I just heard a commercial featuring a choir singing, “VW Passat EcoFuel only emits 20 grams of CO2 per kilometer… 20 grams per kilometer”, and wanted to comment!
I think the times have changed. 
Or put (perhaps) more succinctly by Joe P. Ickuptruck, “What kinda s**t are they letting on the radio nowadays??”
Regardless of mine or anyone’s opinion on biogas, this was on Swedish radio, just now. I love it!
Yes, there seems to be a trend towards this, at least when religion or other “either-or” malignancies mutate, like two-party political systems, or even opposite schools of thought in science, like dynamic vs static Universe, or bird Dinosaurs vs lizard Dinosaurs once upon a time. (I don’t include evolution in the former lot, since I haven’t (yet) read a paper by a scientist that proposes an alternative.) When media ™ on a whim and a rating decides it’s hot stuff, beware. They’ll heat it up.
This post by Matthew Nisbet mentions main points of the actual study (which I am too cheap to buy online) and brings up the question, among others, of what will make people engage in discussion and discusses the need of a scientific consensus.
I wrote this to add something to my comment #8 on that article (which is inserted below): The fourth option I see as a way forward is to instead of forcing consensus, to dispense with consensus. Seeing as religions have failed at this (even with a limited set of unproven sources without sources), I think science advances only by fierce NON-consensus of individuals presenting neutral and testable measurements, fact, or conjecture with rationale. To sever that tree of research open to anyone will yield the same consequences as imposing needless legislation on free trade; those who know the rules and use them will quash the competition and make the consumers of same suffer.
Religious believers will not all be swayed by a board of truth of not quite final theories of everything; some will be engaged by heated debate of scientific theories. We do see that today. Probably not enough to stop the habit of going to church or slitting the throats of conscious lambs, perhaps enough to watch a TV program. For myself, I’d rather see a science vs science fight than a science vs religion fight, and so, I think, would a ninth grader not brought up in a too fiercely religious home.
Comment #8 follows. It’s a suggestion of alternatives to decrease the polarization of debate. (Quoting myself, huh? I’d never think I’d sink that low. But anyway.)
I have a hard time addressing the behaviour of groups of individuals, let alone trends among groups of individuals, and further less groups of individuals in opposite camps, and least of all media coverage of the different camps.
Also, there is no will left in me to find middle ground or go down the track Taylor is (probably accurately) describing.
What is left when no more can be left out? To pick a fight, one you believe in. If media is considered the way to reach out to, um, those more numerous than the people who look shit up (note how I avoided the word “masses”!), the positive action is to empower the media reaching out to them for “your camp”.
The other option I see is an opening up of dialog of all camps, which I only see the good guys without agendas doing, and which can be hard to fit inside the programming time of media channels and attention span of (passive) viewers.
A third is establishing a working board of scrutiny of media, without censorship. Right now it’s mostly censorship without scrutiny. If we imagine a society where this would actually happen, that would relieve that society of some of the fascination for entertainment, misrepresentation of fact, and shift of focus purveyors of woo rely on.
No, this site won’t go in my blog roll, since I’m not into ornitology. I know a bit about what inhabits the nearest woods, since I was born in this town and walk my dog and cat a couple times every day. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find this site well-made.
Instantly inviting, it has a modern design (webdev by trade, sorry) with media and a clear layout that pretty much makes it impossible for anyone not to stop and maybe click on something, like the luxuriously sized inserted media or next article buttons. Even if visitors are young, old, or know nothing about birds and don’t wanna know.
It’s (presumably) backed by good funding, but despite the site not validating (again, habit), it’s more instantly appealing than thousands of sites coming out of larger purses. The devs might not have been paid for the time to cross the T’s, but the overall impression is nothing short of perfect. It made me stop and write this, and that about sums it up, I think.
I had a long chat with a student at a Uni the other day, soon to graduate, as I gathered. We’d chatted before, but as is the case with IRC, mostly informal or very specific topics.
I tried to convince him of the existence of truly great software, in the sense that, depending on who sees the greatness of it and who just miss it, some software stands the test of time indefinitely because it cannot be improved or is enough in itself, or is great despite the test of time or how its environment has changed (think processor speed, texture resolution, and pixelshaders), because of some quantity that I tried to confer with him about, and try to find.
