“Theoretically” is a Nonsense Word

It’s time we stopped using the word “theoretically,” the word is an oxymoron unto itself, at least in the way we use it:

• “Is it theoretically possible for science to someday create a real lightsaber? (source)”
• “Antimatter galaxies theoretically possible, but unlikely (source)”
• “Critics say the White House’s theoretical arguments may fly in the face of empirical evidence. (source)”
• “…academics/media do a big disservice by raising issues that are theoretically possible, but not at all important in reality. (source)”
• “Are MMORPG goods theoretically taxable? (source)”
• “A science is most exciting when there are two or more strong, competing theories. (source)”

In science a theory is a “comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time.” A theory is not synonymous with fact, but it is the best approximation to it.

The way everyday people use the word theory is synonymous with speculation, and this leads to much confusion when debating scientific issues. People who don’t understand science argue that evolution and Anthropogenic Global Warming are only theories, not realizing that what they have actually said is that Evolution and AGW are only practically facts.

The word people should be using in the above examples is hypothetically. In science, we move from hypothesis through experimentation to theory.

There is no such thing as “competing theories.” This is an oxymoron. If they are competing, then they are hypotheses. If you have to ask if something is “theoretically possible,” then it probably isn’t, it’s merely “hypothetically possible.”

Remember Gravity is only a Theory.

The Scientific Virtue of Being Wrong

Every year Green Sea Turtles travel 1,300 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from their nesting grounds in the middle of the South Atlantic to their feeding grounds on the Brazilian Coast. Why do the turtles undertake this incredibly taxing journey each year?

135 million years ago, South America and Africa were a single super-continent called Gondwanaland. At this time, the turtles probably inhabited a small bay or sea, nesting on one side and feeding on the other.

Over time, a process known as plate tectonics split the continents apart at about the same rate your fingernails grow. The change was imperceptible to the turtles, who traveled a few inches farther each year out of habit until, millions of years later, they were migrating the incredible distances they traverse today.

Doesn’t the epic nature of this tale, crossing oceans of time, distance, and generations of turtles, just tickle the imagination delightfully? Isn’t this an absolutely fantastic hypothesis?

It’s also completely discredited¹. We know this because the fossil evidence and geological timelines don’t match up. Sea Turtles didn’t evolve that way. Please don’t go around spreading this scientific urban legend.

The Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, once said, “The tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” It seems like what science knows is always changing, and indeed this is the case. Every day new articles appear in peer-review journals disproving formerly established paradigms, rendering what we assumed were facts into falsehoods.

Just look at a decade’s worth of news articles on health and nutrition to see the wealth of contradictory information that field of research produces. Eat a low-fat diet. No, wait, eat a low-carb diet. Eat how many servings of meat? Dairy?

Many people characterize the mercurial nature of scientific knowledge as a weakness. Science is unstable, they argue, it claims to know the truth, but the truth doesn’t change. The fact that scientific knowledge is perpetually evolving is actually its greatest virtue, because scientists know how to admit when they are wrong.

The famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking published ground-breaking theories on Black Holes. Today we refer to the x-rays Black Holes emit as “Hawking Radiation” in his honor. In July 2004 Hawking acknowledge he was in error about a characteristic of black holes for 30 years.

The Biologist Richard Dawkins regularly tells the story of when he was an undergraduate at Oxford. A respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department there believed and taught that the Golgi Apparatus was not real. One day a visiting lecturer came and presented convincing evidence that the Golgi Apparatus was real. At the end of the lecture, Dawkins tells us, the elder statesman “strode to the front of the hall, shook the American by the hand and said–with passion–’My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.’ We clapped our hands red”²

Western Civilization once thought the Earth was the center of the Universe and that the stars, moon, and sun orbited around it. Then Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and other astronomers developed the theory of a Heliocentric (sun-centered) Universe. Today we know the sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and our galaxy moves through the Universe as well. Because Science has the power to admit when its wrong, it has the power to grow and improve. Our understanding of reality grows and improves with it.

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Daniel Dennet, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York, 1995. (footnote on p245)

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, United Kingdom, 2006.

