I am a professional theoretical physicist, and recently, there has been more and more attention paid to speculations about science that are simply wrong. a.k.a. Crackpot theories. There are many reasons for this. One is the ease of communication that the internet provides. Another is the highly speculative direction that theoretical physics has taken over the last 20 or so years. More and more often I am approached by people who are misinformed, or I see articles in the press about unscientific things. It is my goal to correct some of these mis-perceptions. There is an accepted channel for new ideas. Write up your idea as clearly as you can, and submit it to a journal for peer review. Anyone can do this. Avoiding this procedure and going to the media, courts, blogs, or forums is a means to hide among people who don't have the training to evaluate your idea. An idea could never be proven in such circles. Come to the experts instead. Submit to a journal.
Historically, physicists have tended to ignore the "crackpots" and obviously-wrong theories because there was little to be gained by addressing them. There always have been, and always will be people with plenty of interest, but lacking the training to make a contribution to physics. Frankly this is sometimes where great advances come. Far-out ideas should not be dismissed without very good reason, or we would never have any new theories or scientific revolutions. Indeed, papers occur regularly by "real" physicists which could easily be classified as crackpot. I might even have written one. I think people with lots of interest should be encouraged. But, they need to realize exactly what science is. When untrained people read scientific articles, it sounds like a lot of gibberish strung together. It must be tempting to string the gibberish together in a slightly different order and claim it as a new idea, and many people do that (in fact, people may have received Ph.D.'s doing exactly that).
But science is not strings of gibberish prose. It is a method of making predictions. Making predictions and testing them is the best method mankind has ever devised to determine what is true. If you have a great new theory, it's exactly as great as the number of new things it predicts, that can be tested. Science is prediction, not explanation. The prediction must be quantitative, and the test must be performable in the near future. Theories which predict never-before-seen catastrophies are just as bad as theories which could only be tested by a particle accelerator bigger than the galaxy.
Of course, a good predictive theory also contains an explanatory description. Nonscientific explanations generally are all explanation and no prediction. Consider the widely held belief from not so long ago that lightning was the hand of God, striking down people who were evil. In hindsight, one can always come up with an explanation for lightning striking someone's house. But this was never predictive. It could never tell who would be striken next (and lightning strikes used to be much more common). This all changed when Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. Now this was truly predictive -- one can predict that with a good lightning rod on top of a building, it will not be struck by lightning, no matter how evil the activities inside are perceived to be. Of course many people still believe things in the physical world to be decided based on how good or bad they are, depending on their religion, but this never has been, and never will be predictive, and is not science.
Part and parcel of the "making predictions" part of science is falsifiability. A physical theory must be capable of being proven false. Unfortunately, most of theoretical physics nowadays has forgotten this fact, and we routinely play with theories that can be modified to survive any experimental test. Indeed, some physicists think falsifiability is actually a drawback for their pet theory (because then their pet theory may die). But who wants to live their entire lives with a pet theory, and never know if it is actually true? This modern trend in physics has, I believe, emboldened untrained but interested people to espouse their unpredictive pet theories. Theories which are unfalsifiable because we're too terrified to perform an experiment are just as bad as ones which require technology that can't be envisioned anytime in the forseeable future. They're unscientific and should be ignored in favor of theories which can be tested.
There are three types of "crackpot" ideas. The first is from professional physicists with some gap in their knowledge. The second is from interested but uninformed non-physicists. And the third is from people with some minor psychosis, and want to be associated with physicists or be famous. In any of the three cases, the person may be immune to logical argument. Many of the "crackpot" things I read do not have sentences which follow any grammatic structure, much less an argument which follows any logic. These must simply be ignored, because there is no way to use logic to argue with an illogical person. Unfortunately some people have discovered that they can file lawsuits to get attention. I don't think these people are malicious, and probably truly believe that they may save the world. But, they are misinformed and I hope to change that.
The interested but untrained, and professional physicists are the target of this blog (and perhaps anyone who might get caught up in uninformed arguments about the end of the world). Interested people must always be encouraged. They are more capable of understanding what we do than the rest of the public. Sometimes, they follow their interest, enter a Ph.D. program, and make valuable contributions. They may communicate with their friends and family why physics is important and therefore are a valuable asset in communicating with the public and governments. After all, the citizens pay our salaries and they deserve to be kept informed.
I encourage you to ask questions and post comments (thought they will be moderated). If you find a news report, blog post, or even real physics article you think is questionable, email it to me and I'll do my best do debunk or confirm it, or find a colleague who can. Also if you're a physicist (or otherwise sufficiently knowledgable), I welcome unsolicited debunkings for this blog. You can submit things to anticrackpot@gmail.com.
The first weather satellite to successfully report global weather data from space was launched 53 years ago this week. The TIROS-1 satellite took off on April 1, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, and for 78 days relayed imagery of cloud-covering on the Earth. The mission came from a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and along with later TIROS satellites is credited by the groups as having paved the way for more sophisticated weather satellites.
The TIROS-1 was equipped with two television cameras that returned imagery using the satellite's four antennas. An institute within the University of Wisconsin's has surfaced two of the first images sent back, though there's some debate as to which of the...