Without letting me finish a train of thought, he contradicted each piecemeal statement instantly, and countered each proposition that “this software is great in itself regardless of not topping the best-seller list” or such things as “why don’t use GIMP+Photoshop binds instead of Photoshop?” by explaining how software is made modular these days, with team members contributing their little part. Gee, thanks for the enlightenment.
Contradicting is fine, countering is fine. Nothing is better than a really fierce argument in order to advance ideas and reach conclusions. At least to me. I want people to say that I’m wrong, so that I can find the source of his or my mistake.
I gave him a dozen approaches to the central idea, that it’s not about who made it, but about the result. For an artist, the lines on the paper, the concept and the performance. For a musician, the sound waves, the emotions they evoke, and the idea presented through optional lyrics. For a programmer, the bytes of the complete program, the experience using it, the pixels on the screen. For all those, the resulting whole.
In a certain time period or environment, some people will worship the work of someone. When that environment ceases to exist, the works that approached the truth in some fashion are rediscovered, and everyone finds out what was the spirit of the times and what was timeless. There are numerous examples in the music scene of the nineties, when the sheer starvation for something that was at least decent elevated stars that are now considered, rightly, insignificant in every respect.
By denying entrance to any of my ideas, he never did understand this concept. I could not accept this lock-out, and could not understand how he could deny the concept just by prematurely objecting to, basically each sentence I said because I hadn’t proven logically each sentence before speaking it.
How sick is that? And how unproductive to any kind of intellectual progress, or any useful result of communicating at all? Reduction and logical proof can follow, but only if both parties will “hear all evil”, as made popular by the three monkeys statue.
Rather than conclude that all communication is pointless, I concluded that informal communication is pointless with some, and the best thing there is to get results, with some. Also, that being close friends to start with helps informal communication, since it prevents any misunderstandings. But talking about the same topic for 6-odd hours should at least in theory eliminate any chance of misinterpretation with anyone.
Email is time better spent. It’s an awesome “invention”, actually.
From this experience, a fear arises. Suddenly I see many scholars dissecting individual statements, be they from a superlative intellect or a creationist, and, like the troll that too often went potty on your favorite forum, failing and inanely refusing to see any multiple-paragraph message that is there and makes sense, but hacking it up into convenient chunks of nomatter for easy disposition without counterpoint.
I say, skip that shit. And try to get the whole message, or failing that, to find a fault of fact. This has taught me that I will.
Early, it came to me that intellectual ideas can’t be “transmitted” at all, but only created to an image of some likeness in the mind of the receiver; for some, an exact likeness. If the receiver is disallowing a picture to form, nothing will be transmitted.
Discovered scienceblogs.com today, as is convention on the internet, by chance. Which in my case is the sometimes random, oftentimes logical following of (unidirectional, pew pew Ted Nelson!) links.
But who could resist a Ring of Fire cover by a glaciologist, anyway??
Science is always fascinating (if you filter out the data, vital to some of course, compiled by pretentious but unambitious non-writers) and oftentimes a step closer to truth.
For those not deep into a certain field (few scientists do them all; what human would cope, at least at the extreme level of detail scientists usually apply?), it can be daunting.
I read around and found surprisingly many articles to follow easily and a tight community with their mind in the right place. Commenting about the danger of eejots taking over the world and linking to some juicy prime examples. Taking over, as in being voted into office by eejotees (probably through lack of choice?), not in the homicidal loner arms collector sense.
I would never use the ‘ee word’… more than twice. Of course there are a lot of uneducated people in the world, and many, many intelligent, logical, reasonable people outside those who have science as profession. I just feel a bit sad at how important decisions are made, sometimes without a proper basis, scientific or not. If there were a larger percentage of politicians with a science degree, I’m sure the world would be better no end from it. This will be my hope until the day I die, i.e. before people will suffer the use of public transportation. Sigh
But I digress.
As a random (again, not quite) example of the articles on scienceblogs.com, this is a nice, simple and concise article, entitled: “What wiped out the dinosaurs?”
A good starting point for a follow-up could be to go into detail about the layer of ash of “a few hundred thousand years” and “mass extinction all at once”, as Ethan writes. What were the mechanics of this sudden yet (I know, sudden in geological terms) drawn out period?
