Monthly Archives: July 2012
What's Next?
Now that we’ve got the Higgs, what’s next?
Combined with our knowledge of gravitation through general relativity, and the framework of quantum field theory describing all the standard model particles and how they interact with one another, it’s no stretch to say we’re sitting pretty, and that we’ve come an incredibly long way to arrive at our present understanding, especially considering practically none of this was known a century ago.
Don't Flame Me
In this PBS NewsHour segment, science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports on a contest launched by actor and author Alan Alda that challenges scientists to explain the science behind a flame, while flexing their communication muscles. The judges are thousands of 11-year-olds.
I missed the part where Alda specificaly attacks jargon, so I’m not sure where the title came from. He explains why communication is important (we swim in an ocean of science) and how great is was that the students were so enthused about science, and wanted something more substantive than quick answers.
Nothing to Do with that Little Blue Pill
Make your own epic-scale water weenie!
One of the classic squirt mechanisms is the “water weenie,” where the water is stored under pressure in a length of elastic tubing, and the force to eject the water is provided by the restoring force of that tubing. Often the elastic tubing is a simple length of latex “surgical” tubing, or in the case of the classic Wham-O Water Wiennie, a literal rubber balloon. While people have almost certainly been squirting each other with these things since (we’re guessing about ten minutes after) the invention of the water balloon, the technology has more recently been reinvented as the “constant pressure system” used in modern high-end water guns.
Here is our take on the water weenie: How to make your own high-performance, arbitrary-capacity squirt machine, starting with basic hardware.
What Shall We Name Him or Her?
Higgs boson: The poetry of subatomic particles
Physicists from Russia to California have given lots of curious and sometimes poetic names to the subatomic particles discovered over the last century or so. Here are 10 of them.
CERN Results Improperly Kerned; Data Invalidated
I can’t dismiss this as a joke, because I’m aware of the vitriol that surrounds the use of Comic Sans.
CERN scientists inexplicably present Higgs boson findings in Comic Sans
For many of us, the most shocking revelation to come out of CERN’s Higgs boson announcement today was quite unrelated to the science itself. Rather, we were blown away by the fact that a team made up of some of the most undoubtedly brilliant people in the world believe that Comic Sans is an appropriate font for such a historic occasion.
The most shocking revelation? Seriously? I wonder if they all dropped their monocles in their cups of tea, simultaneously. Comic sans, the very idea! Were smelling salts required, Aunt Pittypat?
Not sure if I file this under “You can’t please everyone” or “Talk about missing the point”. (That it also goes under “Comic Sans douchebaggery” is a given). I would love it if someone had actually thought about this, and did it for the sole reason of causing typographers to have a collective fit. Not defending this as the right choice, mind you. It’s just the inevitable violation of Newton’s third law — the reaction far outweighs the action, whenever Comic Sans is involved.
Update
Power restored (after only 90 hours!), but still no internet at home. My fridge hasn’t been this empty since I moved in. I noticed one set of traffic lights still out on my commute this morning, so there is still work left to do in the area.
A Zero-Sum Game
Causes of death: 1900 and 2010
Interesting chart; one can see where we’ve made significant progress in reducing diseases like tuberculosis and making the world safer so that accidents account for fewer deaths per unit population. Fewer deaths implies progress. But an increase is not so clear.
We’re doing great on kidneys, but hearts not so much.
As they might say up in New England, you can’t get there from here. Death is a zero-sum game; sorry if this comes as a surprise, but everybody dies. So if you are going to drastically reduce the number of deaths by one method, then those people will eventually die via another. If you eliminate childhood diseases then average lifespans will increase and those spared will die of something else. I can recall a comment in a medicine-related blog post recently, wherein the commenter claimed that something is wrong with the system because the instances of cancer were increasing, as this chart shows. But given some probability of getting cancer as an adult, you expect that increase: if your chance is 25%, then (roughly speaking) every four childhood deaths prevented should give you an additional adult cancer death. Similarly for heart-related deaths. The chart also doesn’t tell you at what age the deaths occurred (though the decrease in rate implies that death is occurring later, on average). So a heart attack that killed a person at 50 in 1900 might translate into avoiding or surviving that attack in modern times, and finally succumbing to heart disease at 70 or 80. That would not be a lack of progress. You simply can’t glean the necessary details from the graph.
Not Physics-Defying, But Certainly Unusual
Ball makes U-turn from foul to fair on Brian Dozier’s incredible infield hit (Video)
Some stories are saying it defies the laws of physics (which, unfortunately, does not defy the laws of journalistic hyperbole) but the stretch at about 0:45 gets it right: it’s like a cue shot in pool. There’s a lot of spin, and it looks a lot like a trick shot.
Veni, Vidi, Slamdunk
After spending four hours in makeup, 2012 NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving heads to the courts of New Jersey to devour some young bloods in a pick-up game.