Here is my kind of project.
Hydraulic Powered Robot Arm from Cardboard
Here is my kind of project.
Category: Science
Robots are Getting More Advanced
Here is the newest robot from Boston Dynamics.
Movie Review: Hidden Figures
In the early 1960s, the Russians had a little head start in the race to space. NASA was still young, and its engineers used slide rules, pencils and vellum to do its designs. And humans were the “computers” who had to figure out the math.
Hidden Figures tells the story of three brilliant African-American women who worked at NASA. Each one of them with her own special skill, each with her own drive and motivation. But in those days, blacks were not allowed to use the same toilets or coffee pots as whites. The odds were against them.
This movie tells the story of what it was like behind the scenes at NASA. We all know that it was John Glenn who was the first American to orbit the earth. What we didn’t know was that up to a few days before his launch they didn’t really know how to calculate the trajectory to get him back safely to earth.
In a time when racism seems to be back on the rise and gender equality is questioned again, Hidden Figures shows us what it was like to live under such conditions. But the human spirit rises, like the rockets of old rose.
As I walked out of the theater I could not think of a single thing wrong with this film. It just felt really good.
Consensus on Climate Science and Trump’s Appointee
The worldwide consensus that the current global warming is anthropogenic approaches 100% as the expertise in climate science rises.
In English: The more a person knows about climate science, the more they believe it’s man-made.
Trump’s assignee to transition the EPA to the new administration is Myron Ebell, a climate change denier. Ebell has no scientific experience at all. He graduated from Colorado College with a B.A. in philosophy and obtained an M.Sc. in political theory from the London School of Economics. This makes him a politician by education, and that’s what he has done all his life.
I put a dot for him on this chart. He has no professional experience with climate science. Not surprisingly, and consistent with the graph, knowing nothing about climate science, he ends up on the bottom as a denier. There is nothing wrong with that. Most people don’t.
However, this is the “best and brightest” President-elect Trump came up with to head the transition of the EPA, a highly science-heavy organization. That’s like making the clerk in the butcher shop in your local supermarket the Surgeon General. After all, he knows what a T-bone steak is. Meat.
I wonder what kind of respect Ebell will garner from the staff in the EPA?
This appointment does not make Trump look like he is serious. During the campaign, he signaled that actual expertise does not really matter, as long as you have good advisers. But if the advisers themselves do not have any expertise, things will not end well.
The emperor has no clothes.
But What If We Are Wrong?
The Religious Argument
I have been fortunate that I was able to cast off the shackles and blinders of religion very early in life. I am not religious or spiritual in any way. I have always called myself a non-combative atheist, and I am convinced that mindset has served me well.
According to Wikipedia:
The Pew Religious Landscape survey reported that as of 2014, 22.8% of the U.S. population is religiously unaffiliated, atheists made up 3.1% and agnostics made up 4% of the U.S. population. The 2014 General Social Survey reported that 21% of American had no religion with 3% being atheist and 5% being agnostic.
So being part of only 3% of solid atheists mean that 29 out of 30 of my friends, associates and people I run into on a daily basis are more or much more religious than I.
As a result, I have a lot of religious friends. Some very old, good friends. I have friends who are pastors, youth pastors, and even a Catholic priest. In serious late-night discussions with religious friends, one of the most common points that eventually comes up is:
What if you are wrong?
They argue that their belief in a God protects them from eternal hellfire. While I, who does not have such an insurance policy, am exposed. Let’s say with both die. If there is a God, the priest presumably goes to heaven. If there isn’t, he’s just dead and nothing mattered anyway. But on the off-chance that there is a God, he has an insurance policy. He is covered.
But I don’t have that coverage. If there is a God, he says I’ll go to eternal hell. If there is no God, I’ll be just as dead and nothing mattered anyway.
I know that is why many religious people hang on to religion. Just in case.
The Climate Change Argument
The American public has been led to believe that “climate change is a hoax.” Our populace has just elected a government that officially, and in all levels of the executive and legislative branches, supports this argument.
