And we can see the black hole at the center of the galaxy

And we will soon be able to see through 26,000 light-years of gas and dust to see the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227091.200-coming-soon-first-pictures-of-a-black-hole.html

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

We are about to detect gravity waves using a spectacular interferometer right out of Star Trek. http://lisa.nasa.gov/#

What we are about to see

We are about to be able to discern the very fabric of this universe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/feb/22/highereducation.highereducationprofile

Solar installations

At the Expo in Japan a few years ago, I saw many solar panels installed vertically on the top of buildings. I did not quite understand why they were like that, but now I think that combining a white roof with vertical installation of bifacial panels is the way to go. You will substantially increase the amount of light hitting the panels (think being blinded on a sunny day standing in snow; the elastomeric on our garage roof reflects a lot of light through a tiny window into our house), and vertical installation will reduce the need to dust them off.

Second Best: The Detection of Biosignatures in Extrasolar Planets

The ultimate goal is of course the detection of a civilization in another star system by SETI or other project. That may or may not turn out to be easier than detecting biosignatures on extrasolar planets. Biosignatures detected in planets in nearby star systems would allow a rough estimate of the prevalence of life in our galaxy. My guess is if there are planets or moons that are not too close to the star and are not in highly eccentric orbits, even if those planets or moons have no atmosphere and are frozen, then life is almost certainly present in subsurface oceans or pockets. In our solar system, there may be life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, certainly on Earth, nearly certainly on Mars and in Europa, and perhaps even in Ceres and many of the other ice moons.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227083.800-telescopes-poised-to-spot-airbreathing-aliens.html

Herschel Space Telescope and Planck Space Telescope are launched

They are headed for the L2 Lagrangian point a million miles in the direction from Earth that is opposite to the Sun, where they will be relatively free of gravitational influences.

Herschel is an infrared telescope.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2009/may/14/herschel-space-telescope-infrared-esa

Planck is to observe the cosmic background radiation in microwave.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/14/herschel-planck-esa-space-telescopes

Words of the day

Patternicity: Seeing a pattern when there is none.

Agenticity: Seeing events or conditions as being caused by unseen agents.

Why it does seem that invisible agents control the world.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=skeptic-agenticity

MacBook power use about 300 watts, about 7 cents, per day

I used an EcoWatt to measure the amount of electricity used by my MacBook over a 10 day period. During this period, I used it to watch a DVD and watched many videos online. Total electricity for 10 days was about 3 kW, which is about 70 cents at current rates. That would mean about 110 kW per year, about 26 dollars per year.

The Dollar

Is the reckoning here for the petrodollar recycling ponzi scheme? Over the last few weeks, the dollar has dropped 1% per week against other currencies. At some point, that could spark a capital flight stampede, and suddenly everyone will be reading about the currency crises in Argentina and Brazil over the last few decades, not the lost decades in Japan.
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/lee/2009/0602.html

Over a lifetime, the dollar's purchasing power went from 1 dollar to 6 cents

Click on the "chart they don't want you to see".

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/annihiliation-of-dollars-purchasing.html

And see the rest of this terrific blog.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/

The two kinds of TV/radio shows

One kind of show teaches you things you don't know. Why? Because the world is complicated. If it weren't, we would not need research institutes or even schools because you would just sit there and you would figure everything out all by yourself.

The other kind of show tells the audience that there is nothing wrong with them by going on long confabulatory ramblings to reassure the listeners. Since the audience is primarily made up of knownothings who can't read, all the host has to do is make up plausible stories (the audience can't tell the difference) that tell them that there is nothing wrong with them and that all problems are the fault of others. Wow! Heaven!

New H1N1 influenza strain

Also called "swine flu", this influenza strain has certain characteristics that I think mean we will all be exposed to it by the end of the summer. Fortunately, it seems to be mild in most cases. In addition, it seems that many people over the age of 20 had an influenza strain decades ago that confers some immunity.

1. It is highly contagious

2. Symptoms may not appear for 5 days, so people go to work and school unaware they are spreading virus.

3. Rate of increase is very high
I guess from cases in the US going from say 1,000 to estimated 100,000 in one month, that the rate of increase is 100 fold per month, but let's say conservatively 20 fold per month. If that is the case, then if we have 100,000 now, we will have 20 times as many at the end of June, or 2 million, then 40 million in July, exceeding the 300 million population of the US by August.

I don't think they can make vaccine fast enough to matter.