Big news for the web today: Google has announced that it's going to stop using WebKit as the rendering engine that's behind displaying web pages in Chrome. Instead, it's forking WebKit to create its own rendering engine, called "Blink." The move, Google says, is to speed up development on Chrome thanks to reducing complexity. Chrome uses some slightly different processes for making web pages load (a "multi-process architecture," which helps keep your other tabs running when a web page crashes), and trying to mesh its technical setup with the rest of WebKit — most well known as Apple's rendering engine on Safari — was apparently making things more complicated than they needed to be.
This week Hindus around the world celebrated Holi, the Festival of Colors. Holi is a popular springtime celebration observed on the last full moon of the lunar month. Participants traditionally throw bright, vibrant powders at friends and strangers alike as they celebrate the arrival of spring, commemorate Krishna's pranks, and allow each other a momentary freedom -- a chance to drop their inhibitions and simply play and dance. Gathered here are images of this year's Holi festival from across India. [34 photos]
An Indian child reacts as colored powder is smeared on her hair during Holi festival in Chennai, India, on March 27, 2013. Holi, the Hindu festival of colors that also marks the advent of spring, is being celebrated across the country Wednesday. (AP Photo/Arun Sankar K)
I bet you don't remember that both William Shatner and Isaac Asmiov were pitchmen for PCs. Well, people who had "home computers" back in the 1980s do. Here's a collection of insanely great (and greatly insane) computer ads from the days of WarGames and Tron.
If only the implementation is done properly; something which is rarely seen.
Technet, a Czech sci-tech server, published an interview with Vyacheslav Pershukov today, the deputy CEO and the director of the scientific-technological complex at Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear corporation that is managing all Russian reactors that are in operation.
He says many things I should have noticed half a year ago because as Russia Beyond the Headlines mentioned in November (see also an echo in The Telegraph), there was a nuclear conference in October 2012 in a city whose name is nothing else than Prague where they presented plans to build new, "fast reactors" on the Russian territory with the help of 13 Czech companies.
And they seem to be better than the nuclear technologies we are using today.
Existing nuclear power plants are using uranium-235 which is rare (we need to get this one which is what enrichment is all about) and it produces lots of long-lived radioactive waste.
To make the story short, the fast reactors (or fast-neutron reactors) are employing the nearly omnipresent uranium-238 which can be supplemented with lots of other radioactive garbage, including the radioactive waste from the contemporary nuclear reactors. It's possible because they have a different speed of the neutrons which is allowed because the moderator isn't there at all and stabilization is achieved either by Doppler broadening, thermal expansion of the fuel, a neutron poison, or a neutron reflector.
To make the story even better, some of these reactors are breeder reactors so they produce some new fuel along the way. The radioactive waste coming out of these reactors is a mixture of isotopes that only need to spend one year in the cooling swimming pools; plus plutonium and uranium-238 that may be recycled as fuel if they're properly separated. This separation procedure only exists theoretically at this point but they seem confident that it's possible.
To summarize, these reactors may use what we consider waste today; their own waste is a mixture of a new fuel and true waste that doesn't need to be stored for too long; they're more efficient; and they can't really explode because there's no water (but if the envelope breaks in the sodium-cooled reactor with thousands of tons of sodium, the reactor is finished – but safely so for humans).
The particular RBTH story focuses on the SVBR-100 lead-bismuth-cooled reactor (developed with the Czech companies) and the BN-800 reactor, a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor, which is under construction in the Beloyarsk power plant in the Sverdlovsk region.
(Sverdlovsk is the communist name of Yekaterinburg, Pilsen's twin city in Russia: they have kept the name inspired by the heartless murderer of the tsar family for the region around the city. That surely sounds fair to our Russian brothers: if one name is after a tsaritsa, Catherina I of Russia, there must be another name derived from the killer of the tsar family. Yes, the murder of the family took place in Yekaterinburg itself. Lots of other bad things happened in our twin city. Last summer, for example, they found 4 barrels with 248 human fetuses over there. The kids could have built the adjoint representation of \(E_8\) but they were terminated...)
I hope we will see the new power plants soon enough. They hope to end the research and design of SVBR-100 in 2014 and run it in 2017. Independently of that, Rosatom is planning nuclear reactors for spaceships. There are two big challenges: to get it into space and to launch it over there. They're thinking about its first big test – a mission to Mars.
Meanwhile, Westinghouse claims to be ahead of its Russian competitor in the tender to complete the (not fast) Czech Temelín nuclear power plant.
रविशंकर प्रसाद बोले; "मैं माननीय लालू जी से पूछना चाहता हूँ कि प्राचीन भारत के समय से ही गुझिया के मसाला में जो गरी काटकर डाली जाती थी वह रंगी नहीं जाती थी। यहीं देख लीजिये कि इन्होने जो मसाला यहाँ रखा है उसमें इस्तेमाल होने वाली गरी को इन्होने हरे रंग में रँग दिया है।"
रविशंकर प्रसाद की बात पर लालू जी बोले; "आ जो हरे रंग से रंगी गरी देख रहे हैं, ऊ रंगी नहीं है। उसको कहते हैं सेकुलर गरी ... आपका निगाह ही हरा हो गया है। आ अंधे को सब जगह गरी की हरियाली ही दिखाई देती है।"
लालू जी की बात पर जोर का ठहाका लगा।
अपनी पार्टी के एम पी को समर्थन देने आये प्रकाश करात बोले; "यह बात केसरिया गुझिया बनाने वालों को समझ कैसे आएगी लालू जी?"
