Four Dollars, Almost Five

Everyone loves a flowchart

2012-01-24T11:34:00.000Z

(click to enlarge)

Higgs looking like-lier

2011-12-14T13:47:00.000Z

In complete disagreement with my last post, it turns out that scientists at CERN might have actually found the Higgs boson. Separate experiments have independently confirmed the existence of something 'Higgs-like' at about 124-126 GeV:

Gianotti and Tonelli led two separate teams – one using Cern's Atlas detector, the other using the laboratory's Compact Muon Solenoid. At their seminar yesterday one team reported a 2.3 sigma bump in their data that could be a Higgs boson weighing 126GeV, while the other reported a 1.9 sigma Higgs signal at a mass of around 124GeV. There is a 1% chance that the Atlas result could be due to a random fluctuation in the data.

Higgs looking unlikely

2011-11-25T12:24:00.000Z

The search for the Higgs boson has apparently entered the 'endgame'. As I mentioned a few months ago, the mass/energy ranges in which Higgs was expected to be found have all but been ruled out. Since then, as this article in the latest edition of Nature explains, the searches in lower and higher mass ranges have been unsuccessful. The last remaining possibility is that the Higgs is lurking somehwere between 114–141 GeV.

Data from this range has been collected and is currently being analysed:

The answer to the Higgs question lies in the data now being crunched at CERN and other academic-computing centres around the world. The first 70 trillion or so collisions turned up intriguing Higgs-like decays in the ATLAS and CMS experiments, hinting at a particle of around 140 GeV (see Nature 475, 434; 2011). But the second batch of collisions showed nothing. If the collisions now being analysed show further evidence of Higgs decays, then the teams on the two experiments are likely to announce that they have found a tentative signal, to be firmed up in 2012. If not, the search will probably continue until the LHC is shut down for an upgrade at the end of next year.

Of interest, several prominent physicists were asked for their opinion as to whether Higgs will be found. Opinions differed (click image for larger and clearer version):

Web of debt

2011-10-24T13:26:00.001+01:00

The New York Times have "Chart[ed] the web of debt exposure among sagging economies"

What a square

2011-10-15T17:15:00.001+01:00

I've been reading a bit about magic squares. That is, a square consisting of an arrangement of numbers, such that the numbers in all rows, all columns, and both diagonals sum to the same constant.

Probably the most impressive of these has to be Durer's Square, which is shown below:

The orientation of the numbers 1-16 in this square show an amazing about of magic-square-like properties. In total, the addition of the numbers in 86 different spatial orientations add up to 34.

Fascinating.

Yes!

2011-09-18T15:36:00.002+01:00

Ireland 15 - 6 Australia

Foul play reported at show by psychic Sally Morgan

2011-09-13T10:44:00.004+01:00

On Sept 11th, while psychic Sally Morgan was displaying her amazing abilities in the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin, several of the audience (who had paid 40 quid a ticket) reported that they heard a strange voice at the back of the room relaying information to her.

They told their story to Joe Duffy on RTE radio (12th Sept show):

Sue went to see psychic Sally Morgan last night in the Grand Canal Theatre. She was great in the first half but during the second half Sue began to hear somebody talking loudly at the back of where she was sitting. She thought it was somebody heckling but she soon realised that everything he said Sally was repeating on stage. He would say a name like David and she would repeat it onstage. Other callers who were also at the show tell of similar experiences.

At the very least, it seems that a few believers are now skeptical of Sally's professed psychic abilities. One woman reported that while she was queing at the end of the show to get a book signed, the woman in front of her asked Sally about one of the names she was calling out during the show. The woman in question had realised too late that this name was relevant to her. Shockingly, Sally allegedly dismissed the grieving woman, who had forked out €40 for the ticket and presumably another sum for a book, saying that she was finished relaying messages for the evening. In other words, give me your money and get lost. End of story.

It's sad that even some of the women that called into the radio show, who heard the man relaying information to Sally, still think she is a genuine psychic and cares about her grieving audiences. There is only one thing that Sally and her staff are interested in - I'll leave it up to you to work it out.

Of course, that 'voices in the head' are used as part of a psychic's show is not a new discovery. They've been doing it for years. Most famously, the faith-healer Peter Popoff was exposed as use this technique by James Randi back in the 1980s. This incident is detailed in the below video, in which he also embarrasses Uri Geller on the Tonight Show.

Sally Morgan be warned.

(Source)

Don't worry

2011-09-01T13:23:00.002+01:00

Here is the ultimate problem-solver...

(Source)

How many complex species are there on Earth?

2011-08-27T12:13:00.002+01:00

About 8.7 million.

And how many have we found to date?

About 1.2 million.

That is according to a recent study in PLoS Biology:

Knowing the number of species on Earth is one of the most basic yet elusive questions in science. Unfortunately, obtaining an accurate number is constrained by the fact that most species remain to be described and because indirect attempts to answer this question have been highly controversial. Here, we document that the taxonomic classification of species into higher taxonomic groups (from genera to phyla) follows a consistent pattern from which the total number of species in any taxonomic group can be predicted. Assessment of this pattern for all kingdoms of life on Earth predicts ~8.7 million (±1.3 million SE) species globally, of which ~2.2 million (±0.18 million SE) are marine. Our results suggest that some 86% of the species on Earth, and 91% in the ocean, still await description. Closing this knowledge gap will require a renewed interest in exploration and taxonomy, and a continuing effort to catalogue existing biodiversity data in publicly available databases.