Since it is mild so far, perhaps we should look at it as a free live vaccine against what could be a far nastier mutation that could crop up down the road.

Wait to install photovoltaics

The perfect is the enemy of the good.
We need to figure out the 20% that we can do now that will capture 80% of the benefit, not be paralyzed doing nothing waiting for perfect solutions.

If you want to install photovoltaics, first wring every bit of energy efficiency out of the house.

New energy efficiency standards for refrigerators are coming online, so if your refrigerator is old, it might be worthwhile to replace it, depending on how much you pay for electricity and how hot it is where you live.
The warm white (sometimes labeled as 2700K) compact fluorescent bulbs are really cheap and good now, and if you replace a light that you have on all the time, like the light in the kitchen, it will pay for itself soon and then keep on paying. You will be astonished at how much more light is directed to where you want it by a spotlight. Even an 8 watt bulb can be quite adequate if the light is directed to where you want it. I replaced a 60 watt incandescent spotlight that we leave on all the time, so that the house is not pitch black at night, with a 11 watt warm white (2700K) compact fluorescent spotlight like these. http://www.1000bulbs.com/R20-PAR20-Compact-Fluorescent-Floods/ It paid for itself in less than two months, and has continued to save $50 a year in electricity. I mean, why throw away $2,000 over the rest of my life?
The water heater... Ah, the water heater... Probably the single biggest user of energy in your house. Have a plumber flush it out annually because any sediment in the tank reduces efficiency by blocking the heat from getting into the water. Turn down the temperature of the water heater... scalding water should not come out. If you can control the temperature of the water, I do not understand why you would want scalding water to come out and potentially scald a child or an elderly person (we lose the ability to judge temperature as we get older). Get a solar water heater. The freezing problem has been solved by using evacuated tubes. I have one that cost, in current dollars, 5,000, and has saved 30,000 over the last 30 years. It is a Solahart, and I have been very happy with it. There are all kinds of rebates and federal and state tax credits, so check around, and find out what may be expiring and what may be available in the years ahead. Sometimes, the tax credits have a limit to the total funds available, and when they run out, that is it! If person 8,765 uses up the last of the funds, and you are person 8,766 to apply, you will get nothing, nada, zip. This happened to many people in Florida, I think. Also, it might be possible to install half a system in December and the other half in January, and get the tax credit twice, once for each half of the system. That might make a big or a small difference, depending on the circumstances. Of course, you would have to ask a tax accountant about this before doing anything.
In general, if you install a solar water heater, you get the tax credit, and when you sell your home, the solar water heater generally increases your appraisal price, so it is a win-win for you.
If that is not practical, when you replace your water heater, look at a tankless one. They use half the energy because they don't have a tank full of hot water sitting there 24/7/365 losing heat to the environment. And they do not run out of hot water. Gas ones are better than electric... electric may require substantial rewiring.
That is much cheaper.

A number of issues with photovoltaics are about to be solved, and those solutions will make a huge difference in the performance of the system over its service life of 25 to 40 years.

It seems that the glass can absorb a lot of spectrum, especially IR, and can reduce the efficiency of the photovoltaics. Special glass that allows more of the spectrum through is very expensive. Perhaps the price can be reduced, or perhaps the increased efficiency would make this aspect of the upfront cost not very important.

There is also the matter of specular reflection. Perhaps Solyndra design minimizes this problem?

Currently, most photovoltaics are strung like Christmas lights... the old fashioned kind where if one bulb goes out, the whole string goes out.
There are two reasons this is a problem. One problem is that, if you have this type of panel, you must decide on the capacity of the DC/AC inverter, which is very expensive, for the overall system, before you start. If solar panels become really cheap in the future, you cannot simply tack more of them on to your system if that would exceed the capacity of the inverter. Another problem is that, because the cells are strung in line, if any one part of a panel is shaded, that is a bottleneck, and the output of the entire system drops.
The solution to both these problems is to provide an inverter for each panel separately. Since each panel has its own inverter, you do not need to size the whole system and can continue to tack on panels as the price drops, and this solves the problem of system output dropoff just because a small part is shaded. This is currently under development.

Then there is the problem of dust. If the panels are installed inclined, you may need to dust them off often. (There was a video of Bill Nye and Ed Begley dusting off their panels in an all out war to see who was greener, but I can't find the video online anymore. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2008-07-10-begley-nye-green-off_N.htm ) On the other hand, if something like the Sanyo HIT Double Bifacial Photovoltaic Module were installed vertically, presumably the panels would need to be cleaned much less frequently. If you don't think this is a serious problem, just ask the Mars rovers... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/10/rovers_ready_roving/

Then there is the problem of hail, baseballs, and golf balls.

