids. This is quite possibly the most horrible crime anyone can do. Imagine your worst fears of going to prison and becoming wedded to your cell mate. Now imagine that you are a child and that if you tell anyone about the torture you have endured, that you will burn in hell for eternity. I become sick with rage thinking about it. The Church has covered it up every step of the way. Allowing such evil, real evil, to happen while you have the power to stop it makes you an accomplice.

Catholics with conscience should boycott their church until there is a radical change in leadership and philosophy. In Belgium at least, the exposed rot in the church has started to disgust people enough to leave the church. Hopefully other countries will follow suit.

Atheists are "parasites"

2010-09-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

By all accounts, the most secular parts of the world are also the happiest. The poorest, most uneducated, most overweight regions of the United States are also the ones that go to church the most. Try again.

The possibility is too horrific...

2010-09-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a deity I could see worshipping.

2010-09-22T17:31:00.001-07:00

Knowing who Christine O'Donnell is may cause head explosion.

2010-09-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

If you are at risk for head explosion or are pregnant or think you may be at risk for head explosion, you shouldn't read this article.

Christine O'Donnell is a Tea Bagger who came out of nowhere to win the Republican primary in Delaware. This by itself isn't so shocking. What is sort of interesting is that she led a TV campaign (on MTV of all places) to stop a great evil in America: masturbation.

"If he can please himself...then why am I in the picture." Because given the option between masturbating and having sex a man will choose masturbating every time.

But that's not all...

In 1999, on a show called Politically Incorrect, O'Donnell said she dabbled in witchcraft.

O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]

One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

I think I'm feeling some pressure...

EDIT: It goes without saying that the crazy witch (HA!) doesn't believe in evolution and never says the word "facts" without verbal air quotes.

Marian Call

2010-09-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

Marian Call doesn't need my approval, but I will give it to her anyway.

In other news I figured out how to shrink youtube videos down. Just change the height and width in the html. Duh. I have a bunch of piled up blogging material, but haven't had time to post. I think there is a way to automate posting. I will try to figure out how to do it so the blog spits something out once a day instead of me busting out a ton of posts all at once on my day off like I am about to do.

Two articles illustrating anti-science rage.

2010-09-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

Boom and boom.

These are fairly modest little articles. The first is a bit on some glaciers melting due to anthropogenic climate change. The second is a short piece on some of the anti-science sentiment that is connected with the surge of conservatism in the US. Fairly mild stuff I should say.

What is interesting is the comments. Take this one from the NPR article.

Kent Clizbe wrote:

"DopeSmokingHippie,

Of course you're enraged and offended. The foundations of your religion are crumbling under your feet, like so much tropical glacier ice in a rainstorm.

Interesting that none of the true-believers here at NPR have made an effort to refute the fact that the Ohio State ice-core expert quoted here is essentially a Chicken Little scientist. He, with NPR's expert goading, leapt to the conclusion that since he saw ice melting, therefore the glacier would dissappear at exactly the same rate, and be gone in 8 years. What other evidence does he have that this melting is at a constant rate?

Ludicrous as science, assinine in his intellectual flabbiness, and pitiful to behold the US government network broadcast such blatant propaganda..."

This continues for a bit and is echoed in many others. Intellectual flabbiness? Points for creativity my friend. How about one from the Nature article.

Johan F. Prins said:

It is a pathetic comment on the American right. Believe me, I am not on their side but their criticism of science is spot on. Even Limbaugh looks like a superliberal when he is compared to the physics community; and the way in which this community safeguards mainstream scientific dogma. It is hilarious that NATURE has the arrogance to criticise Limbaugh while this publication drives one to believe that the BIBLE was better "peer-reviewed" than the trash that is regularly published in NATURE! My, my, how much more of taxpayers' money must be wasted on the delusion into which physics has moved after Bohr, Heisenberg and Born, went against Einstein's impeccable physical insights. Science stinks at the moment because it is controlled by bigots against who Limbaugh just cannot compete in any way. Science can only blame itself NOT the American right!

Nature, one of the most respected science publications in the world, is trash? Modern physics is a delusion? We are bigots that exclude results from publication based on personal bias? Really? All of us are in on the act?

Perhaps I shouldn't overreact. The internet has more trolls per capita than a bridge in a fable. I do question though, where this ire comes from.What is it that science is or does that so many people find threatening?

More on the whole Hawking thing.

2010-09-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

So more folks are reacting to the excerpt of Hawking's book that was published. One Baroness Greenfield compared the "smugness" of scientists to, get ready for it, the Taliban.

Let me clear this up for you. When scientists have an idea they want to spread around, they write a book about it. When the Taliban has an idea they want to spread around they kill people. They stone people to death. They force their women to cover their faces.

Greenfield even says Hawking's views are "surprising". Really? I hate to be the one to clue you in on this, but Hawking's views are not uncommon among physicists. They may even be the majority. Greenfield goes on to say that because all science is provisional, assertions like those made by Hawking are premature. Sure science is provisional, but physics as it stands today has undergone incredibly rigorous experimental and theoretical testing. At most, it is incomplete. We are missing parts of the picture. Let us keep things in perspective though. How often has physics failed to increase the borders of its own knowledge? How often since the beginning of modernity has science had to back away from the claims of divine fiat? Not once. We have theories describing the beginning of the universe that are based on real facts. They will be and are tested by real experiments and we have every reason to believe that we come to understand why the Big Bang happened the way it did. We have every reason to believe it will not depend upon some "outside," conscious, influence for it to work correctly.

Some, like the Baroness, might label this view as "extreme" or perhaps "militant." Fine, but that means you will need new words to describe the atrocities committed by the real militant extremists.