Here is a table from the paper (click to enlarge) showing the vast difference in the numbers of catalogued and predicted species, which really highlights how little we know about life on our planet (particularly in the ocean).

An interesting calculation made in the study was the approximate cost and man power it would take to catalogue all of the species that are currently unaccounted for:

Considering current rates of description of eukaryote species in the last 20 years (i.e., 6,200 species per year; ±811 SD; Figure 3F–3J), the average number of new species described per taxonomist's career (i.e., 24.8 species, [30]) and the estimated average cost to describe animal species (i.e., US$48,500 per species [30]) and assuming that these values remain constant and are general among taxonomic groups, describing Earth's remaining species may take as long as 1,200 years and would require 303,000 taxonomists at an approximated cost of US$364 billion.

On the subject of species diversity, here is a nice 'tangled bush' image (click to enlarge then zoom in):

Skeptical Twitter community brings down internet spammer

2011-08-23T13:39:00.001+01:00

See here for an excellent summary of the history behind the recent arrest of internet spammer and sender of death threats, Dennis Markuze (aka David Mabus).

The kook pictured below has spammed the inbox of hundreds of skeptical bloggers for years, starting off with relatively harmless verbal diarrhea, but becoming more and more sinister in recent times. His downfall came when he moved his tirade of abuse to Twitter, following which he (presumably unknowingly) began to harass the Montreal police department. The skeptical Twitter community then launched a petition to get the Montreal police to investigate Markuze. It worked. He was arrested and now faces 16 separate charges, and is currently undergoing a 30-day psychological evaluation.

What a moron.

Still no Higgs

2011-08-22T10:45:00.001+01:00

Apparently the Higgs boson has not been found in the energy range predicted to be most amenable to its detection, casting doubt on its existence. The search now moves to lower and higher energy ranges, in which Higgs is less likely to be found.

According to James Gilles, the director of communication for Cern, it is now that the real work starts.

"In some mass areas, the Higgs is much easier to see than in others so in some mass areas it was always going to be easier to find it or exclude it quite quickly," he told BBC News.

"And now what we're being left with is the harder part; the regions where it's harder for us to see and harder to pick out the signal from the background."

The ranges left after these results suggest that the Higgs is either quite a light particle, below about 145 GeV, or a heavy one, above 466 GeV. A couple of islands in the middle, around 250 GeV, have not been fully excluded yet.

Ploughboy sinks to a new low

2011-07-29T10:17:00.001+01:00

The amazingly ignorant and obtuse commenter called Martin (aka Ploughboy) on the Premier Christian forums consistently infuriates a lot of people with his antagonistic commenting style. See here for a long and frustrating exchange I had with him about transitional fossils.

Now he has pretty much sunk as low as possible. He made this particular comment on the topic of the innocent people (mostly children) who were murdered in the recent Norwegian massacre:

So stop worrying about those who have died, they have received what they deserved, worry about yourself, that you might not receive what you deserve.

What an incredible asshole.

I'm glad to say that all commenters, both Christian and non-Christian, have responded to tell him so. To make it worse, some of the commenters he continues to insult and bicker with are currently in Norway experiencing the tragedy firsthand.

The end of SETI - as we know it

2011-07-28T15:50:00.002+01:00

That's right. According to the latest edition of Nature, Californian budget restraints mean that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is to come to an end.

If further funding is not secured, this means that all 42 radio dishes of the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek Radio Observatory will be shut down and possibly dismantled.

The melancholy vista at Hat Creek makes it easy to entertain equally melancholy thoughts about the SETI enterprise itself. It's the ultimate in high-risk, high-payoff science, pursued by only a handful of passionate researchers. In 50 years of searching, they have turned up nothing — and they can't quite shake an association in the public mind with flying-saucer sightings and Hollywood science fiction, all of which is so easy for cost-cutting politicians to ridicule that any substantial federal funding for SETI is impossible. Private support for the search is getting tighter because of the global recession. And many of the pioneers who have championed the search are now well into their 60s, 70s or 80s.

It's a sad thought that SETI might soon be gone, because althought they have been scanning the skies - without success - for 50 years, they have literally just begun. As Jill Tarter, head of the search programme at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, puts it:

...giving up now would be like dipping a cup into the Pacific Ocean, finding nothing but clear water and declaring, 'the oceans have no fish'

So what next?

According to the article, although SETI itself might officially be shut down, the search for extraterrestrial life will go on regardless. A website called SETIstars.org has been set up to try and raise some basic operational money - this seems unlikely to succeed though given the current worldwide economic pressures. A more plausible approach that is being considered is to simply cut back and do smaller scale studies with the help of SETI enthusiasts around the world who might have access to the appropriate equipment - sort of a SETI equivalent of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPs).

Either way, I think it's inevitable, and important, that the search will go on - albeit in a different way.

The good, the bad and the ugly of Lyme disease treatment

2011-07-22T17:25:00.002+01:00

Treating human disease is difficult for a number of reasons, not least the fact that patients have preconceptions about what treatments they want to receive. If a doctor prescribes a certain medication, and the patient - in full knowledge of the facts - decides not to take it, then there is not much more that the doctor can do. A case in point is highlighted in the March 2011 edition of Nature Reviews Rheumatology, specifically in a Case Study article entitled: "A case revealing the natural history of untreated Lyme disease".