Then there is the cost of the mounting, the weight, and the wind load. These problems are solved by Solyndra design.

Solyndra is now installing a lot of commercial systems, so we will see how well they perform, and I hope they start residential systems soon. Or maybe Sanyo HIT Double Bifacial Photovoltaic Module because I already have a white elastomeric fairly flat roof, and this bifacial module also collects light hitting it from the underside http://finchannel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37940&Itemid=8

It seems the Sanyo panels have been in production for ten years now, so presumably serious problems have been fixed.
See the vertical installation at the bottom of page 1.
http://us.sanyo.com/dynamic/LinkListingItems/Files/HIT%20Double%20190%20Data%20Shet-1.pdf

On the other hand, Solyndra design is fairly new and certainly has not been tested as long. Very large commercial customers have been ordering multimillion dollar installations from Solyndra, and I assume their engineers have checked the design and product quality carefully, so that is also reassuring.

Solar panel prices are expected to drop by half within two years, but the panels are typically only about 1/3 the cost of the system; 1/3 is the inverter (electrical regulator) and 1/3 is the installation, but again, this can vary substantially depending on the design.

So, what I think I want on my white elastomeric roof is:
Residential system kit, infinitely expandable
Solyndra design, or Sanyo HIT Double Bifacial Photovoltaic Modules installed vertically
Separate inverter for each panel
Glass that will allow maximum range of solar spectrum through

Buying a car for 2010 to 2025

It seems the majority of people are unwilling to buy hybrid cars because they cost a few thousand dollars more. They seem to be unaware that when they buy a car, they are also "buying" the next 15 years of gasoline the car is going to use. Just like when you buy a refrigerator, you are also "buying" the next 15 years of electricity the refrigerator is going to use. Upfront costs just don't matter that much.

I guess a plug in hybrid is the most practical thing for 2010 to 2025 because we will have spikes in the costs of gasoline during that time, and when the photovoltaics finally reach retail grid parity and then further decline in price, the electricity to charge the car will go down in price.

We live in the past

A good example of just how constructed our sense of reality is.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104183551

Halley's Comet is nearly as far out as it goes

Halley's Comet is nearing the farthest point in its orbit from the Sun (aphelion) and will be at that point in 2023, after which it will soon start falling Sunward again. The next apparition will be in 2061... and we might just be around to see it.

Planet of the dogs

I think the first animal that will be seriously screened and engineered for intelligence will be the dog.

We have been breeding dogs for behavior and intelligence for at least 15,000 years. There have been military breeding programs directed primarily at intelligence from at least the 70s. In a few generations, the dogs understood hundreds of words.

Presumably, this kind of classical breeding program would make extremely rapid progress for a few decades and then plateau (unless the obstacles are primarily in developmental timing of gene expression, in which case progress using classical breeding techniques might go on for many decades).

Now that we can cheaply read DNA, however, this process can be ramped up thousands or millions of fold by screening embryos. They would still be dogs, just the best of them (Gattaca joke).

Ultimately, once even that plateau is reached, the last step will be direct genetic engineering.

And if they can be engineered to speak...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17206-human-speech-gene-gives-mouse-a-baritone-squeak.html
What will happen if we add the genes for speech? Dogs may not have the anatomy for speech, but their comprehension could go through the roof. And then of course some crazy people will try to kill them as abominations... Or they might become more manipulative than they already are...

Then the dogs, too, will be expelled from Eden and will come to know that they are mortal.

Knowing what snakes humans can be, no doubt some will use these dogs and exploit them more cruelly than humans exploit other humans. Which could lead to Planet of the Dogs.

Kepler is working!

In less than three years, we will have an estimate of the number of Earthlike planets in our galaxy!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=kepler-spacecraft-begins-its-search-2009-05-13

The Kepler Space Telescope is looking down the Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm, the spiral arm in which our solar system is located. This is important in a subtle way. Our solar system is located about 25,000 light years from the galactic core. Too close to the core and there would be frequent supernovae that would sterilize planet surfaces. Too far from the core, and the amounts of heavier elements necessary for life fall to very low levels. We therefore would want to know as a priority what is in our own spiral arm (not that we could see much farther with current technology anyway).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Milky_Way_Arms.svg

Here is what that area looks like in the context of the whole Milky Way.
http://my.execpc.com/60/B3/culp/astronomy/Summer/milkyway.html

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

Johannes Kepler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler

While the Texas School System dumbs down textbook language about evolution and tries to sneak creationism into schools, this is the kind of exponential advance that is happening elsewhere... and while Texas grapples with an idea from 1859 because it just cannot get over the idea that humans are mortal, the Chinese are laughing all the way to the bank and into the 21st century.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200904101
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200806135

The next step would be to find planets with oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres like that of the Earth. We would then be fairly certain that such a planet contains a lot of life as we know it.