रविशंकर प्रसाद कुछ कहते उससे पहले मोदी जी बोल पड़े; "मित्रों केसरिया रंग ही नहीं, केसरिया गुझिया भी भारतीय राष्ट्रखाद्य का प्रतीक है। और यही कारण है कि माननीय अटल बिहारी बाजपेयी जी के नेतृत्व में हमारी पार्टी ने मित्रों पांच वर्षों में उतनी गुझिया बनाई जितनी बाकी की पार्टियों ने पचास वर्षों में नहीं बनाई थी। आपको जानकार आश्चर्य होगा कि अंतर्राष्ट्रीय समुदाय भी यह मानता है .... और फिर प्रश्न यह है मित्रों ....."
वे बोल ही रहे थे कि तभी कांग्रेस पार्टी को रिप्रेजेंट करनेवाले राहुल गाँधी बोल पड़े; "प्रश्न वह नहीं जो आप कह रहे हैं मोदी जी। महत्वपूर्ण प्रश्न यह है कि भारत में गुझिया कौन लाया? और फिर आप अपनी पार्टी की गुझिया की बात कर रहे हैं। हमारी पार्टी ने पिछले नौ वर्षों से देश में जिस मात्रा में गुझिया बनाया है ...."
राहुल गाँधी के प्रश्न पर कि "देश में गुझिया कौन लाया?" पैवेलियन में बैठे किसी दर्शक ने कहा; "राजीव जी लाये। और कौन ला सकता है?"
उनको काटते हुए मोदी जी ने कहा; "राहुल जी कि मैं इज्ज़त करता हूँ लेकिन ये यह भूल रहे हैं कि जिन मसालों का इस्तेमाल करके इनकी पार्टी ने गुझिया बनाया, मित्रों वे सारे मसाले आदरणीय अटल जी के नेतृत्व में हमारी पार्टी ने भारी मात्रा में खरीदे थे। अगर हमारी पार्टी ने उन मसालों का भारी मात्रा में स्टॉक नहीं किया होता तो राहुल जी की पार्टी इतनी गुझिया का निर्माण नहीं कर सकती।"
उधर अपनी पार्टी की तरफ से मुलायम जी आये थे। गुझिया बनाने के लिए सारा सामान साइकिल पर ले आये थे ताकि जमीन से जुड़े प्रतियोगी लगें। मोदी जी की बात सुनकर बोले; "आपएं मासाला खईदा था तो गोईया भी बआं एते।"
उनकी बात पर रविशंकर प्रसाद बोले; "मैं माननीय मुलायम सिंह जी से कहना चाहूँगा कि लोकतान्त्रिक गुझिया ऐसे ही बनती है। मसाला कोई और खरीदे और गुझिया कोई और तले, ऐसा हो ही सकता है।"
तभी अचानक अरनब ने देखा कि डीएमके की तरफ से आये एलेंगोवन जी बड़ी अजीब आकार की गुझिया बना रहे थे जो कुछ-कुछ तिकोनी थी और श्रीलंका के आकार से मिलती-जुलती थी। अरनब ने पूछा; "आई हैव अ डायरेक्ट क्वेश्चन टू यू मिस्टर एलेगोवन। ह्वाई आर यू मेकिंग गुझियाज व्हिच रेजेम्बेल श्रीलंकाज शेप ऑन वर्ल्ड मैप?"
उनके इस डायरेक्ट सवाल के जवाब में एलेंगोवन जी बोले; "सी यारनाब, आवर ल्यीड्डर, डाक्टर कलयैङ्गार सार वास यगेंस्ट्स आवर पार्टिसिपेशन यिन दिस्स गुजिया क्याम्पीटीशन यैज यिट्ट यिज्ज टाटली यागेंस्ट्स आवर द्रविड़ काल्चार। बाट ऐट लास्ट ई याग्रीड़ टू यिट्ट यान द क्यान्डीश्यान दैट हूयेव्वर वुड रिप्रेसेन्ट द पार्टी वुड्ड कुक गुजिया याफ द शेप याफ़ श्रीलंका येन्ड यीट दोज गुजियास देन्न यैंड देय्यर। आवर ल्यीड्डर डाक्टर कलैङ्गार सार टोल्ड दैट डूइंग दिस्स वुड येसटेब्लिशड आवर येट पार श्रीलंका येण्ड यिट्स प्रेजिडेंट। यिन्न पैक्ट यिट्ट यिज्ज आवर वे ऑफ़ प्रोटेयेस्ट यगेंस्ट्स ह्वाट श्रीलंकन गावंमेंट ड्यिड्ड टू आवर तामिल ब्रेदार्न।"
एलेंगोवन जी को चीयर करने आये एम्डीएमके के वाईको ने ताली बनाई।
एलेंगोवन जी की तरफ मुखातिब होते हुए लालू जी बोले; "आ आपलोग सेकुलर रसोई में एतना बरस से हमलोग का साथ मिलकर गोझिया बनाए आ खाए, बाकी आज खाली ई बात पर छोड़कर चले गए कि कांग्रेस जो है सो आपको छोहाड़ा खाने नै दिया? आपलोग को नहीं बुझाया कि ई सेकुलर रसोई का अपमान है?"