Evolution Sunday

Today more than 618 Congregations across America and five nations will participate in Evolution Sunday. More than 10,000 ministers have signed the letter supporting the idea that science and religion are not incompatible, and support for Evolution Sunday grew 13 per cent to 530 congregations in 2007.

Several years ago, I was married to a very open-minded and warm-hearted Born Again Christian woman. Despite our differing perspectives on theology, me being an Atheist, we did work perpetually to understand one another’s point of view. I read the Bible cover to cover and began attending my wife’s church, Christ and Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Norfolk VA, an incredibly ornate church, hundreds of years old, which provided an unlikely place to find Enlightenment values.

While I still disagreed with many of the church’s teachings, I was willing to entertain them in order to challenge and refine my own ideas. Similarly, this church regularly entertained the ideas of other theologies, hosting representatives of spiritual philosophies that were completely incompatible with Christian teachings, such as Buddhists and New Age spiritualists. When the theologian Huston Smith gave a talk at the church, the Reverend followed it with the statement, “While you all know I disagree strongly with many things Mr. Smith has said…” he then proceeded to emphasize only those things they agreed on.

Many Creationists have stong criticisms for churches that take part in today’s activities, and many scientists have strong criticisms of the whole idea too. Such criticisms reduce debate to a zero-sum game, where one side can only win through the complete and utter defeat of their opponents. My message to the folks on both sides of the aisle who take such a perspective: enjoy pushing your boulder up the mountain forever.

Meanwhile, those of us with a bit more political savvy know that disputation is a game of inches, like American football, where we all work to nudge the ideal mean a bit closer toward our goal. I’m an atheist, and it’s doubtful many religious people read my blog, so my nudging is for what I think my fellow Brights need to take from Evolution Sunday, which will ultimately nudge the ideal mean in direction better for everyone. I think Michael Zimmerman put it best himself:

[Evolution Sunday] is designed to provide an opportunity for congregations around the world to discuss the compatibility of religion and science, to investigate why religion and modern science need not be at war with one another. The event is designed to demonstrate that those shrill fundamentalist voices that assert that people must choose between religion and science are simply incorrect, that they are presenting a false dichotomy, that no such choice needs to be made.

Got that? False Dichotomy, and that goes for us atheists too. It is possible for person who looks at Evolution without an invisible hand guiding it and a person who believes in that invisible hand to have a healthy conversation about the science of evolution without their pro or con invisible hand positions entering the conversation in any way, shape, or form. Why alienate each other over something so trivial?

Despite our many quibbles, human beings of all faiths, politics, and none of the above all overwhelming believe in and work to ensure our common welfare. Religious and non-religious people need to remember that, if all the members of one side were to vanish tomorrow, the other would be in a world of hurt without their fellow humans’ daily altruistic contributions to our common society.

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The Clergy Letter Project has a large collection of sermons written by clergy and religious leaders across the U.S.

Beyond Belief, Enlightenment 2.0

Daniel Dennet

I had the delightful fortune to discover the Salk Institute’s Beyond Belief Conference online about this same time last year. I ended up spending an entire weekend hanging out near my computer, soaking up every single lecture in order while sipping hot chocolate in my pajamas.

2006’s Beyond Belief program was Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, which included such greats as Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ann Druyan, all offering their perspectives on Religion and Science, followed with academic discussion of each lecture. Watching the conference in its entirety was like watching a concert video of Lolapaloza (or whatever the big concert is for kids today), but instead of the monsters of rock, these were the Titans of Science.

Because it’s science, it’s all online for free. Beyond Belief Enlightenment 2.0 features presentations from Daniel Dennett, David Brin and an interview with PZ Meyers, and focuses on Enlightenment ideas and values. It takes a much more progressive and positive tone than last year’s content; although, last year’s content had several very inspiring talks.

You can view the full program of presentations here.

Thinking Beyond Science Debate 2008

Science Debate 2008

The Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the Scientists & Engineers for America, Audubon… World Wildlife Fund… the Society for Amateur Scientists… the Sierra Club… The list of activist organizations representing the multitude of issues important to Scientists and the Scientifically aware goes on and on and on.

Now there’s Science Debate 2008, which I completely support and believe everyone should get behind.

