Monthly Archives: December 2012

Critique of Rebecca Watson's Talk: Haters gonna hate.

Evolutionary Biology, Falsehoods and Skepticism, ,

Whinging About Skepchick

A critique of a talk by Rebecca Watson is very likely heavily influenced by the critiquer’s membership in one group or another as defined by The Great Sorting. This not because Rebecca is a polarizing person. It is because she has been outspoken on issues that tend to polarize people, like feminism. This polarization is enhanced by the fact that a break-off group of skeptics have chosen to join the haters rather than the thinkers and doers. Also, she leads a group of women who have tried to open up the Skeptical Community to having more female participants and to more frequently address women’s issues, and this has led to significant push back. As you listen to Rebecca’s recent talk on Evolutionary Psychology or read critiques of it, especially those that specifically call her talk “science denialism” or “creationism” or some other absurd thing, keep that in mind. Continue reading Critique of Rebecca Watson's Talk: Haters gonna hate. →

The Ebb and Flow of Lunar Science

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The picture above is what the Moon would look like if you wore gravity glasses.

We’ve been following the Grail Mission for some time now, and new results are in. NASA has made a very detailed gravity map of the moon. The Grail mission involves the use of two space craft flying next to each other, keeping track of their relative position by the use of radio signals. As they pass over the moon’s surface, they also interact with the Moon’s gravity. The complex dynamic of interaction between the twin spacecraft and the moon is measured by highly sophisticated and sensitive equipment, the data are crunched, and a gravity map is made.

The new map shows tectonic structures and landforms not previously seen in detail. Of particular interest:

“We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets,” said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL guest scientist with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. “This data revealed a population of long, linear gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early history.”

Here’s the gravity map in motion:

The twin spacecraft were initially named “A” and “B” in order to keep them straight, but later on a naming contest was held and they were renamed “Ebb” and “Flow.” The mission had completed a full map of the Moon’s gravity about mid year, and then the spacecraft changed position at the end of August to create a higher resolution map.

Details from the NASA press release are here.

A handful of peer reviewed papers on GRAIL were published in Science moments ago. Here are the abstracts:

The Crust of the Moon as Seen by GRAIL, by Wieczorek et. al.

High-resolution gravity data obtained from the dual Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft show that the bulk density of the Moon’s highlands crust is 2550 kg m?3, substantially lower than generally assumed. When combined with remote sensing and sample data, this density implies an average crustal porosity of 12% to depths of at least a few kilometers. Lateral variations in crustal porosity correlate with the largest impact basins, whereas lateral variations in crustal density correlate with crustal composition. The low bulk crustal density allows construction of a global crustal thickness model that satisfies the Apollo seismic constraints, and with an average crustal thickness between 34 and 43 km, the bulk refractory element composition of the Moon is not required to be enriched with respect to that of Earth.

Gravity Field of the Moon from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission, by Zuber et al.

Spacecraft-to-spacecraft tracking observations from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) have been used to construct a gravitational field of the Moon to spherical harmonic degree and order 420. The GRAIL field reveals features not previously resolved, including tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks, and numerous simple craters. From degrees 80 through 300, over 98% of the gravitational signature is associated with topography, a result that reflects the preservation of crater relief in highly fractured crust. The remaining 2% represents fine details of subsurface structure not previously resolved. GRAIL elucidates the role of impact bombardment in homogenizing the distribution of shallow density anomalies on terrestrial planetary bodies.

Ancient Igneous Intrusions and Early Expansion of the Moon Revealed by GRAIL Gravity Gradiometry, by Andrews-Hanna et al

The earliest history of the Moon is poorly preserved in the surface geologic record because of the high flux of impactors, but aspects of that history may be preserved in subsurface structures. Application of gravity gradiometry to observations by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission results in the identification of a population of linear gravity anomalies with lengths of hundreds of kilometers. Inversion of the gravity anomalies indicates elongated positive density anomalies interpreted to be ancient vertical tabular intrusions or dikes, formed by magmatism in combination with extension of the lithosphere. Crosscutting relationships support a pre-Nectarian to Nectarian age, preceding the end of the heavy bombardment of the Moon. The distribution, orientation, and dimensions of the intrusions indicate a globally isotropic extensional stress state arising from an increase in the Moon’s radius by 0.6 to 4.9 km early in lunar history, consistent with predictions of thermal models.

