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25 October 2011: Brain Damage

I still read John Baez's stuff, although the site's eponymic title is now called Azimuth. Baez is one of the smartest people around, so smart that he's come to realize that things like higher gauge theory and quantum gravity need to make room for more immediate issues, like saving the planet from global climate change.

But Baez still likes puzzles, illusions and enigmas, and here's a couple of the best from his site:


This is an old illusion, but still one of the best. Do the rows
of black squares slope, or are they perfectly horizontal?



    I like this one even more. Here we have what appears to be
    interlocking spirals of alternating black- and white-outlined squares.
    But are they really interlocking spirals, or just circles?

But here's the best, in my opinion, and one that I've shown before:


    Consider the squares marked A and B. They appear to be of different shades,
    but they are in fact identical! To see this, you'll have to use Adobe Photoshop
    or other tool to isolate the two squares from the rest of the image (you can also
    use a color sample from one square and paste it into the other). What is almost
    as amazing is the fact that the shades remain distinct from one another until most
    of the entire image has been scrubbed away.

Scientists continue to study why humans see what they do in illusions such as these. The results appear to demonstrate that we see what we do in order to help us make sense of the world, but that hardly expains anything. I think that the same type of illusory "understanding" exists in the brain's set of belief systems. Unfortunately, in many cases there is also a deeply-embedded need to believe to avert some fear or uncomfortable realization, and this can have dangerous consequences. Iraq's WMDs were a type of mass illusion, although there were a few people who saw through it. Sadly, they were ignored.

Scientists are also working to get computers to recognize shapes and patterns, something that they're not making much progress on. A truly cognizant computer would be an ideal tool for space exploration, for example. But we're a long way from having a computer scan the above images and respond with "Hey! Something's screwy here!"

24 October 2011: Plato Turns

Einstein came here to Pasadena on three occasions, all of them by the invitation of Caltech President Robert Millikan, the 1923 Nobel prize winner (many of us had to suffer doing his "oil drop experiment" in school). Though a scientist himself, Millikan was also an obnoxious pro-war right-winger who detested Einstein's liberal anti-war, pro-equality sentiments, but he wanted Einstein to join Caltech because of the great scientist's potential to bring big bucks to the school. Sadly for Pasadena, Millikan was outbid by Abraham Flexner of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein settled in 1933. (Flexner also detested Einstein's liberal views, but he thought he could control Einstein once he came on board. Flexner was wrong.)



      Einstein derived the most famous geometry equation in history, but it didn't make him rich.

The money-über-alles attitude continues unabated. One enterprising business PhD is now suggesting that geometry be replaced by entrepreneurship in high school, given his apparent view that math and science are less important than getting rich. Now, I personally hated high school geometry (Miss Wood did her best, I'm sure, but I think Mrs. Pope was a better teacher, though I couldn't get into her class). I later learned to love geometry, but hated teaching it.

It seems everyone has a conservative brother-in-law or other relative whose schooling never went past high school because "that's all the education anyone ever really needs." Chances are he's also Republican, devoutly Christian, detests public education, favors home schooling, hates science, and is an insufferable know-it-all who doesn't need to know whatever it is he doesn't already know. In many instances (mine included), the person is also a moderately successful self-described entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs don't make much money (party-balloon store owner, etc.), but for those that do the mindset becomes firmly cemented: money is everything, and anything that doesn't make money is a waste of time.

The worship of greed in this country seems to know no bounds. The Republicans, having regained the House of Representatives, have made it crystal clear that the country should be run for and by the richest among us, with just enough trickle-down to keep the unwashed masses from revolting. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has stated that "if you're unemployed or not rich, then it's your own fault." That pretty much sums up the GOP's attitude for me.

President Obama wants $447 billion for a jobs bill but, even if he wasn't demanding a miniscule tax increase on millionaires to pay for it, the Republicans would kill it without a second thought. Their goal is a lame duck president for another 12 months, so Obama will have to pull the funding out of his arse if he wants to get anything done in that time. And if he somehow wins reelection, their goal will then be a 48-month lame duck chief executive.

Believe it or not, we have a Nobel prize winner in physics in the Obama administration, Energy Secretary Steven Chu. And look what the Republicans are trying to do -- get him tossed out because of the failed Solyndra solar energy deal. And several GOP presidential candidates (Ron Paul in particular) want to get rid of the agency altogether, along with the EPA.

It seems wealth, like religion, makes people stupid.

22 October 2011: Return to Iraq!

Although Generalissimo George W. Bush had promised a departure from Iraq by 2011, President Obama's recent announcement that he'd pull all troops out of the country by the end of this year was expectedly met with harsh criticism by the GOP, in particular the field of insensate morons vying for the Republican nomination.

While many saner folks are reflecting on the fact that Obama got bin Laden and his Number Two in only two years while playing a key role in the removal of an insane Libyan dictator without any casualties or significant monetary cost, the siren call of hegemonic military hubris continues unabated in the GOP. Oh, for the good old days of Bush looking for those WMDs under his desk, the quaint entertainment of Abu Ghraib, the abduction, rape and murder of fetching 14-year-old Iraqi girls by US troops (they were under stress, you know, and pining for their loved ones at home), and the nostalgia over 4,500 brain-dead but patriotic US soldiers who died that our country might ever be free! Let's also not forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians (I mean, terrorists in the making) who served to spend down our bullets and bombs so that US corporations might pad the bottom line for their shareholders. 

Perhaps the GOP might want to consider a new line of attack on Obama in the run-up to nomination, in light of Obama's most recent betrayal of American values. That would be a call to return our soldiers to Iraq once Obama is out of office (which, by the way, might be sooner than later). Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki , who insisted that American soldiers not be granted immunity from war crimes as part of any ongoing US military presence in the country, could simply be removed from office (preferably by bullet) and replaced by a friendlier ruler, say, a representative from Exxon-Mobil.

This plan is not as far-fetched as might be imagined. So far, the GOP nominee wannabes are limited to crazies who think the Founders fought against slavery (Michele Bachmann), a pizza mogul who's never held any kind of office (Herman Cain*), a Christian fundamentalist who thinks evolution and global climate change are tricks of the Devil (Rick Perry), a Mormon who believes God lives on the planet Kolob and that Jesus was the son of Adam (Mitt Romney), and another Christian fundamentalist who brought his wife's still-born fetus home to be kissed and fondled by the entire family (Rick Santorum). Eeww.

[Begin the thawing of Ronald Reagan and the reanimation of Saddam Hussein, Usama bin Laden and Moammar Kaddafi; to remain triumphant, America needs its phony heroes and villains.]

* And I still believe that Cain is just a straw man/red herring concocted by the Koch brothers to give Republicans the appearance of being supportive of black voters

21 October 2011: Hotter

The journal New Scientist is reporting the results of the most comprehensive global warming study ever. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team, which includes atmospheric scientists from NASA and NOAA (along with notable warming skeptics), compiled the results of 1.6 billion data points  from 15 different archives available for the past 200 years. After deleting duplicate results from 39,390 separate temperature sampling stations, the group concluded that the Earth has warmed 1 degree Centigrade since the 1950s:


Annual temperature fluctuations for the past 200 years (gray = 95% confidence level)


10-year moving average of BEST data

These results should put to rest any lingering scientific doubts about global warming, but the same probably cannot be said about ingrained US reticence regarding climate change and claims that humans are responsible for a large part of the observed temperature increase. Corporations will continue to insist that the data only point to natural temperature variations, while Christian fundamentalists will reject the findings on the basis of their belief in Revelation end-times prophecy.

Or, as a conservative friend of mine from the gym told me today, "Only 1° C in 60 years? I can live with that."