Category Archives: science

music, people, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Hmmm … doesn’t seem to be much happening in general this week, and that includes fodder for “Quotes of the Week”, so here’s only a short selection entitled “The Way Things Are” …

Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgements can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.
[Richard Feynman quoted in Lawrence M Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science]

The Beatles music is really some of the best music we’ve had in the last century. Children continue to rediscover the music, generation after generation. It’s like saying why is Gershwin timeless? Their music is part of history, it will last forever.
[Sir George Martin, the Beatles record producer]

There are two descriptions of reality: either reality is the bulk of spacetime surrounded by the boundary, or reality is the area of the boundary. So which description is real? There is no way to answer that. We can either think of an object as an object in the bulk space or think of it as a complicated, scrambled collection of information on the boundary that surrounds it. Not both. One or the other.
[Leonard Susskind; Scientific American; July 2011]

beliefs, science

Speeding Lemons

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I came across a very curious thing yesterday. The way in which we associate qualities with things and thus develop intuitive beliefs.

As an example, look at these two shapes.

If I tell you one is called Bouba and the other Kiki, you can probably intuitively know which is which. Yes, that’s right, apparently the vast majority of people will agree that Kiki is the star-like one and Bouba the more blobby one. No-one can tell you why they think this, though, beyond statements like “Bouba goes more appropriately with that shape”.

Nor can anthropologists yet agree why this is so. Although it seems it is something to do with belief systems, and may have some relationship to synaesthesia — that peculiar trait where people associate colours with words or smells with sounds: Monday is always red; the note C# always smells of rubber.

Let’s try another one.

Is a lemon fast or slow?

It’s a curious, almost nonsensical, question. But think about it for a minute … and most people will intuitively conclude that lemons are fast.

And for me (I have no other data on this) it seems possible to intuitively rank citrus fruit by speed: grapefruit are faster than oranges but slower than lemons, while limes are faster than lemons.

WTF?!

Find out more about such intuitive beliefs and synaesthesia.

current affairs, medical, natural history, science

Foxy Magnetism

As one of those filial duties I pay for my mother’s subscription to BBC Wildlife magazine, and once she’s read it my mother passes the copies to me. So it was that last evening I was reading the May 2011 issue and came across this amazing report of foxes using the earth’s magnetic field. I hope I might be forgiven for reproducing the short news item here as it doesn’t otherwise appear to be online.

Magnetic foxes

Scientists reveal the otherworldly talents of red foxes.

The hunting skills of the red fox Vulpes vulpes are out of this world — literally. According to new work, this hunter taps into the cosmos to pinpoint prey.

The fox feeds mostly on small mammals such as mice and voles, and has a clever way of going about it. It often performs what is called mousing — leaping high into the air in an arc and landing on unsuspecting prey from above. Remarkably, it can pull this off in 1m-high grass (or, in winter, snow of that depth). It’s assumed that, under these conditions, the fox relies solely on hearing to locate its quarry.

But when a team led by Hynek Burda, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, scrutinised the hunting habits of wild foxes at various locations in the Czech Republic, they noted a peculiar trend: hunters tended to catch dinner most often when they were facing north. This was especially true if their prey was snuggled under vegetation or snow – the foxes then had a 75 per cent hit rate with north-facing strikes. Attacks in all other directions were mostly futile.

What’s so special about looking north? The researchers believe that the foxes use the Earth’s magnetic field to home in on prey.

Some other mammals, and also birds, are known to sense magnetic north — and some are thought to actually see it, when looking northward, as a bright (or dark) patch in their field of vision — a little like a sunspot in a camera lens — due to special receptors in their eyes. If foxes have this ability, they could use its fixed position to gauge their distance to prey.

Think of it as a circle of light from a headlamp aimed, say, 1m in front of your feet. No matter where you go, the circle is always 1m ahead. Thus, a northward-facing fox that has located prey with its hearing needs only to creep forward until that location is within the circle of light. At that point, it knows it’s exactly 1m away. All that’s left to do is pounce.

It’s the first evidence of an animal using the Earth’s magnetic field as a hunting tool.

Animal Magnetism
» This is the first case of an animal using the Earth’s magnetic field to judge distance rather than direction.
» Except for jump direction, no other factor — from an animal’s age/sex to the season, wind direction or time of day — affected the observed pattern.
» Animals that sense magnetic north probably also sense magnetic south to a degree. Indeed, 60 per cent of fruitful attacks that were not northward faced due south. Overall, 90 per cent were along the north-south axis.
» Cattle and deer tend to line up along the north-south axis – except near high-voltage power lines that disrupt the field.
» When foxes could see their prey they had success in all directions.