लालू जी की बात पर नितीश कुमार बोले; "अभी भी रसोई का याद नहीं गया है? आ सही भी है, देश को गोझिया का पहिला किचेन कैबिनेट देने वाला सब याद नहीं रक्खेगा त कौन याद रक्खेगा?"
नितीश कुमार की किचेन कैबिनेट वाली बात पर राहुल जी को लगा कि शायद उनके घर के बारे में कुछ कहा गया। वे क्या करते, उनका दिमाग जहाँ तक दौड़ा वहां तक वे सोच लिए। अचानक कुर्ते की बांह चढाते हुए बोले; "नितीश जी, सार्वजनिक जगह पर व्यक्तिगत बातें नहीं करनी चाहिए। देखिये हमने पिछले कई वर्षों से इतना गोझिया बनाया। अगर आप चाहें तो हम कुछ गोझिया स्पेशल कूरियर से आपके प्रदेश पहुंचवा देंगे।"
नितीश कुमार बोले; "आ आपकी पार्टी लगातार गोझिया नहीं बनाएगी तो कौन बनाएगा? और फिर कितना बना लिए है? पहले जिस रफ़्तार से बना रहे थे, अब तो वह रफ़्तार भी नहीं रही। ऊपर से गोझिया का सामान और मसाला लाने के लिए आपके पास सीबीआई है। जब चाहें आप उनसे मसाला मंगवा लेते है। तेल ख़तम हो जाए तो सी बी आई ला देती है। मैदा ख़तम हो जाए तो भी .... ऐसे में आप गोझिया नहीं बनायेंगे तो कौन बनाएगा?"
मुलायम जी को लगा कि यहाँ उन्हें सी बी आई का पक्ष लेने की ज़रुरत है। बोले; "एखिये, ऐसी बात नई ऐ। हअबाअ सी बी आई जो ऐ मासाआ नई लाती। असोई चअती अहे, उसके लिए दूकानदाअ कई बाअ खुदै मसाआ पौंचा जाता ऐ। हमयें खुद अपई आँखों से जो ऐ सो देखा ऐ।"
पास खड़े रविशंकर प्रसाद बोले पड़े; "माननीय मुलायम सिंह जी फर्स्ट हैण्ड इनफार्मेशन दे रहे हैं। उनसे बेहतर कोई नहीं जानता कि कई दुकानदार खुद गुझिया का मसाला कांग्रेस पार्टी को दे जाते हैं। लेकिन अरनब, मैं ये भी कहना चाहता हूँ कि सी बी आई कुछ दुकानदारों को परेशान भी करती है। इसबात के लिए कि वे अगर मसाला नहीं पहुंचाएंगे तो फिर उनकी दूकान पर छापा भी ......"
राहुल जी बोले; "लेकिन सी बी आई के बारे में कहीं गई बात से मैं सहमत नहीं हूँ। दुकानदार स्वतंत्र हैं इसबात के लिए कि वे चाहें तो मसाला दें और न चाहें तो न दें। हम किसी न किसी तरीके से मसाला ले ही लेंगे।"
मोदी जे बोले; "मित्रों राहुल जी एकबात भूल रहे हैं और वह ये कि मुद्दा दुकानदारों की स्वतंत्रता का नहीं बल्कि सी बी आई की स्वतंत्रता है।"
मोदी जी की बात पर पास ही खड़े नारायणसामी बोले;"लेट मी रिमाइन्ड एवरीबॉडी प्रेजेंट हीयर दैट सी बी आई ईज्ज मोस्ट यिंडीपेंडेंट गाब्म्येंट बाड़ी।"
सबने एकसाथ ठहाका लगाया। राहुल जी को समझ नहीं आया कि सब लोगों ने एकसाथ ठहाका क्यों लगाया। वे कुछ पूछने ही वाले थे कि अचानक अरनब की निगाह उनकी बनाई गुझिया पर गई जिन्हें देखकर अरनब चौंक गए। सबने देखा कि राहुल जी ने गुझिया में सारे मसाले डाले तो हैं लेकिन उन्होंने एक भी गुझिया बंद नहीं की है।
सब हंसने लगे। सब मन ही मन राहुल जी का मजाक उड़ा रहे थे। अरनब ने पूछा; "राहुल, आपने इतनी सारी गुझिया बनाई लेकिन एक को भी बंद नहीं किया। इसके पीछे क्या कारण हो सकता है? ह्वाट कैन बी द रीजन बिहाइंड दिस स्ट्रेटेजी?"
राहुल कुछ एक्सप्लेन करते उनसे पहले केतकर जी बोल पड़े। जिस चपलता के साथ उन्होंने सफाई देनी शुरू की, देखकर लगा कि उन्हें वहां हाईकमान की तरफ से भेजा गया था। शायद यह कहकर कि कुछ गड़बड़ हो तो संभाल लीजियेगा।
वे बोले; "इन खुली हुई गुझिया के पीछे क्या कारण है वह मैं समझाता हूँ अरनब। मैं यहाँ केवल एक जज ही नहीं बल्कि कांग्रेस पार्टी के शुभचिंतक की हैसियत से भी आया हूँ। दरअसल राहुल जी ने जो बनाया है वह कांग्रेसी गुझिया है। इसे बंद नहीं किया जाता। बंद न करके पार्टी बताना चाहती है कि वह जब भी चाहे गुझिया में से कोई एक मसाला निकालकर दूसरा मसाला फिट कर सकती है। यहाँ मसालों को छूट है कि वे जब चाहें गुझिया छोड़कर जा सकते हैं। हाँ यह बात अलग है कि पार्टी गुझिया छोड़कर जाने वाले मसालों को ही फ्राई कर देती है। अभी हाल में आपने देखा होगा कि चेन्नई में किस तरह से स्टालिन के घर की रसोई में ......"