In this article, a rheumatologist named Robert T. Schoen recounts the story of a patient he had who was determined to use a combination of acupuncture and homeopathy to cure her Lyme disease, a condition brought about by a bite from a tick of the Borrelia genus. Although the alternative treatments occasionally gave her some relief from her symptoms (the placebo effect - alive and strong), her Lyme disease, and painful arthritic episodes, kept coming back.

But still, she refused to take antibiotics:

The rheumatologist confirmed the diagnosis of Lyme arthritis and prescribed amoxicillin (500 mg, three times daily for 28 days) to hasten the resolution of the current episode of arthritis and to prevent subsequent flare-ups. The patient initially agreed to take this treatment and to return at the completion of antibiotic therapy. When seen a month later, however, she had not taken any of the prescribed antibiotic therapy.

Medically speaking, this was obviously not an ideal situation for the patient. However, through her refusal to accept the convential Lyme disease treatment, the disease was able to progress naturally over a period of almost 4 years - Lyme disease is usually treated successfully with antibiotics. This situation gave the doctors a unique opportunity to study how the disease progresses and, ultimately, determine how effective the conventional treatments are following such a long disease period.

Below is a timeline for the four years (click to enlarge). Symptoms are displayed above the timeline. The visits to the homeopath, acupuncturist and rheumatologist are color-coded and displayed below the timeline.

Notice how even the homeopath eventually admitted defeat and prescribed antibiotics for the patient - and she still didn't take them!

Eventually, after four years of failed alterntive treatments, the patient was in so much pain that she had confined herself to bed for a month. She relunctantly visited and listened to the advice of a rheumatologist and took a 30-day course of doxycycline. Six months later, she had no further arthritis and remained well.

Schoen concludes:

...patients who are not treated with antibiotic therapy are known to have recurrent episodes of oligoarthritis, often affecting the knee. Indeed, this Case Study demonstrates that Lyme arthritis, if untreated, continues to occur in a well-characterized pattern that can last for years. Furthermore, the arthritis in this patient is thought to have resulted from B. burgdorferi infection (in the absence of previous antibiotic therapy) rather than a postinfectious inflammatory process, and her condition was cured with a relatively short course of antibiotic treatment. The clinical identification of this increasingly uncommon long-term form of Lyme arthritis is important and appropriate management, even at this late-stage of disease, can result in gratifying treatment outcomes.

This case shows two things quite clearly:

1 - Even after four years of allowing Lyme disease to progress naturally, the patient was still successfully treated with antibiotics (the good)

2 - Acupuncture (the bad) and homeopathy (the ugly) are not effective at treating Lyme disease

The first point above bodes well for Lyme disease patients; conventional medicine can still be effective, even years after contracting the disease.

The second point simply serves as a warning to those who seek out unproven remedies for serious illnesses - do so at your own peril.

Thunderf00t vs Westboro Baptist Church

2011-07-12T12:26:00.001+01:00

Following his debate with Ray Comfort, and hot on the heels of Louis Theroux's recent revisting of the most hated family in America, Thunderf00t has posted an interview he conducted with some of the wackos from the Westboro Baptist Church.

Should be interesting!

From Thunderf00t's blog entry on the subject:

I had hoped to try and keep it all on a civilized, clear and logical level, but it became almost instantly obvious that this was a lost cause. The hostility of 'Meg the Eldar' was really something I was unprepared for. The volume, the amount, and the hostility in the pitch of her voice was that of a bitter, bitter woman. Like a dog that's been tormented daily till all it knows how to do is attack anything that comes within biting distance. The daughter, I had the feeling was only there for eye-candy, or was just there as a spectator so Meg the Eldar could show her how to properly hate something not of the cult. The daughter spoke softly and had it just been me and her we might have made some progress. She had a venomfangx look to her. Every argument had a 'memorized by rote' unthought through answer, but given time it might have been possible to untangle some of the mess. But alas, Meg the Eldar, from the very start was throwing in pointless insults at every opportunity, 'your nothing special' 'your country is worthless' 'your mother...' etc etc. Water off a ducks back for me of course, I've had more shit thrown at me than that before. Battle-hardened to the childish feces flinging :-) . Eventually, I decided that Meg the Eldar could not be allowed to streamroller the events by doing 90 % of the talking, only 5% of which was relevant, but when I accosted her about it she threatened repeatedly to leave.

Realizing that she essentially had the trump card of just walking out, I went for the 'Jesus endorses homosexuality' gambit.

It hit the spot, and they 'RAGE-QUIT'...

Altruistic ape

2011-06-15T14:46:00.001+01:00

In case anyone thinks that altruism is only a human trait, watch how the orangutan in the below video saves a small duck from drowning. The video was shot in 2008 in Dublin Zoo but has only recently appeared on the internet.

Since humans share a common ancestor with other apes, it makes sense that we should find supposedly 'human traits' in orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas (and we do). But what sense does this make in a Creationist worldview?

-----------------------------------------------

Edit: A copyright row has emerged from the above video going viral. It seems that the Daily Mail bought the clip from News Team International, and not from the original cameraman who actually owns the copyright. He'll surely get a nice few quid out of it now.

