So sayeth Bill Maher is a recent blog post and he's absolutely right. MSNBC has officially become the Fox News of the Left and it really sucks. I used to DVR Morning Joe and watch it if I had time later in the night but they just can't lay off Christie. Again, so what? How is what he did any different than what Lyndon Johnson used to do? Add in Mika Brzezinski's tar and feathering of Woody Allen (which is completely devoid of fact, mind you) and we are really only left with Al Jazeera America...still the most honest and best reporting out there.
They don't tell Americans what we want to hear. They tell us what we need to hear. Check out their YouTube feed for what their content is like and why it is superior.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
When Not Seeing Leads to Believing
Humans have always searched for explanations for the unknown. When we can't see a rational cause for something, we inevitably conclude that there's some kind of mystical, supernatural force at work.
Even Albert Einstein did this, in a manner of speaking, when he added the cosmological constant to his theory of general relativity in order to achieve a static universe, which was the accepted theory at the time. Einstein later called this his "greatest blunder."
More recently astrophysicists came up with something called dark matter to explain the "missing mass problem": astronomers cannot find enough mass with telescopes to account for the gravitational effects they observe in the galaxies around us.
By the 1930s astronomers had found that nearby galaxies were rotating faster than could be explained by the estimates of the masses of their visible components (stars and gas clouds): there had to be some kind of invisible matter providing most of the mass that held these galaxies together. Even accounting for the black holes that we know are at the center of most galaxies, there still wasn't enough mass.
Current theory postulates that most dark matter is some kind of special "nonbaryonic" matter, hypothetical axion particles completely unlike mundane protons, neutrons and electrons. However, the theory does grant that a small portion of the missing mass is regular "baryonic" matter, residing in massive compact halo objects.
They also came up with something called dark energy to explain why the universe keeps expanding faster and faster. Dark energy is sort of like antigravity, an idea that raises a lot of hackles. One current theory goes into great detail, calculating that the universe is composed of 4.9% regular matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.4% dark energy.
This is the mirror image of seeing is believing: not seeing mundane physical matter led scientists to believe in the existence of strange and esoteric dark matter.
I admit to being skeptical about dark matter (and dark energy). It smacks of the sort of mystical answer that I distrust: we can't see the missing mass, so that must mean there's something special and weird going on. I've always thought that the simpler Occam explanation is that we just can't see the missing mass because it's dark out there. Dim red dwarf stars, brown dwarfs (starlike objects too small to emit visible light) and cold dust clouds are essentially invisible to our telescopes, or the masses of galactic core black holes could be underestimated, or there could be smaller undetected "loner" black holes orbiting in the galactic periphery.
Well, now it turns out that someone may have found that missing mass, in exactly the place we should have expected it. This discovery has the potential to completely upend decades of theoretical astrophysics.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Jessica Werk and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used light from quasars to detect haloes of cold gas around galaxies ("cold" is relative: the gas is at 10,000 degrees Celsius). The gas previously observed in galactic haloes is about 1 million degrees -- at that temperature the gas emits photons and can be detected by our optical and radio telescopes.
The cold gas clouds absorb some of the quasar's light as it passes through, allowing Werk's team to detect traces of carbon, silicon magnesium and hydrogen. They calculated that there may be 10 to 100 times the amount of cold gas than astronomers previously thought existed, potentially making up all of the missing mass.
If these observations hold up and the cold gas haloes do account for all the missing mass, that doesn't mean the scientists who theorized about dark matter were wrong to do so. They were working with the best data they had, and some aspects of the theory could still be true. And this finding still doesn't explain why the universe's expansion seems to be accelerating (though that could be another observational inadequacy).
The biggest mistake we can make in science is assuming that our observations are complete, that the beliefs we have now are final and can't possibly be changed. Even with the best tools and techniques at their disposal, scientists could not detect the missing mass. So, rather than just assume it was there -- which would definitely have been wrong -- scientists sought out other explanations. And those explanations led them into really esoteric places.
Following that path wasn't wrong: it's what scientists are supposed to do. But once we have the new data, and we have reverified that data several times to ensure that we aren't being misled this time too, we have to go back and revisit and revise everything, and chuck out the theories that don't support the facts.
That's the process of science: going back, testing our assumptions, making the same observations again and again, in new and different ways and from different directions. Making sure that we get the same results, or if we don't get the same results, understanding why we didn't, maybe correcting our experimental methods, or possibly stumbling upon another secret of the universe.