उनकी एनाल्यसिस से सभी प्रभावित थे। लालू जी बोले; "आ खाली टीभी पर समाचार पढने से नै न होता है अरनब। आ, जिस तरह से केतकर जी एनेलाइसिस किये हैं कंग्रेस का गोझिया का, उससे बुझा ही गया होगा कि केतना फरक है आपका औउर केतकर जी का कैपेभिलिटी में। अनुभव का बड़ी महत्व है।"
अरनब ने लालू जी के साथ हामी भरी।
रविशंकर प्रसाद बोले; "मित्रों, अनुभव का तो महत्व है ही। केतकर जी कांग्रेसी गुझिया का स्वाद आज से नहीं ले रहे हैं, वे तो इमरजेंसी के जमाने से कांग्रेसी गुझिया खा रहे हैं। ऐसे में अनुभव तो बोलेगा ही।"
किसी ने पास ही कड़ी ममता जी से पूछा; "दीदी, आपकी पार्टी ने किसी को गुझिया बनाने के लिए नहीं भेजा? क्या आपकी पार्टी चुनाव से पहले अपनी गुझिया नहीं खोलना चाहती?"
उसके इस सवाल पर लालू जी बोले; "आ इनका पार्टी अभी बांगाल में लपसी बना रही है। गोझिया बनाने के लिए ई लोग के पास समय कहाँ है?"
दीदी को यह बात अच्छी नहीं लगी। उन्होंने कहा; "आइसा बात नेही है लालू जी। हामारा पार्टी भी गोझिया बनाने सोकती है किन्तु बनाना नेही चाहती। एही बास्ते कि हामसोब मीलकर जो गोझिया बनाएगा, सोब वालमार्ट ख़रीद लेगा ऊ भी आधा दाम में। हामारा पार्टी को एही बात मोंजूर नही है। औउर जे बात है कि हामारा बेंगोल में गुझिया नही बनता है। उहाँ पे पीठे बनता है। कोभी पीठे बनाने का कोम्पीटीशोन होगा तोब हामलोग सोचेगा।"
पता नहीं कहाँ से पास खड़े वाड्रा जी को दीदी की बात "हामारा पार्टी गुझिया बनाना नेही चाहती" धंस गई। वे फट से बोले; "बनाना की जो बात ममता दीदी आज कह रही हैं वो मैंने तो पहले ही ...."
उनकी बात को लालू जी कटते हुए बोले; "आ चुप रहो, ई गोझिया का बात हो रहा है। ई तुम्हारा रीयल एस्टेट नै न है कि जहाँ चाहो ओहीं बोल ...."
खैर, सारी कलाएं दिखाने के बाद जुरी ने सबकी गुझिया चेक की। जुरी के अध्यक्ष कुमार केतकर जी बोले; "अरनब, मैंने सबकी गुझिया चेक की। मुलायम सिंह जी और लालू जी की गुझिया अच्छी लगी मुझे। नरेन्द्र मोदी की गुझिया कुछ ख़ास नहीं लगी। मुझे तो यह समझ नहीं आता कि अगर मोदी की गुझिया अच्छी है ही, तो गुजरात में में बच्चों में इतना कुपोषण क्यों है? वे गुझिया क्यों नहीं खा रहे? यह एक ऐसा सवाल है जिसका जवाब शायद तीश्ता जी दे पाएं। एलेंगोवन जी की गुझिया मैं चेक नहीं कर सका क्योंकि प्रोटेस्ट रजिस्टर करने के चक्कर में वे सारी गुझिया खा गए। हाँ, जो सबसे ज्यादा पसंद आई मुझे, वह राहुल जी की गुझिया है। क्या गुझिया बनाया है उन्होंने। स्वादिष्ट, मीठी और पूरी तरह से सेक्युलर गुझिया। मुझे यह लगता है कि राहुल जी बहुत बड़े अंतर से जीते हैं इस कम्पीटीशन में।"
दूसरे दिन अखबारों में छपा;"राहुल गांधी ने गुझिया कम्पीटीशन जीता। नौजवानों में आशा का नया संचार"
Nearly one in five Americans now identify themselves as being religiously unaffiliated — a figure that’s been on the rise for the past two decades. But as atheists and non-religious folk increasingly step out of the closet, many still feel marginalized — and even a bit threatened — by a larger religious society wary of their growing presence. The required next step, says Todd Stiefel, is to make atheism a civil rights issue. And he’s putting his money where his mouth is.
By all rights, there is no way I should like an ink like Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün. Black inks and blue inks (and variations thereof) are my go-to colors, and it is rare that I find a non-standard color like Old Gold-Green making it into my daily carry. But wow, it is going to be hard to leave this one out.
I first heard of this ink when I was working at JetPens. When we were considering carrying the R&K ink line most of the comments we received said something along the lines of "Decide how many of each ink color you are ordering, then double that for Alt-Goldgrün." Looking at the color online, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This color has almost a cult following, and after using it, I can see why.