Psychic wastes police time, as usual

2011-06-08T14:00:00.002+01:00

It turns out there was no mass grave in Texas. Of course, the police had no choice. They have to follow up a 'lead' when it involves the possible murder of children, because if they don't and it turns out to be true, then there will be a massive public outcry. But I wonder, has a psychic ever actually been shown to have provided a significant case-solving piece of information?

No, according to this article:

What appears to be most annoying to police officers is that when crimes happen—especially high-profile crimes—psychics call in offering information—sometimes hundreds of them. Regardless of whether the information is even acknowledged, the psychic claims that the police consulted him or her on that case. This appears to have been the MO of more than a few famous psychics, whose cases numbered into the hundreds and thousands. How many they actually worked on, let alone were invited into, is anyone's guess.

Often on any given case, no two psychics agree, so which one is to be believed? Even if one is singled out, the information that psychics give is typically too vague and impressionistic to narrow down the field of search, and it looks impressive only in retrospect.

Joe Nickell asks psychics to step forward and solve the great mysteries, such as where is Jimmy Hoffa? Or who killed JonBenet Ramsey? So far, psychics have tried but none has succeeded.

Says debunker Gary Posner, who criticizes the lack of controlled studies of paranormal phenomena, "There has not been a single iron-clad case, bulletproof case that has been convincing."

In addition, no psychic has ever stepped forward to try for the million-dollar reward that James Randi's educational foundation offers (nor any other financial award from other agencies) for proving their psychic powers in controlled conditions. This certainly baffles the average person.

Thus far, a psychic's reliability for law enforcement has not been established. Anecdotal information is sometimes impressive and even surprising, but nothing can be concluded about using psychics as resources in solving a crime.

Obama leaves his mark on Ireland

2011-06-01T08:29:00.009+01:00

Literally!

In case you hadn't heard, Obama's indestructible, missile-proof, bullet-proof super car, nicknamed the 'Beast', met its match in the form of the ramp outside the US embassy in Dublin. Check the video below to see the beached Beast:

Well, I happen to walk past the very spot it happened every day, so I took some photos (click to enlarge)...

And a close up of Obama's mark...

Ha ha!!

Sovereign Independent - much huff and puff but no substance

2011-05-27T22:11:00.004+01:00

I became a member on Skeptic Ireland yesterday and upon reading a recent post there, my attention was drawn to the Sovereign Independent website - a real goldmine for conspiracy theories and New World Order nonsense. The co-editor is called Neil Foster and in this post he attacks an article in the Irish Independent (a real newspaper) by Ed Power which pokes fun at conspiracy theories. Here is an excerpt from Power's piece:

Spend just a few minutes on the internet and it becomes obvious we live in the golden age of conspiracy theories. From climate change (concocted by Al Gore and grant-hungry scientists) to September 11 (a CIA plot to stir up resentment against the Arab world) there is, it seems, a crank hypothesis for everything.

He provides a list of popular conspiracy theories including the JFK assassination, the origin of AIDS and even that Stephen King shot John Lennon! At the end of the article, Power mentions a few theories that actually did turn out to be true. These include the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study on black men conducted by the American government, CIA-funded propaganda during the Cold War, and finally the assertion that Ireland's economic problems were caused by a greedy cabal of bankers (this last one is obviously being referred to as a conspiracy theory tongue-in-cheekily, as it is widely known to be patently true)

And so, how did Neil Foster of the Sovereign Independent respond?

Well, he was angry. Very angry. In fact, such was his outrage at 'this piece of gutter journalism', I fully expected him to show us all how to critically analyse an article in a proper journalistic manner....

But no. As it turns out, Foster is the real 'gutter journalist' here. First of all, his article is littered with nasty rants using terms such as 'moron', 'comic book garbage' and 'junk fuelled buffoonery'. Hardly journalistic prose worthy of a Pulitzer, now is it?

Furthermore, Foster is livid at Power for not considering the mounds of 'EVIDENCE!' that support his Orwellian worldview of secret societies and Big Pharma cabals that are moments away from taking over the world. Oh, and the word EVIDENCE! is always capitalised - don't you know that's a sign of a reputable journalist.

And what EVIDENCE! does Foster present?

Firstly, on the subject of Osama Bin Laden he begins with John Hill, who produced the 'Ripple Effect' DVD supposedly showing that the London 7/7 bombers were tricked into getting the tube by the UK government so that their movements could be caught on CCTV and the bombings later pinned on them. Indeed, according to Hill, the innocent young men were supposedly murdered in Canary Wharf and never made it to the site of the bombings. Foster claims that Hill and his crank theories were vindicated in a court of law:

I wonder if [Ed Power is] any relation to Peter Power, the lackey, or accomplice in the 7/7 London Bombings which interestingly are not mentioned in this hitpiece. I wonder if that’s got anything to do with the FACT that a jury found 10 to 2 in favour of John Anthony Hill recently in his ‘Ripple Effect’ trial?

'In favour of' Hill. Hmmm... This ambiguous sentence seems to be implying that a jury vindicated Hill's beliefs that the London 7/7 bombings were orchestrated by the UK government. I guess Foster has proved his point.

Oh no, wait. On closer inspection, Foster is simply manipulating the truth here. What a surprise!