Geologist Piotr Stanczak sitting next to his Taliban captors in Pakistan shortly before they cut his head off.

An interesting article

2010-09-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Vanity Fair has an interesting article about Sarah Palin. Trying to figure out the how's and why's of the conservative movement has become a part-time hobby of mind.

A taxonomy of dicks.

2010-09-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

Behold a list of the many varieties of skeptical dicks. I'm not sure where I fall in. Goad and withdraw maybe?

Choir of physicists.

2010-09-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Physicists singing at CERN. I'm not crazy about the lyrics, but it is pretty cute all the same. On a side note, why do some youtube videos embed huge and others small?

White people suck.

2010-09-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

To quote Hitchens: "Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity."

Hawking says there is no god.

2010-09-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hawking says that physics is sufficient to explain the existence of the universe without including a creator deity. People have reacted negatively. As a physicist I can't really comment because I don't know enough fundamental quantum mechanics or relativity.

I can get behind the sentiment though. If you believe in a deity or you don't, you have to accept one of two possibilities. Either something has existed forever, or something came from nothing. This is true no matter what.

Life in our solar system pt. II

2010-09-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

Next in our continuing series about life in our solar system we are going to travel to the moon of another gas giant. We're headed to Saturn.

Specifically we're headed to Enceladus, one of Saturn's many moons. Enceladus is a cool place. It is an icy world just like Europa. Remember our requirements for life? Liquid water is a big one. Well we are almost positive there is liquid water underneath. How are we almost sure? Check this out.

This is the surface of Enceladus. See those spray-looking things. Those are (thought to be) geysers of liquid water. Actually it probably freezes are soon as it reaches the surface. Underneath, though is water. So if we have heat and some organic matter we can get life.

Another thing that is cool about Enceladus is that it looks like the geysers replenish Saturn's rings, feeding it with a constant stream of ice particles even as the gravity of rocks and small moons knock bits of the rings out of orbit. More awesome pictures of the Saturnian system and Enceladus keep coming in from Cassini.

JPL has a lot of resources if you want to learn more.

Here is another good article from NASA.

Vaccines save lives.

2010-08-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

Vaccines save lives and, this just in, they don't cause autism. Gains in human life expectancy over the past hundred years are due in large part to vaccination.

Maybe I will start watching Bullshit again on Netflix. Bravo guys.

Am I a dick ? Should I be?

2010-08-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

There is an ongoing debate in the atheist/skeptic movement on whether or not we should be ridicule those we disagree with. As you might guess there are two main camps, yes and no.

The Dick Camp says that converting believers, particularly the fundamentalists, is a lost cause. The people we should worry about converting are moderates who will respond to seeing skeptical wit eviscerating religious ideas.

The No-Dick Camp says we won't convert anyone by being assholes. Yeah that's basically it.

I have flip flopped about three times on the subject. On the one hand, I feel like fundamentalist religion is damaging the country and the world and I feel like we need to fight back (non-violently) as best we can. On the other... well I tried to put myself in a believers shoes. I tried to be skeptical of my own ideas, step outside my own biases. That is after all what I am trying to get everyone else to do. I thought, what if I knew I was going to live forever? What if I thought in order to live forever, I had to believe that I was going to live forever? How hard would it be for me to change that belief? I think it would be really hard. I don't think I would want to change my mind.

So how should we proceed? Well I propose that we use our dick weaponry selectively. Honor killings in the Middle East? Arm the tactical nuclear dick warhead. Intelligent design in public schools? Spin up the dick torpedoes. Conservative politicians and talking heads devaluing science? Charge the dick phasor banks.

For our moderate religious friends and neighbors? Challenge when appropriate and with respect. A full on assault will just cause them to circle the wagons. When people's cherished beliefs are challenged (and this goes for everyone) they rarely step back to examine why they hold those attitudes, but they almost never conduct such and examination when challenged aggressively. In fact it may make them pull away even more. We need to find the optimal balance for dick use.

When irrational parties pose a threat to society I think we need to be ready with our dicks in hand. Just remember that it isn't the right tool for every job.

Click here and here for more voices on the debate.

Watch this for more info on being a dick. (NSFW)

Yes, that will be all for the phallic humor on the blog for a while.

Life in our solar system pt. I

2010-08-28T16:21:00.001-07:00

So we've talked about what life is, let's talk about where it is.

Well it's here for one. What makes Earth so special? What properties does a world need in order to produce life ? First, a caveat. It seems most likely that the life most likely to arise in the rest of the galaxy will resemble ours at least in it's most basic components. That is, we can only really say things about life that are made from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen because that is what makes up all life on Earth. Some people have proposed wacky things like life with silicon as a major component instead of carbon, but as far as I know no one knows how it would work.

With that said, we've got our first prerequisite. That stuff: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is particularly helpful if this stuff is in the form of water and amino acids. Water is relatively common and amino acids can form naturally in space. Amino acids clicked together in the right way can make self-replicating molecules and... well you already know the rest. So we add water and amino acids and we have our primordial soup.

The next thing we need is for the water to be liquid which means it has to be relatively warm. Without liquid water organic molecules can't wiggle around and combine and react to make the stuff of life. We also need some energy to power reactions and to fuel whatever living things might arise.

So now let's turn our heads up and see what worlds meet this criteria in our solar system. First on the list is Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Europa is covered in water. Jupiter is a good ways from the sun so of course that water is frozen. Looking at the surface though, we can see lots of cracks. These are from asteroid impacts and, we think, from the big ice sheets crashing into each other like tectonic plates on Earth. This tectonic action is likely powered by thermal vents underneath the ice. These vents heat the water which causes it to rise and the ice plates to shift causing...icequakes I guess I'll call them. You can see some of the results.

