Science, Technology and Other Cool Stuff

test 123

2012-02-16T15:07:00.001+01:00

test 123

2012-02-16T15:04:00.001+01:00

test 123

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Carl Sagan - A few links worth perusing

2011-11-06T22:50:00.001+01:00

The first five awe-inspiring minutes of Carl Sagan's award-winning Cosmos series.

Carl Sagan reading the now-legendary Pale Blue Dot passage from the book of the same name.

Carl Sagan on the Tonight Show hosted by John Denver, standing in for Johnny Carson; classic Carl Sagan.

The Demon Haunted World: The classic work on critical and skeptical thinking. It's a lifechanger.

Carl Sagan interviewed by Ted Turner circa 1989. This is part 1 of a 5 part series on YouTube, Carl Sagan at his best in describing our common humanity, space, the benefits of scientific literacy and the fragility of our world. Classic Sagan - time very well spent.

Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: The classic tool for critical thinking and detecting fallacious and/or fraudulent arguments, and a lot of other resources.

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Fix for iTunes Store hanging at "Accessing iTunes Store"

2011-10-19T11:40:00.001+02:00

Just found this, hope it helps someone :)

FYI: I'm running iTunes 10.5 on Windows 7 (64 bit), but apparently this works on Mac OS too......it may be due to upgrading o 10.5 last week, but I'm not certain that's what caused it. Anyway, on to the fix!

Symptom:

when you do anything in iTunes Store, itunes seems to hang showing "Accessing iTunes Store" in the banner.

Fix:

Open iTunes - go to the top bar, click the 'Store' drop down menu
Then click 'De-authorise this Computer'
Enter your password
Close & relaunch iTunes
Click 'Store' again then click 'Re-authorise this Computer
Enter password

et voila, the store should work properly again!

Source:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1113558

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Paris Airshow 2011 Photos

2011-06-26T13:42:00.001+02:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Afterburners, Giant Airliners And......Sunburn: A Day At The Paris Airshow

2011-06-26T13:35:00.001+02:00

It's been six years since I last went to the Paris Airshow, so when France24 announced on Twitter that they were giving tickets in exchange for tweets, I was in like flynn. And so it was on a sunny Friday morning I find myself on the RER B heading out to Le Bourget. Not too crowded, but still there was a 45 minute wait for the free shuttle to the airport.....I remembered it as not being too far a walk and arrived at the entrance in about 20 minutes. After checking in on Foursquare (of course) I pull out my camera and away we go. First stop: Ariane 5, dominating the Le Bourget skyline. I took a couple of snaps of the engines for old times sake (I have tons from previous visits, but why not?). Then off to see the Americans. A little light this year - no Navy or Army aircraft, but the Air force F15E, F16, C130, C5, C17 and Marine Corps AH1Z and UH1Y still made for nice viewing. I had an interesting talk with a Marine Corps mechanic who told me that the AH1Z is brand new; declared combat-ready only in September 2010 and hasn't yet been on the ground. Interestingly, both the AH1Z and UH1Y share 84% of the same components making maintenance a lot easier. The mechanic also said (in true jarhead style) that the Army's AH-64 Apaches have a big problem with launching Sidewinders but, ahem, the Marine Corps AH1Z has no such issues.....Semper Fi :)

I dropped in to the ESA exhibit before the flight demos and saw a presentation on the joint ESA-NASA Cassini-Huygens mission (incidentally, it's still ongoing, click here for more info). The speaker paraphrased Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot when talking about this photo of Earth through the rings of Saturn ; The video on the Huygens probe landing on Titan was wonderful.

And after spending what seemed like an hour trying to get a sandwich at the Paul stand (more like 15 minutes, but still) it's flight time!!

I can't hep but let slip a big goofy grin when I hear screaming jet engines and see full afterburners flaming......yep: military high performance jets. In the air today was the Dassult Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Lockheed Martin F16. Even after seeing lots of this, I'm still blown away when I see 30-40 tonnes of metal flitting around the sky like a bat.....awesome.

The French Air Force display team, La Patrouille de France, put on a beautiful display, as alway.

There was an interesting demo by a Russian Altair amphibious aircraft configured as a firefighter - pretty cool to see it dumping twelve tonnes of water in two seconds!

And then there's the A380 - the biggest commercial airliner in service today. I saw its first public display flight here 6 years ago and it's still a wonder to watch in the air....just goes to show that airliners can put up with a LOT more than their daily grind. It's simply amazing to see it float around like a bubble in the small airspace available above Le Bourget for displays, a testament to both the engineering skills required to build it and the skills of the display pilots.

All in all: I took a truckload of photos (some of which can be viewed here), got a dose of howling jet engines and a little sunburned - a great day :)

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Why I'm Not Concerned About Cell Phone Radiation

2011-06-03T14:52:00.001+02:00

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently published a report warning that there might be an elevated risk of certain types of brain tumour in heavy cell phone users. I was surprised to say the least, given that I've previously referenced the WHO as an authority when the swine flu vaccine scaremongering was at its peak a couple of years back. Personally, I'm pretty confident that my cell phone isn't going to kill me unless I walk under a bus while tweeting. Let me explain, using a little biology, physics and common sense.

Cancers happen when an otherwise healthy cell is reprogrammed by a genetic mutation to behave as a cancerous cell. This mutation can occur either by chemical interaction or by EM radiation. The effecting agent is described as a mutagenic agent. EM radiation does this by dislodging electrons in a chromosome which ionise the molecule, allowing it to accept other atoms or molecules which in turn induce a mutation in the chromosome, sometimes leading to cancer. In this case, the effecting agent is described as a carcinogenic agent. (Note: These mutation mechanisms have been around since life first arose on Earth and are fundamental to evolution; they are NOT a result of our technology running amok!)

The IARC claim is that there is a link between cellphone radiation and two types of brain cancer. For this to happen, cellphone radiation would need to be able to ionise the DNA molecule in order to introduce a mutation. This requires a certain amount of energy that cellphone radiation simply doesn't carry. It is non-ionising radiation. To understand more about this, let's take a look at what we mean when we talk about electromagnetic radiation. Below is the electromagnetic spectrum, the range of electromagnetic radiation from longwave radio through visible light all the way up to gamma rays, increasing in energy from right to left. As the frequency of the light increases, the energy it carries also increases.

How do we know this? Bear with me here, we'll get to cellphones shortly! Albert Einstein won a Nobel Prize for discovering the Photoelectric Effect which, essentially, says that light above a certain frequency falling on a metal induces a current. This happens because the energy in the light's photons is sufficient to cause electrons in the metal to move. He showed that red light won't induce a current, but blue light will. Max Planck later found a relationship between the frequency of light and the energy of its photons. As we can see above, red light has a frequency of 700nm (7*10^ -7m), blue light 400nm (4*10^ -7m). It's clear from Planck's discovery that blue light is more energetic than red.

Now, back to cellphones. Where does this radiation figure on the spectrum? Look at where red light is on the spectrum. Go below it, you find Infra-red, then below it again you find the microwave region, a range of wavelengths from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz. Cellphones typically operate in the low end of the microwave region, overlapping with the high end of UHF radio frequencies, usually below 2Ghz. Obviously, this is well below the level of ionising radiation, which is beyond the UV region of the spectrum, in x-ray and gamma-ray territory. It can't be carcinogenic.

So why all the hoopla from the WHO? The IARC report states the following results:

"Results:

The evidence was reviewed critically, and overall evaluated as being limited among users of wireless telephones for glioma and acoustic neuroma, and inadequate to draw conclusions for other types of cancers. The evidence from the occupational and environmental exposures mentioned above was similarly judged inadequate. The Working Group did not quantitate the risk; however, one study of past cell phone use (up to the year 2004), showed a 40% increased risk for gliomas in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10‐year period).

'Limited evidence of carcinogenicity': A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence.

'Inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity': The available studies are of insufficient quality, consistency or statistical power to permit a conclusion regarding the presence or absence of a causal association between exposure and cancer, or no data on cancer in humans are available. "

What does this mean then? A correlation has been observed, but as skeptics are fond of saying, correlation does not equal causation. It would appear the IARC are playing the "let's keep an eye on this just in case" card. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing new here. Might there be an issue? Maybe. But it's unlikely. Cellphones have been in mass consumption for over 15 years now and there doesn't appear to be any increase in brain tumours, according to studies done in several countries. I'll be here waiting for the evidence, and if it comes I'll be the first to change my mind.

Some links:

IARC report: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health#Cancer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

A list of other items in the same "2B Possibly Carcinogenic" category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens#Mixtures

PZ Meyers on the IARC report:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/06/is_your_cell_phone_cooking_you.php

Phil Plait weighs in:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/01/why-im-still-not-worried-about-my-cell-phone-hurting-my-brain/

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2011/05/31/who-verdict-on-mobile-phones-and-cancer/

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Fukushima Vs Chernobyl - A Fair Comparison? Some Resources To Learn More

2011-04-15T13:47:00.001+02:00

There's been a lot of fearmongering about the Fukushima incident, comparing it to (or its being "worse" than) the Chernobyl incident. Make no mistake, it is a very serious situation, and warrants careful attention. But with words like catastrophe, radiation & radioactivity being bandied about with reckless abandon, there's a lot of unnecessary anxiety out there. These words have a lot of emotional baggage attached to them, and tend to cause irrational overreaction.Time for some reason. For starters, look at this:

Sources and distribution of average radiation exposure to the world population

(Source: WHO: http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/env/en/)

That's a lot of natural radiation! What is radiation though? And how does it relate to radioactivity? Further below are some resources I found useful in trying to get a grip on all this. In a nutshell:

radiation is and always has been around us;
the danger is all about the dose received over time;
comparisons to Chernobyl are not helpful, and even that event, the worst nuclear accident in history, doesn't appear to have had the health impact we have been led to believe it had;

The links below are a good starting point to help you learn about the differences between the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents; hopefully you'll also find out what the following mean:

Radiation, the different kinds and their effects on health;
Radioactivity, how it's measured and what is meant by "half-life".
Radiation dose

These concepts aren't beyond anyone of average intelligence. You don't need a physics degree to get an understanding of the basics (I certainly don't have one!) but once you have a grasp of these ideas, the situation seems less frightening. And that can only be a good thing.

Links:

http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html - IAEA's daily updates on the Fukushima situation:

http://resources.nei.org/documents/japan/FactSheet_Chernobyl_Fukushima_4-12-11.pdf - Comparison of Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents

http://mitnse.com/2011/04/12/new-provisional-ines-rating-a-chernobyl-primer/ - Overview of the Chernobyl incident.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html - WHO followup of Chernobyl health impact

https://xkcd.com/radiation/ - a very useful diagram charting relative doses from almost none (bananas!) to fatal, short term massive doses.

http://www.mitnse.com - MIT's Nuclear Science Engineering website, chock full of useful information on nuclear physics and technology.

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/16/radiation-introduction-and-radiation-status-for-fukushima -What is radiation? A good introduction.

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/en/ - WHO on ionizing radiation

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/env/en/ - WHO on natural and manmade radiation

Various articles:

http://www.lvrj.com/health/experts-nuclear-fears-overblown-119678799.html?ref=799

http://topicfire.com/share/Fukushima-Chernobyl-Rating-But-Not-Chernobyl-Bad-17236188.html

http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/myths/

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A Thought Experiment - The Case For A Cheap, Dumb-Terminal Google Tablet

2011-01-07T12:33:00.001+01:00

Gmail. Google Calendar. Google Documents. Google Chrome. In terms of functionality, do these sound familiar? These are the basic requirements for most modern office (home or otherwise) workers: email, calendar, word processor\spreadsheet\slideshow apps, and internet browser. What's missing? An operating system.

Of course in these days of cloud computing, an OS on a local hard disk is somewhat passé. So right now we we have our Google Accounts to keep all of the above in one place. But it's a little cumbersome. You still need a local computer with its own OS. Or do you?

Imagine a dumb terminal, a Google netbook or a future, Google tablet if you will, that connects securely to a virtual Google desktop environment. All you need is a boot process that runs a citrix-type client from a small flash drive. Kick it up, log into your Google account and you're online, in a virtual Google environment. You surf the internet using Chrome and instead of your office suite of applications you have Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calendar. You don't need to backup your device: if it gets stolen, lost or otherwise destroyed, your data is still safe online. On the downside, you need a reliable internet connection, and you don't have much control over the local device, but that hasn't stopped the iPad from selling. Maybe allow for an offline mode in more expensive models?

These could be cheap, $100 laptop-type devices that we've heard about, or they could be flashy status symbol devices like the ipad. I think trying to compete with the iPad would be a foolish move even for Google, so I'll go with the low end, low maintenance device.

Anyway, just a few thoughts on what I think Google might do in the next year to 18 months. Let's see what happens.

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Response to Another Astrologer

2011-01-07T10:08:00.001+01:00

Here's a reponse I got from my last post, complete with a reading (!). Again, my reponses are in blue with the original message in black.

***********************************************************************************************

Thanks for your response. Here are my thoughts in blue below.