All of Hill's nonsense was, of course, thoroughly debunked and indeed Hill was shown to simply be a bit of a loony - it has even been alleged that he claimed on his website to be the Messiah, and he also claimed that George Lucas was told the script of Star Wars telepathically by The Force. Following completion of his DVD, Hill sent it out to the judge and jury foreman in a trial linked to the attacks. For sending the DVD to people directly involved in the trial, Hill was arrested for perverting the course of justice. Indeed, it was this charge for which the jury found in his favour - that he didn't pervert the course of justice - but they most definitely did not endorse any of the claims in his conspiracy theory DVD, which is what Neil Foster is clearly trying to imply as EVIDENCE! to support his article. He truly is a beacon of journalistic honesty, this Foster chap!

The next piece of EVIDENCE! put forward by Foster is to support his claim that Osama Bin Laden was already dead prior to the recent announcement that US troops had killed him. The extent of his EVIDENCE! actually just turns out to be a 2007 interview by Benazir Bhutto in which she claims he is dead. Never mind the fact that she clearly implies in an interview a week later that he is, in fact, alive (she goes as far as saying that 'Osama Bin Laden is rubbing his hands in glee as he as he looks at what's happening in Pakistan'). Foster's EVIDENCE! amounts to cherry-picking whatever he likes from the internet to support his preconceived ideas. His mind is clearly muddled by confirmation bias.

This is the extent of the EVIDENCE! offered by Foster to support his claims, an irrelevant court decision and a cherry-picked comment, none of which he actually links to or presents references for.

But the final piece of 'gutter journalism' displayed by Foster is simply amazing. It turns out that he apparently can't even read. Here is what he has to say about the segment of Power's article on 'Conspiracy theories that turned out to be true' (Power's original words in bold, followed by Foster's response):

‘The American government conducted medical experiments on poor black men’… This is ADMITTED by the American government!

As is this… ‘The CIA Paid Journalists to Write Propaganda’ although the past tense shouldn’t be used because they still do it today! Try reading ‘Who Paid the Piper: CIA and the Cultural Cold War’ – By Francis Stoner Saunders.

But of course the whole hitpiece is designed to divert attention from the last ‘theory’ in your comic strip suggesting that it’s farcical to suggest that:
‘The Irish Economy Was Destroyed by a Cabal of Bungling Bankers, Incompetent Politicians and Sycophantic Regulators’

I’ll add the words you deliberately left out in this line:
‘The Irish economy was DELIBERATELY destroyed by a cabal of CRIMINAL bankers, CORRUPT, TREASONOUS politicians and BOUGHT & PAID FOR ‘REGULATORS’

Look around the country Power and see the effects of this ‘conspiracy theory’ in every town and city in the country where people are losing their homes and businesses, bankers are raping the country, the IMF is taking the country and unemployment is now reaching pandemic proportions; a PANDEMIC deliberately released upon the western world by a criminal elite who are openly pushing for a world government to save us all from ourselves.

The day is coming very soon when those responsible for this corruption will be taken to task and those in the mainstream media, and the lackeys they use to try to attempt unsuccessfully, to discredit the truth, (are you listening Jamie?) will also be held accountable for their inaction in warning the Irish people on matters of great importance, destroying their lives and those of future generations.

That's right folks! In his rage, Foster ploughed straight into his vitriolic rantings without even realising that Power was clearly pointing out that these particular examples are, in fact, true.

Not only that, but he deleted my comment pointing out the above, along with two comments from a person called Jamie, from Skeptic Ireland, who also happens to disagree with him (Foster attacks Jamie in the article too). Freedom of speech obviously isn't a priority for the Sovereign Independent.

Two things Mr Foster:

1) Understand when something is being said in jest.

2) If you are going to accuse others of 'gutter journalism', in your response try not to use ad hominen insults, completely debunked EVIDENCE! and cherry-picked facts. Oh, and try to read the article properly and not delete dissenting comments.

True Christians™ disagreed with Camping all along

2011-05-26T12:30:00.000+01:00

(Source)

Maths is beautiful

2011-05-04T15:45:00.002+01:00

Don't believe me?

Watch these videos.

Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion.

For more see here

This is a wave pendulum designed using billiard balls, this device shows how 15 individual pendulum of different (but relative) lengths that have been adjusted to have successively increasing periods. When all the balls are released at the same time, the different periods cause the pendulums to cycle through all possible relative phase relationships, eventually returning to the beginning arrangement. When it cycles through it's phases, different wave patterns are noticed!

For more see here

Who killed more in the Bible?

2011-04-23T11:51:00.000+01:00

(Click to enlarge)

Source

PhD - what's the point?

2011-04-21T14:47:00.001+01:00

The latest issue of Nature has a few articles on the topic of PhDs.

'Reform the PhD system or close it down'
by Mark C. Taylor argues that many universities and academics essentially (if not purposefully) lie to undergraduates about their eventual career prospects in order to simply get 'free labour'. In this way, PhD students become nothing more than data generators who can be discarded and forgotten once they successfully graduate. I've seen this happen in my own career. Some academics have little interest in their students, other than what they can get out of them for their own benefit, i.e. publications. But their are others who do care. They allow the student to develop in their own time, which can take months or even years, but once that spark emerges they carefully nurture the student and encourage them to think laterally and critically about their chosen subject area.

As a side note, I am somewhat surprised that Nature invited Mark C. Taylor to write this article, given that he is a Professor of Religion in Columbia University. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people studying religion. But I think someone from a scientific discipline would have been more suitable. Indeed, the author even states the following:

[Universities] must design curricula that focus on solving practical problems, such as providing clean water to a growing population.

