Shortly after a study from a former climate skeptic seemed to show that global warming is indeed happening, anti-climate skeptics are now accusing him of "hiding the truth" because the globe hasn't warmed in the last 10 years.
Ok, let's grant that, for sake of argument. I for one believe it. But climate is defined as the weather averaged over 30 years. So even if the temperature hasn't risen for 13 years, as they suggest, that means that it has risen for 17 out of the last 30 - and that the temperature is still rising.
Wait another decade and then you've got a case to make that global warming has stopped. If the skeptics are right, as they haven't been about almost anything for the past century or so, then we can throw a party. If they're wrong ... well, waiting another ten years makes fixing the problem much harder.
Understand: climate skeptics are just stalling in the hope the the problem will just go away. Personally, I wait in joyful hope for the Resurrection --- but when dealing with temporal problems, I pray for God's good favor, then get to work.
Why don't we all try being real about what our problems are and working hard to fix them, for a change?
-the Centaur
Posts tagged as “Hard Science”
John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, has died.
He changed the world more than Steve Jobs ... but in a far subtler way, by laying the foundation for programs like Apple's Siri through his artificial intelligence work, or more broadly by laying the foundation for much of modern computing through innovations like the IF-THEN-ELSE formalism.
It's important not to overstate the impact of great men like John and Steve; artificial intelligence pioneers like Marvin Minsky would have pushed us forward without John, and companies like Xerox and Microsoft would have pushed us forward without Steve. But we're certainly better off, and farther along, with their contributions.
I have only three stories to tell about John McCarthy. The third story is that I last saw him at a conference at IBM, in a mobile scooter and not looking very well. Traveling backwards in time, the second story is that I spoke with one of his former graduate students, who saw a John McCarthy poster in my office, and told me John's illness had progressed to the point where he basically couldn't program any more and that he was feeling very sad about it.
But what I want to remember is my first encounter with John ... it's been a decade and a half, so my memory's fuzzy, but I recall it was at AAAI-97 in Providence, Rhode Island. I'd arrived at the conference in a terrible snafu and had woken up a friend at 4 in the morning because I had no place to stay. I wandered the city looking for H.P. Lovecraft landmarks and had trouble finding them, though I did see a house some think inspired Dreams in the Witch House.
But near the end, at a dinner for AI folks, I want to say at Waterplace Park but I could be misremembering, I bumped in to John McCarthy. He was holding court at the end of the table, and as the evening progressed I ended up following him and a few friends to a bar, where we hung out for an evening.
And there, the grand old man of artificial intelligence, still at the height of his powers, regaled the wet-behind-the-ears graduate student from Atlanta with tales of his grand speculative ideas, beyond that of any science fiction writer, to accelerate galaxies to the speed of light to save shining stars from the heat death of the universe.
We'll miss you, John.
-Anthony
Image stolen shamelessly from Zach Beane's blog. The title of this post is taken from the Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, and is the original, pre-implementation Lisp M-expression notation for code to remove an item from a list.
Who are you? Good question. I'm Anthony Francis, and I write stuff and make computers jump through hoops for a living.
What have you done? I'm most notable for the EPIC award winning urban fantasy novel FROST MOON and its sequel, BLOOD ROCK, which are about magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost and are therefore hopefully both more interesting than my ~700 page PhD thesis on context-sensitive computer memory. Also on the computer side, I've done some exploration of robot emotions.
What are you doing next? Forthcoming in the Dakota Frost series is the third book, LIQUID FIRE, and this November for National Novel Writing Month I plan to work on HEX CODE, the first in a spin-off series featuring Dakota's adopted daughter Cinnamon Frost.
Are you working on anything other than Dakota Frost? I've also recently completed a rough draft of the first book in a new series, JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. A short story set in this universe, "Steampunk Fairy Chick", will be included in the forthcoming anthology UnCONventional.