I must start out talking about astrology to a skeptic. Astrology is a branch of Metaphysics explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics Similar to but different to philosophy and psychology. It has been in existence over 5000 years. Astrology became more refined when Ptolemy AD 90-168 came along. Ptolemy was a Psychologist, Geographer, Mathmetician, Astronomer and finally Astrologer. He was educated in Babylon which is now Iraq/Iran where all the best educated astrologers were along with astronomers.

To summarize his approach to what is now modern day western astrology: Inspiration and insight came to him during his numerous observations as astronomer, pscyhologist,geographer&mathmetician. He correlated cycles of planets & moon to emotional and external events happening to individuals including himself he had observed on a daily basis. He was numbers oriented which lead him to the refining of the everday "transits" (predictions). He took the person's natal chart which described specific personality traits and saw how transits would affect that individual. That's called the Law of Precedence. Basically a person's nature and what they have usually done before is the basis of the Law of Precedence. So personality is based solely on date of birth? And never changes? What about mental illness or brain injury? Or simply life experience? What about twins? We all know twins that have completely different personalities, life experiences and levels of success in life. Indeed there are twins where one dies at an early age and the other goes on to a ripe old age.

It is up to the modern day Astrologer to interpret someone's chart accurately. An astrologer first looks at the personality traits decribed in the natal chart to see what they're capable of. Then an astrologer looks at the Progressed Chart to see the progressed moon to see what distinct emotional changes or experiences they're experiencing. Then look to the transits starting with Pluto going inwards to the moon aspects. Pluto aspects take 2 years to experience down to the moon aspect which lasts 2 hours. Interpeting the transits or predictions all depends on the personality of the person. That's how astrology works. So it's predictable? The sun, moon, planets and stars are absolutely, 100% predictable. Does that mean that we can extrapolate into the future to see what's going to happen? Why not just plot out someone's life & say "here you are....this will be your life" ? Has this been done? What were the results?

Now, looking at your chart the part that makes me see the skeptic in you is your Mercury oppose Saturn. That shows you're suspicious by nature since communication wasn't used well in your family growing up. Thus, the skeptic in you grew. I'm not suspicious by nature, in fact I'm quite gullible which is why skepticism is so appealing to me. Otherwise I'd probably believe everything that came my way! I'm not so much "I don't agree so you're wrong", I'm more "show me your evidence". I was a huge believer in extraterrestrial visitations, area 51, reincarnation etc until I opened Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" in 1996. Those were the roots of my skeptic nature; I always loved science, especially astronomy, but the scientific method wasn't something that was taught very well when I was at school. For the last 15 years

Plus you have 5 planets in Sagittarius. Sagittarius wants truth and honesty and education at all costs. -don't we all (well, except for Sarah Palin ;-P ) ? A very general statement that can apply to a huge number of people. Cast your net wide, you're sure to catch something as people tend to remember the hits & forget the misses.

1 other aspect seems to pop out at me and that's your moon square Neptune which indicates you don't like others confronting you, but to protect yourself you tend to confront other first before they confront you. -again, a general statement. I'm non-confrontational as a rule. I tend to try to pre-empt situations before they become conflicts, not people. But again, this could be a hit for many, many people.

Finally your moon conjunct Jupiter loves truth, education and can be optimistic, but given your skeptic/pessimistic nature you tend to fluctuate between the two. -everyone fluctuates between optimism & pessimism, even the most extreme cases of both.....it's normal human nature.

Another aspect in your chart that doesn't relate to the skeptic part too much is your Venus oppose Saturn. It shows you feel you need to be responsible for everyone and everything which is usually learned by a parent. -again, vague enough to hit home for many people.

Finally another aspect not related to the skeptic in you is Venus square Pluto. You tend to go for underdogs and do all the work in a relationship. -it's a cliché: everyone loves an underdog! All the work in a relationship? Nope, far from it. I would say my partner does more than I do, to my chagrin......

What I see here is a collection of general statements that, in a face to face meeting, would provide information for further development. If I were a believer, or even if I just wanted to do this for fun, I might be surprised at the "accuracy" of some of these statements. I could dig around and find ways to make everything fit with even the most tenuous of links. As it happens, if I stand back and apply reason and logic, I see nothing more than a series of questions designed to elicit a response to provide further information for development.

My views on astrology are based on the following: Science as a process has proven its reliability to demonstrate how the world works. Astrology is completely incompatible with the known, well-tested and well understood fundamental laws of the universe. If an astrologer (or anyone for that matter) were to make a very specific prediction for 2011 - (exact date, time, event, location) with precise unmistakable details, I'd sit up and take notice. That would be VERY interesting. But it hasn't happened yet, and after almost 2000 years in existence, that's not a good sign.

Astrology is generally benign, except when used as the only resource when making important decisions. It scares me to think that French President Mitterand and Ronald Reagan, amongst others, consulted astrologers during their presidencies. The problem for me is the magical thinking that goes along with pseudoscience in general. "Well, I don't know how it works, but it works" is all well and good, but is anyone looking to find out how it works? Matthew gave the example of aspirin; we used it even though we didn't know how it worked...yes, but now we DO know how it works. It was studied and it had an underlying logic that corresponds with what we know from chemistry and biology. Compare this with homeopathy that, like astrology, has no known mechanism to explain how it works. In fact it DOESN'T work and any perceived effects are, for the most part, a combination of the placebo effect and regression to the mean. For astrology, the perceived effects are principally caused by the Barnum effect, the fallacy of sunken investment, and a willingness to believe.

So, it was brief in interpretting your chart,but I want to show you how it works.

I've been busy writing alot in the last few days, so haven't kept up with your dialogue with the other astrologers, but I thought I'd give you a to the point explanation of astrology and including your chart to finish it up.

I hope I've been concise and to the point for you. I don't like to ramble on forever and prefer succinct comments. I hope to hear from you soon.

Posted via email from John's posterous

Astrology Discussion on Twitter

2011-01-02T21:25:00.001+01:00

I got into a chat on twitter with an astrologer last week. Long story. Anyway, during the following night, one of her aquaintances sent a whole bunch of tweets as a followup to our discussion, so I thought I'd blog my response instead of a tedious twitter back and forth. Feel free to discuss in the comments! Oh, and apologies for the delay in responding, it's been a hectic few days...but then, you already know that :)

First: Check out this video, it's a classic:

Richard Feynman on what science is:

In Black below are the tweets I received overnight, in blue, my responses. I was originally going to post a single piece, but figured it would be interesting to see the original tweets also.

Science is "Flick the switch, light goes on." Faith is "I hope the Power Co. didn't cut me off - ok

I don't have to have "faith" in astrology, because it observably and repeatedly works.... who's observing, and under what conditions? If we're only taking your word for it, then I'm sorry - not good enough.

And I know there's little "scientific" evidence for it. -like.....magic, then, no?

Of course they used to pack wounds with cow dung before anyone heard of "penecillin"
...and not understanding hydrogen fusion never stop the Sun from shining.

Most skeptical arguments seem to boil down to "I haven't seen any proof that fits my worldview." -no, the view is that if there's sound evidence to support the claim, I'll change my mind AND my worldview.

In other words, Sagan's "Extraordinary proof (etc)" statement may be true, but it also mentally sets
the bar pf "proof" as high as you want it to be. -it should be high. The more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the proof required. If we accept astrology as valid, it means that the fundamental laws of nature as we understand them today are completely wrong. These laws have been challenged again and again, and any predictions made using them have been verified and replicated the world over.

Consider all the many, many, many studies -

about the effectiveness of antidepressants. Antidepressants are a crap shoot, but since we like

to think of the psyche as being the result of chemistry, we want to use chemistry to change it

Billions in research, and the best antidepressants can do is about 60% effectiveness -not aware of this, but I'm sure it's more complicated than a sweeping general statement like that. At a guess, I'd say efficient marketing by manufacturers, incorrect prescriptions to people that don't actually need antidepressants etc. More of a business ethics problem than a scientific one, IMHO. But then again, I don't have the whole story and I'm sure it's VERY complex.

But when I as an astrologer come up with 8 or 9 out of 10 predictions right, a skeptic starts with
"The Forer Effect" or "The Barnum Effect" or the "well, that's not how planets work" argument. - these are well documented phenomena. When you say you're "right" - based on what kind of prediction? Specific like "you'll slip on the stairs at work at 2.30pm on March 23rd, but it'll be only a mild sprain) Or vague like "there'll be big changes in 2011" , ie Barnum-type cold-readings? Who decides you're right, you or the client? Under what conditions?

We've stopped throwing virgins into volcanoes, yet the "superstition" of astrology persists.
Now that just couldn't be because maybe astrology works or something. Noooooo. :) -correct :)

Every argument I've heard against astrology can be applied to any branch of psychology. -Confusing pop psychology with clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Work by Skinner, Pavlov, and Milgram are among the best known examples of predictive, peer reviewed studies that stand up to the test of time. Psychotherapy doesn't have a lot of fans in the hard sciences as there are problems regarding falsifiability.

Do I understand the mechanism by which astrology works? Hell no. -does anyone? So why are there no astrological research university departments to discover how it works? Surely uncovering the mechanism of astrology, if there is one, would be a monumental discovery. Einstein, Newton, Feynman, Dirac, Fermi: so long, farewell. Countless Nobel prizes await the discoverers of such a mechanism. I may not understand how every part of a car works, but I can find someone who does. If I want to, I can go all the way up to the engineers that designed it using the cumulative results of centuries of scientific research.

But peasants packing wounds with cow dung weren't microbiologists either
...they just saved lives. Is that "scientific"? Well, they observed results...
...and (surprise!) found they were repeatable. No lab involved, but still "scientific." -not sure about the facts of cowdung, but the process is sound. Hypothesis, experiment, replicate. Science is not a body of knowledge, it's a process. The knowledge changes, and in fact does when new evidence contradicts previous observation. The process is to get past the human factor. Ego, error, sloppiness, and fraud can all slip in. Peer review is designed to catch this. It's not perfect (nothing involving humans is!), but in the long run it works. The fact that I'm typing this on a computer that could've run the entire Apollo Program is testament to that, as is the Apollo Program itself.

Meanwhile, billions of $ pouring into "String Theory," and many careers built on it
So where are all the correct predictions made by String Theory"? Anyone...? Anyone...? -String theory is controversial even in the scientific community. It makes plausible claims but at this moment in time, they are untestable experimentally. Because of this, some physicists claim it's more like philosophy than science. I have no opinion; it's completely over my head, although I did enjoy the Elegant Universe! In the meantime, in mainstream science, astronomers have discovered planets outside our solar system (any incidence for astrology, by the way?) we've rendezvous'd with comets (how do they figure into horoscopes?), the Cassini mission has spent years studying the Saturn system, New Horizons will get to Pluto in a few years, and Messenger will get to Mercurian orbit in March of this year. In the 20th century we discovered that we live in a galaxy, one of billions, in a universe far bigger and older than any of our ancient ancestors could possibly have fathomed. We discovered that the anomalies in Mercury's orbit (precession of perihelion) was due to relativistic effects and can be explained by General Relativity. What advances has astrology made in the last century? Where are the predictions made by Astrology?

Astrology should have nothing to fear from science, any more than any other pursuit
Sadly, most of the skeptics I hear seem to use the "scientific worldview" as the club

they use to dismiss anything that doesn't suit their preconceptions. In other words, they
Make Science their Dogma, and (paradoxically) become as benighted as those they like
to feel superior to. No surprise, really: skeptics are humans too. Humans do that.

But if Science is a controlled, logical search for the truth, I like to think it DOES

apply to Astrology. It *should*. It's just that I rarely if ever see it applied.

This "scientific worldview" that you seem to lament created the world we live in today. The computers we work on, the cars we drive, the medicine we take, the clothes we wear, our telephones, food, longevity. It's true that some skeptics get on their high horses about views inconsistent with science. I know, I'm sometimes one of them. But the scientific method has gotten humanity this far. It's improved our lives (at least in first world countries; geopolitics is another matter altogether) immeasurably in the last century. Imagine our great-grandparents hearing of today's world: mother and child will most likely survive childbirth; all of your children will most likely live to adulthood. You'll most likely live to at least your mid-seventies. We can speak with anyone, anywhere in the world instantaneously. We can get anywhere in the world within 2 days. The body of knowledge we call science changes regularly as new discoveries overturn old ones. The "scientific worldview" means that if you present me with evidence for a claim, I'll listen to it and I'll sincerely evaluate it. If it's convincing, then I'll change my mind. Simple as that.

Here's a previous post of mine on astrology.

Posted via email from John's posterous

2010 in retrospect

2010-12-31T11:15:00.001+01:00

2010 is gone. Another year over, a new one just begun (who said that again? :-P )Well, tomorrow :)

What happened this past year? Here are just a few things that stood out to me:

Tech\Internet

The iPad underwhelmed us.....but still went on to sell like hotcakes.

Google Buzz became a fizzle, leaving the way open for Facebook and Twitter. Twitter took off and is soaring. Facebook's Like button is everywhere now. Oauth is everywhere, and you can now sign on to a multitude of services with it, linking them to Facebook and Twitter with just a couple of clicks.