As noted by several of the commenters, how can a religion cirriculum achieve that? If it can't address practical problems, then lets get rid of religion PhDs.

---

The second article ('Seven ages of the PhD') is by a number of authors, each of whom completed their PhD in a different decade: Raymond Gosling 1950s, Cheryll Tickle 1960s, Steve W. Running 1970s, Yao Tandong 1980s, Andras Dinnyes 1990s, A. A. Osowole 2000s, & Erika Cule who is due to complete her PhD in 2012. Each of the authors gives a brief synopsis of their experiences during these years and compares to the current PhD climate.

Particularly interesting is the section by Raymond Gosling, who worked with Maurice Wilkins and later Rosalind Franklin at King's College London and is credited with taking the infamous first picture of the stucture of DNA.

Gosling says:

Randall's biophysics unit was a wonderfully energetic place to work. However, in those days relationships between staff and students were rather formal. All the men wore ties with their white lab coats, and the senior common room at King's was for men only...He told me that he didn't want to see my PhD until it was submitted — I can't imagine that happening nowadays.

Other notable quotes include:

Tickle (1960s):

Nowadays, PhDs are much more structured. Students are not given as free a rein as I was, nor are they allowed to make as many mistakes. There is a greater emphasis on acquiring data. Students also often work with others rather than alone. These differences reflect the changes over the past 40 years in the way in which research is carried out, and its growing pressures.

Running (1970s):

I finished my PhD in 1979, just before personal computers arrived. So it was written on a typewriter, with 53 hand-drawn figures. The subject of this labour of love was inducing water stress on 13 pine trees by cutting their leaves off and measuring desiccation responses. Looking back now, my PhD research seems highly esoteric. The work built fundamental understanding of leaf-scale physiology but had no policy relevance. The only practical value was in understanding why your Christmas tree turns brown. I think how innocent we all were then, doing weird science and looking for cheap beer.

Tandong (1980s):

I graduated from Lanzhou University in China's Gansu Province in 1978. At that time, the postgraduate system in China was immature. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), the whole education system was broken, and it was only after 1978 that the degree system was restored. There were probably only a few hundred PhD students in China.

Erika Cule (2010s):

The first draft of the human genome was published when I was still at school.

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The next three articles comment on an increasingly problematic situation - the bottle neck that has emerged from a large number of PhD graduates and a relatively low number of academic positions. Alison Cook ('Education: Rethinking PhDs') recommends thinking outside the box, as opposed to just staying on the established treadmill of Degree-PhD-Postdoc-Academic position.

Here, Nature presents five approaches to shaking up the hallowed foundations of academia. They range from throwing scientists deep into independent study, to going interdisciplinary, to forgoing the PhD altogether.

1 Jump in at the deep end
2 Forget academia
3 Trample the boundaries
4 Get it online
5 Skip the PhD

All good options, but it ultimately depends on the person.

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The fourth article, ('Education: The PhD factory') discusses PhDs on a country-by-country basis - some in which prospects for PhD graduates are on the way up, some on the way down, and some which are stagnating.

Japan, for example...

In some countries, including the United States and Japan, people who have trained at great length and expense to be researchers confront a dwindling number of academic jobs, and an industrial sector unable to take up the slack. Supply has outstripped demand and, although few PhD holders end up unemployed, it is not clear that spending years securing this high-level qualification is worth it for a job as, for example, a high-school teacher...

Of all the countries in which to graduate with a science PhD, Japan is arguably one of the worst. In the 1990s, the government set a policy to triple the number of postdocs to 10,000, and stepped up PhD recruitment to meet that goal. The policy was meant to bring Japan's science capacity up to match that of the West — but is now much criticized because, although it quickly succeeded, it gave little thought to where all those postdocs were going to end up.

Overall, the statistics seem to show that the benefits of doing a PhD are dwindling:

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So...

PhD - what's the point?

The final article ('What is a PhD really worth?') by Peter Fiske sums up the whole situation for me:

...I believe the most important lesson is that no programme of higher education can guarantee its graduates gainful and lucrative employment. At best, a graduate programme in any discipline can provide its students with key skills, knowledge and abilities. How the graduates apply that learning is up to them.

I agree with this. For me, achieving the ability to think critically and laterally is the point to doing a PhD (whatever the discipline). It is just as important as the eventual career path. The ability to critically assess any given topic or situation is advantageous in any walk of life and is something that employers will recognise and actively seek out. A good PhD program will provide the environment for students to learn these skills, regardless of whether they gain direct employment from such a program.

At the end of the day, a PhD is a very personal thing. No-one should go into one lightly, but no-one should be afraid to pursue a PhD based on downstream career prospects. My philosophy has always been to try and work in a field that I am interested in. I have been lucky enough to live up to that so far, and part of that was gaining a PhD in molecular immunology. I would change things here and there if I could, sure; but I have no major regrets.

Terminator vs Marty McFly

2011-04-20T15:38:00.003+01:00

Where were you at precisely 8.11pm last night?

At home?

Dining out?

Running for a bus?

Wherever it was, remember it, because that's where you were the exact moment when the missile-controlling computer network Skynet became self aware, thus heralding the end of human civilisation as we know it. That's right. Arnie-shaped Terminators and other gloopy shape-shifting bad guys are gonna be all over the place soon, so watch out.