What are you working on currently? I'm also currently working on a fourth new series with the working title STRANDED, a young adult science fiction novel set a thousand years in the future, featuring a spoiled young centauress who must rescue a shipload of children who have crashlanded upon a world she wanted to claim as her own. This story's set in the "Library of Dresan" universe from which this blog takes its name and which was setting of my very first unpublished novel "homo centauris", which I am now happily milking for its 57 billion year backstory.
Anything else? I have a flash fiction story called "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms" to appear on the Smashed Cat Magazine. I've also published one short story, "Sibling Rivalry" in the Leading Edge Magazine. I have a webcomic, f@nu fiku, on hiatus. And I'm actively involved with helping people succeed at 24 Hour Comics through tutorials that I and my friend Nathan Vargas have put together at Blitz Comics.
Is that enough questions for now? Yes, it is. Please enjoy.
-the Centaur
Why? Bananas are naturally slightly radioactive. While it's unlikely your body could retain all that radioactive potassium in those bananas, if it did you'd absorb enough radiation to cause an increased cancer risk:
There are disputes about those figures, of course, but at ~105 calories a banana, you're getting roughly 143 times your daily allotment of 2000 calories, so probably you should cut back anyway.
-the Centaur
P.S. One BED (Banana Equivalent Dose) is 0.1 microsieverts of radiation. XKCD claims that 100 millisieverts of radiation is the lowest dose linked to increased cancer risk. Take that with a grain of salt ... but do the math.
... or, actually, I'm going to be a stem cell donor.
Only 1 in 20,000 actually match, so this is pretty lucky. If all goes well with the physical and blood tests, I'll be helping out someone who's got few remaining options.
Good things do happen.
-the Centaur
P.S. No grief, only 1 in 20,000 match. So check out Be The Match dot org and consider getting your cheek swabbed. Somewhere out there someone may be depending on you - so no pressure.
The ever wonderful chaps at Information is Beautiful have put up a beautiful animated infographic of many of the major theories of consciousness. Click on the graphic to the right to see them all ... I'm essentially a functionalist but try to keep an open mind.
OK, I can state it more forcefully than that: I believe, and believe I can point to evidence for, that consciousness performs many important functions, and I want to know what they all are, how they work together, and how they relate to the other functions of the brain. If we do build up a solid picture of that, however, it won't surprise me too much if we find interesting phenomena left over that require us rethinking everything we've done up to that point.
-the Centaur
UPDATE: Ooo, there's even more to the graphic than I thought ... you can click on the brains and get it to produce a composite graphic of what "your" theory of consciousness is.
Over at Information is Beautiful they've got a chart detailing the levels of radiation at the Fukushima nuclear disaster compared with other things, like the radiation at Chernobyl (bad) and the radiation for eating a banana (not so much).
As XKCD tried to put into perspective earlier, the radiation at the plant is a real threat to the heroic workers trying to shut it down ... but for the rest of us, not so much.
Sorry, folks. Radiation is just not as dangerous as you've been told in the movies and the media - we simply try to keep exposure low because the effects are random. And even if you do get a fatal dose, it won't give you superpowers.
-the Centaur
What do you get for somebody who thinks they know everything? A dose of realism! Here are a few useful links to get started:
- The List of Common Misconceptions: People do not use only ten percent of their brains, and Vikings didn't wear horns on their hats.
- The List of Common Misquotations: Al Gore never said he invented the Internet, and Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house.
- The List of Cognitive Biases: Checking to see if you're right doesn't help, and ignoring evidence that you're wrong doesn't either.
- The List of Fallacies: Authority doesn't make an argument good ... and your opponent's big nose doesn't make their argument bad.