Wikileaks blew the whistle on a helicopter gunship crew taking out what appear to be unarmed civilians in Iraq. Assange is accused of rape. That quietens down until wikileaks unveil a huge amount of diplomatic cables between Washington and its embassies around the world. The rape accusations come screaming back. Not saying there's any connection, but it sure is strange timing. I don't know what to make of it all.....

International:

Ireland's economy implodes, bank debt is transferred to the taxpayer, and Ireland is now owned, more or less, by the EU and the IMF. Unemployment is through the roof. But Brian Cowen doesn't accept that it's his fault.

Korea heats up: First a South Korean naval ship explodes mysteriously last March. Artillery exchanges in December with more and more belligerent language from both sides. Scary times.

Times Square attempted bombing: luckily the would-be bomber didn't know what he was doing.

Eyjafjallajökull gently reminded us that we're just tenants here on earth, and that nature can shake us off like fleas at any time.

Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland and threatened with extradition: the "intellectual" artsy crowd throw a collective hissy fit. Sorry, if you admit to committing this kind of crime, you do the time. It doesn't matter if you cure cancer, bring world peace, end poverty, make great movies, and save the earth from a giant comet all at once: justice is blind, and Roman the movie maker should be treated in exactly the same way as, for example, Mick the bricklayer. And if Mick were on the lam, he wouldn't even have had time to get off the plane before being sent back.

Catholic Church child abuse scandal explodes, Pope is sorry :/ He visits Britain in September, and Godwins himself within minutes of opening his mouth.

Simon Singh off the hook in Chiropractor Libel case and the BCA are on the back foot but English Libel reform has not yet been implemented.

Space exploration:

A new spaceflight strategy was announced by the Obama administration to mixed reviews. Return to the moon is out, asteroid mission & Mars orbit in 20 years, with humans on the ground in about 30. Constellation is cancelled, no US heavy lift capability before 2015, meaning NASA will rely on Russian goodwill to get its astronauts into space in the interim.

The WISE mission released its first images back in February:

There was a lunar eclipse during the Winter Solstice, a rare event that won't happen again until 2094. The last such occurence was almost 400 years ago.

The Martian lander Phoenix was finally declared dead in May. The Odyssey orbiter had been listening for communication from the lander for months to no avail, so the decision was taken to officially end the mission.

SDO First light images released in April.

Messenger images of Mercury released. Messenger timeline: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/timeline/index.html

Cassini continues to enthrall us, in a mission that launched in 1997. Details here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm and here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/products/pdfs/cassini_msn_overview.pdf

LHC goes online and Twitter is briefly taken over by Science. Science was cool for a while there...a joy to behold!

STS-131 & 132 missions added further ISS components.

STS-133 Discovery kept us waiting for a week, and then decided that she didn't want to make her last flight just yet....launch on hold, tentatively scheduled for February 3 at the time of writing, but who knows! Having said that, the tweetup was incredible! I wasn't there, but followed it via twitter and justinTV\hatcam....what a blast!

Sport

Spain won the FIFA World Cup tournament, beating The Netherlands 1-0 in the final. In the meantime, the French team collapsed into a fiasco of infighting, backstabbing, and general unpleasantness that appears to be unprecedented. It was like watching a bunch of spoiled children throwing a tantrum, and management wasn't any better.

The French rugby team however, fared better. They won the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament, Ireland second. Still showing good form, they'll be a formidable presence in next year's rugby world cup in New Zealand.

The feelgood story of the year: 33 Chilean miners were rescued safe and sound after being trapped underground for 69 days following an explosion. An estimated 1 billion people watched the rescue operation live.

Notable deaths this year:

Alexander Haig, US Secretary of State under Reagan; Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russian prime minister under Boris Yeltsin; US diplomat Richard Holbrooke; Former Hussein regime official Ali "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid; mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot; neutron bomb inventor Samuel Cohen; Legendary Apollo Program launchpad boss Guenter Wendt; author J. D. Salinger; singer and civil rights activist Lena Horne; Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren; Popular British comedian Norman Wisdom; Double Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon; Irvin Kershner movie director (The Empire Strikes Back); director Blake Edwards, (Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's); actors Corey Haim (The Lost Boys), Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot), Dennis Hopper (too many to list), Gary Coleman (Different Strokes), Peter Graves (mission impossible), Simon McCorkindale (Manimal);

And on that note.....

Happy New Year!!!

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A Bit of Fun Speculation: Why A Zombie Uprising Wouldn't Be An Apocalypse

2010-12-29T16:08:00.001+01:00

Yep. I’ve been watching AMC’s The Walking Dead. Creeps you out at all the right places, and makes you think when you’re not jumping. I like it.

But honestly: a zombie apocalypse?

Biological improbabilities aside*, it's simply not plausible to me. But it is interesting to think that we’re so screwed up as humans that we couldn’t handle a zombie uprising. Sure there are lots of them, but they are dumb (in most incarnations - for now we'll stick with the Romero-type zombie). They don't plan, hide, adapt, co-operate or even use tools. The only weapon they have is numbers. And they’re mortal. On the other hand, you can't get them to surrender or break their morale. But still, any sizeable number of humans with weapons, armoured vehicles, construction equipment and basic engineering skills should have no problem. People would die, certainly, but I don’t think civilisation would crumble if action were taken quickly**

So the dead have risen and are becoming a bit of a problem. Now what? Well, as previously mentioned, they’re pretty stupid. They don’t have a capacity to plan or reason. They can’t climb over significant barricades, and their idea of siege warfare is to stand around moaning at the obstruction. So here's what I think, and it's something we rarely see in the movies - although Max Brook did something vaguely similar in his novel "World War Z".

First secure safe areas behind high walls. Then draw the undead en masse into an ambush zone, for example, chopper in a few guys in APCs, have them step out like cheese in a mouse trap, and when the Zs come to chow down, batten down the hatches and wait for the next phase: a modern version of the chariot charge. Line up a few tank platoons, and then just run the fuckers over. Squish ‘em to mulch, then follow up with armoured infantry to take out what’s left. Lather, rinse, repeat. Same story in cities: APCs up and down the streets to take out the large numbers, then infantry sweep and clear. It’d be much simpler than clearing out, say, Hue or Fallujah. The bad guys aren’t sneaking around taking potshots at you from concealed positions. They’ll come right up to you and let you pop 'em. Piece of piss.

Military forces the world over ambush and defeat other smart, well-armed humans on a regular basis. Hannibal killed 70,000 Romans at Cannae in a few hours with nothing more than horses, swords and bows***. Beats me why a modern, fictional military can never do anything effective against the mindless hordes of the undead.

In Brook's story, the military eventually mothballed their hi-tech weapons & went back to basics: phalanx-type infantry units with bite proof body armor. In large engagements, soldiers fired volleys of single headshots from long range in what seems almost Napoleonic-era warfare but with accurate weapons. Once they figured that out, they took back the world. But again, it got out of hand in the first place because of human stupidity.

So much for the apocalypse.

And what's with the popularity of zombies? They’re biologically implausible and easily defeated (unless everyone -government, military, all the way down to Joe Soap- consistently makes the wrong decision in no brainer situations, like they do in the movies). I think it’s several things:

The thought that our civilization is so fragile that an enemy the Romans could have defeated could bring it down;
That human egos and emotions could overcome our intellect and allow sheer brute force destroy us;
The sheer terror of relentless, mindless ghouls coming to devour us and our families alive;

Yet zombies are fun. There's no need to feel guilty about killing them, and the movies are generally a commentary on how screwed up we humans are in letting our emotions and egos run the show instead of being rational and doing the obvious.

Personally, I’m more worried about a pandemic taking out 20-30% of us, a bad winter wiping out even more, leaving the survivors in a more or less preindustrial society.

But having said that, I really enjoyed season 1 of The Walking Dead.

* Dead is dead. Once the heart stops, none of the body's cells get oxygen and begin to die. That includes motor neurons and muscles. So no more movement of any description. And how do their teeth stay intact? Zombies of this kind are clearly impossible. Now, the "28 days later" "I am Legend" type? Not so clear cut. They're not undead, but infected with some kind of "rage" virus. Could this happen? Who knows? :)

**A study on the mathematics of a zombie uprising: http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/%7Ersmith/Zombies.pdf by Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith?. In Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009. ISBN 978-1-60741-347-9.

***The Romans seem to have panicked when they realized they were surrounded and trapped, making it easier for Hannibal's forces to wipe them out. Zombies, of course, wouldn't panic, but this would make them even more predictable. And as Sun Tsu said, if you know yourself and your enemy, you won't lose in a hundred battles.

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The Winter Solstice - 21/12/2010 23:38 UTC

2010-12-20T10:59:00.001+01:00

So Winter Solstice is upon us again and the usual argument is brewing. Begining, middle or end of winter? As a kid, I was taught that the winter months were November, December and January. As an astronomy buff that makes sense to me. The sun reaches its lowest annual noontime point in the sky, sometime around December 21st, before begining its climb back up again towards the summer solstice. This year's exact solstice will be on December 21, at 23:38 UTC. The noticeable effect of this is that the days begin to gradually get longer again, although this isn't obvious immediately afterwards. Traditionally, December 21st was described as midwinter, June 21st being midsummer.

Some good info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

.....and as it happens, on this auspicious occasion, I turn 36.

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Sundown out my Office window

2010-11-16T18:13:00.001+01:00

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This is not Science Fiction

2010-11-16T10:00:00.001+01:00

Take a look at this:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101115.html

Did you ever think you'd see something like this outside of a sci-fi movie? This is simply breathtaking.

No words.

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Untitled

2010-11-06T20:09:00.001+01:00

via Seesmic Desktop

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Untitled

2010-11-06T12:14:00.001+01:00

via Seesmic Desktop

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Thoughts on UPS Suspect Packages Yesterday

2010-10-30T12:22:00.001+02:00

Those in the know are saying it’s the work of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Suspect packages are still being investigated in Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Pa., and New York, N.Y., as well as East Midlands, England, and Dubai.

What’s worrisome is that (so far) only one of the suspect packages seems to have had real explosives, and it’s not yet clear that it’s even a viable device. Why is this of concern? Because coming from Yemen, a hotbed of Islamist terrorism and the origin of many recent AQ attacks (successful or otherwise), they are obviously going to be under much more scrutiny. Any packages coming from Yemen with obviously visible wires, printer toner and white powder will noticed. In that it’s multiple targets simultaneously, that smacks of AQ. Yet there appear to have been no significant resources (personnel, explosives, detonators etc) involved. It’s almost like they wanted these packages to be found. This sounds to me like one of the following scenarios in play:

a “we’re still here” psychological operation;
a distraction to cover another operation elsewhere;
a probe to test reaction times and procedures.

If it’s the first then there’s nothing to be worried about, business as usual. The other two are much more sinister. They indicate a deeper, longer term plan coming to fruition.

So what can we do? Refuse to be terrorised. If we go about business as usual, then we win.

If we allow them to scare us into changing how we live then they win, even if nobody gets hurt.

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Where Are The Real Leaders?

2010-10-02T12:24:00.001+02:00

We’re in tough times.

In Ireland the government is about to sink several more dozen billion euros to bail out AIB, with more cuts to follow in the next budget. In France, the “coffers are empty” says the president, just before giving himself a 140% pay increase (this was just before the financial crisis, granted, but France was already in an economic funk). In both Ireland and France elected representatives have a complex system of expenses and are, in effect, fed, housed and transported by the state when on government business (& I won’t even get into abuses of these privileges).

In these tough and difficult times, leadership by example becomes de rigeur. So where are the brave souls in government taking paycuts, or giving up accomodation, food and transport allowances, even on a temporary basis?

Where are they? Where are the real leaders?

Sure, certain persons (notably heads of state & senior cabinet members) have legitimate security concerns in terms of exposure to the public, but steps can be taken. If in both France and Ireland this were to happen, it could help to reduce the immense anger brewing in the streets. It wouldn’t solve the economic and financial crises, but it would certainly make any more cuts (if indeed there’s anything left to cut) less inflammatory. At the very least, it would show that they’re willing to “suffer” along with the rest of us.

There’s real anger simmering in both countries. Real leadership is needed to bring it off the boil or things will get REALLY bad before they can get better.

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Sunset on Mars

2010-09-16T15:57:00.001+02:00

Isn't that spectacular?

I first saw this on @ProfBrianCox 's "Wonders of the Solar System" and it blew me away. We see sunsets all the time on Earth, but to see one from the surface of another world is simply stunning.

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Within a few minutes of opening his mouth, the pope Godwins himself

2010-09-16T14:45:00.001+02:00

It would appear that the horrors of the twentieth century were caused by atheism.Yes, atheism.

Not psychotic megalomaniac dictators with messianic complexes.

I won't even bother to debunk this as it's done so well elsewhere. I'm just angry, furious in fact, that this guy who's covered up paedophiles in his organisation, who is responsible for untold misery and suffering throughout the world due to his uncompromising stances on various social issues such as homosexuality, contraception and divorce, DARES to lecture nonbelievers on morality.

For shame.

(To clarify, I was raised a Catholic. Nowadays, I'm not sure how I'd classify myself given that I despise pigeonholing of any sort, but I'm probably, if we must slap on a label, a secular humanist agnostic, tending toward atheist. I have no problem with people believing in whatever they want to believe, as long as it stays out of public life.)