On the plus side, it's only 1,635 days until Sunday, 11 October 2015, when Marty McFly will arrive and take all the Terminators down in a hilarious scenario involving hoverboards and a big pile of excrement. Join the party here!

Law of Non-Contradiction

2011-04-11T12:40:00.002+01:00

I don't necessarily take the position that the Law of Non-Contradiction doesn't hold, but I also don't necessarily accept a common refutation of this position, which involves reductio ad absurdum. That is, when someone says "if the Law of Non-Contradiction doesn't hold, then it does hold, doesn't it?". The reason I don't accept this is two fold:

1) The refutation takes the form of reductio ad absurdum and attempts to use proof by contradiction. Essentially, the contradiction that is presented is that you are both right and wrong at the same time, meaning the argument is reduced to absurdity. However, the emergence of a contradiction does not refute the position that the Law of Non-Contradiction doesn't hold, because the very nature of this position allows for contradictions.

2) In applying proof by contradiction, the refutation already accepts that the law of non-contradiction holds in order to show that it holds. Thus, the argument is circular and so doesn't refute the original position.

I have blogged about this subject before, and am currently in the middle of a conversation about it with John Fraser (JF) on the Premier forums, which I present below the fold. It started by JF sharing this anecdote about his philosophy professor:

JF: My seminary philosophy professor (a student of Plantinga's) had a standard response when some smart-alec in the back would try to dispute the law of non-contradiction (usually with some kind of half-baked appeal to quantum theory like what you guys are doing). He would say, "well, then I'm right, aren't I?" How can you contradict that (having already denied the law of non-contradiction)?

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Rhiggs (RH): Perhaps I'm missing something, but can someone please explain why a legitimate answer to John Fraser's oft mentioned philosophy professor can't simply be...

"Well, then you're wrong, aren't you?"

...seeing as the professor, in order to give his response, has accepted the student's proposition that the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold? That is, under the terms that the law doesn't hold, if he's wrong he's actually right (as he states). but it also means that if he's right he's actually wrong. As I see it, the back and forth could go on like this ad infinitum, without actually affiriming either position.

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JF: Earth to Rhiggs: the point of the statement is to show that BY THE STUDENT'S OWN STANDARDS he has no way to object that the professor is wrong. Get it? It's not an admission by the professor that the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold!

This is a form of reductio ad absurdum. In a reductio argument, the one making the reductio does not have to accept the conclusion of the argument he is trying to refute - rather, he shows that it leads to an absurdity.

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RH: I know that he is not admitting that the law of non-contradiction fails, but in order to show that the student's argument leads to absurdity, he has to show what happens when the law fails. In order to do this, his argument relies on adopting the student's position.

That is, he is really saying, "well, if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, then I'm right, aren't I?". But the student can just turn this back on the professor and say "well, if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, a position you needed to adopt in order to make your point, then you're wrong, aren't you?". The point being that the professor's argument itself is also reduced to absurdity. I'm not saying the student is correct in the first place, but that the professor's response isn't sufficient to refute it.

In addition, the professor is simply showing that if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, then it leads to contradictions, and thus absurdity. But of course it does - that is the very claim! By using the emergence of contradictions, the professor is using the law of non-contradiction to show that the law of non-contradiction holds, which seems circular.

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JF: Rhiggs,

That is, he is really saying, "well, if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, then I'm right, aren't I?". But the student can just turn this back on the professor and say "well, if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, a position you needed to adopt in order to make your point, then you're wrong, aren't you?".

Well, he could say those words perhaps. The problem is, in saying this he's saying that the professor is NOT right, but he's already denied the law of non-contradiction. But in saying, "then you're wrong, aren't you?" he would be AFFIRMING the law of non-contradiction - unless he wants to say that the professor is both right and not right about the same point. So actually this would be playing exactly into the trap which the professor has set for him. He can't deny the professor's claim to be right, he could only add another claim, namely that he is not right. And then he can try to affirm that those two propositions are perfectly compatible. But that would be sheer nonsense as even the befuddled student would hopefully be forced to realize.

In addition, the professor is simply showing that if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold, then it leads to contradictions, and thus absurdity. But of course it does - that is the very claim! By using the emergence of contradictions, the professor is using the law of non-contradiction to show that the law of non-contradiction holds, which seems circular.

The problem is much deeper than that. It means the law of non-contradiction is necessary even for the student to make any claims about the law of non-contradiction. Note that I'm not saying that this proves the existence of God (a'la presuppositionalism) - just that in denying the law of non-contradiction, you are essentially denying the ability to deny anything. And yes, that is absurd. You might as well say, "I deny the truth claim that says that a truth claim can be denied." It's as self-referentially incoherent as saying that there are no absolute truth - which is itself an absolute truth claim!

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RH: Let me be clear here. I'm not agreeing with the student, I'm just disagreeing with the professor's refutation.

But in saying, "then you're wrong, aren't you?" he would be AFFIRMING the law of non-contradiction ...

I don't see how this is so in two different ways. If he says the professor is wrong, then he is denying the law, not affirming it, as the professor's position is that the law holds. Also, he is denying the law by the very act of claiming that the professor's position is both right and wrong at the same time.

...unless he wants to say that the professor is both right and not right about the same point

Which is exactly the point. The student could say this if the law of non-contradiction doesn't hold. He could say the same about any statement, even his own. The professor might claim that this reduces the student's argument to absurdity, but in doing so he is relying on proof by contradiction, i.e. it is absurd because you can't be both right and wrong.