The vast majority of all climate scientists in the world disagree with this reasoning. Our CO2 levels at 400 PPM in the Antarctic are now higher than they have been in 4 million years. In a hundred and fifty years of burning coal and oil we have created a hockey stick of CO2 levels in the atmosphere in the blink of an eye from a planet’s perspective. But this argument I am making here is not about the science. I’ll leave that to the thousands of scientist much better qualified than I am. I just need to state that I am utterly convinced that we’re seriously messing with the balances of chemistry in our atmosphere, and we will need to pay a dear price for that in the not too distant future.
Our illustrious American politicians tell us that it’s all a hoax. Never mind that we are the largest polluters in the world as a country. Never mind that the second and third largest polluters, China and India respectively, basically agree with the seriousness of climate change. Never mind that China is now cleaning up their act as rapidly as they can (which requires another post eventually to discuss). Never mind that 195 nations all came together and agreed that this is a serious problem and crafted the Paris climate agreement.
Our government, empowered by the electorate, is now preparing to get out of the Paris climate agreement. Trump’s position is: We’re not allowing UN bureaucrats to have the power to spend American tax dollars. By itself, that argument makes sense. UN bureaucrats should not get to spend American tax dollars. However, the consequences of just tearing up the agreement are severe.
What if they are wrong?
Say for the sake of argument that climate change really were a hoax. These CO2 levels of 400 and more in our air are just a natural spike, and humanity has nothing to do with it, and can do nothing to change it. The weather will change whether we like it or not.
In a hundred years, no matter what we do, we’ll still be here, with our Manhattan real estate, with our Miami beaches, happily ever after.
Then it will not have mattered.
But on the other side, if human activity actually does affect the climate adversely, and the hockey stick graphs are going to get worse, we will have serious consequences to deal with as a species. The human food chain in the oceans will be disrupted. Agriculture will be severely hindered. Real estate will disappear and many of the lowlands around the country will be under water.
Seriously, we’re willing to play this game – for MONEY?
Ignoring climate change now is like killing the last rooster and chicken, who have been laying eggs for us every day, so we can have ONE LUNCH.
We’re risking our children’s welfare and taking away their right to the pursuit of happiness so we can burn some more oil and coal, so some people can have jobs? Seriously?
What if we are wrong?
Laryngeal Nerve as an Example of Why We’re Not “Intelligently Designed”
Opponents of evolution often argue that we didn’t evolve from “monkeys” but rather that God designed us.
Science, however, shows many examples where evolution came up with rather poor designs. I highlighted one of them in my post a few years ago where I compared the “design” of external laptop batteries to the “design” of mammalian testicles, using human ones as the example. A designer would never lay out testicles like mammals have them now, particularly with the vas deferens looping over the ureter.
Another example of misguided evolution is the laryngeal nerve, that controls our voice box among other things. In all mammals, this nerve goes from the brain all the way down to the heart, loops around a major artery and comes back up to the voice box. This makes no sense in humans. In giraffes, it is the most ridiculous display where rather than going two inches from the bottom of the brain to the larynx, it reaches more than six feet down the neck, around the artery, and back up the neck another six feet.
The video by Richard Dawson below shows this in a dissected giraffe.
For those of us that can’t stomach the fact that humans and modern apes have a common primate ancestor, this will be even more disturbing. It shows clear evidence that humans (and giraffes, and apes, and rats, and elephants, and whales – you get the idea) all come originally from a common ancestor fish.
Yes, fish. That’s where the laryngeal nerve started, as a connection between the brain and the gills.
Evolution is not intelligent. It has no planning or foresight. It supports and propagates the solution that survives better than any competing solutions.
Two Trillion More Galaxies
Astronomers have just recently come to the conclusion that there are two trillion more galaxies in the universe than previously thought. We used to think there were 100 billion galaxies.
Our own galaxy, which is a pretty unremarkable one, is estimated to have about 400 billion stars.
Let’s just say there is only ONE intelligent civilization in every galaxy that is active and alive today. Just one. That would make it two trillion civilizations.
There are about 7.5 billion human beings on earth.
That means that there are 266 intelligent CIVILIZATIONS in the universe for every human being alive – right now.
This is beyond what I can fathom.