"let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”

This is horrifying. Removing gods, indeed all religious dogma from public life is one of the greatest freedoms we have in democratic societies. We've seen, and continue to see, the horrific consequences of religious extremism, but couple that with the resources of a government and we go down the path to ruin. Religion has no place in public life. None.

The Pope's equating atheism with nazism, stalinism or a decline in morality in general is just selfserving claptrap that needs to be called out for what it is: a straw man. The Church sees that some people are no longer afraid of it, people that would once have been under its thrall so it takes action by associating atheism with the worst in humanity. This pope would have us return to the medieval mindset that resulted in airliners crashing into buildings in New York. Don't think, just obey.

Enough now.

(Oh, and British taxpayers, you should ask for your money back. Twelve million quid could be put to more productive use, methinks.)

Here's the speech made in Edinburgh. Make up your own mind.

Your Majesty,

Thank you for your gracious invitation to make an official visit to the United Kingdom and for your warm words of greeting on behalf of the British people. In thanking Your Majesty, allow me to extend my own greetings to all the people of the United Kingdom and to hold out a hand of friendship to each one.

It is a great pleasure for me to start my journey by saluting the members of the Royal Family, thanking in particular His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh for his kind welcome to me at Edinburgh Airport. I express my gratitude to Your Majesty’s present and previous Governments and to all those who worked with them to make this occasion possible, including Lord Patten and former Secretary of State Murphy. I would also like to acknowledge with deep appreciation the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Holy See, which has contributed greatly to strengthening the friendly relations existing between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.

As I begin my visit to the United Kingdom in Scotland’s historic capital city, I greet in a special way First Minister Salmond and the representatives of the Scottish Parliament. Just like the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, may the Scottish Parliament grow to be an expression of the fine traditions and distinct culture of the Scots and strive to serve their best interests in a spirit of solidarity and concern for the common good.

The name of Holyroodhouse, Your Majesty’s official residence in Scotland, recalls the “Holy Cross” and points to the deep Christian roots that are still present in every layer of British life. The monarchs of England and Scotland have been Christians from very early times and include outstanding saints like Edward the Confessor and Margaret of Scotland. As you know, many of them consciously exercised their sovereign duty in the light of the Gospel, and in this way shaped the nation for good at the deepest level. As a result, the Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years. Your forefathers’ respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike.

We find many examples of this force for good throughout Britain’s long history. Even in comparatively recent times, due to figures like William Wilberforce and David Livingstone, Britain intervened directly to stop the international slave trade. Inspired by faith, women like Florence Nightingale served the poor and the sick and set new standards in healthcare that were subsequently copied everywhere. John Henry Newman, whose beatification I will celebrate shortly, was one of many British Christians of his age whose goodness, eloquence and action were a credit to their countrymen and women. These, and many people like them, were inspired by a deep faith born and nurtured in these islands.

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

Sixty-five years ago, Britain played an essential role in forging the post-war international consensus which favoured the establishment of the United Nations and ushered in a hitherto unknown period of peace and prosperity in Europe. In more recent years, the international community has followed closely events in Northern Ireland which have led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the devolution of powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Your Majesty’s Government and the Government of Ireland, together with the political, religious and civil leaders of Northern Ireland, have helped give birth to a peaceful resolution of the conflict there. I encourage everyone involved to continue to walk courageously together on the path marked out for them towards a just and lasting peace.

Looking abroad, the United Kingdom remains a key figure politically and economically on the international stage. Your Government and people are the shapers of ideas that still have an impact far beyond the British Isles. This places upon them a particular duty to act wisely for the common good. Similarly, because their opinions reach such a wide audience, the British media have a graver responsibility than most and a greater opportunity to promote the peace of nations, the integral development of peoples and the spread of authentic human rights. May all Britons continue to live by the values of honesty, respect and fair-mindedness that have won them the esteem and admiration of many.

Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms; and may that patrimony, which has always served the nation well, constantly inform the example your Government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world.

May God bless Your Majesty and all the people of your realm. Thank you.

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H1N1 Vaccine issues: back in the news again in France - narcolepsy edition

2010-08-27T14:34:00.001+02:00

Saw this in the news last night. It appears that narcolepsy is being linked to H1N1 vaccination. This set off my FUD alarm, so let's quickly look at the numbers:

6 million French people were vaccinated against the swine flu virus. France's population is approximately 65 million; for convenience let's call it a 10% vaccination rate;
There are approximately 500 new cases of narcolepsy reported annually in France;
6 of these are being linked to the vaccination;
30 million were vaccinated in Europe with 22 reported cases;

So in summary:

~10% of the French population were vaccinnated:

Reported new cases every year comprise 0.0008% of the total French population;

Reported new casessuspected of links to the vaccine comprise 0.0001% of the vaccinated French population;

reported new cases in the Europe comprise 0.00007% European vaccinated population

So what does this mean? Are the numbers of cases statistically significant? I'm no statistician, but I think given the huge populations involved and the tiny number of suspected cases, I have my doubts. At this point, as the Lepoint article below points out, a link hasn't been established. If there is one we should know about it, but given the numbers, I think it's premature to start shouting from the rooftops about this. People are already a little wary thanks to the antivax movement and the hysterical bleating last year surrounding the H1N1 vaccine.There's no need to add speculation to it.

Sources:

http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/grippe-h1n1-six-cas-de-narcolepsie-apres-vaccin-en-france-26-08-2010-1229085_23.php

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/briefing_20091119/en/index.html

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Astrology - is there anything to it?

2010-08-26T12:04:00.002+02:00

Anyone who has studied astronomy at even the most elementary level understands can see that the claims of astrology are untenable. Why? Because we know that we are only a small speck in a universe that's incomprehensibly large and old. The possibility that the stars and planets can have some special effect on our lives outside of the known laws of physics is improbable, to say the least. And even though the daily horoscope on one's favourite website or newspaper might be an amusing daily distraction, plenty of people take astrology seriously enough to spend sigificant amounts of time and money on it.

So just what is astrology? Astrology claims that the position of the sun and planets in relation to the zodiacal constellations (see below) at the time of our birth has a profound influence on our personality and destiny (for the purpose of this discussion I'm referring to "western" astrology, but the same principles apply to Chinese, Indian, Aztec and other variants). We'll take a look at the main, obvious evidence against this, and also why it's still around.

But first: a little astronomy :)

What are constellations? These are groups of stars that resemble terrestrial artifacts, mythological characters or animals. There are 88 recognized by the International Astronomical Union, details here. Some of these shapes take a little imagination to see, others are a bit more obvious. To the ancients, one group of stars looked vaguely like a lion, another a goat, and yet another a scorpion. We humans projected our bronze age world onto the stars, as did the 17th century explorers when they saw the southern hemisphere constellations for the first time. They saw ships prows, telescopes and crosses in the sky. The constellations in the sky are in fact paredolian artifacts.

But they're not fixed. Nothing in the sky is. It's just that our lives are too short to notice movements that take place over hundreds of thousands of years. In all of recorded history the skies haven't changed significantly. We don't notice that the pole star is gradually drifting away from celestial north and that in the future, various other candidates will take its place. In a few hundred thousand years, the constellations we look at will have changed beyond all recognition due to stellar migration. Those that concern us for the present discussion are the zodiacal constellations, those that are grouped on the ecliptic - the imaginary line traced by the sun's annual apparent path in the sky.

So how do the planets come in to all this? The planets move around the sun in fixed orbits. As they do, we see them move "in" and "out" of constellations in the background. This is what astrologers mean when they say, for example, that Jupiter is in Leo: the planet Jupiter, in it's journey around the sun as seen from our perspective, passes in front of the constellation Leo. Of course, Jupiter is a lot closer than any of the stars in Leo, and Leo itself is just an arbitrary collection of stars at various distances from us and each other. We know, thanks to Kepler and Newton, exactly where all the planets are are now, where they were in the past, and where they will be in the future. We also know that when a planet appears to move backwards in its orbit (in retrograde) that it's simply because the Earth's orbit is overtaking that of the planet in question. Here's a good visual explanation for how this works in the case of Mars.

By what mechanism could the planets and stars affect us at our birth? Physics tells us there are only four fundamental forces in the universe. The strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, gravity and electromagnetism. The first two can be eliminated as they concern only atomic nuclei. EM is plausible only if the baby is born outdoors, and even then the light from the planets takes a certain amount of time to get to the earth. So should that be part of the calculation? And what about gravity? Its effect is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two bodies (F=G (mm')/r² if you remember your high school physics classes) so the gravitational force of the baby's mother would be millions of times stronger than our closest celestial neighbour, the moon, never mind any other celestial bodies. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, the moon is more massive, but mommy is closer.

Another problem:
Due to precession of the equinoxes the sun doesn't "pass" through these constellations on the dates proposed by astrology proponents. Here are the dates that are commonly accepted as being the "sign" of a person born in that interval (when the sun's apparent movement takes it through the the zodiacal constellations), as compared to when the sun actually crosses these constellations:

Sign	Sun's actual passage through constellation	Commonly accepted Astrological solar passage through constellation
Capricorn	Jan 20 to Feb 16	December 23 - January 20
Aquarius	Feb 16 to Mar 11	January 21 - February 19
Pisces	Mar 11 to Apr 18	February 20- March 20
Aries	Apr 18 to May 13	March 21 - April 20
Taurus	May 13 to Jun 21	April 21 - May 21
Gemini	Jun 21 to Jul 20	May 22 - June 21
Cancer	Jul 20 to Aug 10	June 22 - July 22
Leo	Aug 10 to Sep 16	July 23 -August 21
Virgo	Sep 16 to Oct 30	August 22 - September 23
Libra	Oct 30 to Nov 23	September 24 - October 23
Scorpius	Nov 23 to Nov 29	October 24 - November 22
Ophiuchus	Nov 29 to Dec 17	?
Sagittarius	Dec 17 to Jan 20	November 23 - December 22

A related problem, as evidenced by the table above: The zodiacal constellations aren't spread neatly and evenly across the sky. For convenience, most astrologers use twelve virtual constellations that divide the zodiac into neat, thirty degree regions and work from this instead of using the visible night sky. For example, the sun takes more than twice as long to pass through Virgo (44 days) as it does Cancer (21 days), yet astrology counts them equally, as per column 2 above.

Looking at the table again, you'll see a thirteenth constellation that's rarely mentioned: Ophiuchus. Now why don't we see this in the daily horoscopes? How many people have you met that say "Hi I'm an Ophiuchus, what's your sign?" ? Logically there should be as many Ophiuchuses (Ophiuchi?) as Leos or Capricorns. But there aren't. There are some astrological systems that use the constellations as they appear in the sky, but are in the minority. This detail aside, however, the fundamental theory of all astrology is the same: celestial bodies influence our destiny.

One obvious test of astrology is fraternal twins (to eliminate any possible genetic factors): If astrology were valid, they should have similar lives as they were born under similar circumstances. Time and again we see that this is not the case.

So given that we have this evidence against astrology (and there's plenty more where that came from), why does it persist into the 21st century?

We can boil it down to two principle reasons:

A fundamental lack of critical thinking skills;
General scientific illiteracy\apathy and a lack of curiosity in how the world works.

Both of these are essential to understanding why astrology, like other pseudosciences, persist into our technological age. These problems can ultimately be addressed by teaching critical thinking skills at both high school and university level (using, for example The Baloney Detection Kit *), and by using creative outreach programs that engage the public at large. As regards the latter, CatherineQ recently wrote a wonderful piece on why engaging people's emotions in popularising science is essential.

In the end, we may think of astrology as a quaint, quirky holdover from the past, and so adopt a "what's the harm" attitude.

At first glance there is no real danger in letting people pursue beliefs that may cost them a little money but are otherwise harmless.Yet there is real harm here. Astrology, like homeopathy and other pseudosciences, promotes magical thinking. No evidence or thought is required. It leads us to take the word of anyone who comes along with a magic solution to any and all problems. And when magical thinking gets together with health care or politics, the results can be disastrous, much more than merely financial. Would you like your leaders making policy based in part on astrological advice?

*Taken from THE reference on critical thinking and skepticism, Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World . If you haven't yet read it, it's a lifechanger.

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Mercury, glorious Mercury, by MESSENGER

2010-08-08T12:42:00.001+02:00

Take a look at this.

This is Mercury. That little bright light you sometimes see in the sky, low on the horizon in early morning or late evening. It's a real place. And we humans sent a spacecraft, MESSENGER, out there and it sent back this picture among others.

It never ceases to amaze me that we can do this. Simply spectacular.

More info and pictures:

http://www.universetoday.com/70536/picture-of-planet-mercury/

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Scaremongering And General Incoherent Nonsense in Video Piracy\Anti-Terrorism Billboard

2010-07-23T17:32:00.001+02:00

Take a look at this:

Have you ever seen such tripe? It's idiotic and Orwellian all at the same time. So much is so wrong here, I don't even know where to start. But I'll try.