This fails for two reasons:

1) Showing the emergence of a contradiction does not refute the student's position, as this is his position, that contradictions are allowed.

2) In applying proof by contradiction, the professor is already accepting that the law of non-contradiction holds in order to show that it holds. His argument is circular and so doesn't refute the student's position.

just that in denying the law of non-contradiction, you are essentially denying the ability to deny anything. And yes, that is absurd.

As I see it, by denying the law of non-contradiction, you are actually allowing for any particular thing to be both denied and affirmed at the same time, not just denied. I agree that it is absurd - in that it is of no apparent practical use to humans - but it is not refuted using the professor's method due to the reasons presented above.

Interesting topic.

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JF: Rhiggs,

I don't think you get the point of the refutation. Sure, the student could take the position, "you're both right AND wrong, as am I, because I don't believe the law of non-contradiction holds," but then even as he says this, he is implicitly affirming that the law of non-contradiction DOES hold - otherwise he would not be able to say the law of non-contradiction DOESN'T hold. Get it?

So actually his statement would have to be modified to, "you're right and wrong just as I am right and wrong because the law of non-contradiction both does and does not hold." But hopefully the light will come on at some point and the student will realize that this is all just sheer nonsensical gibberish with no content or truth value whatsoever.

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RH:

I don't think you get the point of the refutation.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, but you're right, I don't get it. By the student's standards, if the law doesn't hold, anything that anyone says can mean what they say and the opposite all at once. It's absurd! But I still don't see how it has been refuted. The professor is simply applying the law to refute the denial of the law, and that is just circular.

Sure, the student could take the position, "you're both right AND wrong, as am I, because I don't believe the law of non-contradiction holds," but then even as he says this, he is implicitly affirming that the law of non-contradiction DOES hold - otherwise he would not be able to say the law of non-contradiction DOESN'T hold. Get it?

No. Why does the student, by his own standards, need to implicitly affirm the law in order to deny it?

So actually his statement would have to be modified to, "you're right and wrong just as I am right and wrong because the law of non-contradiction both does and does not hold." But hopefully the light will come on at some point and the student will realize that this is all just sheer nonsensical gibberish with no content or truth value whatsoever.

You say that the student's position is gibberish because of the multiple contradictions that arise, but that still doesn't actually refute the student's position due to my points above about why the professor's refutation is flawed.

Firstly,
- The student's position is that contradictions are allowed
- The professor's refutation is that the student's position leads to a contradiction (you can't be both right and wrong at the same time)
- But this fails, because the student's position is that contradictions are allowed (if the student is right, then he most certainly can be both right and wrong at the same time)

Secondly,
- The student's position is that contradictions are allowed
- The professor's refutation relies on proof by contradiction (reductio ad absurdum), which requires the law of non-contradiction to hold
- Thus, the professor is assuming that the law holds in order to show that the law holds
- The professor's argument is circular and, therefore, is not sufficient to refute the student (pointing out a logical fallacy with the use of another logical fallacy isn't very impressive)

If you can address these two points then I might be convinced.

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JF: Rhiggs,

If you can address these two points then I might be convinced.

You're really making me earn my paycheck on this one. Oh, wait, I do this for free. It just feels like a job sometimes.

You want me to address these "two" points - with 3 and 4 subpoints, respectively?

Probably this won't work after everything else I've already said, but basically the problem is this. You keep considering the whole thing from the standpoint that the student's position is that contradictions are allowed. Right? The problem is, as the professor shows, the student's position also leads to the conclusion that contradictions are NOT allowed. So are contradictions allowed or aren't they? You can't just say, "well, that's a contradiction but it doesn't matter because contradictions are allowed," because by his own position contradictions are NOT allowed. You have to apply the rule at the meta-level, not just the sub-level. In other words, you can't just apply the student's rule to everything below the level of the rule itself, because it also has to apply to the rule.

The point of all of this, hopefully, is that the student will see his position leads to a situation which even he doesn't find desirable. That his position amounts to nothing more than meaningless word games and makes it impossible to talk about anything coherently. He could, I suppose, just say, "why talk about anything coherently?" The problem, though, is that in saying that the law of non-contradiction does not obtain, he presumably takes himself to be saying something coherent. If he isn't, then who cares?

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RH: As I suspected, you are still simply saying that a contradiction disproves the position that contradictions are allowed. This would be a perfectly acceptable way of disproving most positions, but not this particular one due to the very nature of what is being claimed. Put simply, proof by contradiction cannot be used to prove the law of non-contradiction, or to disprove its negation. In doing so, you are saying nothing more than it's wrong because it's wrong.

So are contradictions allowed or aren't they?

This is where you are going wrong. You can't just decide the answer to this and then subsequently apply it to the problem, because this is the very thing that is being debated. Your approach is completely circular.

You have to apply the rule at the meta-level, not just the sub-level. In other words, you can't just apply the student's rule to everything below the level of the rule itself, because it also has to apply to the rule.

That is exactly what I am doing. I am applying the position that 'contradictions are allowed' to every level in this. If the rule holds, then it both holds and doesn't hold, so any apparent disproof is not a disproof at all, because the position implies that the rule both holds and doesn't hold at the same time, and of course it also doesn't imply that! Call the position nonsense or gibberish or meaningless word games if you like, but that is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the refutation, which I still contend is flawed.

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