Echo Chambers

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Rachel Maddow can be very scary, because she’s like, all truth and stuff. For example, she claims that evolution is real and the moon landing was real! Imagine that!

But seriously the question is, how can people get things like this, and lots of other things (Obama’s place of birth, what really happened at Benghazi, etc.) so wrong.

Many misconceptions are politically motivated, but they are so absurd that it is hard to understand how they are spread and maintained. Recently, Rachel threw a few “truth bombs” and discussed the “truth” bubble that conservative politicians and the conservative media live in. This prompted Eddy, Lauren, Lux and Mindy, of Teen Skepchick to engage in a discussion of Echo Chambers, as Episode 2 of their new podcast. Here.

Canadian Scientists Create Virtual Human Brain

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A large scale model of a human brain has been created by a team of scientists at the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, Ontario. This is a virtual model, inside a computer, that involves 2,5 million virtual neurons structures in a pattern resembling the overall human brain’s anatomy, including cortical regions, motor control regions, etc. There are two components of the model: Visual processing including input and visual memory, and motor control sufficient to make a relatively simple, but 3D, arm move so it can draw things. The brain is called Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, or, rather creepily, “Spaun.” Continue reading Canadian Scientists Create Virtual Human Brain →

Disaster! Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes

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I’m reading Disaster!: A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes by John Withington, who also wrote about other disastrous things such as disasters specific to London. It is a couple of years old (and thus does not include the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami). This is more of a reference book than a sit-down-and-read-it book, and it lacks detailed presentation or critical analysis of sources, but if you want to know about a particular past major disaster or category of major disasters (volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, etc.) this is a good starting point. Reading just through the famous volcano disasters, for instance, one can get a good feel for the relationship between people’s experiences with volcanoes and an understanding of how these events play out and create the havoc they are responsible for. For example, recent research on the cause of death of Romans at Pombeii during the Plinean eruption of Vesuvius suggested that most of the victims found entombed in hardened volcanic effluence died by being cooked instantly as though tossed into an ultra-hot oven all at once. Reading in Withingon’s book about eye witness accounts several similar volcanoes (including Vesuvius), one would not be surprised about this at all. In Martinique, Mount Pelée totally destroyed the thriving cosmopolitan town of St. Pierre in 1902. Eye witness accounts attest to people watching the eruption from a nearby ship suddenly bursting into flames, with some individuals sizzling as they hit the surface of the sea into which they leapt to save themselves (unsuccessfully).

Another interesting theme that runs through the book is the relationship between leadership, or lack thereof, and the level of magnitude of the disaster’s impact on people, which reminds us of the difference between Katrina and Sandy. In the case of Mount Pelée, local officials had an interest in keeping everyone in town for an upcoming election, so the leadership assembled a commission of sycophants to “study” the volcano’s unrest and determine that it would not threaten the town. Almost every person who lived there was killed when the main eruption occurred, with the death toll being in the tens of thousands. Another theme is the vital importance of effective monitoring and planning for volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

This is a book without pictures so the Kindle edition is a good choice if you like eBooks. Also, note that the British edition has a slightly different title.

Our Conversations Should Be Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day

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I am having a conversation with my friend, Pat. We are talking about the way we talk when we have a chance to spend some time, or the way our emails seem to go.

“I tire of being asked what I think about something only to have the conversation derailed at the first ‘bump’ in my logic, at the first self-contradiction,” Pat says, of life in general.

My response: “I savor your contradictions. It’s my desire to explore them with you and to experience the change that happens when you wrestle with them.”

“Yes, I think you get it. How refreshing.”

As you can see, Pat and I have a deeply meaningful relationship. Enviable, in fact. It is based on not knowing things that we want to know, and how to fix that. There is also an element of bringing unformed or poorly formed thoughts to the table, cutting them up like a fruit salad, and enjoying them. Our conversations are like a cold fruit salad on a dusty hot summer day. Yes, very, very refreshing.