No problema

"It's going to get worse before it gets worse."
- Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist for Channel Capital Research.com.

Moody's warned two years ago US could lose AAA rating

The US has been rated AAA since 1917. Moody's warned two years ago that it was in danger of losing that rating. That was at the peak of the bubble.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5534bd04-3f27-11de-ae4f-00144feabdc0.html

They tell you what will generate fees for them

I have this theory about market beating advisors and brokers. When they talk about "retirement planning," it means they are planing to retire with your assets.
Dan Solin

I have never heard a financial adviser talk about how to minimize future expenses... I wonder why...

The AAA sky must be falling

Standard & Poors says something other than everything is AAA and okeydokey? What's next? Rating agencies might actually objectively rate things? Useless on the way up and on the way down when the entity being rated can shop around until some agency gives them the wink-wink-nudge-nudge rating that is desired.

I don't know whether to be cynical and think someone is trying to short something, or this helps the banks further unwind CDSs, or something, or whether Jesse is on to something.

Jesse's excellent American Cafe (see bottommost link) expects the US crisis to resemble the recent crises in ARGENTINA and RUSSIA rather than the lost decade in Japan.

ARGENTINA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis
Argentine peso dropped 80 percent.
Inflation per MONTH in Argentina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Monthly_inflation_in_Argentina,_2002.png

RUSSIA
On August 13, 1998, the Russian stock, bond, and currency markets collapsed on fears that the government would devalue the ruble, default on domestic debt, or both. From January to August the stock market lost 75 percent of its value, 39 percent in the month of May alone.
On September 2 the Central Bank of the Russian Federation allowed the ruble to float freely.
By September 21 the ruble had lost 70 percent of its value.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis


Jesse: There will be serious discussion with regard to the annexation of Canada and Mexico into a North American government as the crisis worsens. Mexico should adopt a silver monetary standard and Canada must find its own economic independence again as it did in the Great Depression.

Jesse: Export dependent countries [Japan, China, Germany, who else?] should begin to prepare for a collapse in the US import markets... earlier than 2010.


http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2009/05/us-dollar-rally-will-end-in-currency.html

I wonder why Merrill Lynch doesn't want us to see that

The Merrill Lynch division of Bank of America has some little things they don't want us to see... I wonder what they are.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bigMoney/idUS348388621820090512

Zero Hedge is excellent.
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/

Zero Hedge comment on bank "profits"

As Zero Hedge initially reported nearly two months ago, the main reason the banks' fixed income trading desks generated phenomenal profitability in January and February had nothing to do with actual trading of fixed income and everything to do with AIG's hamheaded (and loss-generating) unwind of its CDS book, which by implication generated one-time, massive profits for counterparties to the trade (read: the banks, which are now doing all they can to issue shares in the open market day in and day out on the coattails of the phenomenal short squeeze that this unwind generated).

Kneejerk skepticism

Many academics, scientists included, even though they have spent their entire lives training how to avoid pitfalls in thought, are often susceptible to kneejerk skepticism. It is not that we do not have to go through extraordinary lengths to verify and reverify ideas, it is that many people rigidly embrace skepticism so much so that they begin saying "this is wrong, and that is wrong" before they even understand the entire idea. What they are supposed to be doing is reading the whole idea and say "uhuh, uhuh" until they get to the punchline. And then they are supposed to evaluate the idea. In other words, one should be able to explain multiple mutually exclusive cohesive arguments, and then explain why one argument is more likely correct than the others. Unfortunately, they often cannot articulate the arguments they hold in such contempt. Treated with the contempt reserved for that which they do not understand... And it gets worse from there. If someone says that biological evolution is not true, ask them to explain what evolution says, or even how natural selection works. You will get silence. I have. Many woes stem from this bizarre behavior as evidenced by many unnecessary messes in many places. Reality does not deform to fit delusions.