"A bomb won't go off here because weeks before the criminal pirating films was caught by monitoring his internet history"(sic)

Leaving aside the terrible punctuation (or lack thereof)*, this is a mishmash of flawed logic, non-sequitors, scaremongering and outright technological ignorance. The only thing missing is a kiddie porn reference and the scaremongering would be complete.

A bomb (not going off, mind you). Illegally copying films. Same person involved in both. Ergo, illegal copying of films = terrorism, or aiding terrorism. 'kayyyyy......so basically what's being implied here is that anyone ripping or downloading films for personal use is a terrorist. And if they're not, we should monitor their internet usage anyway, just to be sure. And while we're at it, why not everyone else's, too?

Just in case, you know.

I'm willing to grant that there are people in the world who make and distribute illegal copies of films for profit, and that some of them may be involved in unsavoury activities. But really, how many of the people you know actually pay for illegal copies of films? Most people simply download, watch and delete.

And those who are in the illegal distribution-for-profit business will almost certainly know how to cover their tracks. They'll either use a copy bought legitimately and copy it offline (no internet history), or they'll download it using an anonymous proxy server or Tor-type network. It's VERY difficult to track what happens behind the anonymiser. Either way, internet monitoring is not very useful.

So what's going on here? Does increasing internet surveillance on the general public, aided and abetted by a TIPS -type operation REALLY help prevent terrorism? Or does this merely contribute to a paranoid, TERRORISED citizenry, where those encouraging this kind of a society are complicit in aiding the real terrorists by scaring the bejaysus out of the very people they're supposed to protect?

At best this is a huge waste of time and resources. Bruce Schneier wrote about this a few years back. At worst, it's reminiscent of Stalinist Russia at its worst, with everyone watching everyone else, scared shitless they're going to be the next ones to hear a knock on the door at 4am. Over the top? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

My guess is that the copyright protection crowd have taken advantage of the 9/11 7/7 paranoia to associate piracy to terrorism, and the security services have gleefully indulged. These days, if you can plant that association you're on to a sure thing. The security services are always happy to have more visibility over what happens on the internet, thank you very much, so everyone's a winner.

Except the public.

Thanks to @crntaylor for the picture on Twitter.

*And who wrote that awful phrase? Have they never heard of commas?

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Solar Cycle Maximum 2013

2010-06-27T21:45:00.003+02:00

So, the solar cycle will reach its maximum in 2013.

I'm betting that when 2012 comes and goes without the end of the world, there'll be solar maximum hysteria right on its coattails. It may even start before then, but it's coming. You saw it here first :)

That's not to say there aren't potential problems. Heightened solar activity such as increased flares and CMEs can wreak havoc on satellites and unprotected electrical grids on Earth. Steps can and should be taken to mitigate these risks. Spacecraft such as SOHO, SDO, GOES, STEREO as well as the the venerable ACE are studing the sun and the space weather environment and can give us advanced warning of increased activity. Check out the links below for more information on solar science and space weather.

New Solar Cycle Prediction (NASA) (gotta love the "Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013, but use a pencil" quote!)

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Nasa Heliophysics

Current space weather

Severe Space weather social and economic impacts

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Atlantis launch as seen by the US Air Force

2010-06-08T14:23:00.001+02:00

Fabulous image. Atlantis darts off into space seconds after her final launch as a US Air Force F-15E stands watchful over the local airspace.

The BA has more details here.

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Life found on Titan? Well, no.

2010-06-08T14:14:00.001+02:00

Excellent post from Chris McKay, an exobiologist studying Titan. There are intriguing things happening on Titan from an organic chemistry perspective, but we are a VERY long ways from stating that a new form of life is behind it.

http://www.ciclops.org/news/making_sense.php?id=6431&js=1

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One to watch

2010-06-08T14:11:00.001+02:00

Hypatia, as those of you who have may seen or read Carl Sagan's Cosmos, was a scientist at the Great Library of Alexandria in its last days.

The film is called Agora.

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Cognitive Biases in song!

2010-05-11T14:27:00.001+02:00

A list of cognitive biases in song, pretty cool:

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Miscellaneous Tuesday: Times Square, Polanski, E15, and more....

2010-05-04T17:06:00.001+02:00

New York failed bombing

First of all, let's be clear: no-one prevented anything. Had this been a well engineered bomb, it would have gone off, with all the carnage that implies.But luckily, the idiot perpetrator(s) screwed up the bomb: http://tinyurl.com/2uuv3vh The device seems to have consisted of fireworks, propane and some fertilizer that, as configured, would have most likely burned up with maybe a couple of bangs as the propane tanks went off, but with no real damage outside the immediate vicinity of the vehicle. As it was, it fizzled. The bystanders that noticed something amiss, the police and fire department did a good job in containing the situation, and there appears to have been very little panic while it was further investigated. But, again, the media got in on the act. "How do we prevent this?" "How can this happen in a city like New York?" Preventing this kind of atrocity doesn't happen on d-day, but beforehand. A well engineered bomb would usually mean an organised cell -a bomb maker and support people -and they tend to leave traces. Telephone\internet chatter, unusual purchases of raw materials, these kinds of things may get noticed and put together can lead to a plot long before its execution. This seems to be how the London liquid explosives plot was caught before the conspirators ever got near an airport. Old fashioned police work: more here on that: http://tinyurl.com/l4ap29

Here are the thoughts of several specialists on the Times Square incident: http://tinyurl.com/33ys229

Ekman, Clarke and Schneier's comments sound best to me; the others, in varying degrees, smack of catching up with the last attack and an over-reliance on technology.

Polanski extradition

Roman Polanski can, apparently, remain silent no longer - his own words: http://tinyurl.com/2vrrhss

I don't get this: the guy was being tried for a serious alleged crime, had confessed to it and he jumps bail, but because he makes movies it suddenly becomes a big deal that he's being extradited? What if he were a butcher? He'd be back in the US quicker than you could say pot roast. This makes me sick. Either the law applies to everyone equally or to no-one: there can be no half measures.

Volcano kicking up again

Irish airspace closed for 12 hours because E15 is fuming again. Operations have restarted, but they warn of a summer of uncertainty: http://tinyurl.com/3747zw9

Guenter Wendt

Another part of space history is gone. Guenter Wendt finally, well, went. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guenter_Wendt

.....and:Happy Star Wars Day: May the fourth be with you :)

More miscellania next week!

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Miscellaneous Monday! SDO, Gallipoli, boobquake and Korean War 1.5....

2010-04-26T18:14:00.001+02:00

SDO kicks ass and takes names

The Solar Dynamics Observatory released its first images last week, aptly dubbing the event "First Light". Simply amazing. The discoveries that will be made by SDO will not only help us prevent damage by extreme solar events, but will allow us to learn more about the sun's potential impact on plans to have an indefinite human presence in space. We need to learn a lot about this before we can send humans beyond LEO for extended periods. SDO will help us do just that.....exciting times ahead!

Miscellaneous Monday - volcanos, space exploration and more

2010-04-19T16:43:00.001+02:00

That volcano, of course:

Nature's little reminder that we're not really in charge.....we just happen to be around during a pretty quiet period, geologically and cosmologically speaking. And yes, I mean little: look up the Yellowstone volcano if you want to see big (warning - not for the fainthearted). Far from being stewards of the planet, we're just tenants, and short term ones at that: the dinosaurs were around for 160 million years - we, in our current form, have been here less than a paltry fifty thousandish. But -sometimes- we're smart. When we put our minds to it, we can overcome almost anything (except the really big things - there's not much we can do about Yellowstone and its ilk except try to get out of the way when they come along). The big problems are overcoming political and other ideologies to work together for the betterment of everyone, not just "our" people.

Incredibly, it seems that there may be a link between some volcanic activity and global warming: http://tinyurl.com/y5ahzby

More spectacular images from Iceland: http://tinyurl.com/y6596em

Here's what volcanic ash does to jet engines: http://tinyurl.com/y3sfp8f

On the subject of "our" people and clannishness, here's an interesting interview with Stephen Pinker discussing the evolution of morality, sociobiology and the future of humanity: http://tinyurl.com/y2fs53p

And the big story last week for every space geek:

President Obama's speech on the future of space exploration

In a nutshell:

With the end of the space shuttle era, LEO will be handed off to private enterprise while Nasa pushes out further; no manned flights to the Moon; an asteroid landing and manned Martian orbit by 2035; a new heavy lift capability will be developed, but for the next few years the US will be dependant on Russia to get astronauts to space; Orion will be revived as an ISS lifeboat is.

Gemini on steroids is a good description of this. We have to develop the technology, skills and procedures incrementally that we'll need to get to Mars. The Moon has been done, and while we still have incredible amounts to learn there, it's not an efficient staging post and not useful to pushing out further.

And as for all those asking why we're spending so much money going into space while we have all these problems here on Earth (yes, you John Cusack!) - check out how much Nasa really costs: http://tinyurl.com/yzdlojh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

Yes, you read that correctly. This year it's about 0.5 % of the federal budget. That includes EVERYTHING Nasa does. Compare that to the Defense Department and Social Security. It's peanuts. The DoD spends the equivalent of Nasa's annual budget in 6 weeks in Iraq alone. If every US government department could get as much bang for their buck as Nasa, it would be a very fine state of affairs indeed.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says it best:

STS-131 Discovery landing: Two opportunities waved off due to bad weather today, next one tomorrow morning, 7:34am ET

The Big Picture: Journeys to the ISS, some mindblowing pictures: http://tinyurl.com/y7wsoe5

Simon Singh off the hook, but the battle for British Libel Reform continues

The British Chiropracter Association has withdrawn its libel suit against Simon Singh. Great news for him, and an important milestone in the battle for reforming Britain's draconian libel laws.Full coverage: http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/

And finally David Attenborough narrates an incredible sequence: a persistence hunt in the Kalahari desert: http://tinyurl.com/y3y4hmf

More MM next week!

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Phoenix Lander is silent

2010-04-14T13:57:00.001+02:00

Phoenix Lander is silent. Very slight shades of morosity, along the lines of Spirit being stuck, but at least no-one's referring to Phoenix as "she"!

I recently posted on our tendency to anthropomorphise machines: http://tinyurl.com/y5prejk

More on Phoenix lander: http://tinyurl.com/y3quj6q

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Miscellaneous....Tuesday!

2010-04-13T14:23:00.001+02:00

Ok, so it's Tuesday, I know.....but this is an astronomical miscellania, so doesn't really count as Miscellaneous Monday!

Herschel images of Rosetta nebula stellar nursery:

Spectacular image from the Herschel observatory. I find this absolutely stunning.

Stars are being born.

That alone is worth a pause. Think about it. Stars. Being. Born. Excuse the anthropomorphism, but these events are where EVERYTHING comes from. I wrote a post about this a while back: http://jmahony.posterous.com/twinkle-twinkle-little-star-9

Huge clouds of matter have collapsed gravitationally and the pressure induced is such that nuclear fusion has initiated in the core. We know how this happens, and can describe it mathematically. To see actually in progress is evidence that SCIENCE ACTUALLY WORKS! More info here: http://tinyurl.com/ychg76k

Supermassive Black Hole in Centaurus A :

This is an amazing composite image, in various wavelengths (x-ray, visible and submillimetre), of the Centaurus A galaxy, which has a supermassive black hole at its centre. This shows the extent of this black hole's influence. A jet of X-ray radiation (represented as blue) extends -get this- 13000 light years from its source; the material contained in it seems to be travelling at about half the speed of light! It's absolutely mindblowing. That something this powerful can even exist really should put us in our place, but of course it's far away (about 11 million light years) and not a threat so, ho-hum, few are impressed. But I am.

For more more on this:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/cena/:>

And speaking of threats.....here's a piece about a fantastically destructive antimatter explosion - Supernova SN2007bi wreaking unimaginable havoc on its neighbourhood. http://tinyurl.com/ycl75er

If you're interested in destruction in and from space, you could do a lot worse than picking up a copy of Phil Plait's "Death from the Skies". It came in the annual book-orgy that is my Christmas list and it's really excellent, highly recommended.

More miscellania soon!

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Specialization is for insects - Heinlein

2010-04-12T14:49:00.001+02:00

Love this Heinlein quote.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-- Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

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Miscellaneous Monday

2010-04-05T21:56:00.001+02:00

Unless you were on a desert island today, of course you know STS-131 Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Centre this morning! A beautiful sight as always, and trending highly on twitter...wicked!

Confrontations between victims of church abuse and clergy at Easter services in Dublin. Incredibly, some members of the congregation accused the victims of being out of line!

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0405/1224267707590.html

LHC kicked off the science last week, beginning the first 7TeV collisions in history. The intertubes were all a-twitter and science became cool, at least for a short while. Between this & the shuttle launch, there's hope for science yet!

Can you spare a brain cycle? Non-scientists CAN help science advance, check it out: http://weareallinthegutter.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/we-need-your-brains/

More MM next week!

Sent from my iPhone

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Science Briefly Takes Over Twitter

2010-03-30T14:28:00.001+02:00

Today I saw something wonderful. Yes, the biggest scientific experiment in history kicked off, but that's not what I'm talking about. Not directly anyway.

Nope. Today science became cool. At least for a short while.