Click here to to see it massive. You can see the area, known as Conamara Chaos, shows signs of continual cracking and refreezing, evidence of liquid water beneath the surface. So it is likely we at least have liquid water beneath the icy crust. We probably also have some organic material, if not from the initial formation of the moon, than from asteroid impacts which often include some organic material. So we have all we need. Now all we need is to go there and find it. There are already some plans to do this, but unfortunately not for a while. It would be a pretty complicated endeavor, because a probe would have to drill down through an unknown depth of ice and release a submersible drone to navigate the pitch black waters. Power would be an issue since there is no light and you can't really string an electrical cord down there... So it may be a while before we can crack Europa open and see what secrets lie inside. It could be just a dark abyss full of nothing but strange geography and geology. That would be pretty cool by itself really, to see pictures of such an alien underwater world. What would be even cooler is if the bottom of this dark ocean was full of hydrothermal vents that are themselves covered by aquatic alien beasties. Would they look something like our own hydrothermal vent dwellers? Or would they look like something entirely different? I hope I am alive to see the day when we find out.

Next time we will look at Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons and a big headline maker recently.

Ray Bradbury love. (NSFW)

2010-08-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

Cute and cheeky or objectifying? Feminists want to weigh in?

Relativity: A liberal plot ?

2010-08-14T19:23:00.001-07:00

Apparently, according to Conservapedia, Einstein's famous and wildly successful theory of relativity is a big liberal lie.

Wow. I barely know how to respond. Ok...let me recover the chunks of my gray matter that just burst from my skull. Einstein's general relativity is one of the most well-tested and well confirmed theories of all time. This is just the latest front in the battle, propagated by conservatives, against science and reason in this country. Why Republicans, why? What motivates you to do this stupid stuff? I can only think of one thing: because science widely accepts evolution and other theories that contradict the various beliefs of the large population of fundamentalist Christians (the conservative base) the only thing to do is discredit science wholesale. They have already done it with evolution and climate science. I am almost not surprised. Studies have shown that rather than change their worldviews about gays, people with anti-gay attitudes will reject all of science when presented with scientific evidence that supports a genetic cause for homosexuality.

Originally, I had intended not to politicize the blog. Well consider it on conservatives. You're messing with physics now.

So with my rage slightly vented, let's look at just a small swatch of the evidence that supports general relativity. Behold.

Pretty picture yes? "Sure", you might say, "But who cares?" Well let's take a look. The semi-circular blobs are galaxies like our own Milky Way. First let that set in. These are each collections of millions of stars. That's super cool but it isn't what we are looking for. See those curved smears like the one circled and the one in the top right? Those are called Einstein Rings, and they were predicted by general relativity and what do you know, we found them. What are they? Well general relativity says that mass bends space. Try to accept that, weird as it may sound. Now the smears are light from galaxies behind a the large collection of galaxies (or other massive stuff) in front that we can see. The mass bends the light around intervening stuff just like a lens. In fact, the effect is called gravitational lensing. It is just one of the amazing confirmations of general relativity that include the gravitational redshift, the precession of Mercury's orbit, and others.

Its amazing stuff and its a shame that it has become the next stop on the Republican Marginalization of Science Tour.

For more info and an enjoyable talk, check out this video which talks about how scientists use gravitational lensing to learn about dark matter.

Feynman lectures on the nature of light

2010-08-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

Check these out. Feynman is a Nobel winner and a great science communicator. The video quality isn't great. It's old of course, but the science is still legit. I don't think you'll find a better resource geared for the public on the subject of quantum electrodynamics.

Perspective on life.

2010-08-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, this isn't the self-help post for this blog. I mean life as in living things. How life came to be around is the subject of pretty hot debate, at least in the US anyway. Now I am not going to rehash the same old arguments against young Earth creationism. There are plenty of resources for that if that is what you are interested in. However, I would like to put some perspective on how we think life emerges.

What you need for life is something that replicates itself with mostly perfect fidelity.

That's it. Now for some caveats. Just because you have something that replicates itself with mostly perfect fidelity, that doesn't mean necessarily that it is alive. That is at least not by our current definitions of alive. Prions for example replicate themselves and even evolve. They are just little protein blobs. Notice what is sufficient criteria for life is also sufficient criteria for evolution, but like in the case of prions and viruses not everything that can evolve is alive. The above is sufficient for evolution because of the "mostly" bit. Every so often you get a mutation that survives differentially from the thing that created it.

Evolution is a bit like a game. Winning is whatever lets you play more - survive another generation, make more babies etc. Prior to "life" little replicating things can only change strategy (or interact with the outside world at all) when they replicate. Think about DNA. It's just a big molecule. It can't interact with the outside world other than t occasionally make copies of itself with the occasional mistake. Well think for the moment what would happen if a particular DNA molecule mutated in such a way that it produced a little armored chauffeur that carried it around and reacted to things in real time. That DNA molecule would have huge advantage over all the other DNA molecules that are just floating about all nimbly-bimbly and every now and then they copy themselves. That would be a very winning strategy in the evolution game.

Well that's what life is. Life is the stuff that is built around replicating stuff to help it replicate better. Sounds unflattering huh? In high school, or at least in my high school, DNA is presented as what life uses to make more of itself, but that is getting it backwards. Life didn't come first and then invent DNA. Actually, it might have, but only if the original replicating molecule was something other than DNA, like RNA or some protein. In that case DNA is just another piece of the life machinery originally constructed to propagate some other molecule. DNA may have then co-opted the role of the "in charge" (whatever that means) replicating molecule. However, DNA works as good as anything for an example.