At the same time, I have to wonder, is this only watering down the field even more? I realize this is an effort focused around a single goal, getting the candidates to acknowledge and speak to those issues of interest to the Scientifically Aware community, but why did Mooney, Kirshenbaum, Chapman and others have to set things in motion? Why didn’t one of the established organizations listed above take the initiative? Why don’t we have an organization that stands out in assuming responsibility for organizing all Science-minded people around political issues all the time?

The Science-focused community is fiercely independent, making it a big tent and giving it the power to forge its individual perspectives in the fires of honest, constructive debate. At the same time, this independence means that we don’t form a cohesive voting block. Oddly enough, the fact that we can’t be stereotyped politically, like African Americans, Evangelicals, Hispanics, Feminists, Dittoheads, or Unions means the political world need not acknowledge us at all.

What unites Scientists ideologically? I was surprised to learn that several Scientists I met at NCNBC 2008 specifically stated they were not Environmentalists. I had always assumed Biodiversity and Sustainability would be lock step with a Scientific Worldview, but this was not so. Scientists and Enlightenment ideologues believe in science funding, science education, and prohibition of political interference in science, but they don’t necessarily agree on what science has to say about anything. Go figure… constructive disputation is the nature of science.

We tend to think of Science as above the fray, and it is and it needs to be above the fray to maintain its intellectual integrity. But you know what? The pundits don’t care!!! They don’t acknowledge any integrity. As far as politics is concerned, Scientists are all ready a self-serving special interest of cosseted, pussified academics who over hype the importance of species extinction, global warming, and pollution because they’re trying to scare people into giving them more taxpayer money.

Scientists can ignore the political world all they want, but the political world will demonize them regardless.

The reality is that Science needs a platform. Science must begin endorsing candidates. They must get active in politics. In 1983 Carl Sagan single-handedly convinced Senator Proxmire to drop his campaign against SETI funding, and Congress went on to vote in $1.5 million for SETI projects as a result. That’s what one rational mind engaging politics was able to accomplish. Imagine what a few hundred thousand could do.

What political business model works right now? In their coverage of the Nevada Caucuses, the mainstream media focused strongly on the Labor Union vote, an organization powerful in numbers and united in purpose so that whoever runs for office must obtain their stamp of approval.

Scientists have enough obligations eating up their time without politics. This is why Scientists, Educators, and Science Proponents need the equivalent of a Labor Union, to speak with Candidates on our behalf, secure promises from them to support our special interests, evaluate how they serve those interests, and either reward those politicians or hold them accountable. They’re our public servants; let’s get Pavlovian on them.

Scientists and Enlightenment Scholars do share a stereotype. We are highly-educated, inquisitive, regularly challenge our ideas, and we are also fun-loving people, who genuinely enjoy our intellectual pursuits for their own sake, rather than solely as a means to an end. Give us a convenient organization we can send $20 a month that will e-mail us when to write our Representatives and recommend who we should vote for.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the media had to factor in the “Science and Enlightenment Vote” when discussing election strategies?

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Currently, I feel the Union of Concerned Scientists is the organization best serving this need, but I’m open to running with the herd if we could all get behind just one organization.

There’s Only One Human Race

Nobel Laureate, James Watson, recently made the claim that blacks were ‘less intelligent,’ than whites, which just goes to show, being smart in one area doesn’t prevent you from being foolish in other realms.

The following message is from the American Anthropological Association:

“race” has no scientific justification in human biology.

Tiger Woods coined the term Cablinasian to describe his ethnicity, merging Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian to encompass his blending of heritages. The very fact that such diverse groups of people can successfully produce offspring together proves that they are not of different races.

The difference between light and dark skin human beings really is only skin deep, when we trace the course of human migrations we learn that our skin colors are an adaptation to sun exposure. As humans migrated into the North, they were exposed to less sunlight, and began to suffer Vitamin D deficiencies. People with lighter skin produced more Vitamin D and survived to pass on their genes in this environment.

Ryan Somma’s Paternal Genetic Journey

I’m in Haplogroup J2 on my paternal side, according to my genetic ancestry test. My father’s Italian, but specifically Southern Italian, which means we share our ancestry with people from Northern Africa. I’m practically half-Arab genetically (but don’t tell my Italian relatives that).