A lot of us already know that. But for CERN and LHC to be trending on Twitter, that's outreach. A lot of people out there like science, but for some reason the general consensus is that it's boring. But science can be exciting. All you had to do is watch the reactions of people on Twitter as the beams ramped up, the excitement was palpable. And when it reach 3.5 TeV, and collisions started, it just exploded

Let's face it. Science is popular. There appears to be a significant geek vote worldwide.

I just hope that those with clout will sit up and take notice.

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Miscellaneous Monday

2010-03-29T14:30:00.001+02:00

Hubble Dark Matter Map

This is really cool! Although you can't see dark matter, you can see its effects on the universe around it. Check out this link for the map and some great info on how it was created: http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-3d-map-universe-dark-matter.html

Scientology google ads:

"you are not your fears, your past or your failures...so who are you?" followed by a link to their site which I will not utter here (gratuitous Gandalf quote notwithstanding).

I know Google ads are sometimes incongruous with the content of the page they find themselves on, but this takes the biscuit: scientology ads on Google Reader, mixed in with my science and skepticism feeds: WTF, Google?! This is like crack for many people who're feeling a little down, lost or confused. Manipulative bastards.

And speaking of cults and manipulative bastards....it seems the current pope tried to get the last one to do something about the rampant sexual abuse in the worldwide church. Easy enough to blame the dead guy, isn't it? "It was like that when I got here, guv, honest". Not sure what to make of this, but it sounds to me like propoganda to muddy the waters.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100031816/pope-john-paul-ii-...

India Knight nails it in this piece on her disgust with catholicism: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article70788...

Korean "war" II :

Not yet.....

It seems the South Korean Navy's ship was probably sunk by a naval mine, not a torpedo. But there are questions to be answered here: Whose mine was it? Was the mine in South Korean or international waters? A tragedy for the families of the dead, but at least it's not imminent war.

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2010/03/30/201003300033.asp

My light cone: Coming up on Delta Trianguli (4 weeks away)

from Light cone

Delta Trianguli is 35.4 light years away and only 4 weeks from the outer surface of your light cone - your ever-growing sphere of potential causality - which began its expansion from Earth on December 21 1974.

See ya next week for #MM!

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As Well As Being Offensive, Pope's Letter to Irish Catholics is Emotional Blackmail

2010-03-22T12:39:00.002+01:00

I am extremely annoyed by this. No, I'm pissed. Very much so. Not only does the Pope not admit any Vatican responsibility, impose any real punishment or propose any kind of assistance to the victims and their families aside from prayer (?!), but in a few lines he manages to push all the right buttons in the Irish psyche for a spiritual call to arms for those who might, even after all of this, have any lingering respect for the church.

Let me explain. Irish people are sensitive to criticism of catholicism for historical reasons - being a catholic in Ireland before Catholic Emancipation around 1829 was in effect being a slave. Look up the Penal Laws if you're interested, it's not pretty reading. In Northern Ireland, until relatively recently, if you were a catholic you had a hard time getting a decent job or good housing: your address gave you away and you were quietly filtered you out. This wasn't official British Government policy, but that's the way it happened on the ground in a protestant dominated society, and appears to have been tolerated by the establishment. Most people with whom I grew up aren't religious, but non-catholics criticising catholicism raises hackles. Even for myself, a recovering catholic and atheist, there's still a small voice in the back of my head (I ignore it, of course) that raises its hand timidly when the church is criticised. I hope to shut it up one day. I believe this comes from my childhood, when the only criticism of catholicism we knew of came from Northern Ireland, where certain extremists wanted the pope hung, and catholics kicked out. Of course, given that most of my generation have grandparents that were involved in the war of independence in the early twentieth century, the linking of catholicism to being Irish was inevitable. A good Irish person went to mass every Sunday and knew about Irish independence. Even today, baptism, first communion, and confirmation are practiced by people who wouldn't go near a Church otherwise. Why? It's part of the culture. Even for many of those who aren't true believers, the church is so deeply intertwined with daily life that many people accept these practices on autopilot, even if they haven't been to a mass in decades. What it essentially boils down to is this: Attacking catholicism was, and maybe still is for some, akin to attacking Ireland and Irishness.

That's what the Pope is trying to exploit

He speaks of Irish Catholics as having been persecuted in the past, and rising up after emancipation to spread the faith worldwide. These are historical facts, but bringing up these emotional subjects is for some Irish people like having your patriotism questioned. If you're not a good catholic, then you're not a good Irish citizen. It's not explicit, and in fact most people would probably deny it outright, but it's there, in the murky depths of our collective cultural subconciousness. In effect, the Pope is reminding us of how the church was there for Ireland during the bad times, now it's our turn to stand by the church in its time of need. To me, this smacks of emotional blackmail, trying to call out anyone who has a hint of respect for catholicism to come back to the church. The Irish are catholics, so if you're Irish, well.....follow the logic. Basically this letter says two things:

1) Yes, we fucked up, but if you pray lots more it'll be alright;

2) Remember your heritage: If you're REALLY Irish, you'll come back to the church.

Hardcore catholics will forgive anything and are probably hopeless cases, but my hope is that the majority of Irish people will see this for what it is: a cynical attempt to browbeat people back to the church using a call to patriotism.

And is the Pope really asking all catholics in Ireland to pray for the church? That's his fix? Do penance for the sins of a few wayward priests (no penance for the priests, mind you, just the congregation) and all will be well? This is the twenty first century, isn't it?

This medieval nonsense MUST stop.

Instead, how about this for starters, Mr. Pope:

* Sell off a few buildings and set up worldwide secular psychological counselling services for the victims of this horrific, systematic violence perpetrated against the most vulnerable in society.
* Appoint an independent, secular commitee to investigate the role of the church in covering for pedophile priests. And then let the law of the land judge those found responsible.

That would be a start. Words are easy: it's actions that count.

Carl Sagan on talk show hosted by John Denver

2010-03-19T14:48:00.001+01:00

Someone posted this on Facebook recently, and I just had to share it. Carl Sagan is one of my all-time heroes and this is a real joy, as Denver says in the interview. It seems to take place shortly after the Voyager missions launched and a little while after the Viking mission to Mars.They also discuss the "recent" launch of the space shuttle Enterprise so that would put it around early 1978ish, methinks. This is Carl Sagan at his best. Eloquent, authoritative, but never condescending.

Who is there today that even approaches his enthusiasm for communicating science, as well as his ability to convey complex ideas to a non-scientific general audience? I can only think of one person, maybe two, who give me that same thrill. The first is Dr. Caroline Porco. When you hear her speak, she conveys that same delight and awe in exploring the universe as Dr. Sagan did. Check out her TED talks on the Cassini mission to see what I'm talking about. The second, although this is based solely on the trailer to "Wonders Of the Solar System", is Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester. My first reaction to the trailer: this is Cosmos 2010! It really got my geeky juices flowing, and I just can't wait to see it! You can follow Dr. Porco and Professor Cox on Twitter: @carolineporco @ProfBrianCox I highly recommend them.

Carl Sagan was a prolific writer, but two of his books in particular stand out. Cosmos, and The Demon Haunted World.

The Demon Haunted World is a classic in critical thinking. It tackles everything woo-related from alien abductions to ghosts to the afterlife, all the while pointing out that while an open mind is a good thing to have, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It was the first book of its type I had ever read, and it's safe to say it profoundly changed the way I view the world.

Cosmos is simply amazing. And the television series is an absolute jewel. If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Even 30 years later, it still holds up. And for rewatch vallue, you just can't beat it.

There is a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1 as seen from 4 billion miles away (can't you just hear that explosive Sagan "B"!) that has become iconic. Here is Carl himself reading the passage he wrote describing it, taken from his book "The Pale Blue Dot":

Now tell me science has no soul!

Carl Sagan died in 1996 following a long struggle with myelodysplasia at the relatively young age of 62. Such a loss to humanity, but he left us such a legacy. I wonder what he would have accomplished were he still with us?

One thing is for sure: he would never have bored us.

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How Rogue Waves Form - Wired

2010-03-06T11:07:00.001+01:00

There was a news story during the week about a cruise ship off the coast of Spain getting damaged by an unusually powerful wave, killing two passengers and injuring another. Great piece from Wired about how these waves can form.

http://tinyurl.com/ybkyazx

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Primitive Stars discovered

2010-03-04T14:03:00.001+01:00

Stars from the early universe, formed shortly after the big bang, have been discovered in a "nearby" dwarf galaxy.

http://tinyurl.com/y98wmvm

A related recent post:

http://jmahony.posterous.com/light-shed-on-mysterious-supernova-and-the-st

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WISE: First Spectacular Images Released

2010-02-18T10:04:00.001+01:00

WISE launched in December and has been toiling away since. This is probably my favourite image, as it's a view of M31 Andromeda Galaxy that we haven't seen before. It looks like something a science fiction illustrator would come up with, but in reality it's a false colour infrared picture of this well known galaxy. I like this so much in fact, it's become my desktop wallpaper!

Some great interpretation of WISE's newest images, as usual, from the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait:http://tinyurl.com/ylluozz

WISE mission home page: http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/

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Light Shed on Mysterious Supernova and the Star Behind It

2010-02-16T14:06:00.001+01:00

A supernova that lasted an unprecedented 555 days, SN2007bi, appears to have been caused by a star that technically should not exist....today. The monster that led to this supernova ought to have been more than 300 solar masses, but this seems to contradict current theories, backed by observational data. A protostellar cloud would gravitationally collapse to form a star at 150 solar masses or less, and would never get even close to 300 solar masses. Stars this large just can't form.

However, that's in todays universe.

Back in the early days, when the universe was less than a few hundred million years old, the universe consisted only of hydrogen, helium and a little lithium which were forged in the first three furious minutes following the Big Bang. Heavier elements had not yet been formed as the universe cooled too quickly after the Big Bang to continue building elements, and the stars that would eventually synthesise them didn't yet exist. Huge amounts of these light elements had to come together before reaching the critical mass necessary for gravitational collapse that leads to stellar ignition, hence the truly enormous mass of these early stars. These first stars burned quickly (quickly for stars, ie a few million years) and brightly before exhausting their reserves of hydrogen and exploding in supernovae, creating heavier elements and sending them out into the universe, in the process reducing and eventually killing off any possibility of these types of stars from forming in the future. But why did it it burn so long? A hypothetical "pair-instability"-type supernova occurrs in stars this big. Hypothetical because it wasn't believed that stars this big could exist.

So how could stars this big exist today?

This supernova was seen in a dwarf galaxy 1.6 billion light years away, too nearby to be from the early universe. From observations, these dwarf galaxies seem to have significantly less of the heavier-than-lithium elements than they should have for their size. The implication here is that these dwarf galaxies may in fact be leftover "islands" of the early universe! The low mass could explain why they never accumulated to form fully sized galaxies.

This is why I love cosmology. The timescales, the distances and the concepts are so awesome, the processes so ferociously elegant....it's humbling to think that a complex glob of carbon compounds on a rock orbiting a yellow star in an insignificant galaxy can even exist to contemplate such things.

For lots more on this amazing story: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527470.900-primordial-giant-the-star-that-time-forgot.html?full=true

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Launches !

2010-02-11T16:33:00.001+01:00

The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It will study the sun's activity in order to predict, amongst other things, solar storms that can potentially knock out terrestrial power grids. Solar flares, Coronal Mass Ejections and sunspots will lose some of their mystery as we learn a lot more about the sun over the next few years from this mission.

If you've read any of my earlier posts, you'll recognise this phrase: I love it that we can do this stuff; it's soo freakin' cool!! And with Twitter, you can ask knowledgeable people about this stuff as it happens. The 21st century so rocks!

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SDO launches from

2010-02-10T17:53:00.001+01:00

The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It will study the sun's activity in order to predict, amongst other things, solar storms that can potentially knock out terrestrial power grids. We'll learn a lot about the sun over the next few years from this mission. Solar flares, Coronal Mass Ejections and sunspots will lose some of their mystery!

If you've read any of my earlier posts, you'll recognise this phrase: I love it that we can do this stuff, it's soo freakin' cool!! And with Twitter, you can ask knowledgeable people about this stuff as it happens. The 21st century so rocks!

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Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-130 launches from KSC!

2010-02-08T10:17:00.001+01:00

The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from KSC this morning to deliver critical components to the ISS. It's a beautiful thing to watch.

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Launching Tuesday

2010-02-07T21:38:00.001+01:00

As reported by the BA, some really cool info here, check it out!

http://tinyurl.com/yfgohvy

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My baby daughter chuckling madly!

2010-02-07T21:35:00.001+01:00

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Spirit, the Mars Rover is just a machine but tugs on our heartstrings nonetheless

2010-01-29T09:40:00.001+01:00

This wonderful xkcd cartoon

http://xkcd.com/695/

illustrates perfectly how we can get anthropomorphise non-living things. We have this "plucky" little rover "fighting" on against all the odds and now she's stuck. Yeah, yeah, I know, I've picked up on Emily Lakdawalla (she of Planetary Society blog fame)'s habit of referring to Spirit as a "she", something that makes "her" even more endearing. NASA and the JPL have decided after a year of unsuccessful attempts to free her that she no longer be a rover. She is now a Stationary Research Platform, à la Viking. She may survive the Martian winter, but her solar panels will eventually get covered in dust, Spirit will finally power down and, effectively, die.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I use words like "die" sometimes in my daily work when I talk about hard disks or old PCs or whatver that pack in: they die. Big deal. I can rationalise that Spirit is a fabulously engineered machine that has performed well above and beyond the original mission specification, and nothing more. Yet cartoons like this one definitely push my emotional buttons. It could be that there's a fundamental human fear in play here, that of dying alone in a strange place, having been abandoned by everyone. Any takers on this one?

