Weblog Response: Proven By Science!

Possible future blogs

Travel Blog
Home and Gardens
Politics Blog (Ph34r it)

I'm taking a Biology Lab course, I have been asked to bring the following itmes that may be required for each session:

Ruled Paper

Plain Paper

Icm graph Paper

Clear plastic ruler

Pencil

Simple Calculator

Rubber

User name and Password

*Scissors, Forceps and Permanent marker pen may also be useful especially for 'wet practicals' but these are not essential.



White coast are not essential, but are useful for protecting clothes.

....and for looking professional I say!

NUDIE BLOG NOW!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

The other day they had this picture, and in the text they linked to an article on skateboarding!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031001.html

staffers who haven't yet posted should do so, lest they meet the wrath of SCIENCE!

alan yr post on the dancing bear was great!! i once tried to derive g through a bunch of inclined plane experiments for an intro physics class -- i used a wooden board and slid stuff down it, but the coefficient of friction on the board was so high and uneven that it kept throwing off my results!! so i buttered the incline plane. i'm not kidding -- putting butter all over the board got rid of a lot of the problem but i still had like 14872% error

g = 9.8 m/s^2 approx obv

(ie every time yuou have to cram something new into the space, you eat some of yr flatmate's food)

Apparently a lot of Galileo's experiments with pendulums and balls rolling down planes and in vertical semi-circles were also fudged. And Millikan just made all his results up "A bright white spec moving upwards at .2 ms^-1" my arse.

(g is 10 to a better approximation than is wholely natural.)

While doing so two years ago, I realised that I'd forgotten what the other one was about :(

I always thought the Millikan experiment as performed was bobbins. IIRC Feynmann wanders off into a digression about it in The Nature Of Physical Law. Apparently some other chaps tried a superior experiment not long after that got a far better result, but fudged it so it was much closer to Millikan's. Subsequent experiments gradually homed in on the better result as it became more reasonable to doubt the result of the initial experiment.

"She rocks! I'm sending this to every scientist I know."

Thought you'd like to know.

those of you who signed up to be contributors who haven't posted yet -- science is calling you!! ricky how's your fridge experiment going? sarah the world needs to know abt your crystal radio!!

also when i click a PBS post's link it takes me to the FT main page, is this meant to happen?

Dear Idiot. Three sips of lavander oil a morning and repeat the mantra My Feet Are Impervious To Pins fourteen times a day. And send me a cheque.

"The world's greatest single
repository on the subject of weird, gimmicky,
extinct forms of communication!"
http://www.deadmedia.org/

NYT: High-Tech Daydreamers Investing in Immortality
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/01AGE.html

Foresight at Pop!Tech 2003. Foresight President Christine Peterson's talk at
Pop!Tech 2003,
a conference held Oct. 16-19 in Camden, Maine, on "The Impact of Technology
on People",
presented Foresight's view on the "Sea Change" to be brought by
technological transformation
over the coming decades.
http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/31/0930244&mode=nocomment&threshold=

Enough Already By Ronald Bailey at Reason Online. A leading environmentalist
makes a foolish
case against technological innovation.
http://www.reason.com/0310/cr.rb.enough.shtml

The Physics of Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations
http://www.mkaku.org/articles/physics_of_alien_civs.shtml
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku wonders what the physics of extraterrestrial
civilizations must be like, and argues that alien civilizations may be able to
harness the energy of galaxies and travel through the universe using wormholes.

Should We Be Scared of Superintelligence?
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/tech/nextnews/archive/next031024.htm
The theme of out-of-control, supersmart computers has become a pretty common
staple of science fiction, says James M. Pethokoukis, but that hasn't stopped
speculation about the ramifications of such technology. Oxford philosopher Nick
Bostrom and artificial intelligence researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky are two
thinkers who take both the threat and promise of superintelligence very
seriously.