Similarly, Native Americans bare a stronger resemblance to Asians the further Northwest you go, because that’s where their ancestors crossed the Bering Strait.

All of us are Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Primates, Family Hominidae, Genus Homo, Species Homo sapiens, and Subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, all of us. It doesn’t matter if someone’s dark skinned, blue-eyed, tall, heavy-set, light-skinned, curly-haired, big-nosed, smart, web-toed, etc, etc, they are only about 0.1 percent genetically different from anyone else.

As for Watson, it was also recently found that he has black genes.

Scientific food for thought this MLK Day.

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You can read the final revision of the American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race” here.

The OLPC XO-1, Shortcut to the Information Age

So I got my OLPC XO-1 in the mail about a month ago, and I’m still wrestling with my opinion of it. Personally I think it’s the bee’s knees. Everyone who comes into the comic shop fawns over it. I’m the envy of the local geek crowd.

I love it when people ask me, “What’s that?” and I get to extol the virtues of Nick Negroponte’s beautiful vision of supplying underprivileged children all over the world with their own laptops to learn art, reading, mathematics, programming, science, and connect them with the entire world as their classroom. Just like so many people here in America have done through the Internet.

“Huh. But don’t those poor kids have more pressing concerns, like survival, that need to come first?” they always reply in some form or another, and the heart-bubbles floating around my head all pop and I wake up, blinking dumbly.

Which brings me to my conflict. While I dig the OLPC XO-1, will it serve its purpose of enlightening young minds all over the world? Even I laughed at Newt Gingrich when he suggested we provide the homeless with laptops, but now I’m not so sure.

People get stuck in this idea that other nations need to repeat every step of America’s history to achieve America’s quality of life. China can either work through America’s entire history of building a middle class that will demand its own fair workplace standards, or Americans can exert economic pressure on China to do away with its sweatshops. Similarly, third-world countries can step through fossil-fuel power plants, or they can skip straight to renewable energy.

Why reinvent the wheel? The OLPC is a shortcut for lesser-developed nations. Why not help them skip being a second-world country and go straight to the Information Age, with all its collaborative memetic innovation? I say get them into the Global Village ASAP. The sooner they start using LEDs, solar panels, and well-water pumps, the sooner they’ll start contributing their own inventions, software, art, and literature to the world.

OLPC as an E-Book Image Courtesy OLPC Foundation

On the downside. This laptop is hand-me-down softwares and technologies. The hand-me-down 433mhz processors with hand-me-down 256k RAM. Hardware-wise, this brand new laptop is my brand new PC from 1993. Software-wise the hand-me-down Sim City is the same one that ran on my Apple IIe in Junior High, but I’ve got a better opinion of the rest of the software suite further down.

So is the $200 price tag justified? The software’s open-source, so there’s $0 of the total. A refurnished Thinkpad runs $200-$300, but this is brand new. Former OLPC CTO, Mary Lou Jepsen, is now working on a $75 laptop. How they intend to accomplish this when they couldn’t accomplish it with the OLPC is anybody’s guess, but the competition among charities will definitely spurn more innovation. The $200 price tag is very prohibitive to the OLPC’s ultimate success.

On the plus-side, the hardware has features that are uniquely perfect for the OLPC’s intended recipients. Practically speaking. This is a rugged little #$%@ of a machine. A fully charged battery runs for hours (three hours for one of my sessions). The twin wifi antenna are rubberized and folded in to serve as a locking mechanism for the laptop when closed. With flash memory storage, I don’t have to worry about bouncing it around and wrecking the hardrive, and stuffing all the main components behind the screen means it doesn’t make your sperm-count decline uncomfortably when it sits in your lap.

The keyboard is a rubber mat, which is awesomely spill-proof and would feel great if it wasn’t so tiny. I read one hacker’s first mod to his XO-1 was to convert it to a Dvorak keyboard layout. What’s the point? I’m reduced to hunt-and-peck mode using my forefingers when I type on it, but that’s okay because the keyboard isn’t meant for my adult hands, and when my friend’s five-year-old daughter got her hands on the laptop, she looked like a pro typing utter gibberish into it’s Journaling Software.