But maybe that's just me getting sappy. It's just a machine.

Isn't it....?

Guys?

GUYS...?!

Links:

http://xkcd.com/695/

Planetary Society blog: http://www.planetary.org/blog/

JPL Mars Rovers site: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Nasa Rovers site:http://www.nasa.gov/rovers

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Homeopathic "Overdose" Prediction

2010-01-25T15:16:00.001+01:00

Ok, so I'm biased.

I'm sure that we won't see skeptics dropping by the dozen on Saturday following the planned "overdose". But I'm curious as to how the homeopathic community will react. What will the special pleadings be? I'm guessing it'll be a combination of the following:

You weren't sick so it didn't have any effect;
You took too much so the law of infinitesimals doesn't apply;
Some kind of quantum-physicsy-sounding hocus-pocus explanation;

...and finally, I'm predicting that someone will come out with a really wicked, convoluted explanation that's totally out of left field.

This is going to be fun to watch as it unfolds :)

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New Solar Observatory Launching Feb 9 2010

2010-01-25T12:05:00.001+01:00

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is nearing readiness for the planned launch date. More info here:

http://tinyurl.com/y878la7

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iPhone keeps buried earthquake victim alive for three days

2010-01-21T17:31:00.001+01:00

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/21/iphone_medical_aid/

This one's making headlines around da intertoobs today. Pretty cool, I have to say, though I do wonder how he managed to keep it running all that time....mine usually needs daily charging. I guess he had the presence of mind to turn off all the battery-hungry bells and whistles?

Still though, this shows that in fact there are useful apps that can have real, practical uses out here in meat-space.

But lets not overhype it. Yeah, that means you, iphone fanboy :)

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What is Homeopathy?

2010-01-20T15:05:00.001+01:00

I've heard a lot about this homeopathy stuff. It's for sale in almost every pharmacy here in Paris, but just what is it? Is it effective? Must be if it's for sale in a pharmacy, right?

Let's take a look at how the British Society of Homeopaths describes it - from the horses mouth, as it were. Here's their "what is" page:

http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/

"Homeopathy is a system of medicine which is based on treating the individual with highly diluted substances given in mainly tablet form, which triggers the body’s natural system of healing."

Hmm. Not much information there, but ok....let's read on further.

"Scientifically it can not yet be explained precisely how it works, but new research in biochemistry and quantum physics is going some way towards shedding light on the process."

How it works can't be explained, yet with an appeal to quantum physics. Curious.

"Homeopathy has been used in the UK for over two hundred years. It was Samuel Hahnemann, a brilliant doctor working in 1796 who developed the scientific and philosophical foundations of this gentler way of healing. These scientific principles form the basis of successful homeopathic practice today."

OK. First things first: Just because something lasts a long time doesn't mean it's right. Look at the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. That lasted for thousands of years until Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo came along and upset the applecart.
Next: During Hahnemann's time, when blood-letting, leeching and other sorts of prescientific medical practices were being used, just about anything non-invasive would've been gentler. This was before we knew anything about the germ theory of disease, before anesthetics, before antibiotics. A time when few children reached adulthood because of disease, and childbirth was each and every time a very serious risk to the lives of both mother and baby. In other words, medical prehistory. Since then we've learned a lot about biology, anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacology. We've learned that leeches and bloodletting don't work, but on the other hand we've held on to some of the ancient wisdom that works. For example, it's been known for millenia that the bark of the willow tree can sooth pain and from that we developed aspirin. This is how medicine, and science in general, evolves. If it works it stays, if it doesn't it gets tossed out with the leeches. To paraphrase Tim Minchin from his poem Storm: alternative medicine that works is known as medicine."

"How are the remedies made?
The raw extracts (from plants or animals) or triturations (from minerals and salts) are made into a ‘tincture’ with alcohol which forms the basis of the dilution procedure. Dilutions are made up to either 1 part tincture to 10 parts water (1x) or 1 part tincture to 100 parts water (1c). Repeated dilution results in the familiar 6x, 6c or 30c potencies that can be bought over the counter: the 30c represents an infinitessimal part of the original substance."

No information on how the "tincture" is prepared, but this is, after all, an outline. So let's do the math. 1C is a dilution of 1 part per 100 in water. 30C is 1C repeated 30 times. So I dilute it down 1:100. Then I take a part of this and dilute THAT down 1:100. Repeat 30 times. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^20) molecules of water. It would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth to be certain of containing 1 molecule of active ingredient at this dilution!

(source: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html)

So in reality, we're left with a container of water. Wow. How could it possibly work if it's only water?

After each dilution the mixture is vigorously agitated in a machine that delivers a calibrated amount of shaking. This is called succussion. It is thought that this process leaves an energetic imprint of the medicinal substance throughout the body of water .

Here's another alarm bell. An "energetic imprint". Some mysterious energy, undetectable by science, gets imprinted in the water. In physics when we speak of energy, we refer to the ability to do work, ie to make things happen. We can talk broadly about kinetic and potential energy, and we can drill down into each type, delving into into various subtypes such as chemical, nuclear, gravitational energy and so forth. They can be converted from one to the other and back again. We understand these forms of energy quite well. But invoking the word energy like this, in the same way as invoking quantum physics, always sets off my woometer.

We also know quite a bit about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water). We know its chemical composition and behaviour. We also know a lot about how the atoms in a water molecule bind together. Imprinting "energy", or anything else for that matter, on water molecules is something that the laws of physics and chemistry as we currently understand them simply can't happen. These laws have been verified experimentally on many different occasions and not found wanting. They explain the observable universe quite well. There are Nobel prizes aplenty for anyone who can demonstrate the mechanism by which homeopathy allegedly works, placebo effects aside.

Science and technology have moved on enormously since Hahnemann's development of these ideas, but homeopathy has not. These same ideas have been propagated for over two centuries with little or no modification. It's as if we still bled hospital patients. Homeopathy may be less messy and relatively harmless in wealthy countries, but when you have snake-oil salesmen pitching homeopathic remedies for big killers like AIDS, malaria, and cancer in the place of proven science-based medication, then it's time to come down, and to come down hard. What's the harm, you ask? Look here: http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html

It's the second decade of the 21st century. It's time for this pseudo-scientific twaddle to go the way of leeching and bloodletting.

Let's send it on its way.

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What is Homeopathy?

2010-01-20T14:28:00.001+01:00

I've heard a lot about this homeopathy stuff. It's for sale in almost every pharmacy here in Paris, but just what is it? Is it effective? Must be if it's for sale in a pharmacy, right?

Let's take a look at how the British Society of Homeopaths describes it - from the horses mouth, as it were. Here's their "what is" page:

http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/

"Homeopathy is a system of medicine which is based on treating the individual with highly diluted substances given in mainly tablet form, which triggers the body’s natural system of healing."

(source: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html)

So in reality, we're left with a container of water. Wow. How could it possibly work if it's only water?

It's the second decade of the 21st century. It's time for this pseudo-scientific twaddle to go the way of leeching and bloodletting.

Let's send it on its way.

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Carolyn Porco Talk at TED on Cassini Mission to Titan

2010-01-18T13:40:00.001+01:00

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Terrorism is extremely rare, so refuse to be terrorised!

2010-01-14T11:27:00.001+01:00

Great article by the Register concerning the rarity of terrorism and why you shouldn't be terrorised.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/08/mutallab_comment/

If we react to any incident with fear and panic, then the instigators will have achieved their aims.Their goals are to disrupt of our way of life, actually killing people is just a means to that end and is a very secondary goal. So even if their attempts to commit mass-murder fail, they still achieve their goals if we overreact, which we inevitably do - every single time. We close the stable door after the horse has bolted, we crank up the colour coded alerts and a hysterical media frenzy whips everyone into a state of, um, well, TERROR! We, (the media, governments and public at large) collectively, are doing their work for them! They must be laughing their arses off when they see how we react on the extremely rare occasion that one of them tries to blow up a plane, even when he screws it up royally.

Via Bruce Schneier

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Dark matter's effect on planetary orbits

2010-01-14T10:02:00.001+01:00

Interesting story on how dark matter being swept up by the sun appears to be affecting the orbits of the planets in our solar system. Yes, Earth too.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24663/

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Martian Avalanches caused by springtime on the red planet

2010-01-11T17:11:00.001+01:00

Fantastically coolesome images of Martian avalaches taken by HiRISE - details, with customary dry, only-the-facts-ma'am delivery ;-) from the BA:

http://tinyurl.com/y9gzqhf

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Tim Minchin - this is the business!

2010-01-11T14:24:00.001+01:00

Just discovered this bloke....brilliant!

</object>

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Typical French governement "solution" to anything....tax it!

2010-01-08T14:35:00.001+01:00

Any time there's something needs fixing, or becomes a pain, or is just plain different, you could bet your bottom dollar that the gouvernement du jour, no matter what side of the political spectrum they might be found on, will react in the same way: they'll invent a new tax for it.

And I'm sorry, but these so-called creative industries aren't very creative if they can't come up with a way to thrive in the digital age.That's just a stupid argument, there are plenty of ways for them to make money online, look at iTunes, for crying out loud. This is just plain, old-fashioned protectionism at work again.

PC world article:

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/331699

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This is spectacular....a Transparent Laptop screen

2010-01-08T13:42:00.001+01:00

Have a look at this: still in R&D but in a few years, it'll will be in the wild. So freakin' cool, I want one, now!

http://tinyurl.com/ydtxlxq

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Britain under snow....amazing picture

2010-01-08T11:40:00.001+01:00

Check this out: amazing picture, like something from "The Day After"! Isn't it amazing we can take pictures like this?

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Top 10 NASA Photos of all time (so far!)

2010-01-07T16:58:00.001+01:00

Some amazing sights in here:

http://www.airspacemag.com/multimedia/photos/?c=y&articleID=28246359&page=1

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Richard Feynman and the Tao of "WHY"

2010-01-07T16:44:00.001+01:00

Simply wonderful.

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The Saturn System, in all its glory, thanks to Cassini

2010-01-07T16:18:00.001+01:00

Feast your eyes on beautiful Saturn. There are some heartbreakingly gorgeous images here, but be warned: you might end up staying for a while, so make sure you have adequate time!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/?start=1&category=1

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gotta tell ya - I'm 95% agreed with this guy!

2010-01-07T15:06:00.001+01:00

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Cognitive biases

2010-01-07T14:22:00.001+01:00

Think you're immune to making mistakes? Are you supremely rational? No, you're not :)

Read on and see if you've fallen prey to any of the following recently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

The good news: we all have, 'cos we're we're only human, but awareness of these is a great way to learn how to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

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WISE is calibrating and already releasing images!

2010-01-07T13:17:00.001+01:00

WISE is being calibrated and has released this preliminary image:
http://tinyurl.com/yh5afuc

Here's the BA's take:
http://tinyurl.com/yefpbxo

Here's the press release:
http://tinyurl.com/yar36gr

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http://xkcd.com/685/

2010-01-06T19:05:00.001+01:00

Following all the recent g-spot hooplah (here: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1428 and here: http://www.drpetra.co.uk/blog/where-have-all-the-g-spots-gone/)
xkcd makes a point in its own inimitable style! http://xkcd.com/685/

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Our Galaxy, a squished beach ball and dark matter

2010-01-06T18:20:00.001+01:00

Using inferences from all sky observations of out nearest galactic neighbours, researchers at UCLA have hypothesised a shape for our galaxy that's not at all expected.....more here: http://www.universetoday.com/2010/01/06/milky-way-has-a-squashed-beachball-shaped-dark-matter-halo/

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Update on previous post

2010-01-05T19:13:00.001+01:00

Bruce Schneier has a great take on my (and, it seems, every other person's out there) El-Al thinking - it doesn't scale.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/adopting_the_is.html

I wonder if there isn't a happy medium between the two, though? Hmm.

My original post:
http://jmahony.posterous.com/attempted-airline-bombing-security-theatre-fr

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We need this kind of thing in France!

2010-01-05T18:22:00.001+01:00

http://www.1023.org.uk/ Even at 35%, it's outrageous that the Secu reimburses magic "medicine". Might as well put Lourdes holy water on the list of approved medication!

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The hubble hits just keep on coming!

2010-01-05T18:19:00.001+01:00

Check out this latest image from Hubble: http://tinyurl.com/ykt547o Just think, each little speck is a galaxy, with hundreds of billions of stars...mindblowing! You can actually see the oldest ones in the bigger picture. They're the red blobs, displaying that famous red-shifting, and - get this - we're seeing them as they were up to 13 billion years ago! The image was created by combining several different images, taken in ultraviolet, visible light and near-infrared. (bigger image here: http://tinyurl.com/ya3h3vp)

We are so small.......