But not everybody has the opportunity to interact that way. This is because all utterances are questionable, if you want them to be. All communications are subject to measurement against a standard that one can easily justify as “Teh Standard,” even though one has merely pulled it out of one orifice or another. In fact, there is a place where that kind of communication is favored, revered, honed and practiced, and imposed by force of will and repetition on those who do not come to the table oppositional in affect and armed with snark.

That place is known … as the blogosphere.

But, dear reader, that is a Continue reading Our Conversations Should Be Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day →

How long can a fly fly?

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That is the title of a book by Lars-Åke Janzon, with the subtitle “175 Answers to Possible and Impossible Questions about Animals”. Oddly, that particular question appears to be evaded in the book itself, but most of the 175 questions seem to be addressed accurately. This is one of those books you keep around and read bits from now and then…perhaps you bring it on a trip and the tweens use it to create a game show or perhaps you keep it in your Life Science classroom and use it to generate discussion or test questions, or perhaps you just thumb through a fifth of it or so before going to bed, then a few months later you wonder “where the hell did I learn that thing that just came into my head…”

How Long Can a Fly Fly?: 175 Answers to Possible and Impossible Questions about Animals‘s author, Janzon, is the “Biologist In Charge” (of answering questions) at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and this book is inspired by the many questions he fields as part of his stewardship of public knowledge about Natural History. For this reason he focuses somewhat on the widespread myths people seem to pick up and the common questions people tend to ask.

Because the author is working in Swedish there is both a Swedish and a European slant to some of the topics, which is usually not important when addressing general principles, but is sometimes a bit too focused for the non-Swedish reader. For instance, I’d much rather know about snakes in the US, in particular the upper Midwest, than the Swedish viper, when it comes to practical advice. Also, there are some interesting language issues; did you know that Swedes (or Europeans?) call “purring” of a cat “spinning”? I didn’t. But now I do!

This is a definite stocking stuffer for the budding naturalist or Life Science teacher.

Oh, by the way, do you happen to know: if a mosquito is hit by a drop of rainwater, will it die?

Tinkering with Lego Technic

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Lego Technic is a Lego based technology that includes a combination of totally new kinds of Lego pieces and fancy technology that lets you build some amazing things. You can get kits that range in cost and sophistication from the LEGO 8514 Technic Power Roboriders a sort of motorcycle for robots that costs tens of dollars to a Motorized Bulldozer that will set you back nearly $700. Actually, I think there may be Techno kits that cost way over $1000.

The modified Lego pieces include the techno “brick” which comes in many forms that have holes in them through which specially shaped parts can be inserted, to have an armature that does not rotate, an axel, or some sort of pivot. Some of the tecno Lego parts seem to converge on Erector Set pieces, but without the annoying little nuts and bolts. Then there are gears and pullies and all that stuff, and on top of that, electronic doohinkeys. You can get electric motors, you can get a differential, and clutches. You can get lights. There is even a pneumatic system. Actually, there’s two different ones, a legacy system and an updated system.

With enough parts and some good design, you might actually be able to design a Lego Technic machine that does something useful. Like one that brings you a beer or scares away solicitors at the front door.

I’ve got this book that seems to be the book to have if you are going to start messing around with this Robotic Technology: The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide. If you know someone who is planning to play around, er, I mean engage in DIY hobbyist activities, with this form of Lego, do them a favor and get them this book so they can mix and match and design their own stuff rather than buying those expensive kits. Some details from the publisher:

The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide is filled with building tips for creating strong yet elegant machines and mechanisms with the Technic system. Author Pawel “Sairel” Kmiec will teach you the foundations of LEGO Technic building, from simple machines to advanced mechanics, even explaining how to create realistic to-scale models. Sariel, a world-renowned LEGO Technic expert, offers unique insight into mechanical principles like torque, power translation, and gear ratios, all using Technic bricks. You’ll learn how to:

  • Create sturdy connections that can withstand serious stress
  • Re-create specialized LEGO pieces like casings and u-joints, and build solutions like Schmidt and Oldham couplings, when no standard piece will do
  • Build custom differentials, suspensions, transmissions, and steering systems
  • Pick the right motor for the job—and transform its properties to suit your needs
  • Combine studfull and studless building styles for a stunning look
  • Create remote-controlled vehicles, lighting systems, motorized compressors, and pneumatic engines

The The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide, being unofficial, is not a catalog or sales pitch, but rather, a very well organized and clear guide to getting the most out of your new toy, er, hobby. Start at the beginning, work towards the end, and you’ll be an expert modeler and maker of things Lego-Technic. Nothing that flies, though. But a lot of stuff that drives.