The monitor flips completely around and folds flat on the laptop, turning it into an e-book reader. This is a really nice feature, and one that makes this laptop a real keeper for me. If nothing else, I’ve now got a screen bigger than my cellphone to read all the free books I download from Project Gutenberg, and a laptop with the battery life to survive a long flight.

OLPC Network Neighborhood Image Courtesy OLPC Foundation

So this is a sweetly innovative, however overpriced, bit of technology. Which brings me to the second most common objection I get to the OLPC, “Are kids in third-world countries even going to be able to use that thing?”

The assumption here is that this learning toy is beyond the technological grasp of children living in villages without electricity. That somehow people deprived of Best Buy, Cinema Multiplexes, and the mind-numbing inanity of American Idol lack the cognitive foundation for Computing 101. Whenever a Baby Boomer raises this objection, I just remind myself that they are from the same generation that couldn’t program a VCR.

The reality is that the OLPC’s linux user interface sorta takes me back to my Commodore 64 days, when computing was just the basics. Only my Commodore’s interface was a command line, (LOAD *,8,1 anyone?), whereas the OLPC is cartoony and graphical. Kids will get into this thing and make it sing in ways the developers never anticipated. Just like kids run technological circles around their elders in modern America.

The OLPC provides plenty of pre-loaded software that will educate in a well-rounded fashion. The Video, Picture, and Sound Capture capabilities using the built in video and microphone introduce students to multimedia. The journal provides a creative writing outlet, while the Paint and TamTamJam softwares allow for art and music creative outlets.

Etoys and Turtle Art introduce kids to programming logic, while Pippy introduces kids to the joys of Python Programming, the easiest, most advanced programming language out there. Through these, kids are introduced to mathematics, building their own software toys, and logical constructs.

Most of all, the web browser introduces them to the world’s knowledge. The chat introduces them to world’s people.

They’re doing all this on an open-source operating system, where they can eventually incorporate what they learn into publishing their own improvements and innovations to the World Wide Web, where the rest of us will enjoy them.

That’s dream worth supporting, not to mention a huge return on our investment.

Science Etecetera Marsday, 20080108

Geodesic Gingerbread House by Slave to the Light

A tasty selection of entries are in for the Bake for Change, sustainable ginger bread house contest. The entries are so sweet they make my teeth hurt.

Two bits of sweetness for the Astronomy geeks, a Mandella Made with Galaxy M74 and the Rings of Jupiter.

Negroponte’s observation that Intel’s dirty tactics against the OLPC is “a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program,” seems pretty on the mark. Especially in light of the first-hand account from Peru’s Minster of Education of an Intel Sales-Person trying to convince him to ditch the project (while Intel was part of it) for their more expensive Classmate PC. Luckily, the “Give One, Get One” charitable promotion has generated $35 million and sold a total of 167,000 computers, half to be distributed in the developing world.

A hardware hacker takes apart the OLPC-XO1 and gives it a qualified thumbs-up.

Politicians local to the region are rushing to Protect the Water In the Great Lakes Basin, which contains 18% of the world’s freshwater, before the Federal Government steps in to redistribute it to states who failed to manage their water supplies.

Curious assertion from a member of the field: Biology is Built on an Oral Tradition, because the science doesn’t lend itself well to mathematical explanations.

Christian Science Textbook

This is what science textbooks will look like, if the Creationists have their way.

Breeding two different species of cavefish partially restores vision in 40% of their offspring. The phenomenon has to do with the different species being blind due to errors in different genes, crossbreeding gives the children a good chance of having all good genes for sight. Neat!

To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!

For a lesson in chaos theory and self-organizing systems check out video from an India Traffic Cam.

2007 Science Yearbook: Entertainment

There was a smattering of science-themed movies this year. Flock of Dodos came out in 2006, but didn’t arrive at my local theaters until 2007. Randy Olson’s film explored personality differences that made creationists more likable than evolutionists. In the Shadow of the Moon took what might be the last walk down memory lane with the only human beings to set foot on another world. Disney’s Meet the Robinsons was an animated film that made scientists the heroes (however zany). Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth provided a surprise treat, an engaging science fiction film that takes place entirely at one location and relied heavily on engaging intellectual dialogue.