When we do, we often find we no longer need supernatural explanations to explain what we see -- or don't see.
Even Albert Einstein did this, in a manner of speaking, when he added the cosmological constant to his theory of general relativity in order to achieve a static universe, which was the accepted theory at the time. Einstein later called this his "greatest blunder."
More recently astrophysicists came up with something called dark matter to explain the "missing mass problem": astronomers cannot find enough mass with telescopes to account for the gravitational effects they observe in the galaxies around us.
 |
| Galaxy and its halo |
Current theory postulates that most dark matter is some kind of special "nonbaryonic" matter, hypothetical axion particles completely unlike mundane protons, neutrons and electrons. However, the theory does grant that a small portion of the missing mass is regular "baryonic" matter, residing in massive compact halo objects.
They also came up with something called dark energy to explain why the universe keeps expanding faster and faster. Dark energy is sort of like antigravity, an idea that raises a lot of hackles. One current theory goes into great detail, calculating that the universe is composed of 4.9% regular matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.4% dark energy.
This is the mirror image of seeing is believing: not seeing mundane physical matter led scientists to believe in the existence of strange and esoteric dark matter.
I admit to being skeptical about dark matter (and dark energy). It smacks of the sort of mystical answer that I distrust: we can't see the missing mass, so that must mean there's something special and weird going on. I've always thought that the simpler Occam explanation is that we just can't see the missing mass because it's dark out there. Dim red dwarf stars, brown dwarfs (starlike objects too small to emit visible light) and cold dust clouds are essentially invisible to our telescopes, or the masses of galactic core black holes could be underestimated, or there could be smaller undetected "loner" black holes orbiting in the galactic periphery.
Well, now it turns out that someone may have found that missing mass, in exactly the place we should have expected it. This discovery has the potential to completely upend decades of theoretical astrophysics.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Jessica Werk and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used light from quasars to detect haloes of cold gas around galaxies ("cold" is relative: the gas is at 10,000 degrees Celsius). The gas previously observed in galactic haloes is about 1 million degrees -- at that temperature the gas emits photons and can be detected by our optical and radio telescopes.
The cold gas clouds absorb some of the quasar's light as it passes through, allowing Werk's team to detect traces of carbon, silicon magnesium and hydrogen. They calculated that there may be 10 to 100 times the amount of cold gas than astronomers previously thought existed, potentially making up all of the missing mass.
If these observations hold up and the cold gas haloes do account for all the missing mass, that doesn't mean the scientists who theorized about dark matter were wrong to do so. They were working with the best data they had, and some aspects of the theory could still be true. And this finding still doesn't explain why the universe's expansion seems to be accelerating (though that could be another observational inadequacy).
The biggest mistake we can make in science is assuming that our observations are complete, that the beliefs we have now are final and can't possibly be changed. Even with the best tools and techniques at their disposal, scientists could not detect the missing mass. So, rather than just assume it was there -- which would definitely have been wrong -- scientists sought out other explanations. And those explanations led them into really esoteric places.
Following that path wasn't wrong: it's what scientists are supposed to do. But once we have the new data, and we have reverified that data several times to ensure that we aren't being misled this time too, we have to go back and revisit and revise everything, and chuck out the theories that don't support the facts.
That's the process of science: going back, testing our assumptions, making the same observations again and again, in new and different ways and from different directions. Making sure that we get the same results, or if we don't get the same results, understanding why we didn't, maybe correcting our experimental methods, or possibly stumbling upon another secret of the universe.
When we do, we often find we no longer need supernatural explanations to explain what we see -- or don't see.
Monday, February 17, 2014
President's Day Good Words #13
"Citizenship demands a sense of common purpose; participation in the hard work of self-government; an obligation to serve to our communities."
(Barack Obama, Sixth State of the Union Address delivered on January 28, 2014 during a joint session of the United States Congress)
(Barack Obama, Sixth State of the Union Address delivered on January 28, 2014 during a joint session of the United States Congress)
President's Day Good Words #12
"Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
(Bill Clinton, First inaugural address, Washington, D.C. January 20, 1993)
(Bill Clinton, First inaugural address, Washington, D.C. January 20, 1993)
President's Day Good Words #11
"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that's crazy. It's time we stopped it."
(Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, June 6, 1985)
(Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, June 6, 1985)
President's Day Good Words #10
"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose."
(Jimmy Carter, "Malaise Speech," July 15, 1979)
(Jimmy Carter, "Malaise Speech," July 15, 1979)
President's Day Good Words #9
"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
(John F Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963)
(John F Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963)
President's Day Good Words #8
"I am not worried about the Communist Party taking over the Government of the United States, but I am against a person, whose loyalty is not to the Government of the United States, holding a Government job. They are entirely different things. I am not worried about this country ever going Communist. We have too much sense for that. "
(Harry Truman, Responding to a question at his press conference (February 28, 1947); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947, p. 191)
(Harry Truman, Responding to a question at his press conference (February 28, 1947); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947, p. 191)
President's Day Good Words #7
"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation."
(Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms Speech, January 6, 1941)
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation."
(Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms Speech, January 6, 1941)
Presidents Day Good Words #6
"The government is us; we are the government, you and I."
(Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at Asheville, North Carolina, 9 September 1902)
(Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at Asheville, North Carolina, 9 September 1902)
Presidents Day Good Words #5
"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves."
(Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature, 9 March 1832)
(Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature, 9 March 1832)
A Global Science Experiment
The physics of climate change can be complicated to figure out because of all the different systems on earth: we know that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide increase global temperatures by trapping heat from the sun, but how does that interact with the ocean, the plants, and so on? How do scientists validate their models when they predict that temperatures will rise when the CO2 level goes up, and so will sea levels?
The answer's pretty simple: historical data. From the Times:
From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 parts per million in the depths of ice ages to about 280 during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperatures and CO2 levels are tightly linked.The concentration of CO2 is currently at about 400 parts per million. Before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration was 270 to 280 ppm. In just a few hundred years humanity has burned enough wood, gas, coal and oil to overpower all the natural CO2-absorbing mechanisms. We burn more than 20 billion tons of fossil fuels each year, and only half of that crap is absorbed naturally; the rest is still floating around in the air.
For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.
Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.
People frequently argue that people are "too small and insignificant" to change the planet's environment: but without even trying, we puny humans have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide across the entire globe by more than two-fifths in the time since the Declaration of Independence was signed.
If we continue on our current path, with China, India and other undeveloped countries increasing their use of fossil fuels as well, by 2100 we will increase CO2 levels to 900 ppm, more than three times the preindustrial level.
Some argue that historically, high CO2 levels were just a symptom of a warmer planet, and not the cause. We do know that there are cascading effects from a warming planet: CO2 and methane are escaping as the permafrost melts in the frozen tundra in Siberia, Alaska and the Yukon. But we also know the physics: as CO2 and methane levels increase, the greenhouse effect causes higher temperatures.
Once the temperature starts spiraling upward, it doesn't really matter what is cause and what is effect: adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is like throwing gasoline on a fire. If global warming isn't ultimately "our fault," it's especially important that we don't exacerbate the problem by tripling CO2 concentrations.
Do we really want to conduct an irreversible global science experiment to see who's right?
Presidents Day Good Words #4
"Religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
(James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822)
(James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822)
President's Day Good Words #3
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."
(Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459.)
(Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459.)
President's Day Good Words #2
"I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. ... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read."
(John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams 28 December 1794).
(John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams 28 December 1794).
President's Day Good Words #1
"Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country"
(George Washington, letter to Benedict Arnold, 14 September 1775)
(George Washington, letter to Benedict Arnold, 14 September 1775)
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Protecting Numbskulls
The doorknobs in Georgia now want to make it legal to try to bring guns aboard airplanes. That's not how they phrase it, but that's the effect:
Of course, having a loose gun is dangerous in so many ways: it can simply go off if bumped or dropped (like the loaded shotgun some nitwit had in their baggage, or the pistols that fall out of suitcases, pockets, purses and waistbands and sometimes shooting their owners, spouses and innocent bystanders). A kid could find it while searching daddy's pocket for loose change. The attendant at the coat check at a restaurant could find it and give it to her drug-addict boyfriend.
Finally, this gives terrorists a free pass to find the best way to sneak guns onto planes.They can keep probing security without fear of arrest until they eventually learn to sneak a weapon in. I'm sure these gun nuts will write the law so that security can't track how often and who attempts to smuggle guns aboard airplanes, the same way they make the FBI discard background check data. You wouldn't want those forgetful nitwits to get a black mark against them for trying to bring a gun aboard a plane 20 times, or track terrorists amassing a major arsenal.