New DVD players produce very high quality pictures from conventional DVDs

Some people were very interested in the now defunct Toshiba's HD DVD or in Blu-Ray. The pictures they produce on a high definition TV are stunning. The drawbacks were that you had to buy a new expensive player and new high definition DVDs that are much more expensive than regular DVDs.

Toshiba lost the battle for its HD DVD format, but perhaps it won the war: Toshiba released a new type of DVD player that is cheap, say 100 to 200 dollars, and will play regular DVDs at much higher picture quality... picture quality approaching that of Blu-Ray.

It seems your TV may need to have an HDMI jack to get the best picture, so be sure the player is compatible with your TV before buying.

HMDI jack
http://images.google.com/images?q=hdmi%20jack&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

Review of some players. It seems this feature is referred to in various ways, such as upscaler, and enhanced picture.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article6249799.ece

The State of the US Fourth Estate

If you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That’s when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq)...

Colbert’s routine did not kill. The Washington Post reported that it “fell flat.” The Times initially did not even mention it. But to the Beltway’s bafflement, Colbert’s riff went viral overnight, ultimately to have a marathon run as the most popular video on iTunes. The cultural disconnect between the journalism establishment and the public it aspires to serve could not have been more vividly dramatized.

Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10rich.html?_r=1&hp

At the end, "Killer" seemed to say "Fuck You" to Colbert... which no doubt pleased him no end. Cyrano himself could not have done better and bows with a sweep of his panache!

A lot of people are haunted by the thought that they might be frauds... because they are.

Candy corn in space

Pay now or pay double later

Areas with a population of 500,000 or more in 2007 with highest percentage of roads in poor condition:
Los Angeles: 64 percent
San Jose, Calif.: 61 percent
San Francisco-Oakland: 61 percent
Honolulu: 61 percent
Concord, Calif.: 54 percent

Source: "Rough Roads Ahead: Fix Them Now or Pay for It Later"
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials

We need a basic set of universal ideographs and a basic international sign language

A universal set of ideographs, for example, selected from standard Chinese characters or modified characters for clear meaning, would allow a single set of labels, a single line of subtitles in a movie, a single set of instructions, to be read by anyone on the planet. As China continues to increase in economic power, I expect something like this will happen automatically.

We also need a universal sign language. Since computers now have video telephone systems as more or less standard features, a universal sign language would allow anyone to sign to anyone else for basic communication over the Internet.

On the other hand, a universal translator would make these less useful.

The sensation of reading Chinese and Japanese characters

It is difficult for us, having learned a language written alphabetically, to imagine what it is like to read in Chinese and Japanese.

The best approximation I can think of for a native English speaker who does not know characters is to imagine having to do math in words.

in English: two divided by three multiplied by sixty equals forty.
in characters: 2/3 X 60 = 40


The characters have certain advantages

They are ideographs in many situations, so the meaning may be guessable even if you have never seen a term before. For example, 糖尿病 is "sugar(y) urine disease", which is one of the ways diabetes was diagnosed centuries ago when it was noted that ants were attracted to the urine of sufferers.

They are compact. In general, for translated text, the length in characters is half the length of the English.
渋谷
Shibuya (a place in Tokyo)
So you move your eyes about half the distance to take in the same idea. When speed reading, eye coordination usually becomes really difficult above 600 words per minute, so effectively, if one could read comfortably at 500 words per minute, reading at that linear speed would be comparable to reading comfortably at 1,000 words per minute in English.

They are perfect for skimming in Japanese. Because characters usually have more strokes than phonetic elements in Japanese, the characters stand out, almost as if they have been bolded.

They do not change form. Although there are characters with multiple forms, especially for surnames, usually, the form of a character is stable, so you learn it once and that is it. Try that with am/is/are, water/aqua/hydro, etc., in English. The pronunciations may be irregular in either language, but usually the character gives at least a hint of the meaning. It does not matter how you read them aloud, their basic meanings stay the same.

If you can read Japanese, you can guess at basic meanings in Chinese, and vice versa. Centuries ago, some European philosophers considered trying to develop a basic set of universal characters so that one written form could convey one basic meaning and be read aloud in whatever way the reader would like.
万能 翻訳 機
omnipotent translation device = universal translator, English
ban nou hon yaku ki, Japanese
universale traduttore, Italian
universaloversattare, Swedish

The characters have disadvantages

They are learning frontloaded. The characters take substantial time to learn. The basic set is approximately 2,000, and to be fully literate, more like 5,000. However, the basic set works out to learning about one per day in school, so this really is not so onerous, and thereafter, although there will be many idiosyncratic readings to learn, the meaning is usually guessable. On the other hand, English is learning backloaded (it does not take long to learn the letters, but it takes the rest of your life to learn spellings, pronunciations, and meanings), you will be looking up words until you die wondering what they mean and how they are pronounced. (What is surfeit? How is it pronounced? Annoying.)