The main reason why so many people love this ink is the shading. You can probably see it better in the larger size of the photo, but the range of colors on the page is outstanding. The greens range from olive to lime, with shades of gold, yellow, and brown coming through as well. It is a truly unique color.
So now I have a dilemma. Do I go with a bottle of Alt-Goldgrün and commit to a regular load out? I'm not ready for that yet I don't think. I think the next step is to give it a good run in one of my F or EF nib pens and see how it performs.
How many of you use Alt-Goldgrün on a regular basis?
For more details on Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün check out these great reviews:
Someone sent me the following video. Indeed, it turned out to have a large capacity to make me upset.
The exchange between Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson, a science communicator from a planetarium, took place at the 2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate (107 minutes) two years ago. Members of the panel included Katherine Freese, Jim Gates, Janna Levin, Marcello Gleiser, Brian Greene, and of course the omnipresent pushy hippie crank called Lee Smolin.
In the 4-minute excerpt, Tyson prepares Brian for a purposefully blunt question. At this moment, the eternally diplomatic Brian Greene may already display a facial expression indicating that he knows what he should expect and he's a bit annoyed.
Tyson says that "you guys have been at the string theory for two decades." Well, this shows Tyson's remarkable ignorance of the history of science. String theory started 45 years ago, not 20 years ago, it became supersymmetric (super) 40 years ago, and it rapidly strengthened during the first superstring revolution almost 30 years ago. Almost 20 years ago, it began to undergo the second superstring revolution.
But let's get to the point. Tyson says something like
Einstein, working alone, went from special relativity to general relativity in ten years. It was a brilliant piece of work. Just four years later, there was an experimental verification of the new theory. Legions of string theorists are working for two decades and you're sort of not there yet. Is there not enough of you? Are you chasing a ghost? Or is the collection of you too stupid to figure this out?
What a jerk, what a pack of malicious demagogy. Brian gives a perfectly sensible answer and mine won't be too different. Nevertheless, let me give you mine.
First, Tyson suggests that every theory takes the same time to be completed and the same time to be verified. Needless to say, this opinion shows that Tyson compares apples with oranges and he can't possibly have a realistic idea what science is.
The fact that two or three systems of ideas are called "theory" – special theory of relativity, general theory of relativity, and string theory – doesn't mean that they're equally large or comparable collections of ideas and equations. In fact, they're obviously not. Relativity is just a principled theory – observations based on symmetries that constrain the allowed laws of physics in a certain way. String theory isn't just about some cherry-picked constraints; it's an actual complete, detailed theory that predicts everything that may be predicted about Nature. Once string theory is fully understood, the search for the fundamental theories of Nature will be over. Given the uniqueness of this moment, it wouldn't be inappropriate if the research of string theory continued for 200 or 500 years or more.
A student with some required mathematical background may be explained the special theory of relativity on 3 pages and she sorts and clarifies the remaining calculations and principles on extra 10 pages by herself. A similar comment applies to the general theory of relativity.
If I exaggerate just a little bit, Einstein needed 10 years to realize that \(S\sim R\); the action is proportional to the Ricci scalar. A physicist with a modern background to understand physics really needs these three characters to define general relativity and she needs to solve several straightforward exercises to deduce its basic implications.
None of these comments holds for string theory. You really need something like 1,000 pages for an introduction to the subject. String theory is composed of dozens or hundreds of breakthroughs of comparable depth and importance as special or general relativity. Mr Tyson and other laymen probably don't understand this very fact and there are seven billion people who don't understand this very fact. But the high number of these morons doesn't give them the moral right to talk about the deepest theory that the mankind has ever had and probably will ever have and about those who have seriously contributed to it in this disrespectful way, especially if they're the kind of infinitesimal pseudointellectual dwarfs as Mr Tyson.
Also, I find it important to say the following comment. I have always admired Einstein and he managed to revolutionize physics several times, indeed. But he was almost certainly not the smartest physicist who has ever lived on this planet. And whether he was smarter or more creative than the top string theorists – or whether he was mostly more lucky, especially when it came to the timing of his life – is a question that doesn't admit an easy, immediate answer.
Well, I believe that 10 years to go from special relativity to general relativity is just too much and I would have been faster if I were in the same situation in which Einstein found himself after his miraculous year, 1905. For some other people I know, it could have literally been a question of days, perhaps. By using suggestive demagogic adjectives such as "brilliant", Tyson wants to outlaw the very discussion about these matters. He builds his case on the imbeciles in the audience and the expectation that Brian wouldn't have the courage to say that string theory is a much deeper and more ambitious project than just relativity. Fortunately, Brian didn't quite get intimidated (although his courage was arguably fortified by his physical absence in the hall).
Because Tyson doesn't really understand string theory at the technical level, as Brian pointed out, he can't know a legitimate procedure to estimate how much time it should "reasonably" take to complete string theory and/or settle its validity (recall the estimates of the length of the Emperor's nose). I think this task is hundreds or thousands of times more profound than just realizing that the Universe respects the laws of relativity. But no one can know the right ratio – not even the top string theorists – before all the things are settled.
Also, to think about the deadlines and quotas as methods to assign researchers to various disciplines of science is just preposterous in general. Young people in a certain quantitative, supersmart category focus on string theory simply because they understand that string theory is the cutting edge of physics where meaningful progress is happening and may happen with their help, too. People with some interest in the deepest laws combined with the competence are working on string theory because it hasn't been completed yet while it is the only game in town. It doesn't matter to them whether string theory has been around for 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, or 500 years. A theory's being the cutting edge can't be determined from some numbers describing its history.