So there you have it. Life is the stuff replicating stuff uses to propagate itself. All you need for life is to have some replicating stuff "invent" some responsive machinery around itself. Invent is a poor word because it implies some conscious decision made by the molecule (or whatever). Decision making in the usual sense of the word is predicated on having a relatively sophisticated living thing, which not all living things are obviously.

If this is perspective seems familiar to you, it is the same one advocated by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Despite what else you may think about Dawkins, he is a damn good biologist and writer and I think Selfish Gene is some of his best stuff. Check back in soon for a post on what conditions you need for life and where in our planetary neighborhood we might find some.

Responding to Sam Harris

2010-07-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

So, here's the thing. I re-watched Harris' talk and I agree with almost everything Harris says. I agree that science can inform us when making decisions about how to help human beings flourish. I agree that these are objective facts. I agree that moral relativism is bad. I agree that these are moral decisions.

However, I don't agree that we can infer an objective morality from science, at least not in the conventional sense that we use the phrase objective morality. Consider the following.

Suppose there is a burning building. Inside is convicted murder sentenced to life in prison. Also inside is a priceless work of art with no existing copies. You can save one. What do you pick? One school of thought says that the piece of art (say a painting) will, over its lifetime, provide a much bigger benefit to society and thus should be the one you save. Another school of thought says that by abandoning the man in the building you are killing him. People have differing opinions on what the moral course of action is. Can science tell us what the correct course of action is? Harris says that we should endeavor to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. What accomplishes this in our case? How does a small increase in happiness in many people stack up against the ultimate suffering of one man? Unless there are rights and wrongs I don't think we have what we call an objective moral system.

Harris admits that there is a plurality of objectively good moral courses of action or societal systems. So is either of the above options good? I suppose the question is can you believe in objective morality and still accept difference of opinion? How is this not morally relative to some degree? Harris talks about his moral landscape so depending on the "peak" you are on the morality of a given decision is relative to where you are at. It's not "anything goes" moral relativism, but it is in some sense relative.

Either way I think that different humans evaluate what is the morally correct course of action by different metrics. Someone with a utilitarian perspective values maximizing total well-being. Someone with libertarian perspective emphasizes personal freedom. There's been around a century of philosophical dialogue and none of these camps have reconciled their positions. Maybe it's just because no one has done enough experiments or studies to figure it all out. Sociology is a tough science.

Now after poo pooing on Harris, let me say that if he and I sat down went down the line on moral issues I think we would agree on the vast majority. I think forced veiling of women is bad. I think female genital mutilation is bad. I don't think the western world's objectification of women is good either.

Wow this was a tough post to write. Like a lot of people I suppose I find my own opinions on moral issues to be easy to decide on, but a comprehensive moral system seems very elusive to me at least. Here I thought philosophers had it easy.

Apologies and morality

2010-07-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I just got done moving and finding a job. Things went pretty well, and a big thanks to my friend who helped me move (he knows who he is). So again sorry for the dearth of posts, but pretty soon here we're going to be back in business.

What I would like to talk about in today's and what will hopefully be tomorrow's post is science and morality. What can science do for morality? What can morality do for science? Can we infer morality from scientific principles? This train of thought was really catalyzed from a TED talk given by Sam Harris.

A lot of what I have to say on science and morality is in response to Sam Harris' talk. So, watch it. I think Harris makes some good points, but I disagree with him on some fundamental issues. More on that tomorrow.

I wonder if Ray Comfort has tried this.

2010-07-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

"Curved for ease of entry..."

If you don't know about the banana man look here.

Quantum Dishonesty

2010-07-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

As you may know by now, abuse of science and particularly physics is something that I do not like. Now some of this is fairly innocuous: things like quantum dish soap and "fusion" (or Mach 3) razors and shave gel. I don't really understand this tendency. The idea of blades flying around my face faster than the speed of sound isn't particularly appealing to me.

"Fusion, it's a thermonuclear EXPLOSION for your face!"

Talk of odd advertising aside, lets take a look at a tried and true example a dishonest use of physics. Like a lot of dishonest physics woo, this video is "based"on quantum mechanics. No doubt quantum mechanics is difficult field with concepts that seem to violate a lot of our expectations, but in a lot of ways quantum mechanics makes a great deal of sense. It has passed every experimental test put in front of it. In fact, when a theory like general relativity doesn't seem to fit well with quantum mechanics (for the most part) we expect the other theory to be the one that is incomplete or flawed. So let's go through together, bit by bit and see where this video gets it wrong. Maybe we can learn a thing or two along the way.

0:00 - 1:07 The first bit of this is not too bad. Quantum mechanics does in general describe things on the molecule-scale or smaller, though we can observe quantum effects (like the Photoelectric Effect) in more everyday situations. Where we get into trouble is around 0:40. For objects where quantum mechanics apply, they do indeed behave like both waves and particles. See here for a more thorough explanation. However, there aren't really two schools of thought or really any sort of controversy. Most working physicists just accept that matter has this property. For my part at least, I don't see why the idea is so troubling. From an ontological perspective, we don't have much reason to expect wave-particle duality to be untrue other than it violates our intuition, and we have heaps of evidence that it is true. All matter seems to have this property and the reason we don't notice it on a day-to-day basis is because we don't live on a size-scale where the wave effects are observable. That's that. The statement that ppsimmons makes that particles and waves constitute two different realities is not even wrong. It is just unintelligible.