Oh, and the "license to carry" proviso is meaningless, since places like Georgia basically require that anyone who wants such a license will get it.
The main reason airport security works is that the bad guys don't know exactly what the TSA is looking for. If allowed to experiment without repercussions, terrorists will eventually learn the best way to sneak weapons aboard airplanes.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are still wasting our time taking our shoes off and screwing around putting shampoo and toothpaste into stupid little plastic bags.
As with stand-your-ground laws, guys with guns want a free pass to screw up and not suffer the consequences for their mistakes. The problem is that when armed idiots make mistakes people wind up dead.
Gun nuts in Georgia are still actively campaigning to bring their weapons into churches and college campuses. Why not airports and airplanes? I mean, the logic is exactly the same: the more guns we have on airplanes, the safer we'll be. Right?
Do we really want laws that promote incompetent and careless weapons practices, allowing these folks to be even more oblivious about the guns bouncing around in their suitcases, pockets and waistbands?
Now gun-friendly lawmakers in Georgia want people licensed to carry a gun to avoid arrest if they accidentally bring their firearms into the security checkpoint at the country’s busiest airport and willingly leave the security line. It comes as gun rights groups in Georgia push state lawmakers to broaden the places where people can legally take guns, including churches and other houses of worship.Why do they need this law? They don't want forgetful and incompetent gun owners to be arrested for trying to board a plane with a loose gun in their pocket or briefcase. They can't be bothered to think ahead or plan.
Of course, having a loose gun is dangerous in so many ways: it can simply go off if bumped or dropped (like the loaded shotgun some nitwit had in their baggage, or the pistols that fall out of suitcases, pockets, purses and waistbands and sometimes shooting their owners, spouses and innocent bystanders). A kid could find it while searching daddy's pocket for loose change. The attendant at the coat check at a restaurant could find it and give it to her drug-addict boyfriend.
Finally, this gives terrorists a free pass to find the best way to sneak guns onto planes.They can keep probing security without fear of arrest until they eventually learn to sneak a weapon in. I'm sure these gun nuts will write the law so that security can't track how often and who attempts to smuggle guns aboard airplanes, the same way they make the FBI discard background check data. You wouldn't want those forgetful nitwits to get a black mark against them for trying to bring a gun aboard a plane 20 times, or track terrorists amassing a major arsenal.
Oh, and the "license to carry" proviso is meaningless, since places like Georgia basically require that anyone who wants such a license will get it.
The main reason airport security works is that the bad guys don't know exactly what the TSA is looking for. If allowed to experiment without repercussions, terrorists will eventually learn the best way to sneak weapons aboard airplanes.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are still wasting our time taking our shoes off and screwing around putting shampoo and toothpaste into stupid little plastic bags.
As with stand-your-ground laws, guys with guns want a free pass to screw up and not suffer the consequences for their mistakes. The problem is that when armed idiots make mistakes people wind up dead.
Gun nuts in Georgia are still actively campaigning to bring their weapons into churches and college campuses. Why not airports and airplanes? I mean, the logic is exactly the same: the more guns we have on airplanes, the safer we'll be. Right?
Do we really want laws that promote incompetent and careless weapons practices, allowing these folks to be even more oblivious about the guns bouncing around in their suitcases, pockets and waistbands?
Climate Change Lies
With John Kerry's pointed remarks on climate change yesterday, it's important to note the various arguments that the Church of the Climate Denier uses all the time and illustrate how they are lying. Here is a complete list of their assertions by popularity which are all linked to the evidence that shows how they are completely false. Take note of how one can examine the data from a basic, intermediate or advanced point of view with many of the falsehoods.
So, the next time you encounter the adolescent climate skeptic who just can't stand the fact that liberals are correct about something, show the this list. Ask them to refute the evidence using the same scientific method used in each of the links. Remind that "No, you are!!" and a stomp down the hallway with a door slam are not logic based arguments.
So, the next time you encounter the adolescent climate skeptic who just can't stand the fact that liberals are correct about something, show the this list. Ask them to refute the evidence using the same scientific method used in each of the links. Remind that "No, you are!!" and a stomp down the hallway with a door slam are not logic based arguments.
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