In books, Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science achieved what I always wanted in a science book, an adventure from the quantum to the microscopic to the macroscopic to the astronomic realms of science. Steven and Lucy Hawking’s Book George’s Secret Key to the Universe achieved what I never realized I’d wanted in a children’s book, hard science fiction. Howtoons: The Possibilities are Endless brought the Do It Yourself movement to children (and adult-children, like myself), and supplemented it with an awesome website.

Michael Pollan’s incredible NYT article “Unhappy Meals” provided the best, most conclusive dietary advice you’ll ever need: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Make it your mantra to healthy living.

Microscopic Rodin’s Thinker Credit: Dong-Yol Yang et al., Applied Physics Letters

In the art world, the Brown Hall of Entomology offered 25 cents per cockroach for a display on the “sanitary engineers” of the insect world. Korean researchers crafted a microscopic Version of Rodin’s “The Thinker”, about twice the size of a red blood cell. Scientists at Harvard and MIT genetically modified mouse neurons to fire “tracers,” which produced colorful Brainbows.

Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms Information Aesthetics

While on the Internet, Information Aesthetics Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms free downloadable wall chart presented a fantastic visualization tool that provokes hours of examination and reflection. The Science Creative Quarterly hit it big with their Order of Science Scouts Badges, an Internet meme I hope to see become a standard. E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life went online, but then failed to produce much of anything by way of content, while Google Space took the prize for the coolest new software toy of the year free or otherwise.

Science Etcetera Jupiterday, 20071227

Anthropologists tend to either dazzle me with their brilliance or dazzle me with their stupidity. These Jared Diamond bashers fall into the later category. It’s not always about culture nitwits!!!

Have your new X-mas gadgets rendered your old ones obsolete? If you live in Louisville Kentucky, you can CyberCycle them.

The Optical Telegraph network was Email for 18th century Europe (HT Clint).

The Nanosolar company manufactures Solar Cheaper than Coal.

More on academics, musicians, and poker-players using Cognitive-Enhancement Drugs like ritalin and provigil. How do you get this stuff? Fake narcolepsy?

Alexander Graham Bell

A new book looks at new evidence to argue that Alexander Graham Bell stole the phone idea from his rival Elisha Gray.

The last severe global warming episode 55 million years ago produced thousands of years of explosive plant growth in the oceans, which helped to end Global Warming.

ScienceWoman has the Top 10 Women in Science developments of 2007. You go girls!!!

Snark! Nanobots that Use Sperm Power

Science Etcetera Moonday, 2071224

The FBI is preparing a Vast Database Of Biometrics, including irises, faces, and scars. Sounds useful. They will also keep fingerprints of employees for companies upon request. Sounds Big Brotherish.

China is teaching their Pandas how to Fight by housing them with police dogs, after animals killed the first Panda released into the wild. Go Super Science Ninja Pandas!!!

Maybe they could train them to protect the other animals too, as a rare tiger was found
Skinned in a Chinese Zoo. Sick.

A $10 million telescope turned into a parasail and smashed to pieces. A £1.5 million autonomous yellow submarine trapped under the Arctic ice. New Scientists has the best Doh! Technology Moments of 2007.

Let the countdown begin. The 100-Watt Incandescent Bulb will Disappear by 2012 thanks to the Energy Bill. A good step, but Compact Florescent Bulbs (CFLs) aren’t the end-all-be-all because disposing of them puts mercury into the environment.

In 2002 Dave Weiner bet against Martin Nisenholtz that Blogs would out-rank the New York Times on Google for the top news stories in 2007, and he won.

They distort, you comply. Fox News linked to Senator Inhofe’s linked to the blog post instead of to his supposed “consensus-busting report” disputing climate change.

I did not know that! Why you shouldn’t use WD-40 on your bike chain.

Mistletoe kills cancer tumors and other science facts for the holidays.

Very pretty, but at this stage it’s the software doing all the work and not the brain, but these EEG Biofeedback Paintings are pretty to look at, and hold promise of cooler things to come.