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, medical, personal, science, thoughts

Works of the Devil

Katyboo recently listed a number of things she considers the works of the Devil. And naturally this got me thinking, the way such things do. So here are a few more things which the Devil has sent as a pestilence upon us.

  • Top of the list has to be RELIGION. Now look all you religious people, you’re all Devil worshippers! If you didn’t believe in the Devil you wouldn’t need God to save you from him.
  • And then comes politics. Need I say more when one looks at workers of Devil like Tony B Liar and Gordon Brown.
  • Fast food: especially McDonalds and KFC (or as it’s know in this house Kentucky Fried Food Poisoning). As an adjunct we must include ready meals, and indeed all False Food.
  • Then there is a collection of actual food stuffs, which includes Egg Custard (yeuch!) and Jellied Eels (double yeuch!) and tinned sweetcorn. I love eel, but jellied, no, disgusting – salty and slimy.
  • And a few beverages, especially Pernod and Absinthe which are just vile. They even look like the works of the Devil as well as tasting disgusting.

What else should one add?

  • Hermetically sealed clam-shell packaging. Well you could make that all plastic packaging.
  • Night clothes, especially pyjamas. Haven’t worn anything in bed since I was a student apart from the odd occasions I’ve been in hospital. It’s just so uncomfortable.
  • Braces (suspenders to you Americans). Something else that’s vilely uncomfortable and looks stupid – if you need braces your trousers don’t fit properly.
  • And while we’re on clothes, there’s fashion. Pretentious and a waste of time and money.
  • Girls wearing far too much make-up (so that’s most of them!). Why do they need to look as if they’ve strayed a 2mm thick skin of plastic on their faces?
  • Facial pubic beards and pudenda (on both sexes) without them.
  • Ballroom Dancing. I refused to have anything to do with it as a youngster, despite my parents’ prediction I would be a social outcast. So I’m a social outcast: it’s probably for the best!
  • Maggots. Anything that smells nasty and wriggles. No more to say really!
  • Cinema and films. I just ask “Why?”. What is the point?
  • And finally there are a few people including Lord Winston (I remain convinced that IVF is the Devil’s work), Richard Dawkins (who is just as bigoted as the believers he objects to) plus most of the twats that fill our TV screens.

Oh, you’d better add daytime TV too!

Interesting. Reading back over that list it is very much a reflection of our theory about False Life. Worrying!

Image from 123RF Stock Photos.

beliefs, food+drink, people, quotes, science, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Here’s this week’s selection of words that have caught my eye in the last week …

We’ve replaced the time we used to spend cooking food with watching people cook food on TV.
[Fiona Yeudall quoted in “Foodies: Are food crazies getting their just desserts?”, The Globe and Mail, 19 March 2011]


“No data yet,” he answered. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.”
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes]

It is important to reflect on the kindness of others. Every aspect of our present well-being is due to others’ hard work. The buildings we live and work in, the roads we travel, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat, are all provided by others. None of them would exist but for the kindness of so many people unknown to us.
[Dalai Lama]

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes]

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]

I grew convinc’d that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.
[Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography]

If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.
[Bob Basso]

Marshall’s corollary to the last: If it isn’t fun, don’t do it.

freedom of speech, medical, science, sexuality

Male Circumcision

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I’ve blogged about the circumcision of male babies as being child abuse and mutilation before (see here).

There’s a useful article, supporting my point of view, on CNN from a day or so ago. It suggests that boy babies should not be circumcised but that the option be given to teenagers when the subject can give informed consent.

The comments I’ve read support the view that boy babies should not be circumcised; if parents/medics are not worried about hygiene than it is better to teach boys to wash their members properly.

As one might expect there is, of course, debate about how a teenage boy can make an informed decision until he has some significant sexual experience. And indeed I would agree with the view that you can’t make a proper decision without that sexual experience.

I would actually go further. How about we make circumcision (male and female) illegal until such time as the person can legally give informed consent – and in my book there would be no exceptions regardless of religious (or any other) considerations barring genuinely and immediate life-threatening medical conditions.

science

Bad Science Rising

Some while ago I read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. As his website says:

Ben is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. He has written the weekly “Bad Science” column in the Guardian since 2003.