Best of the Times Top Ten Space Moments: The Moon Sunk Titanic

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I was just looking at the newly released Time Top Ten Space (science) Moments of the year. This is a little unfair, actually. The year is not over. Something could easily happen between now and January 1, 2013. Anyway, there are things on this list I didn’t know, so I therefore assume that you did not know them either.

It appears that the Moon sunk the Titanic. At first this sounds silly, but it is actually quite possible and even if an exaggeration of sorts, interesting. On January 4th, before the Titanic sailed, there was a Spring Tide. This is the monthly (in lunar months, obviously) extreme high tide caused by the opposition of the Sun and the Moon. On this day, however, Earth was at it’s annual perihelion in its orbit around the Sun, and the Moon was at a 1400 year orbital low in relation to the Earth. So, the Spring Tide that month was extremely extreme.

This, then seems to have lifted large ice bergs that would have normally been grounded and put them back into action, and one of them went over to the Titanic and sank the damn thing.

One of the items I knew about but want to remind you of: An Earth-like planet was spotted at Alpha Centauri. Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

The others are all more commonly known, and they are good choices for a list of top ten space science events. Interesting, though, that the strangest and in some ways most unexpected one is about an early 20th century boat.

See you in Minneapolis on Thursday, right?

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Thursday, at 7 to 9 PM in Room 412 of the Science Teaching and Student Services Building on the East Bank. A few of us involved with Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories will be doing a thing called “Telling our Stories.”

The event is run by the UMN Campus Atheists Skeptics and Humanists, and will include August Berkshire, Robin Raianiemi, Eric Jayne, Stephanie Zvan, and Me. Details are here.

Help with this petition regarding a facebook page on teen suicide DONE

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UPDATE: The pages are DONE. Good work, Miriam!

Let’s try to act like a civilized society, for at least a few minutes, OK? There is a facebook page called “No respect for suicidal teens” that seems to have been put up by someone annoyed by attention given to someone who killed herself that the facebook page creator has judged worthy of death. Thus the page. It almost looks like a persona vendetta of some kind.

Miriam Mogilevsky has created a petition asking Facebook to take this page down. I should note that there are actually two almost identical pages; either the person who created them was incompetent, or that person created two pages in order to cause some confusion so it would stay up longer.

A lot of teenagers commit suicide. An even larger number try. Those who use inadequate methods or who otherwise don’t succeed tend to get help and usually get past that period in their lives and survive. Those who use, say, a handgun tend to die. Clearly, suicide is not inevitable. There is about a 100% chance that someone close to you, whom you know and love as a adult attempted suicide at one time in their past and you don’t even know it.

I’m sure the person who put this web site up is emotionally immature and ignorant. Or, possibly a sociopath, but I’m assuming the former. They may get past this stage in their life when they are being an unmitigated ass. Let’s help that person get past the unmitigated ass stage by getting Facebook to take notice of these pages and take them down.

How Girls Evolved to Shop

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Rebecca Watson gave the following talk at Skeptcon. It is funny, well done, and critiques a Pop-Evol-Psy concept or two, which I have also addressed (Why Do Men Hunt and Women Shop?, Understanding Sex Differences in Humans: What do we learn from nature?, Falsehoods: Human Universals, A Tutorial in Human Behavioral Biology, Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism, Race, Gender, IQ and Nature, What is the most important human adaptation?, How Do You Get Sexual Orientation and Gender in Humans?, Men = Testosterone Damaged Women!, Sex and Gender in An Odd Primate), as Rebecca notes, thank you Rebecca! I don’t agree with everything Rebecca said about the role of men and women in forager societies, but that isn’t too important to her talk.

The original video is HERE. Please be so kind as to go and “like” it, as there will be many haters who will bother to go and “unlike” it because they are haters.

CLICK HERE for my followup post on this. And, HERE is another, related post.