I've picked up a fair number of conventions over the years ... notations, ways of writing things to make the type of thing that I'm writing clear. Most of these I've picked up from others, some are my own. Here are a few of them:
- Novel titles are written in ALL CAPS
You write novels this way to make it clear that it's a BOOK you're talking about, dag nab it. Examples: FROST MOON, ATLAS SHRUGGED, ULYSSES. I picked up this convention from my publisher, Bell Bridge Books. - Search queries are written in [square brackets]
You write search queries this way, rather than with quotes, because quotes can appear in search queries. Examples: [frost moon], ["frost moon"] - note the results are not the same. I picked up this convention from The Search Engine That Starts With a G. - Command line text is indented in a special format where the prompt is bold, the command is bold italic, and the command response is plain text.
centaur@mobile (Sat Jul 24, 00:44:54) [501] ~:Some WordPress or theme weirdness is making this formatting a little harder than it is in Gmail. I think this is fixed to the point that you should be able to see that the "informational" part of the prompt (when the command was executed) appears on its own line, with a colon and line break to separate it from the command proper. The command proper is prefixed by a dollar sign, a UNIX standard that distinguishes it from the response text that follows. This communicates and distinguishes when you did it, what you did, and what you got. This one is mine. I've been developing this convention over the years as a way of communicating results from the command line in email. I have to admit, this is driven in part by a bit of egoism: I want people to know that the results I'm sending them can be done in one line of Bash, Sed and (g)AWK. And the remaining part is, I want people to learn that yes, they too can in a minute do immense amounts of computation with Bash, Sed and AWK. That's all for now. Next time: why the Einstein summation notation is cool. -the Centaur
$ imagelink comicon-2010-01.jpg san diego comicon 2010
<a href="http://www.dresan.com/images/comicon-2010-01.jpg" alt="san diego comicon 2010"><img src="https://www.dresan.com/images/comicon-2010-01.jpg" alt="san diego comicon 2010" border="0" width="600" /></a>
Not fast enough:
-the Centaur
UPDATE: Reading around a bit on the site, it turns out if you aren't wearing one of those metal bunny suits you can catch on fire from radiant heat, so Revenge of the Sith, it is.
There was a case a few years ago where a geologist accidentally stepped into some lava. The nylon laces of his boots burned off almost instantly but the thick leather did not, and he had only minor burns on his foot. After that we all made sure that we only wear real leather boots out on active flows, not the lightweight part-nylon kind.Revenge of the Sith, it ain't. Still, I'm not swimming in it.
-the Centaur
UPDATE: Reading around a bit on the site, it turns out if you aren't wearing one of those metal bunny suits you can catch on fire from radiant heat, so Revenge of the Sith, it is.
... you might think about this:
-the Centaur
Space shuttle for sale, fully loaded, air conditioning, one careful owner. It's the ultimate bargain. NASA has cut the price of a space shuttle to $28.8 million. The vehicles will go on sale after they finish constructing the International Space Station, scheduled to be later this year.I take no credit for the "my birthday is coming up" joke, which I stole shamelessly from my coworker Othar Hansson.
-the Centaur
If the world didn't have enough evil already, dedicated computer engineers have figured out how to put it on tap. Behold the terror that is the Lovecraftian Name Generator! Go on, click on it, see what I'm talking about.
Back? Ok, I admit, "Lolho" and "Ual'ke" aren't the scariest Lovecraftian names. But it's programmatic. You can create more than one. The current limit is 25, but by the unholy names of Anai, Bbhaaat, Bosaush, Cazagorarl, Ch-yos, H'eligthorteg, Han-dha, Ibhagugu, K'zaru, Kephoital, Mazazho, Mephangos, Mmililog,Nacharsar, Nali-yatl, Naquggo, Niquggolo, Phomasothugn, Ralellosaq, Rhub-harny, Rlakibha, Uga-urshu, Uggugakithu, Ygg-cyo and Yishotha, not even in Lovecraft's coldest visions of an indifferent universe could he have imagined you'd be able to create an entire pantheon with the click of a button!
Even worse, that limit is no doubt arbitrary, designed to protect their computing infrastructure if not the fabric of space-time. A truly evil black-hatter could use a sequence of queries to generate matched sets of Cthulukin at the upper limit of the QPS (queries-per-second) their servers could handle! Hopefully they have some kind of DoS (Denial of Shoggoths) throttling on their servers to protect humanity. If not-
the mind reels.