What Does it Mean to Be Me?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/10/29/ecfme2\
9.xml&sSheet=/connected/2003/10/29/ixconn.html
"Science, having done away with the soul," says Paul Broks in the Telegraph,
"has lately been turning its gaze to the soul's secular cousin: the self. There
is no ghost in the machine, it is agreed, just a machine." Indeed, where in the
brain our sense of self is born is a riddle that still vexes scientists.

Religious Opposition to Cloning
http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/bainbridge.html
Religion is among the most powerful factors shaping attitudes toward human
reproductive cloning. William Sims Bainbridge of the National Science Foundation
explores this influence with both quantitative and qualitative data from a major
online questionnaire study. The interpretations offered by Bainbridge are based
on the New Paradigm theory of religion, which stresses the strength of religion
to resist the secularizing influences of science, revealing the possibility of
heated future conflict between religion and science.

Zillions of Universes? Or Did Ours Get Lucky?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/science/space/28COSM.html
"Those who favor taking the anthropic principle seriously don't really like it,"
says cosmologist Steven Weinberg. "And those who argue against it recognize that
it may be unavoidable." Why is the theory that the universe is finely tuned for
intelligent life so controversial? Leading scientists explained and demonstrated
recently at "The Future of Cosmology" conference.

On the Importance of SETI for Transhumanism
http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/cirkovic.html
In this Journal of Evolution and Technology article, cosmologist and
transhumanist Milan Ćirković argues that astrobiology and the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence may be of vital importance to future humanity and
the transhumanist endeavor. Aside from the scientific import of discovering
alien life, Ćirković believes, extraterrestrial intelligences could provide us
with strategic information about how to live, survive and create value in the
universe.

The Berlin Declaration
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
As a subset to the Conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and
Humanities, and in light of the radical potential for the Internet, a number of
individuals and institutions have compiled and signed The Berlin Declaration
inisting that that there be greater open access to knowledge in the sciences and
humanities. The declaration promotes the Internet "as a functional instrument
for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify
measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies,
libraries, archives and museums need to consider."

Here's some tools that might be of use to proven by science regulars:

Create a google News Alert:
http://www.google.com/newsalerts

SCIENCEWEEK STUDENT'S EDITION
http://www.scienceweek.com/subinfo.htm

http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/.

eg what happens to shapes when you get v.big, what happens to matter when you get v.small, the distance between the biggest and the smallest and the points where they "join up" (black holes)

after all three eps, i maintain (against little opposition) it was fantastically badly organised, made a major boo-boo trying to use history science to clarify content of science, and employed a total complete utter idiot in the visualisation department (ie 9/10ths of the visualisation introduced extra levels of confusion, misapprehension and irrelevance)

I also think that there isn't enough of this stuff on TV and I don't want to be horrible about it in case I hurt its feelings.

Also, brian greene vs carl "beans and beans" sagan. I mean both of them are/were irritating as teevee presenters.

the rolf thing tells you something a million non-painting critics can't, which the implications of the material act of painting - it's a really bold strike against the idealisation of art (i dobn't think non-painters talking abt painting is a bad thing at all, i just don't think it's intrinsically and obviously better than painters talking abt painting)

ps i haf always fd his huffing-and-humming-while-i-paint v.maddening BUT goya did the same only worse (he used to sing highly operatic obscenities and stamp) so meh

(i edited the second to three dots)

(ps. hey marianna! how's it going?)

Ruled Paper

Plain Paper

Icm graph Paper

Clear plastic ruler

Pencil

Simple Calculator

Rubber

User name and Password

*Scissors, Forceps and Permanent marker pen may also be useful especially for 'wet practicals' but these are not essential.

White coast are not essential, but are useful for protecting clothes.

....and for looking professional I say!

-- marianna (mariannamaclea...), October 3rd, 2003 9:08 AM."

Hey marianna, how did the class go?!? I see it was two years ago now, so can you tell us since enough time has passed...what on earth did you use the RUBBER for????? Was it a study in human biology and how procreation works?

This off the grid alien consciousness is devoted to a sober examination and response to advancing human development and preserving the human species.