Science and Souls (for geeks and spiritual explorers)
- Thread starter Bob Loblaw
- Start date
grokit
well-worn member
Another bit of bad from fukushima...
"Workers from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the shuttered utility, apparently forgot to turn off an overflow valve at an onsite storage tank recently, causing the release of 100 metric tons of highly radioactive water into the ground...this latest leak is the worst to occur at the plant since an earlier one back in August which sent some 300 metric tons of contaminated water into the environment..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/20/us-japan-fukushima-tepco-idUSBREA1J08E20140220
"Workers from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the shuttered utility, apparently forgot to turn off an overflow valve at an onsite storage tank recently, causing the release of 100 metric tons of highly radioactive water into the ground...this latest leak is the worst to occur at the plant since an earlier one back in August which sent some 300 metric tons of contaminated water into the environment..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/20/us-japan-fukushima-tepco-idUSBREA1J08E20140220
Nooky72
Dog Marley
Worth checking this out.....
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/johnmaxfield376/02212014-marijuana-presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/johnmaxfield376/02212014-marijuana-presentation
t-dub
Vapor Sloth
Every time I read the "Grasshopper" thread I think of these guys. SpaceX . . . this booster stage will eventually recover itself from near orbit after launch and land on its own feet like you see being tested here in the "hover slam" and "diversion" tests . . . 
---
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/falcon-9-stretch-legs-grasshopper-trials/
Edit: A view from a drone . . .
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/falcon-9-stretch-legs-grasshopper-trials/
Edit: A view from a drone . . .
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Nooky72
Dog Marley
In December 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented something that would, decades later, revolutionize photography: the world’s first digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, and captured black and white images at a resolution of 100×100 – or 0.01 megapixels in today’s marketing terminology. The images were stored on cassette tape, taking 23 seconds to write. The camera uses an ADC from Motorola, a bog-standard (for the 1970s) lens from a Kodak movie camera, and a CCD chip from Fairchild Semiconductor – the same technology that digital cameras still use today. To playback the images, a special computer and tape reader setup (pictured below) was built, outputting the grainy images on a standard TV. It took a further 23 seconds to read each image from tape.
t-dub
Vapor Sloth
Taking the thread back from the inane . . . 
Pulling my Meade LX200 ACF out of mothballs for the summer. After getting a GPS fix the scope self leveled, found north, and proceeded to alignment which I verified with Google Sky on my cell phone from indoors. This is a positional test from a down position up to tracking Jupiter . . . .
Pulling my Meade LX200 ACF out of mothballs for the summer. After getting a GPS fix the scope self leveled, found north, and proceeded to alignment which I verified with Google Sky on my cell phone from indoors. This is a positional test from a down position up to tracking Jupiter . . . .
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Crohnie
Crohn's Warrior
Sad to say I found the premiere of COSMOS disappointing. A bit too dumbed down and all over the place. Also, wasn't it supposed to be about science, not religion? It's pretty common knowledge that the church persecuted scientists. Why spend SO much time on it? Hopefully, it will get better from here.
Vicki
Herbal Alchemist
I think I will always like Carl Sagan's Cosmos better. As a matter of fact, I just started a marathon.
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Frederick McGuire
Aggressively Loungey
Sure, there was a fair bit of time sent on th religion story, but it was still interesting from a science perspective.
For one thing, I think it is an important part of the history of science to note.
Nowadays any reasonable person should be fully accepting of the scientific method as a tool to gain knowledge, but back then the "reasonable person" had absolutely no trust in it.
If they keep harping on about it in future episodes, it'll be annoying, but I didn't think it was too overbearing in this episode.
It also seemed like it was a good opportunity to express the point that even though the guy was technically right, he really wasn't justified in the model he was proposing, as he didnt have any evidence.
Plus I kinda thought the animation style was a cool little way to break up the episode.
For one thing, I think it is an important part of the history of science to note.
Nowadays any reasonable person should be fully accepting of the scientific method as a tool to gain knowledge, but back then the "reasonable person" had absolutely no trust in it.
If they keep harping on about it in future episodes, it'll be annoying, but I didn't think it was too overbearing in this episode.
It also seemed like it was a good opportunity to express the point that even though the guy was technically right, he really wasn't justified in the model he was proposing, as he didnt have any evidence.
Plus I kinda thought the animation style was a cool little way to break up the episode.
caliwisp
Cali Dreamin'
@Bob Loblaw thanks so much for staring this thread, I'm following! Have you (or any of the other fabulous people here) read "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe" by Michael Schneider? About the numbers 1 through 12, and how they show up in various patterns throughout nature. Great visuals! Fun website to visit, too. Enjoy! http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/
t-dub
Vapor Sloth
For members here who understand math . . .