-the Centaur
From Coilhouse's shoutout Stephen Hawking - "It matters if you just don't give up":
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNcHFRq6wOQ]
"I hope I would not use the [robotic boxing glove the Simpsons gave me]. But sometimes I'm sorely tempted."
Filed under "Thank You, Carl Sagan" because, well, he's practically the next best thing to Carl we have now.
-the Centaur
Hey, guess who else was born on Jan 8th? World-renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. He turns 68 today. Here’s a small assortment of reverent (and not so reverent) clips and quotes concerning a brilliant and resilient man whose mind is arguably Teh Sexiest human organ on this entire planet:One of my favorite of the clips in that article follows:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNcHFRq6wOQ]
"I hope I would not use the [robotic boxing glove the Simpsons gave me]. But sometimes I'm sorely tempted."
Filed under "Thank You, Carl Sagan" because, well, he's practically the next best thing to Carl we have now.
-the Centaur
More than a sixth of a mile underground. 122 degrees Fahrenheit. 100% humidity. An environment that could kill a man in ten minutes - filled with 35 foot long selenite spears straight out of the Fortress of Solitude.
They're the Naica caves, one of the most beautiful environments on Earth:
They're the Naica caves, one of the most beautiful environments on Earth:
No images, they're copyright, so click through to the links.
"Thank you, Carl Sagan" is an in-joke I and my friends use which requires a bit of explanation. I've been a member, on and off, of the Planetary Society since ... oh, heck, I don't know, since I lived in Greenville, South Carolina ... which makes it at least 25 years, a credible guess since the Planetary Society was founded by Carl Sagan in 1980.
Back in the 80's, I was first coming into my own as a space enthusiast - getting a subscription to Scientific American, joining the Science Fiction Book Club, and of course joining the Planetary Society.
A few years after I joined, I opened my mailbox in Greenville and found a renewal letter for the Planetary Society. That was great - I had planned to renew - but when I pulled out the envelope and prepared to write my check, I found the following (roughly reconstructed from memory):
I was flabbergasted. This was my first barely-adult encounter with marketing speak and I couldn't imagine the hubris of someone asking me for money writing the response letter in such a way that it looked like I was thanking them.
Even though I was young and naive, on some level I knew Carl Sagan hadn't written that letter, and even if he had seen it he would have approved it without a second thought (I mean, come on, the Society IS providing a valuable service). But it was funny enough at the time to show it to all of my friends, most of whom were also big fans of Cosmos.
So every time Carl Sagan's name was mentioned, it was immediately followed by a chorus of: "Thank You, Carl Sagan!" I still hear those words every time I hear his name ... but the meaning has changed:
Thank you, Carl Sagan, indeed...
-the Centaur
Back in the 80's, I was first coming into my own as a space enthusiast - getting a subscription to Scientific American, joining the Science Fiction Book Club, and of course joining the Planetary Society.
A few years after I joined, I opened my mailbox in Greenville and found a renewal letter for the Planetary Society. That was great - I had planned to renew - but when I pulled out the envelope and prepared to write my check, I found the following (roughly reconstructed from memory):
Thank you, Carl Sagan for the opportunity to renew my subscription at the Planetary Society! Yes, I'd like to sign up for another year of the Planetary Report and to contribute to all the Planetary Society's great causes!
I was flabbergasted. This was my first barely-adult encounter with marketing speak and I couldn't imagine the hubris of someone asking me for money writing the response letter in such a way that it looked like I was thanking them.
Even though I was young and naive, on some level I knew Carl Sagan hadn't written that letter, and even if he had seen it he would have approved it without a second thought (I mean, come on, the Society IS providing a valuable service). But it was funny enough at the time to show it to all of my friends, most of whom were also big fans of Cosmos.