EEG Biofeedback Paintings

Science Etcetera Jupiterday, 20071220

A Single Tin of Paint Can Pollute Millions of Litres of Water

One can of paint can pollute an entire river, illustrated in the above WWF Anti-Paint-Dumping Ads.

Didn’t expect it, but Bush signed the energy bill into law mandating fuel mileage standards. Yay!!! US budget makes cuts to the particle accelerator. Booo!!!

Bite me “Abstinence Only” lobby. Sex Education of any kind delays the onset of sexual behavior in teens.

Looks more like a rat to me, but a Deer-like fossil fills an important missing link in whale evolution.

Janet D. Stemwedel ponders the ethics of performance enhancing drugs in academia.

Squirrels chew up shed snake skins and rub the scent over themselves to ward off predators.

71 Year-Old Physics Professor’s MIT Open Academia’s videos are a YouTube Hit.

More proof humans aren’t as unique as we like to think, Monkeys Can Perform Mental Addition

There’s an updated version of the classic YouTube video Shift Happens online:

Science Gift Ideas: Worldchanging, A User’s Guide to the 21st Century

Worldchanging A User’s Guide to the 21st Century

“Happiness demands giving up all hope of a better past.“
- Buddha

I dilly-dallied about checking out this book when it came out last year. Then one day, I happened to pick up an opened copy at the bookstore and immediately fell into profound ionian enchantment with it. This is the kind of book I would normally bounce around, taking it down off the bookshelf every now and then and opening to a random subject to enjoy whatever topic I stumbled upon. I still do that to my now dog-eared copy with its worn binding, but I first read it cover to cover, bibliography and all.

With more than 60 authors, many mainstream and noteworthy, contributing to this tome of a book, fantastic design layout, inspiring photographs, and though-provoking material, it would be a wonder if I didn’t fall in love with it. For 2007, this was my catch-all gift, everyone who got a present from me got this book, and everyone receiving it loved it too.

Worldchanging is the greatest collection of sustainable living innovations ever compiled. Worldchanging introduced me to the Mega Cities Project, which seeks innovative solutions to urban living, NGO-in-a-Box open-source software for managing Non-Governmental Organizations, Solar Energy Products at Real Goods, H₂ouse home water-saving ideas, the United Nation’s World Food Programme free video game where players deliver aid to countries in crisis Food Force, the free International Futures modeling software, Gapminder free software to visualize world development, and numerous other resources online, offline, and within myself. Not to mention, the Worldchanging Website, called the “leading sustainability-focused website on the planet” and has “an archive of 7,600 stories on ecological innovation, breakthrough design and social change.”

Most of all, Worldchanging makes us hopeful about the future. It recognizes the myriad problems the global village faces and places its focus on finding the solutions to them. This is the best DIY book ever. After reading over 500 pages of projects, inventions, lifestyle modifications, and products, you will see the world around you in a whole new light. And a fresh outlook on life is one of the best gifts you can give.

Available at Amazon.

Science Gift Ideas: Zome Tool

ZomeTool’s connector balls are small rhombicosidodecahedrons

I started playing with Zome Tool after watching the college lecture series Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas on DVD, which required no mathematical background and I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning about why Math totally rocks from a humanistic perspective. I wanted to try out some of the geometrical concepts the lecture series talked about and needed a construction set that would suit this need.

Zome Tool is like an errector set, only incredibly geometrically well thought-out. The vertices, connector balls, for the Zome Tool are small rhombicosidodecahedrons, one of the 13 types of Archmedean Solids (this link has 3-D examples that you can rotate). This means that there are three types of connections for the edges, a pentagon, rectangle, and equilateral triangle; and for this reason, the edge pieces come in three different color-coded types.

The length of these edge pieces are related to one another along the Golden Mean, a proportion found throughout nature, art, and architecture, and one that allowed me to build three interlaced golden rectangles inside an icosahedron.

Icosahedron with Three Interlaced Golden Rectangles

I later added another layer to this, by putting the icosahedron inside the dodecahedron with it’s verticies touching the middle of each of the dodecahedron’s faces.

Also on a Holiday note, check out a Zome Christmas Tree