The characters, as they are often written in compounds, are missing important information usually conveyed in English by -ed, -ing, etc., singularity and plurality, and other concepts. In other words, it might say "dissolve" in Japanese, but we may not know whether this means "dissolves", "was dissolved by", "will dissolve", etc., without reading the entire context. This could be overcome merely by being explicit.

A set of characters would also require a phonetic set of symbols to write what the characters do not cover.


All in all, since in Japanese the meanings of most words, including those of newly encountered words, are usually guessable, and since reading speed can be about double, as explained above, the total effort in learning to read Japanese and actually reading Japanese over a lifetime is, I think, counterintuitively, less than learning to read English. As when buying a car, what we really want to know is how much it costs to buy the car, how much the financing will be, how much the insurance will be, how much the maintenance will be, and how much the gas will be, not just the upfront price of the car.

The value in knowing that which is wrong

Many people become instantly exasperated with that which is wrong.

But there is enormous value in know what is wrong and understanding why it is wrong.

There is enormous value in knowing what is likely not to work because that allows you to focus on that which is likely to work.

There is enormous value in understanding why something thought to be true is in fact wrong.

As they used to say in biochemistry classes 30 years ago: Half of what we are teaching you is wrong. The problem is, we don't know which half.

Simple examples of this are eliminations like in an SAT math question.

11 divided by 6 equals approximately
A. 8.0
B. 10.0
C. 2.1
D. 1.8
E. 0.9

A and B are clearly too large; E is clearly too small.
That leaves C and D.
Since 11/6 cannot be more than 2 since 12/6 would be 2, C is also eliminated, leaving D, without having to perform any calculation.

So, being able to determine what are likely to be blind alleys can be tremendously useful.

It is also crucial to determine why people make errors. See "choice blindness" and "change blindness" below. There is also the I-don't-like-it-therefore-it-is-a-lie problem.

In many cases, it is as important to understand what is wrong and why it is wrong as it is to understand what is correct and why it is correct. The former is, however, woefully neglected. Since researchers often do not publish negative results, other researchers waste huge amounts of time redoing experiments and going down the same blind alleys over and over again.

Novel wave energy machine

This is unlike any wave energy machine I have seen.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17090-sea-snake-generates-electricity-with-every-wave.html

Norway Oil Exports to Drop 30% over Next Decade

Another oil exporter forecasts drop. Another 600,000 fewer barrels on the world market.

http://www.ogj.com/display_article/361093/7/ONART/none/DriPr/1/BMI:-Norway%27s-oil-production-to-drop-by-288/

The Great Repricings

Let me first talk about economic repricing. Many bubbles have burst in the current crisis starting with sub-prime properties in the US. All over the world, asset prices are plummeting. In the last one year, tens of trillions of dollars have been wiped out...

The repricing of human beings will be even more traumatic. With globalisation, we have in effect one marketplace for human labour in the world. Directly or indirectly, the wages and salaries of Americans, Europeans and Japanese are being held down by billions of Asians and Africans prepared to work for much less. China and India alone are graduating more scientists and engineers every year than all the developed countries combined. Now, while it is true that trade is a positive sum game, the benefits of trade are never equally distributed. We can therefore expect protectionist pressures to grow in many countries.

Governments will try to protect jobs, often at long-term cost to their economies. It is wrong to think that we can force our way out of a recession. Beyond a point, the stress will be taken on [by] exchange rates. If governments try to prevent the repricing of assets and human beings, international markets will force the adjustment on us. A country that is over-leveraged, living beyond its means, will itself be repriced through its currency. Its currency will be devalued, forcing lower living standards on all its citizens...

When this crisis is finally over, which may take some years, out of it will emerge a multipolar world with clearer contours. Although the US will remain the pre-eminent pole for a long time to come, it will no longer be the hyperpower, and power will have to be shared. The Western-dominated developed world will have to share significant power with China, India, Russia, Brazil and other countries. Thus, accompanying the economic repricing will be political repricing.