1:07-1:55 Let's move on. Here we have some historical truth. Study of quantum mechanics is what led us to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy and atoms are indeed made of smaller particles. However, as quick as ppsimmons says something intelligible we get hit in the face with a big bowl ridiculous. He says, "Atoms are made of even smaller bits or particles or wave packets or substances of reality." He also says that these bits are made out of smaller bits. This (as of now) is untrue. The Standard Model of particle physics says that neutrons and protons are made from quarks and that these are the fundamental pieces, that is you can't split up a quark and get anything else. So if you think of a proton as a pie, the smallest slice you can have is quark. It also happens that there are only 3 quarks to a proton (or neutron) so you can actually only have 3 slices. Electrons are leptons and they can't be sliced up at all. They are fundamental particles. He also calls these nonexistent particles "energy-forces" which of course is meaningless. Then ppsimmons goes on to talk about light. Light is made up of photons. Photons do mediate the electromagnetic force and yes they do keep protons together with electrons. However, you just have electromagnetism and the fundamental particles all you get is hydrogen. In order to make more complex nuclei you need the strong nuclear force also known just as the strong force. The strong force is mediated by particles called gluons. So when ppsimmons says that atoms are held together by light he is totally glossing over the strong force (and the weak force and gravity).

1:56-2:20 Now ppsimmons says, "So we now know that everything is made up of smaller and smaller parts, but we've also discovered that these small parts interact in ways that we cannot describe with the known laws of the universe." This is complete crap. Quantum mechanics are the laws and they do an incredibly good job of describing things. They defy our expectations. They are difficult to think about without a great deal of abstraction, but they are not as ppsimmons directly claims, operating outside of the normal constraints of time and space.

2:21-3:30 Now ppsimmons starts talking about entanglement. Entanglement is a tough topic, one that deserves a blog post all its own, but again ppsimmons claims are just bunk. For one, all particles are not entangled with each other. Checking on just any old particle isn't going to affect a particle a mile away despite what this video or Deepak Chopra says. Also during this part of the video has a weird aging superhero flying around who is probably talk more sense than ppsimmons is.

3:31-4:50 Now we get to ppsimmons attack on the uncertainty principle. He says you can never know the position of a quantum particle. Untrue. What is true is that if you know position, you cannot exactly know the momentum and vice versa. Then ppsimmons says some stuff, that I can't even really interpret. Something to the effect of "small stuff can't be measured...argle bargle REALITIES." He makes the claim that "particles recede into nothingness." I don't know what that this is supposed to mean, but you would never catch an honest physicist saying it.

4:51-6:03Now ppsimmons talks about the fact that quantum mechanics is hard and that we are like ants looking up at the moon.

6:04-end Biblical implications ? Cheese and rice, you've got to be kidding me. Ok here we go...

1."Quanta particles operate outside of our realm of natural laws" Wrong. For one thing it should be "quantum particles" and for another quantum particles make up our world. They don't exist outside of the real world (whatever the hell that would mean). You me, the sun, stars, rocks, plants, lizards, light, it is all made of things that obey quantum mechanical laws.

2."Time ceases to exist at the smallest (quantum) of all levels." Wrong. Time progresses just fine at quantum levels. If it didn't we would never have to have to worry about radiation from nuclear waste.

3. "Everything at the quantum level seems to recede into nothingness - yet this nothingness makes all that exists." Recedes into nothingness ? Quite the contrary, quantum mechanics says that there are fundamental units of things: energy, charge, mass, spin, anything your interested in. There is no infinite regression of smaller and smaller things. Particles certainly aren't made from nothing, whatever that would mean.

4. "Light or electromagnetic energy is what holds all quanta particles together - thus all matter is held together and made up of LIGHT." Light has electromagnetic energy. You might even say it carries energy. These are mostly semantics. However, the claim that matter is made of light is...incomplete at best and at worst misleading. We have three other forces that hold things together besides the electromagnetic force.

5. "Our world and all things are made up of invisible particles." True! Hey we are one for five. But so what? Bacteria and viruses are invisible. So is wind. The point ppsimmons seems to want to make is that quantum mechanics = magic = god.

6. "There appear to be parallel realities - the Quanta world / the Natural world - both operating with their own laws yet one depends entirely on the other for its existence." Horse crap. There is nothing unnatural about quantum mechanics. There is also nothing separate or parallel about it. Quantum mechanics doesn't happen in some extra-dimensional place. It happens right here, there, everywhere all the time. It just happens that most of the effects of quantum mechanics are impossible to notice at our size, though there are exceptions. Nothing in quantum mechanics, as ppsimmons claims, could explain the dead rising or water becoming wine. That would be called magic. Quantum mechanics is not magic.

7. There appears to be "eternal" connection between all elements. The 'Entanglement" theory." All particles are not entangled with all other particles. End of story.

Phew! I think I know why science bloggers don't spend more of their time debunking nonsense. It takes forever and its hard to listen to that much stupid. I hope in reading this you may have learned some physics and maybe learned to recognize a woo woo peddler when you hear one. Truth is, ppsimmons is an easy target. He also has a video about god punishing America for Obama's foreign policy with Israel by blowing up the oil platform in the Gulf. He also says Obama is the Anti-Christ.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

2010-07-02T20:23:00.001-07:00

Street art reportedly done by graffiti artist Bansky.

Via flickr.

In a world not so different from our own...

2010-07-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Multicellular life is older than previously thought

2010-07-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Cool picture.