“Bad Science“, the Guardian column and blog, seeks to expose the misrepresentation of scientific and medical reporting in the media.

Bad Science, the book, looks in greater depth at the ways in which the aforementioned journalists, pharmaceutical companies, PR people, quacks and, yes, even government reports distort, misrepresent and lie about the science behind just about everything in order to have us believe what they want us to believe.

In reading the book I culled a few good quotes (page references to the 2008 paperback edition) for you …

——

As the perfect example, there are huge numbers of creams (and other beauty treatments) claiming to deliver oxygen directly to your skin. Many of the creams contain peroxide, which, if you really want to persuade yourself of its efficacy, has a chemical formula of H2O2, and could fancifully be conceived of as water ‘with some extra oxygen’, although chemical formulae don’t really work that way – after all, a pile of rust is an iron bridge ‘with some extra oxygen’, and you wouldn’t imagine it would oxygenate your skin. [Page 25]

——

Like most things in the story the natural sciences can tell about the world, it’s all so beautiful, so gracefully simple, yet so rewardingly complex, so neatly connected – not to mention true – that I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would ever want to believe some New Age ‘alternative’ nonsense instead. [Page 117]

——

We should also remember that bizarre English ritual whereby GCSE results get better every year, yet anyone who suggests that the exams are getting easier is criticised for undermining the achievement of the successful candidates. In fact, taking the long view, this easing is obvious: there are forty-year-old O-level papers which are harder than the current A-level syllabus; and there are present-day university finals papers in maths that are easier than old A-level papers. [Page 140]

——

SSRI antidepressant drugs cause sexual side-effects fairly commonly, including anorgasmia. We should be clear (and I’m trying to phrase this as neutrally as possible): I really enjoy the sensation of orgasm. It’s important to me, and everything I experience in the world tells me that this sensation is important to other people too […] There are evolutionary psychologists who would try to persuade you that the entirety of human culture and language is driven, in large part, by the pursuit of the sensation of orgasm. Losing it seems like an important side-effect to ask about.

And yet, various studies have shown that the reported prevalence of anorgasmia in patients taking SSRI drugs varies between 2 per cent and 73 per cent, depending primarily on how you ask: a casual, open-ended question about side-effects, for example, or a careful and detailed enquiry. One 3,000-subject review on SSRIs simply did not list any sexual side-effects on its twenty-three-item side-effect table. Twenty-three other things were more important, according to the researchers, than losing the sensation of orgasm. I have read them. They are not. [Pages 190-191]

——

Research conducted at Cardiff University in 2007 showed that 80 per cent of all broadsheet news stories were ‘wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry’. [Page 211]

——

Science coverage now tends to come from the world of medicine, and the stories are of what will kill you, or save you. Perhaps it is narcissism, or fear, but the science of health is important to people, and at the very time when we need it the most, our ability to think around the issue is being energetically distorted by the media, corporate lobbies and, frankly, cranks.

Without anybody noticing, bullshit has become an extremely important public health issue, and for reasons that go far beyond the obvious hysteria around immediate harms: the odd measles tragedy, or a homoeopath’s unnecessary malaria case. Doctors today are keen – as it said in our medical school notes – to work ‘collaboratively with the patient towards an optimum health outcome’. They discuss evidence with their patients, so that they can make their own decisions about treatments.

[…] working in the NHS you meet patients from every conceivable walk of life, in huge numbers, discussing some of the most important issues in their lives. This has consistently taught me one thing: people aren’t stupid. Anybody can understand anything, as long as it is clearly explained. [Pages 316-7]

——

The book certainly makes you think about the truth of just about everything we’re told. It is definitely recommended reading, it isn’t hard even for non-scientific technophobes and is most definitely clearly explained.

amusements, beliefs, music, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A better selection of quotes this week, which reflects a more varied weeks reading.

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
[Steve Eley]

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
[Psychologist BF Skinner]

We all are born mad. Some remain so.
[Samuel Beckett]

Physicists. Just because you’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about doesn’t mean God exists.
[]

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen Roberts]

Children are naïve – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
[Frank Zappa]

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
[Frank Zappa; Statement to the Senate Hearing on “Porn Rock”; 1985]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
[Isaac Newton]

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
[Frank Zappa]

Just as long as that giraffe is made of choux pastry and dipped in chocolate! Might be best if it doesn’t mate with a pink unicorn too. 🙂