Moreover, the experimental verification, as Brian also noted, is inevitably harder now simply because string theorists are wrestling with a problem that is much further from the everyday life experience – and therefore more profound in this particular sense. The reasons why it was easier to verify certain claims 100 years ago than it is today should be completely obvious to everyone who has at least some clue. If someone suggests that he doesn't understand these reasons and uses the comparisons to argue that string theorists are qualitatively dumber than Albert Einstein, then he's either an unprecedented moron or a hardcore jerk without scruples.
String theory isn't a completed theory yet but it has already made so many striking discoveries that they have already downgraded both the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity to cute and essential ideas among hundreds of similarly cute and essential ideas in physics. But even if we made a completely different conclusion – that relativity was a deeper discovery than all of string theory and Albert Einstein was smarter than any living string theorist – I don't quite think that string theorists should be ashamed because of this comparison. As Greene says, Einstein was a special genius and relativity was an extraordinary advance. So it can't be a mortal sin if you were less creative and achieved a smaller breakthrough than one of the greatest scientific breakthrough of the 20th century.
Number of string theorists
But let me discuss the claim by Tyson that there are too many string theorists. I find the stupidity of this claim totally unbelievable. To understand the Universe at the deepest possible level is – let's estimate – one of the three most natural motivations of life of a modern thinking human. If the mankind had the ambition to be a science-driven society, two billions of people should be consistently thinking about such issues.
Instead, the number of string theorists who are actively thinking about these questions in physics pretty much every day is almost certainly smaller than 2,000. Using a less inclusive counting, one could get down to 500 or so. But let me use the higher number, 2,000 in the whole world. That's more than 1 million times fewer than it should be.
If you have never been a string theorist, you probably can't even imagine how incomparably elite and reclusive status it is to be a string theorist. Even if we assume that there are 2,000 string theorists in the world – and it is probably an overestimate – it implies that there is one string theorist per 3.5 million people. An average nation – or the average U.S. state – with 10 million people (such as mine) may be expected to host something like 3 string theorists. You visit ever acre in a disk of radius 200 miles around you and ask every person what he or she thinks about the newest developments in cutting-edge theoretical physics and you will find roughly two people who will have something relevant to say.
Do I think that there are too few string theorists? I surely do. I don't know whether there's enough IQ among the humans on Earth for the number to be much higher but if I forget about this limitation, I surely think that the number of people who are actively thinking about string theory should be higher by a few orders of magnitude.
Just compare the number 2,000 of string theorists with some more ordinary occupation. For example, just the Internal Revenue Service in the U.S. has about 100,000 employees (tax collectors). You should multiply this number by 20 (because the U.S. population is about 1/20 of the world population) and obtain something like 2 million to get an estimate of the number of people in the world who are doing pretty much the same thing.
These 2 million people are doing a completely annoying, redundant, repetitive, uncreative work: they're just robbing the remaining folks on Earth and take a part of their income from them. A large percentage of these 2 million people is paid salaries that exceed those of an average string theorist. Again, the number of IRS-like employees in the world is something like 1,000 times greater than the number of string theorists. And I could enumerate hundreds if not thousands of occupations similar to the IRS employees that are comparably overbloated.
By now, you should have understood why I consider proclamations about "too many people thinking about string theory" to be breathtakingly idiotic and malicious at the same moment. There are many people in the world and it's guaranteed that a vast majority of them has to do something rather ordinary. But if the mankind cared about knowledge, string theorists would arguably represent the most underrepresented occupation among all of them. How someone can turn this obvious fact upside down and complain about the allegedly too high number of string theorists – while being silent about 2 million tax collectors and everyone else – is just beyond me.
A deep hatred against science and against people who are smarter is the only conceivable motivation that people like Mr Tyson may have. What makes their comments that "there are too many string theorists" even more stunning and hypocritical is that the number of people emitting dumb criticisms of string theory is vastly higher than the number of string theorists – and many of them are actually making living out of this hostile, barbarian, intellectually worthless junk. Where does this overgrown group of dishonest parasites find the chutzpah to say that there are too many string theorists?
Does string theory produce crackpot alternatives?
At 2:10, Tyson says another stunningly idiotic thing:
The pace of progress in string theory is so slow that it has led to other ideas exhibited on this panel [which also includes Smolin]. Some people say that we live in the Matrix and Marcello is questioning the whole idea of a unified theory.
Holy cow. How can the – high or low – pace of progress in string theory lead to the emergence and re-emergence of mostly stupid ideas that have nothing to do with string theory? The people who talk about our world's being the Matrix are not string theorists. They have nothing to do with string theory and frankly speaking, they have virtually no chance to become string theorists because they're just too intellectually limited for that.