I have been absent for a while so let's start off on a cool note. Above is what may be the oldest known multicellular organism ever discovered. Life is believed to have arisen about 3.5 billion years ago. These little guys are supposed to be about 2.1 billion years old. This is about 200 million years older than the oldest previously known multicellular organisms. So what is cool about this? This is mostly my commentary here and I only have a little formal biological training. So take what I say with a packet of salt. Well for one, there has been some controversy about the Cambrian explosion. Previously life seemed to diversify explosively after multicellularity showed up in the fossil record. Some people find this huge diversification to be implausible. Creationists occasionally use it as ammo in their war against a world that makes sense. Well now, with multicellularity apparently showing up 200 million years earlier the Cambrian explosion is ostensibly less of a surprise. For another, these things existed on an Earth that was very different from how it is now. The gas mixture in the atmosphere was way different. There was much less oxygen, though it seems that is still what these guys "breathed." There were no plants, no animals, no fungus, just bacteria and...these. These and other early multicellular and unicellular critters. Now this is just my commentary, but I think discoveries like this can really inform what we think about life on other planets. Life might be able emerge on planets that look very different from our own.

In other words: cool.

EDIT: Overly large picture replaced with link.

Randall Munroe is my hero.

2010-06-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post continues to post nonsense

2010-06-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

What is with medical doctors and inane posturing about cosmology?

Dr. Larry Dossey says the universe can't be an accident. He cites other scientists that say that the fundamental laws of nature are too favorable to life to be an accident. The so called fine-tuning argument is indeed a mystery, but one that gives no indication that humanity has a particularly significant place in the universe. I have some other opinions on this, but I will save those for another day.

Dossey then makes claims that the mind, or something else, is somehow separate from the physiology of the body. There is no evidence for this anywhere. I was not sure how this was related to the fine-tuning argument until I looked at the fine list of books written by Dr. Dossey which includes great titles like Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice Medicine and The Power of Premonitions. Ohhhhhhhhh. Now I get it. He is also the executive director of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing. Hey let's take a look at some of those articles. Here is a list of my favorites.

Transplants, Cellular Memory, and Reincarnation
Larry Dossey

Testing Nonlocal Observation as a Source of Intuitive Knowledge
Dean Radin

Children's Reports of Past-Life Memories: A Review
Jim B. Tucker

Toward A Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies
Ken Wilber

Nonlocal Knowing: The Emerging View of Who We Are
Larry Dossey

Are you getting the picture yet? Nonlocal knowing is code for clairvoyance. Past-life memories are code for reincarnation. This is a journal about nonsense and woo woo. Suddenly all his talk of mind-body separation and cosmic purpose makes sense. The question is why Huffington Post allows this sort of nonsense to pass. It is a violation of all journalistic ethics and is further proof the HuffPo is intentionally pandering to the traditionally far-left woo woo peddlers instead of trying to deliver real news.

Our species is doomed.

2010-06-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

Here at TPR, I try to stay positive. Being a secular humanist, I like to think that one day humanity is going to overcome it's many issues and really pull together in the spirit of goodwill and rationality. Then I see this. On the face of it a pretty standard survey of people's religious views except for the part about 1/4 people in the US believing in astrology.

HOLY CRAP!

One in four people believe that the other planets of our solar system affect us personally on a daily basis and their affects depend largely on the planets' positions on the day we were born! Just think about what you are saying!

Now I know what some of you might be thinking, "Why are you so hard on astrology, it's not hurting anything." Wrong. Astrology is one of the many ways that a large portion of our population is taken in by frauds and fools.

The sun was in this constellation on the day I was born. This means precisely jack except that it is always cold on my birthday.

Michael Shermer discusses cool research

2010-06-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

How to remain objective in response to criticism and new ideas.

2010-06-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

This is a good article. I don't agree with everything they say over at Rationally Speaking but this one is very solid. Part of thinking skeptically is eagerly accepting the idea that you could be wrong.

Ditto.

2010-06-20T10:59:00.001-07:00

Let's talk about creationists.

2010-06-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

Young earth creationism is the belief in the literal creation story in the Bible. It is the belief that the Earth is between 6000 and 10,000 years old and that all life forms on the Earth were created magically by god in a form essentially the same as they exist now.

There are thousands peer-reviewed articles to the contrary and their argument is not even logically coherent. The science is very clear and though I could talk for days and days about the evidence for evolution and the age of the earth and the age of the universe. That is not what I want to do here. What I want to do is talk about the kind of dialogue we can have with creationists at this point. My fiance pointed me towards a fundamentalist Christian message board. Take this post on the flood. One of my favorite quotes is the following:

God's Word tells us everything we need to know about the flood. Intellectual arguments about what God can and can't do are meaningless, but the pride and vanity of man makes him try regardless.

This is pretty typical for this message board. I have seen a lot of posts where the gist of the thing is "I will suspend logic when it conflicts with my faith in the Bible." I think this constitutes a problem.

Creationists make up a substantial portion of the United States population. In some states they are the majority. It is common knowledge at this point that fundamentalist Christian viewpoints clash with modern society on many fronts like the teaching of evolution, sex education, birth control, and abortion. These are serious issues. Now the question is how do we engage with these people when they have stated in plain words that they will not use reason in matters that conflict with the teaching of the Bible? In a debate, logic constitutes the rules of the game. If you throw logic out the window, you are essentially saying "I refuse to play by the rules." So what do we do? Well in grade school when someone stops playing by the rules, you stop playing with them. Can we do that here? Can we stop debating creationists? Creationists wield a lot of political power. Their assaults on education continue. So far they have been pushed out public schools, but home schooling is still a big business. I do not know any religious demographical data but I am relatively sure their numbers are going up.

I am tempted to say that we should stop engaging them directly. They aren't playing by the rules so we should stop playing with them. I think the downside to this is that this might play into the hands "arrogant scientist" meme that creationists seem to spread. Maybe the best tactic is to highlight the fact that they aren't playing by the rules. Creationists want their ideas like 'Intelligent Design' to be put on equal footing with science, but they want to frame the debate on their own terms and be judged by a different metric.