NCDC turns a strong January cooling trend (orange) into a strong January warming trend (blue) by simply altering the data. Adjusting the numbers might be justified in certain situations, but NOAA never explains why, and the adjustments they impose always create the illusion of a warming trend, even if the raw numbers say otherwise. If the adjustments were honest, I would expect them to move the numbers up and down much more randomly. That these adjustments only go one way — in favor of global warming — either suggests they are unconsciously allowing their biases to influence their work, or they are intentionally allowing their biases to influence their work.
Either way, their work is meaningless and untrustworthy, and should be ignored as less than worthless.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/...anuary-data-tampering-by-our-friends-at-ncdc/
The “adjustment” schemes in the official U.S. dataset are so drastic, according to Goddard’s analysis, that they managed to “turn a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” he said, suggesting that there may be a “software bug” at work. “Bottom line is that the [NOAA National Climatic Data Center] U.S. temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless,” Goddard concluded. “Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990 now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive are implemented as negative.”
Respected climatologist and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer actually showed evidence of what Goddard described as early as April of 2012, saying that “virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data.” Commenting on the latest findings, Dr. Spencer said that his own examination of the data and corrections to account for urban heat island (UHI) effects “support Steve’s contention that there’s something funny going on in the USHCN data.” He also called the NOAA methodology for adjusting the data “opaque” and said he believes it is prone to serious errors.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/
This is their current US graph. Note that there is a discontinuity at 1998, which doesn’t look right. Globally, temperatures plummeted in 1999-2000, but they didn’t in the US graph.
NCDC turns a strong January cooling trend (orange) into a strong January warming trend (blue) by simply altering the data. Adjusting the numbers might be justified in certain situations, but NOAA never explains why, and the adjustments they impose always create the illusion of a warming trend, even if the raw numbers say otherwise. If the adjustments were honest, I would expect them to move the numbers up and down much more randomly. That these adjustments only go one way — in favor of global warming — either suggests they are unconsciously allowing their biases to influence their work, or they are intentionally allowing their biases to influence their work.
Either way, their work is meaningless and untrustworthy, and should be ignored as less than worthless.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/...anuary-data-tampering-by-our-friends-at-ncdc/
The “adjustment” schemes in the official U.S. dataset are so drastic, according to Goddard’s analysis, that they managed to “turn a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” he said, suggesting that there may be a “software bug” at work. “Bottom line is that the [NOAA National Climatic Data Center] U.S. temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless,” Goddard concluded. “Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990 now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive are implemented as negative.”
Respected climatologist and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer actually showed evidence of what Goddard described as early as April of 2012, saying that “virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data.” Commenting on the latest findings, Dr. Spencer said that his own examination of the data and corrections to account for urban heat island (UHI) effects “support Steve’s contention that there’s something funny going on in the USHCN data.” He also called the NOAA methodology for adjusting the data “opaque” and said he believes it is prone to serious errors.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/
This is their current US graph. Note that there is a discontinuity at 1998, which doesn’t look right. Globally, temperatures plummeted in 1999-2000, but they didn’t in the US graph.
t-dub
Vapor Sloth
So is this what GdubyaB meant when he said, "fuzzy math"?
Who is GdubyaB?
Seren
Away with the fairies
grokit
well-worn member
Gwb; "dubya"; george w. bush, the 43rd US prez/war criminal who used the term "fuzzy math" to make the election against gore close enough to steal. Gore was talking about global warming as if it was important enough to actually take action; his "inconvenient truths" were a bit heavy on numbers so instead we got perpetual war and a crashed economy. Some may have a different opinion but not on the term fuzzy math.
edit: http://www.globalresearch.ca/bush-a...ar-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity/5336860
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grokit
well-worn member
Back on track, with theMost trafficked mammal that you've never heard of:
Inside a metal vault here in rural Vietnam is a creature believed to be the most trafficked mammal in the world. No sounds come from its cage. No squeaks or howls. A padlocked door creaks open to reveal an animal that seems far too unassuming to be traded by the ton.
It looks like a ...
"Dragon,” I say.
"Artichoke,” says a colleague.
"His name is P8," a researcher says.
But everyone calls him Lucky.
If you hear his story it's easy to understand why.
Lucky is a pangolin -- a rare, scale-covered mammal, about the size of a house cat, that’s so bizarre it almost forces your brain to flip through a Rolodex of more-familiar images. It could be described as a walking pinecone or an artichoke with legs – a tiny dinosaur or friendly crocodile. The pangolin possesses none of the cachet of better-known animals that are hot on the international black market. It lacks the tiger’s grace, the rhino’s brute strength. If the pangolin went to high school, it would be the drama geek -- elusive, nocturnal, rarely appreciated and barely understood. When it's frightened, it actually curls up into a roly-poly ball.
The pangolin could go extinct before most people realize it exists.
Or, more to the point: It could go extinct because of that.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014...ange-the-list-pangolin-trafficking/index.html
Frederick McGuire
Aggressively Loungey
Wait up, you're telling me that wasn't a sandshrew?
Gotta catch 'em all
Seriously, it's a sandshrew isn't it?
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