Pilot mistake means pingpong balls rain on highway
Moon says a new pilot attempted the drop this year, but apparently didn’t understand that pingpong balls lose speed quickly and drop straight down.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Stare into the Puck, and the Puck Stares into You
Blackest is the new black: Scientists have developed a material so dark that you can’t see it…
A British company has produced a “strange, alien” material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record. To stare at the “super black” coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss.
Revenge of the Orbs
Clapham house fire caused by crystal doorknob
The blaze on Monday was the latest of several fires in London started by household fittings.
Years ago I warned about the dangers of snow globes. Now this. When spheres conspire, bad things can happen.
A Song Should Be Just Long Enough to Reach the End
Why Are Songs on the Radio About the Same Length?
I think there are a lot of reasons, one being that radio stations are not services that play music for you — their business is to air advertisements and use music as one of the hooks to get you to tune in. So long songs would not tend to be selected if they would keep them from airing ads, and that may be enough in the evolution of rock-era songs to keep most of them short. I think Rhett’s gone off on the wrong path by looking at this in terms of how much music you can get on a 45 rpm single.
There’s probably a lot more to this. Writing longer and keeping it interesting without repetition has to be hard, especially if you’ve gotten into a habit of a certain style. I remember seeing an interview with members of The Who (I think it’s in “The Kids Are Alright”) where Peter Townshend says, in relating how Tommy was written, that “rock songs are 2:50 by tradition” and then got the idea of writing a longer theme as a series of short songs.
But this animated gif of the action of a needle on a record is worth the price of admission.
You Can't Beet This. It's 24-Carrot Gold.
Lettuce See the Future: Japanese Farmer Builds High-Tech Indoor Veggie Factory
Shimamura turned a former Sony Corporation semiconductor factory into the world’s largest indoor farm illuminated by LEDs. The special LED fixtures were developed by GE and emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth.
…
By controlling temperature, humidity and irrigation, the farm can also cut its water usage to just 1 percent of the amount needed by outdoor fields.
300th Anniversary of the Longitude Act
Maritime museum finds time for celebration of Harrison’s sea clocks
The exhibition marks the 300th anniversary of the Longitude Act, passed in 1714, which established the Longitude Board and offered a vast £20,000 prize to anyone who could solve the problem of measuring longitude at sea. It includes the actual act of parliament, passed in the last weeks before the death of Queen Anne, on display for the first time.
The story of John Harrison, the carpenter and self-taught genius clockmaker who invented a series of ever more accurate clocks and then a cabbage-sized watch that solved the problem, but never got the full prize from the board, inspired Dava Sobel’s bestselling book and film, Longitude.
This is the reason why my job (making atomic clocks — real clocks) is a navy job — precise navigation requires precise time. The transition to GPS hasn’t changed that fact. Poor navigational ability is costly:
In a storm in 1707, when an entire British fleet was driven onto the rocks at Scilly believing they were safely out at sea, more than 1,400 sailors drowned.
Turning Up and Turning Down and Turning In and Turning 'Round
I want a doctor to take your picture
So I can look at you from inside as well
Stop-Motion Animation Reveals the Insides of Objects Sanded Down Layer by Layer
Laurin Döpfner … used an industrial sander to grind down logs, electronics, and even a skull in thin layers which he then photographed to create this amazing stop motion video. Each object is comprised of about 100 different photos
I like the walnut the best, I think.
Oh, Behave!
…unless that robot is operating properly, which means ketchup has been weaponized.
Finally, Someone's Dealing With False Balance
Stop Giving Airtime to Crackpots
I’ve seen this from several sources, so a summary from Bad Astronomy is as good as any and better than most. Added bonus: taking Brandon Smith to task for claiming that “the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that.”
(For the record, I dispute that. It’s a ridiculous claim.)
Economics and Science?
What Scientists Should Learn From Economists
All those other enterprises, though, seem to have come to terms with the fact that there are going to be mis-steps along the way, while scientists continue to bemoan every little thing that goes awry. And keep in mind, this is true of fields where mistakes are vastly more consequential than in cosmology. We’re only a week or so into July, so you can still hear echos of chatter about the various economic reports that come out in late June– quarterly growth numbers, mid-year financial statements, the monthly unemployment report. These are released, and for a few days suck up all the oxygen in discussion of politics and policy, often driving dramatic calls for change in one direction or another.
But here’s the most important thing about those reports: They’re all wrong.
Chad makes an excellent point, but if I’m reading the post correctly it’s an admonition toward scientists, and I think that’s misplaced, or at least too narrow a focus. As a group, I think we have a decent handle on the difference between the levels of confidence one places in results at different stages of confirmation. Many scientists I follow on twitter were saying we need to be cautious about the BICEP2 results, and how we needed to wait for further analysis and confirmation — that’s the protocol, and it needs to be more widely acknowledged.
What’s missing is in the restraint of the media chain, which often includes the principal scientists; one should understand that they and the attached PR machine may tend to be a little aggressive in touting their results, and may have a bias to which they are blind; it’s why replication of experiments is important. However, everyone else involved has to slow down a little and consider the shortcomings of the system as well.
Is this a preliminary result/small sample size, or is this further down the line in terms of confirming the original discovery? (I’m assuming we’re over the hurdle of this being peer reviewed). If it’s early in the game, then these are much like the preliminary economic numbers Chad discusses — there will be revisions, and that needs to be explained. More data require more experiments, preferably by different research teams. Results have a way of disappearing when more data are examined — which is exactly what you should expect! But this doesn’t get much prominent discussion when BIG RESULT™ has been announced.
In the case of economic reporting, the public has been seeing this same style of reporting for decades — they’re used to it. They expect a certain level of wrongness from the folks who have predicted twelve of the last five recessions. What they’re used to in science reporting is a hyperbolic headline and the promise that it will result in a flying car really soon (and then, of course, the flying car never materializes) being reported in the same fashion as science that has a much longer pedigree of confirmation.
Scientists need to do better in getting the word out properly, to be sure. But my feeling is that the entire system needs to be reined in.