So every time Carl Sagan's name was mentioned, it was immediately followed by a chorus of: "Thank You, Carl Sagan!" I still hear those words every time I hear his name ... but the meaning has changed:
Cosmos. Contact. Intelligent Life In the Universe (with Shklovskii). The Pioneer Plaque. The Pale Blue Dot. The Planetary Society itself. And A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits (with Stephen Hawking and Colorpulse).
Thank you, Carl Sagan, indeed...
-the Centaur
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M]
Carl Sagan ruminates on life on Earth, how, as seen by a far-off camera on a spacecraft, a pale blue dot houses everyone anyone ever has known in the course of human history.
From his speech on the Pale Blue Dot:
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Thanks, Carl.
-the Centaur
I don't know why this strikes me as so funny, but it does:
Perhaps it's because when I see "find out more", "explore our catalogue" and "go directly to listings" related to land masses I expect them to have a list of foreclosures or beachfront properties. Nevertheless, the search for extrasolar planets is hot, and is only going to get hotter:
Remember, "a new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"
-the Centaur
Initial image and text from the linked pages on the Planetary Society web site (not to be confused with the Planetary Organization). Fomalhaut B image courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia. Full disclosure: I have been a member of the Planetary Society since, like, forever.
Exoplanets, also known as "extrasolar planets", are planets outside our solar system, orbiting distant stars. To keep track of this fast-changing field, the Planetary Society presents this list of exoplanets. Here you will find a complete and up-to-date registry of known exoplanets and what is known about them.
Perhaps it's because when I see "find out more", "explore our catalogue" and "go directly to listings" related to land masses I expect them to have a list of foreclosures or beachfront properties. Nevertheless, the search for extrasolar planets is hot, and is only going to get hotter:
Remember, "a new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"
-the Centaur
Initial image and text from the linked pages on the Planetary Society web site (not to be confused with the Planetary Organization). Fomalhaut B image courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia. Full disclosure: I have been a member of the Planetary Society since, like, forever.
Link roundup - file under creepy:
"Verified" at http://www.hypatiamaze.org/m_curie/curie_walk.html.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie:
Due to their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s (and even her cookbook) are considered too dangerous to handle. They are kept in lead-lined boxes; those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.
"Verified" at http://www.hypatiamaze.org/m_curie/curie_walk.html.
My buddy Gordon tipped me to the song Glorious Dawn by Colorpulse featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc]
After so many years since his amazing television show Cosmos, it strikes me how much I like the way he thinks - how he imagines vistas of space and time:
An still more glorious dawn awaits: not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise - a morning filled with four hundred billion suns: the rising of the Milky Way.
How he synthesizes facts about the world:
But the brain does more than just recollect: it intercompares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions ... the brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world.
How he combines prediction and caution:
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
And most of all, how beautifully he writes:
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we've waded a little way out ... and the water seems inviting.
When I grow up, I want to be like Carl. So check the video out on Youtube, go to Colorpulse's site for more videos, or to Amazon for a copy of Cosmos.
-The Centaur
If only the theory mentioned in this article were true...
Sigh.
-the Centaur
Chiao and co ask how big is this effect of a gravitational wave on a thin superconducting sheet compared to the effect on an ordinary conducting sheet. The answer? 42 orders of magnitude bigger....then just by putting two superconducting sheets together we would have gravity wave lasers. They'd probably be practical within twenty years, and Lord knows what we'd have within a hundred. Unfortunately this probably violates the equivalence principle and is likely nonsense:
First, Chaio assumes that coopers pairs fall differently than normal matter in a gravitational field...which basically means violation of Equivalence Principle....and there is no physical evidence for that assumption....neither does he give a rigorous treatment to prove that ASSUMPTION.In other news, scientists studying the Alcubierre warp drive have found yet another way it would not work: in addition to being unstable, non-steerable, non-startable, and requiring planet-sized masses of unobtainable negative energy, it would also cook the occupants as soon as you exceeded the speed of light.
Sigh.
-the Centaur