George Yeo
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Singapore

With video

http://beyondsg.typepad.com/beyondsg/2009/03/speech-by-minister-for-foreign-affairs-george-yeo-at-the-distinguished-lecture-at-the-university-of-cambridge-on-27-march-200.html

No-stress test

It's time to set aside the myth of the mega-bank as victim. These banks aren't "too big to fail," but simply "too politically connected to fail.
Bill Buzenberg

Maybe in some instances influenza can disable the immune system, allowing opportunistic infection

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/foas-slw050409.php

Updated saying

Lies, damn lies, and statistics... and government statistics.

Shadow Schools Minister Says Important Things, but the Fundamental Problem Remains

The UK Shadow Schools Minister says something important:
We compare the school system to the way it was in the past to highlight improvement; we should instead be comparing the school system to the school systems in other countries as they are now and as they will be because all workers will be progressively able to compete worldwide. (He forgot to mention that the gap between what humans can do and what computers cannot do is narrowing fast and will vanish in a few years. Maybe he does not know. See below.)

But a bigger problem is one they have been literally screaming about in Parliament for a century: UK education is simply not keeping up, especially in technical fields, with that in other countries.

And their biggest problem is this: The UK treats all study, even academic studies, as trades. Students pick a field and then narrowly study that field to the exclusion of all else. There are Japanese studies majors who know nothing about Korea and China, which is, frankly, bizarre. Their science education is even worse.

All students should be spending half their time casting as wide a net as possible, and the other half in their specialty. Knowing the whole wide world and then one field deeply is the last thing that computers will learn to do.

This Tory minister wants to model the schools on... Sweden??? Hilarious.
http://video.economist.com/linking/index.jsp?skin=oneclip&ehv=http://audiovideo.economist.com/&fr_story=bc08a80815902289ae9479c51c6e5083993ee9d6&rf=ev&hl=true

Oh, wait, so do the Republicans!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/jon-stewart-investigates_n_197628.html

I thought they hate socialists. Reagan is rolling in his grave, and Thatcher soon will be.

Fools, the Wise, and Confabulation

Fools look for reasons they are right; the wise for reasons they are wrong.

Perhaps the problem is confabulation... the automatic constructing of plausible stories by the majority of people, even when the stories make no sense and are demonstrably false.

Some people pick a conclusion, almost inevitably the conclusion that they like, and they then confabulate an enormous convoluted tapestry with more dimensions than string theory about why the conclusion is right. Some of them make huge amounts of money on the radio selling essentially highly entertaining confabulation that has nothing to do with this universe. Confabutainment.

This may be the most serious problem humans face because it hinders the solving of all the other serious problems.

... in an early study we showed our volunteers pairs of pictures of faces and asked them to choose the most attractive. In some trials, immediately after they made their choice, we asked people to explain the reasons behind their choices.

Unknown to them, we sometimes used a double-card magic trick to covertly exchange one face for the other so they ended up with the face they did not choose. Common sense dictates that all of us would notice such a big change in the outcome of a choice. But the result showed that in 75 per cent of the trials our participants were blind to the mismatch, even offering "reasons" for their "choice".

...
As anyone who has ever been in a verbal disagreement can attest, people tend to give elaborate justifications for their decisions, which we have every reason to believe are nothing more than rationalisations after the event. To prove such people wrong, though, or even provide enough evidence to change their mind, is an entirely different matter...

Watch the video.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227046.400-choice-blindness-you-dont-know-what-you-want.html?full=true

The above is "choice blindness" with confabulation. "Change blindness" is also fascinating.
See the video clips where a scene flips and one element changes. It is almost impossible to see at first, and you wind up having to inspect each part of the picture separately.
http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~rensink/flicker/index.html

And what must be the most amazing clip ever, a person does not notice that he was talking to two completely different people, in completely different clothing, after an interruption of just a few seconds.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/12.php

Another sign that peak oil is here

Pemex reported a net loss of 2 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter due to lower oil prices and lower export volume.

Compared with the first quarter of 2008, Pemex produced 8 percent less crude oil during the first quarter of 2009 due to crashing production at Mexico's former main field Cantarell.

Cantarell output

Peak quarter, 2005: 2.1 million barrels per day

First quarter, 2008: 1.2 million barrels per day

First quarter, 2009: 0.8 million barrels per day

Here comes chaos. Gasoline at 5 dollars a gallon or more, oil at 200 dollars a barrel or more... followed by crashing as the economy enters yet another recession... a long undulating plateau that may not look too bad as a graph, but is a rollercoaster when you are actually riding the line... Unless conservation is ramped way up and alternative energy is ramped way up, the Limits of Growth and the Malthusian Nightmare will be seen to have been merely postponed. If the US used oil in proportion to its population, it would have to cut oil use by 70 percent to about 5 million barrels per day, which is the amount it used in 1950. Economic output is often in lockstep with energy use. In 1950, US GDP was about 1/5 what it was in 2009. That won't even pay for the cars. We had better hope and pray that accelerating returns in technology and innovation come soon and are spectacular.