I am curious to hear what some other people think about this issue so feel free to comment.

Wooty-Woo

2010-06-15T11:37:00.001-07:00

I have a problem.

My problem is that people abuse physics terms to support ideas unrelated to physics. For example, sticking words like 'quantum' or 'fusion' on to products to make them sound cool. That's right quantum dish soap. This bothers me a little, but it doesn't bother me as much as a wholesale woo woo salesmen.

Let me give you an example. Robert Lanza is an MD. In his article he is making (admittedly vague) assertions not only about what happens to you after you die, but also about the structure of the universe as a whole. The justification? A few unrelated anecdotes and some poorly phrased observations about how he thinks quantum mechanics and relativity work. There are two major points that Lanza makes that I take big issue with.

Lanza says, "Quantum theory ended the classical view that particles exist if we don't perceive them. But if the world is observer-created, we shouldn't be surprised that it's destroyed with each of us." This is crap and crap like this fuels the public's lack of knowledge about quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics says that prior to a measurement, some characteristics of are indeterminate. Now what does that mean? There is a property that particles have called spin. There are other properties we could talk about but lets just talk about spin. Spin can point up or down. Before I check to see if the spin of a particle, say an electron, is spin up or down, quantum mechanics says it is in a 'superposition' of both states. The electron is still there. The moon is still there even if you don't look at it and anyone who tells you otherwise is a quack. There are instances in the decay of particles into other particles where it could be said that a particle is in a superposition of both decayed and un-decayed states. However, your everyday quantum mechanics measurement doesn't determine the existence of anything. What Lanza claims is basically another version of the old 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it' routine. His argument is more like 'if you are dead, how do you know the universe still exists?' This is an almost reasonable epistemological question, but it has little to do with quantum mechanics.

Lanza makes similar claims with relativity. He says, "In fact, it was Einstein's theory of relativity that showed that space and time are indeed relative to the observer." This is actually true, unlike his previous assertion, but it doesn't support Lanza's ideas about an afterlife (or whatever). How time passes, the distance between things, and the speed of things is indeed relative to each observer, but it is relative in a very specific, mathematical way. The rules of special relativity still work in the absence of a conscious observer, contrary to Lanza's assertions.

Looking at some of his other articles it is easy to see a pattern of science abuse. The titles all read like, Untestable Woo-Woo Claim Now Likely, According to Things I Just Made Up. So what's the point of all this? The point is that there are science abusers like Lanza, and Deepak Chopra who interpret science to say whatever they like. If you hear someone (even an MD or other scientist) make grand claims about what physics does or does not show, ask a physicist (or two or three) before believing it.

Innumeracy

2010-06-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have been a math/physics tutor for a few years. One of the most common phrases that I hear is "I am no good at math." This is normally followed by a little chuckle.

Can you imagine a similar situation where a client said unabashedly and with a laugh says, "I am no good at reading" ? No, I think most people would too embarrassed to admit that they are illiterate. Numbers though, some people positively flout their lack of knowledge about math. I remember as a kid going through middle and most high school I struggled with math. I think this was mostly the case because I was disinterested. Compared to science class (which was most interesting) and English (which was easiest for me) math was a lot of work for very little reward. That all changed when I took calculus and physics. Suddenly, math took on a new dimension of applicability. Previously, math had just been something I had to do instead of something I could do something with. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since then, math has become something interesting by itself, but I will admit that it may take a special kind of person to share that view. Neil deGrasse Tyson has some good words on why understanding math and science is a practical necessity for people to know so that they can make better policy decisions and avoid being taken in by charlatans.

So I will get off my soapbox and put it to you: what turns you off about math/science or what turns you on ?

Nerd Alert: Half-Life film directed by Joss Whedon, starring Nathan Fillion

2010-06-06T15:21:00.000-07:00

Potential tears of joy.

I know, I know it's not science exactly, but if you are a physicist and Gordon Freeman isn't one of your (fictional) heroes...well then you are missing out.

If you don't know, Half-Life is a video game series starring one Gordon Freeman of the secret government research facility Black Mesa. An inter-dimensional gateway gets opened and the proverbial poop hits the proverbial fan. It is a game series so good that you will like it even if you don't like video games. Joss Whedon was the man in charge of the cult Sci-Fi hit Firefly where Nathan Fillion starred. Put it all together and you have at least a Class 5 Nerdgasm.

George Smoot answers questions about cosmology.

2010-06-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

I think the title says it all. I found it interesting.

Don't have a cow man.

2010-06-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

South Park is a funny show. I don't think they should have backed down on depicting Muhammad, but their lives were threatened and I can't say I don't understand why they did. Now people are having a cow about their depiction of Jesus.

To be clear, their protests are about a potential new show that stars the Jesus from South Park as he tries to make his own way in the Big Apple. So technically, it is not on South Park. Anyhow...

First off, you are a little late. They have been making fun of Jesus forever. I remember when I first saw the episode when Satan and Jesus get in a boxing match. I couldn't believe someone let them do that on air at the time. I think I was around 13 at the time. Secondly, chill out. No one is guaranteed to have their ideas be free from criticism or ridicule. I don't recall Richard Dawkins having a cow when Matt Stone and Trey Parker depicted him having sex with a bald trans-sexual. I don't even remember Jews (or Christians) throwing a fit when they drew Moses as the bad guy from Tron.

So suck it up.

Astrology is crap.