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Dark Energy and the Casimir Effect

2010-01-04T19:17:00.001+01:00

It's a weird, weird universe, at the quantum level, with implications for the eventual fate of the universe....probably a Big Fizzle.

Check out the APOD:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100103.html

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WISE opens its eyes!

2009-12-30T16:27:00.001+01:00

Seems I somehow missed this earlier......but great news indeed!

http://tinyurl.com/yhcjxl4

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Currently Reading:

2009-12-29T17:01:00.002+01:00

Pseudoscience & Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A Critical Thinker's Toolkit by Jonathan Smith

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Evil? No such thing.

2009-12-29T16:16:00.002+01:00

Well, I've had with people talking about evil in the world. The metaphysical concept of evil is no longer relevant in the 21st century. There is no force of evil generating horrible events, there are only the laws of nature and human behaviour. We seem to have developed this concept of evil to explain the random, uncontrollable events around us. The death of loved ones in a natural disaster is at least comprehensible if you think some great malevolent force caused it due to your not being nice enough to your god of choice, in turn weakening his ability to protect you (or something). Nowadays, when an earthquake happens, we know it's due to plate tectonics, not a pissed-off deity smiting left, right and centre. In nature, what we call evil is simply the universe obeying the laws of physics (and yes, it's ALL physics). The universe at large doesn't care that it might inconvenience us with the odd supernova, earthquake or hurricane. It just is.

What we call evil in humans is essentially the degree of socially unacceptable immorality being displayed in a particular behaviour, whether in an individual or a group. And morality is not a universal absolute. It is a sliding scale, a function of the society observing it, and is in fact defined by the society observing it. The ancient Aztecs, a relatively sophisticated civilization, butchered thousands of people at a time to appease a bloodthirsty god. They didn't see it as evil, it was simply a necessity (as they saw it) for their society to keep functioning properly. From their point of view it would have been evil not to kill them. Today, such behavior is so far from acceptable that it is beyond unthinkable. So what's the difference? The moral values of the societies in question. Our global society today generally tends to value human life, and unnecessary death is not very well looked upon (what people do about it, of course, is another matter). Individual acts of what we term evil can run the gamut from shoplifting to sadistic, violent murder; again, the "evilness" is relative to the society passing judgment.

Consider:

Stealing in Saudi Arabia can cost you a hand. Which is worse: theft, or mutilating someone for life? Which is evil, the former or the latter? Both? Neither? Is one more evil than the other?
Necessity, coercion or social pressure might make a "normal", well-adjusted person perform horrific deeds in time of crisis, for example during wartime or famine. Is this evil?
Someone who steals food from another to feed his starving family, knowing that he's putting another family in the same situation as the one his family is in now? Is this evil?

As human beings, we are flawed. We sometimes do terrible things to one another, but in the end we and we alone are responsible for our actions. We can explain all of history's atrocities in terms of human flaws: a combination of greed, politico-religious extremism, and charismatic sociopaths manipulating their way into positions of absolute power. We don't need to resort to some supernatural, meta-physical force of evil. That's simply a cop-out. We are in control of our destiny. "The devil made me do it" is no longer acceptable. We can do better. We must do better.

The question is will we?

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"Holy" Catholic Church, my arse

2009-12-29T14:22:00.001+01:00

Read this and tell me about how great the church is.....

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/paula_kirby/2009/12/two_avenging_angels.html

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Blue Moon.....you saw me standing alone.....

2009-12-29T13:54:00.001+01:00

So there's a Blue Moon coming up.....not literally though. It won't change colour or anything, but it's an informal term for the second full moon in the same month. The other big news is that there will also be a partial lunar eclipse, see the BA's blogentry below for more info.

http://tinyurl.com/ydovv7v

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Attempted airline bombing: Security Theatre, front and centre

2009-12-28T13:55:00.001+01:00

Dear oh dear. So now, in addition to no liquids (unless you bought them in duty free, of course, which is another whole mess), taking your shoes off, no nail clippers, no wrapped packages, no cutlery, no glass (that soda can makes a nice little knife, though), you have to stay seated with no ipod, laptop, camera, or book for the last hour of the flight. Cue hundreds of bored, irate passengers. It seems that the bad guys will only do their bad guy thing at the end of the flight. Silly terrorists, how predictable - they must be really stumped now !

And eventually, someone's going to get stabbed with a pencil (come on, it's gotta happen sometime) and that's it, no more inflight writing materials. Someone gets angry and throws his iphone at a crewmember? No more cellphones on board. Seriously, the way this is going, within five years there'll be no more carry-on luggage, and we'll all be forced to change into jumpsuits before boarding, handcuffed to our seats from gate to gate.These reactive "security" measures are bordering on absurd.

So what to do?

Here's a radical idea: what about observing passenger behaviour before they get on the plane? Look at El-al: probably the biggest target there is for terrorists , and only one successful hijacking since 1968. Is it magic? Hi-tech wizardry? Nope: it's plain ol' police work and human observation, supported by good training. They have a layered approach to security that starts even before check-in. See here for some of their practices:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al#El_Al_security

So enough with the theatrics already. Put trained observers on the ground both inside and outside the secure area. If this guy Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had undergone any kind of screening at all by competent persons, he'd have been pulled aside for further questions, and unless he's a highly skilled liar, he'd have been detected, or at least prevented from boarding.

Bruce Schneier's been saying this for years:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/separating_expl.html

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Voyager still producing results.....30 years later!

2009-12-24T14:03:00.001+01:00

Great article on the latest discovery of the venerable Voyager
mission. It blows my mind to think how far away the 2 Voyagers are
now, and that they're still productive.

http://spacefellowship.com/news/art17382/voyager-makes-an-interstellar-discovery.html

Sent from my iPhone

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The Force is with Wall Street today....Vader opens!

2009-12-22T21:22:00.001+01:00

This is dead cool!!

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Censorship: coming soon to an ISP near you?

2009-12-22T10:09:00.001+01:00

Australia and soon the EU will be enacting laws ostensibly to block access to child pornography sites, but who watches the watchers? While these are laudable goals, is this the way to do it? Implementing infrastructure that puts control of this powerful technology in the hands of the political class is foolish. And if it's available, you can be sure they'll use it, whatever their political leanings. It appears that it works by blacklisting sites. Who decides what sites are to be blacklisted and what is the process for doing it? Do we get to know what they're doing? To whom are they accountable? If Internet and surveillance infrastructure are set up in this way, then its use is at the whim of those in power. It could be an off off switch for dissenting opinion on the internet: "Oops, we don't know what happened but we'll bring it back as soon as possible". Think the great Firewall of China. Think Twitter reporting on the Iranian election protests last year, and then being brought down last week, allegedly in revenge. Those in power today might have the best of intentions, but what about those that follow in five, ten, twenty years? We need to keep an eye on this. The Internet is an enormous resource for freedom, and freedom of speech. As it stands it is difficult to censor online, at least in Western countries, but if we're not careful, bills passed quietly in the night by ignorant or malicious politicians could allow this kid of trip switch to creep up on us before we know it.

UK: http://tinyurl.com/dk7mhl

Australia: http://tinyurl.com/y868e49

EU legislation: http://tinyurl.com/c9vzsv

Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org/issues/international

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So just how does that 250 tonne 747 get off the ground?

2009-12-22T09:32:00.001+01:00

And more importantly, how does it stay off the ground?

Great article on the basic principle behind fixed wing aircraft flight.

http://discovermagazine.com/2001/apr/featphysics/?searchterm=airplanes

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Sign of the times - maybe this is why traditional media is in trouble?

2009-12-22T09:03:00.001+01:00

So a guy writes a satirical article for the BMJ, a medical journal, on Santa being a fat, drunken, reckless driver and is immediately pilloried as a scroogy killjoy. Now don't get me wrong, but aren't you supposed to actually read the article in question before commenting on it? Putting aside the traditional business model for the press, I think maybe we could ascribe a part of the lingering death of the historical newspaper to reporters not actually researching before writing an article based only on a press release (http://tinyurl.com/yfehv6u) from the BMJ. Indeed, even the press release is only missing a winking smiley face to be read as tongue in cheek. Oh dear........

Story here:

http://tinyurl.com/ycroeoc

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Sailing on Titan's Hydrocarbon Seas

2009-12-20T10:01:00.001+01:00

A proposal for an unmanned mission to Saturn's moon Titan will apparently be submitted to NASA soon for funding. In summary, it will be a type of "boat" that will explore the hydrocarbon sea in Titan's northern hemisphere.

More here:

http://tinyurl.com/y9sqa44

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A classic Onion story - God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule

2009-12-20T09:47:00.001+01:00

via theonion.com

If god existed, why doesn't (s)he or it just do this already and shut up the hypocrites of all stripes ?!

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Video: The Asteroid That Will Almost Hit Earth | Wired Science

2009-12-19T18:36:00.001+01:00

via wired.com

Cool simulation of Apophis, the one that probably won't hit us in 2029, although we're not sure about the keyhole.....I'll let you google that if you're interested ;-P

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Guess what - Copenhagen doesn't achieve much of anything, really.....

2009-12-19T17:23:00.001+01:00

Basically it comes down to this:

"Well, here are some guidelines, if you feel like following them...no pressure, really...."

Updates: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18309-copenhagen-chaos-sets-world-on-track-for-35-c.html?full=true

What to do? Should we spend our resources on preparing for and adapting to the inevitable changes to come? Or should we spend that money on trying to prevent the inevitable or at least limit the damage? Can we do both? Is it even inevitable, can we stop it before it's too late? My tuppence worth:

Develop alternative, sustainable techologies to generate energy. Using energy efficient appliances and turning off your lights won't help if the electric company still produces the same amount of electricity anyway. It's a business like any other, and they'll always find users for the excess power generated. We need to find smarter ways of producing electricity. We really ought to invest more heavily in nuclear fusion research to solve our energy problems. No radioactive waste, and an almost infinite fuel supply. Windfarms, solar energy, using waves in the sea are just some of the other ways we can move forward but storage is still a problem. Is anyone working on safe, reliable, efficient batteries that can store huge amounts of energy long term? If not, why not?
We need to beware of the false dichotomy of "it's either the green extremist way or big business way" with nothing in between. There is a middle ground between heavy industry and its supporters on the one hand saying that humanity have nothing to do with any warming that might be happening, and the shrill eco-catastrophists predicting the extinction of every living thing on the planet if we don't all go back to the middle ages. Wherever there are extremists, the truth is usually found somewhere in the middle.
Prepare for the worst case scenario. While a system as complex as the global climate is not easily modelled, and projecting into the future is even more difficult, there are some things that we can say with reasonable certainty. We should be thinking about how to handle things like rising sea levels and potential changes in the way heat is distributed around the world via sea-borne and airborne currents.

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Wii Fit may not help families get fit

2009-12-19T15:50:00.001+01:00

Wii Fit May Not Help Families Get Fit

via sciencedaily.com

That's a big surprise. Anytime it looks like any easy fix concerning weightloss, it probably is!

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Science-Art overlap

2009-12-18T17:19:00.001+01:00

As Leonardo said, "see the art of science, and the science of art"
Both are essential in any endeavour. Great visual, I wouldn't be fully on-board with everything said in the article, but in essence I'm there!

http://www.arianaosborne.com/?p=751

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The known universe

2009-12-18T13:48:00.001+01:00

Just......wow.

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Dark Matter: Encouraging results, but no smoking gun

2009-12-18T12:16:00.001+01:00

Some possible events that might be dark matter interactions, but not statistically significant enough to warrant a definite yes. See the link below for a pdf summary from CDMS.

http://cdms.berkeley.edu/results_summary.pdf

Posted via email from John's posterous

Twitter Offline, Apparently Due to Compromised DNS records

2009-12-18T12:11:00.001+01:00

A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army has apparently taken Twitter offline. At the moment it's not clear what happened, but Twitter says it's a DNS attack. From what's been reported so far, Twitter's DNS provider (http://dyn.com) may have been compromised, but seems only to affect twitter for now. It sounds like the perpetrators pointed the name twitter.com to a non-existent IP address. As of now, twitter is still inaccessible (I'm in France).

DNS is the service that associates the name of a computer on the Internet to an IP address so that we humans don't have to remember a long string of numbers to access a website, just its name.

For more information:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/185058/hackers_take_twitter_offline.html
http://status.twitter.com/

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Dark Matter: Encouraging results, but no smoking gun ((tags: dark matter, cosmology, physics, science, astrophysics)

2009-12-18T11:44:00.001+01:00

Some possible events that might be dark matter interactions, but not statistically significant enough to warrant a definite yes. See the link below for a pdf summary from CDMS.

http://cdms.berkeley.edu/results_summary.pdf

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The mind boggles - this one you have to see

2009-12-17T09:32:00.001+01:00

Homeopathic idiocy at its finest. There are links to the video in the comments, but the attempt at scientific justification is more than pathetic.

http://chard.livejournal.com/56996.html

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Saturn

2009-12-16T14:14:00.001+01:00

Saturn:

From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, at a distance of approximately 847,000 km (526,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

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