Star Trek Fans Very Disappointed by New Star Trek Movie

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/04/trekkies-hate-new-star-tr_n_196241.html

The Answer to Another Question of the Ages

How we descended from sponge larvae.

After having considered for 30 years the steps in the evolution of multicellularity and bilateral symmetry, and never having felt that I more than vaguely understood the outline, this finally smells right. It is so simple once you see the explanation. (See Reading Maya below.)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227061.300-sponge-larvae-your-unlikely-ancestors.html?full=true

In particular, see these diagrams.

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/mg20227061300-sponge-larvae-your-unlikely-ancestors

Reading Maya

One of the best Nova episodes of all. Watch online.

The Maya writing system may seem very strange to users of English and other alphabetic systems, but it is actually not so different from the Chinese and Korean writing systems, and in particular, the Japanese writing system.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mayacode/

And a clue to the collapse of Mayan civilization.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227104.400-temple-timbers-trace-collapse-of-mayan-culture.html

Happy Birthday

Pete Seeger turns 90 and is still singing!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103735658

Wolfram Alpha

The biggest internet revolution in a generation.

The Wolfram Alpha search engine will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/an-invention-that-could-change-the-internet-for-ever-1678109.html

Happiness

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

Bertrand Russell

It was supposed to be a Shangri-La in the desert

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

That T-shirt

The T-shirt that says:
Live long enough to be a burden to your children
was supposed to be a joke.

It is suddenly not so funny.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/10/pension-time-bomb-explodes.html

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-on-1-trillion-state-pension-crisis.html


I know many people in the public sector who think their defined-benefit plans are "iron-clad" and that their benefits will never be cut and that they can retire at the age of 60.
They are in for a rude awakening. I can guarantee you that as the pension pandemic continues to wreak havoc on public finances, some very hard choices will be taken, including cutting pension benefits and raising the retirement age. This is why I think people need to start taking matters in their own hands and at the very least educate themselves about their investment choices.
Finally, a telling sign that global pension tension has reached a boiling point. According to Emily Brandon of U.S. News & World Report, a survey of Americans want pensions back as they are planning to retire:

Americans with shrunken nest eggs are feeling nostalgic for pensions. About half of those without a pension (55 percent), say the old-fashioned retirement plan would ease their money worries, according to a National Institute on Retirement Security survey. However, not all workers with pensions are sleeping soundly. Only about 65 percent of Americans with a pension are confident that the payout will be there at retirement.

http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2009/05/global-pension-tension.html

The crucial innovation that made us what we are

What is it about the genus Homo that over the last two million years led to our our extraordinary brains? The other primates, while brainy, do not have ones nearly as large as those in our lineage. And the brains of other mammals are much smaller still.

One clue: our large brains require huge amounts of energy and extremely high quality nutrients.

We are the only ones who manually process our food, and in particular cook our food.

It seems it is extremely difficult to obtain sufficient calories and nutrients by eating only raw foods (hence the raw food diets).

Cooking food greatly increases the availability of calories and nutrients as the food passes through the gut. In addition, cooking softens food, which substantially reduces the energy necessary to digest the food.

We have much larger brains than other mammals because we have had vastly superior nutrition for millions of years.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13139619

http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=10a43cfa92701f6d15f128b44d164cc6d3d3679b&rf=bm

The best game show of all time

Betty White, Greg Morris, Martin Milner, Carol Burnett, Elizabeth Montgomery, Peter Lawford, George Peppard, and of course Alan Ludden and Burt Convey...
Martha Poikert, Louis Retrum...

Thank you for being a friend... and for making me laugh

What is intelligence?

Jeff Hawkins defines intelligence as "the ability to learn and predict".

Why is Enterprise being constructed in a field in Iowa?

Because it is the true Ship of Dreams, being constructed in the Field of Dreams ("If you build it, he will come" Field of Dreams), on the planet that is to become the paradise of the Federation, where there is no poverty and there is no war.

80 million year old dinosaur fossil yields intact biomolecules!

This is just unbelievable.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood-extracted-from-ancient-bone.html