The other starting point could be the Iridium contained in that layer. Would an asteroid contain enough to show up in the layer around the world. How did it spread, how evenly (ie. more concentrated around said impact crater, or not?), and above all, is the estimate of the total amount (surely it has been calculated?) enough to form an asteroid of the mass required to make the right size crater?
There is no doubt an asteroid could be pure Iridium, but it would have to be “the size calculated from the impact data” or larger (not pure Iridium) to qualify.
If someone has data on the above, feel free to link (I’m not current on these things…). It will be much appreciated!
That’s what science is all about, as Ayn Rand has hinted at. The lure of having knowledge of a piece of the truth and the obsession of devoting oneself to the pursuit of that truth.
Though the truth may not always be found on the web (cue applause), I will be pursuing and critically filtering what it has to offer on the subject tomorrow.
It’s amazing. They’re gonna save the Hubble Telescope, which has brought the wonders of the Universe to everyone. All kinds of good things are happening. Almost as if to cheer me up I’m gonna sleep well tonight.
Sitting in my sacred chamber, smelling the soft autumn rain drizzle outside. Waiting for my third coffee of the day to cool slightly in my hands. For the first time in a great while, my eyelids need not strain to stay up. For a Great Idea with initial caps has found me.
It found me twice before, but both times it was just an idea: filled with promise but no way to become reality. This time it approached me like a lover, flirting with my imagination. And suddenly, I saw the full path to completion. It all seems like destiny; at first I just made it up as a wild idea. The second time, just a few days back, it tapped my shoulder again, making me say, “could be neat.” The third time was a time of realization; I could do this and get away with it. It could be something really new and great, and not just an experiment that might or might not result in success.
Why Destiny? Because things came together. The new technology it required was made available and affordable only months back; I had now learned what I needed to see it through; it built on old skills I already had. It has it all, baby. 
“But what is it?”, you ask in frustration. This I cannot tell you. For a man with a Great Idea is a man with a secret, and may he guard it well, lest he eternal damnation of his soul face wouldst.
OK, enough of the Yoda slash Wannabe Writer syntax. Suffice to say I’ve found a career goal to pursue that could lead to better days for me.
It might even take me to the Stars.
Tonight, for the first time, I saw the Moon in a telescope. Mine, that is. I went “Aah!” in adoration. A perfectly round marble with a crisp white edge on the sunlit half and the other half in perfectly black obscurity. A diagonal border in its center. Along that terminator, sharp jagged edges of craters and mountains.
Fiddled around a bit with lenses, scanned the surface along the terminator. But I had to put in the lower mag lens again, to look at it in fullness. Such a nice rough marble.
Took stock of the major craters. Went in to look them up. Found out that Google Moon was a big letdown. The easiest one to find was Copernicus in Mare Insolarum, following the mountain edge from Archimedes (which was in shadow) over ridge of Montes Appeninus and Montes Carpatus. Copernicus is actually rather close to the (as some say, alleged 
) Apollo landing sites.
Oh, such a beautiful half moon, and half an hour well spent. Pictures in a book can only convey so much. Why didn’t I do this 20 years ago?
The 9/11 tragedy keeps springing up again. Not least in book form. The video links below recommend reading for the inquiring mind.
It’s a tragedy because of the amount of lives that were extinguished, both at September 11, 2001 and in the war where USA exacted revenge on Iraq. Being respectful is never wrong, but accepting explanations without proof is always wrong. Judging the truth needs a mind which is distanced from emotional attachment, on both sides. (more…)
It’s a quiet afternoon. Everything is still. The temperature is soothing, so soothing that even the birds are quiet. Outside my porch there’s a big field of green. Beyond it lies a sleeping forest, and above it a pale cyan sky peeking through ice cream clouds.
On days like this, it’s hard to ask yourself why we’re here. This world seems as if it was made for us. On the other hand, it seems like it was made for dolphins, hyenas and viruses as well.
Science tells us we’re here because primordial slime combined into living organisms, which after a lot of trouble evolved into the massively complex lifeforms we are today. But that’s not really an answer, or rather, that wasn’t the question. (more…)