Burning Man View from the International Space Station
The Phenomenal Dumbing Down of America and the SpaceX Hoax
Check out this video and PLEASE tell me that this is a parody!
Then read down into the YouTube comments below (which I have often warned here never to do) and see how many people support these idiotic statement made in this video. Even if the person posting this video does it as a parody, these people commenting certainly don’t get it.
How can there be people in the United States, moving a mouse causing movement of cursor on a computer screen hosted by YouTube, sent to their house via satellite from some data center in Sweden, that do not believe the earth is a sphere? Do these same people use GPS in their cars?
I don’t think there is anyone outside of the United States that would buy into such batshit crazy nonsense. Europeans certainly aren’t. They are too busy building BMWs, and particle accelerators, and watches. The Chinese certainly aren’t. They are too busy building EVERYTHING.
I was at Home Depot yesterday, buying a replacement rod for blinds (made in China) and a few washers (made in China). Everything at Home Depot is made in China. Everything at WalMart. Everything at Sears. EVERYTHING. It’s because Chinese kids go to school 260 days a year and they’re not wasting time debunking science. The Chinese are busy teaching science.
Then there is our friend the dumbing-down-America in chief, Donald Trump. He is going to make America great again. Just trust him. He’s gonna do it. And he’s gonna build a wall, and Mexico is gonna pay for it. Because he’s a business man. He knows how to build great buildings.
Go vote for Trump. Make America dumber yet!
And then tell me this video is a parody, so I can rest again.
Earth, Mars and Venus from Saturn
On July 19, 2013, the Cassini spacecraft slipped into the shadow of Saturn. With the bright light of the sun hidden behind the planet, it was able to point the camera at Saturn to take the first picture that showed Saturn, with Earth, Mars, Venus, seven of its moons and the rings, all in one shot. JPL source here.
It seems to me we should not make it unlivable by heating up its microscopically thin atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Where would our grandchildren go?
Walking on the Moon
Edgar Mitchell passed away on February 4th at the age of 85.
Here is another quote from a moon walker about what it was like:
“But sometimes people just want a description of what it was like,” he continued, “The black sky, the brilliantly illuminated slopes of the mountains, the bright sun, and then our Earth as a big blue marble hanging over one of the mountains. The physical feeling of walking on the moon is like walking on a giant trampoline, to some degree.”
— Harrison Schmitt
Only 24 humans ever left earth orbit and flew to the moon and back. Of those 24, three flew to the moon twice, and 12 landed and walked on the moon. So there were only ever, in the history of the world, 24 people who saw the earth as a brilliant blue marble floating in the black sky with their own eyes – and their own emotions.
Of those 24, only 16 are now still alive, the and the youngest is 79.
So there are only 16 humans left alive that ever saw the earth as a blue marble. The last time anyone saw that was in 1972.
The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing will be in 2019. I remember watching it on TV. I was twelve years old. I was sure when “I grew up” I would be traveling to the moon. Little did I realize that not only was I watching the first moon landing in my lifetime. I was likely also watching the last one.
I doubt that we’ll land on the moon within the next ten years. That spirit of “before the decade is out” (Kennedy) is no longer with us. Rather, our scientific and exploratory spirit is much dampened by our lack of enthusiasm for science and progress. Just listen to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, two of our “leaders” of the 21st century. They want to turn the United States into a theocracy. Why don’t they look at Afghanistan and Iran, and see how that worked out for those countries.
Meanwhile, I choose to remain inspired by the look of the blue marble.
Evolutionist Answers to Questions of Evolution-Deniers
Often, when arguing with a creationist (or as I might call them more aptly, evolution-denier) I find that while the knowledge is there and obvious, I don’t have all the answers quite readily available without research. This topic is not part of my special expertise. So here I found a good summary of questions from creationists, answered by a scientist with a lot of references that help with the most common questions. It’s a good reference post.
Answers for Creationists
The Scale of the Universe
Check it out here.
Wait for it to load and play with it. It’s worth it.
Humans Kill for Oil
Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand.
Presidential Candidates on Climate Change
More detail in this Mother Jones article.