2010-06-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

So I was watching (or avoiding watching) ABC's trash television lineup with The-Future-Mrs.-Reality-Poet when the first episode of the new season of True Beauty came on. If you don't know, and believe me I was wish I didn't, the conceit of the show is that there are a bunch of self-absorbed pretty people who think they're are on TV to win a beauty contest but are in fact being judged by their response to various moral tests. For example, last episode everyone was encouraged to steal clothes by a clandestine actress in effort to win a costume contest. Several failed.

Anyhow, the contestants strut out and they are about what you would expect: drama queens and beefy frat boys. Most of them worked at a bar or as models or as...an astrologer? I face-palmed. In his own words, David doesn't leave the house to get the mail without doing his hair and his horoscope.

Now I am not really surprised that someone on this show is that idiotic. These folks don't know the Gaza strip from Lady Gaga. It did remind me though that some people actually believe this crap. Almost every magazine and newspaper has a horoscope. These are supposed to be the same agencies that give us facts. Let's actually check and see how much force something like Venus has on us. Newton's Law of Gravitation is pretty simple. It is a constant times the mass of the first object times the mass of the second object divided by the square of the distance between them. That is a little hard to imagine but until I figure a way to post equations up here, it will have to do. Here is the calculation for a guy my weight as it is pulled by Venus. The force of Venus on me right now is 8.97 *10^-7 N. That is 0.000000897 N. For comparison a house cat half a meter away exerts almost the same force.

So maybe instead of checking the stars David and should check on the mood and location of nearby kitty cats.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

xkcd nails it again.

2010-06-02T20:14:00.001-07:00

If you don't read xkcd every week you should.

*Click for full size.

Peer review and how science gets done.

2010-05-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

As I have said, science is pretty cool, but it seems to me a lot of people do not understand how science works.

It starts with a scientist or collaboration of scientists. They have an idea. Science is so broad it is hard to say much more than this other than it is a new idea or way to check an old idea. This is intentionally vague but hang with me. So now the scientists try to check, prove, disprove, substantiate, or otherwise figure out what is going on. Once things are figured out (as best they can be), the scientists submit an article with the results for publication. Now here comes the really important part. Scientists with expertise in the same area as the scientists submitting the publication review the paper to see if it is a legit paper. Is it logically coherent? Do the results support the hypothesis? Do the results seem fudged in any way? If everything looks in order, and again I am glossing over a lot, the paper is published. After it is published it comes under the scrutiny of the scientific community where it is checked, rechecked, poked and examined.

Scientific ideas have to withstand this fusillade of scrutiny for a long time before they are considered in many cases to be even plausible. Take dark matter for example. Dark matter is a hypothetical material, that you guessed it we can't see. It is theorized to explain what seems to be missing matter in big things out in the universe like galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Now there are probably thousands of peer reviewed papers on dark matter, but even the biggest dark matter proponent would likely refuse to say that the book is shut and dark matter is answer to all of our problems. There is a large body of evidence suggesting that dark matter exists, but there are still some key pieces of the puzzle that are still missing. I may at a later date delve into some of the more interesting details of dark matter on the blog.

The point is that before something is accepted as scientific fact it has to hold up under enormous intellectual assault. Ideas like the big bang and evolution have held up under this scrutiny, and any scientist who could disprove these theories would be an instant celebrity. There is zero reason to perpetuate these ideas if they are lies and every reason to expose them if they are.

America Speaks Out...and it is pretty funny.

2010-05-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

So it has been a while and it is time to really get the blog off the ground. So here is the first in a rapid-fire burst of posts.

First let me be frank. I try where possible to be non-partisan, but I would be being disingenuous if I did not admit that I am a social liberal. I think firing tactless insults at one party or the other is fruitless.

That said, the Republican party has shot itself in the foot in a manner that is too comical for me to resist commenting. Behold America Speaking Out. This is an official effort by the Republican to build a report with the American people. It is a hilarious catastrophe. The craziness is largely indistinguishable from the giggling satirists. Take this for example. Satire or insanity? I hope it is satire and it probably is, but the huge number of serious-sounding comments leaves me with sickening doubt. There is certainly a spectrum of ambiguity and it is worth scrolling through a few pages for laughs. My favorite was "Legalize Gay Marijuana."

I know what you may be thinking. "I thought this was a science blog." It is. I think this, beyond being funny, should be a warning. If a small fraction of the posts on America Speaking out are genuine than that means that a portion of the US is dangerously ignorant. Time to get to work.

Hello Inter-Tubes !

2010-04-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

Greetings members of the blogosphere,

I realize this post is largely an exercise in talking to myself, but I think it is only fitting to have an introductory post to lay out what the blog is going to be all about.

Physics. It is my opinion that physics is awesome, but that it is not sold to the public very well. I think there is momentum to change this, a lot of which is coming from the proliferation science blogs here on the web, but there remains a good deal of work yet to be done. I am planning to write some posts that are done at a popular or "bright layman" level in an effort to spread knowledge and to peel back the veil of "unknowability" that seems to color peoples' perceptions of physics.
Science and the public. Science and technology have an immense effect on our society, but policymakers and the public are largely ignorant of science issues. This blog hopes to address questions about the intersection between science, public policy and culture.
Anti-Reality. Despite living in an era with unprecedented access to information, people still believe in things that have zero basis in fact. From homeopathy, to creationism, to the anti-vaccination movement, I hope to be one voice in a growing crowd that speaks against the nonsense.

The name of the blog comes from a Richard Dawkins quote, which I first heard in this enchanting music video from Symphony of Science. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd36WJ79z4&feature=player_embedded So Dr. Dawkins, if you are reading this, please don't sue.

Original content will be slow coming the next two weeks as the academic year finishes, but after that I hope to post my own stuff at least once a week. Re-posts of interesting things found around the net will come up a little more often.