How can someone attribute the existence of stupid ideas – which have existed for millions of years, since the humans ceased to be monkeys and probably well before that – to the numerical value of the pace of progress in string theory, a field that the "Matrix researchers" (not to be confused with Matrix theory researchers) have nothing to do with? It just makes no sense. A crackpot may say that the Matrix or Loop Quantum Gravity or any other idiocy are equal competitors to string theory. And many of them are saying similar things all the time. But just because a stupid person says such a thing doesn't make it true. These people are not string theorists. These people are not top theoretical physicists. These people aren't sharing the elite status with the less than 2,000 string theorists in the world. They're just random mediocre folks who are saying preposterous things and they can get away with it simply because there exists an even higher number of "consumers" who buy similar nonsense, partly because the "anti-string theorists" are populistically licking the rectums of the stupid listeners who are annoyed that someone is way smarter than they are.
When Brian told Tyson that Tyson can't possibly evaluate the pace of progress in string theory because he has no clue about string theory at the technical level, Tyson agreed that he had no idea about string theory at the technical level but he added:
That's why I invited this panel. And they're apparently thinking about other things.
Great but what does it have to do with the pace of progress in string theory? Clearly, nothing. Most people have been thinking about other things than string theory – and most people are still thinking about other things than string theory – simply because string theory is way too demanding for them. Some members of the panel were downright cranks. How can you determine the pace of progress by looking at the activities of a randomly constructed panel of good scientists and not-so-good scientists? This "argument" makes absolutely no sense, especially because Tyson who has composed the panel doesn't understand cutting-edge physics at the technical level so he can't be expected to know who really belongs to a panel that could reasonably discuss questions of the cutting-edge physics.
It's exactly like saying
Look, I invited 7 pigs over here and they are primarily eating leaves, grasses, roots, fruits, and flowers. All of them are doing something else than molecular biology which proves that the progress in molecular biology has been so incredibly slow and the molecular biologists are probably chasing a ghost or they are too stupid. This slow pace of progress in the molecular biology has created the pigs that eat leaves, grasses, fuits, and flowers instead of research of molecular biology.
WTF? Are you really serious, Mr Tyson? And please, give me a break with possible suggestions that the comparison of you and the pigs is inaccurate. The empirical evidence in your extempore is overwhelming that you're much closer to average pigs than to average string theorists.
Arrogant morons such as Mr Tyson is something I just can't stand.
By the way, I am just preparing The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene for the second Czech edition, after a decade. It's kind of amazing to see how I could still subscribe to every word of it, how every sentence plays a role, makes sense, and is stylistically and artistically exciting and optimized.
Amos Chapple is a travel photographer who made the following pictures over the course of three visits to the Islamic Republic of Iran between December 2011 and January 2013. The New Zealand freelancer said he "was amazed by the difference in western perceptions of the country, and what I saw on the ground... I think because access for journalists is so difficult, people have a skewed image of what Iran is -- the regime actually want to portray the country as a cauldron of anti-western sentiment so they syndicate news footage of chanting nutcases which is happily picked up by overseas networks. For ordinary Iranians though, the government is a constant embarrassment. In the time I spent there I never received anything but goodwill and decency, which stands in clear contrast to my experience in other middle eastern countries. I met an American special forces soldier in Kyrgyzstan last year who said when it comes to the Middle East, America has the wrong friends and the wrong enemies." Below is a selection of Chapple's recent photographs of Iran, captions provided by the photographer. [20 photos]
The beloved but doomed Google Reader is still a healthy source of traffic. Google+, on the other hand…
According to data from the BuzzFeed Network, a set of tracked partner sites that collectively have over 300 million users, Google Reader is still a significant source of traffic for news — and a much larger one than Google+. The above chart, created by BuzzFeed's data team, represents data collected from August 2012 to today. (Yesterday, Google announced that it would close Reader in July.)
We should add that this data isn't complete. Google Reader traffic became much harder to measure last year when Google began defaulting users to SSL encryption in such a way that masked referral data. And this doesn't include data from apps that use Google Reader as a sync service, such as Reeder. In other words, it's likely that we're actually missing some Reader traffic here.
The second graphic* shows measured Reader and Google+ referrals over time. This one, too, requires qualification: The changes in Reader's numbers can be explained mostly by the addition of new sites to BuzzFeed's partner network, not growth in Google Reader (the total number of visitors to partner sites increased, in other words).
But the relative numbers are still surprising: Despite claims that it has over 100m monthly active users, Google+ barely moves the needle for sites across the network, while Reader is a healthy source of readers.
*For reference: in August of 2012, according to the same data, Facebook drove over 70m visitors to sites in the network while Google Reader was well under 10m.
If ever there was a heartwarming (or stomach-turning, depending on your affinity for amphibians) story to kick off your weekend, it is this one. Mike Archer, a scientist at the University of New South Wales, is on the cusp of successfully cloning an extinct species of frog called Rheobatrachus, better known as the gastric-brooding frog. The frog, which went from initial discovery in 1972 to its eventual extinction in 1983, is famous for the unique way it gives birth. As discovered by Mike Tyler of the University of Adelaide, the mother literally swallows its own eggs and then stops producing stomach acid so they can hatch in her belly, live as tadpoles, and six weeks later are "born" as the mother frog vomits them up.
Flickr has pushed the latest update to its revamped iPhone app, and the headline feature is a tweak to an existing one from the web: according to the changelog, tags are now hashtags, and can be tapped directly below each photo. While Flickr was one of of the first web services to popularize tags as a sorting and search mechanism, it seems Yahoo felt that legacy wasn't enough for the photo-sharing service to keep pace; the change is in line with the Flickr app's adoption of retro filters and @-symbol usernames. The word "hashtag" hasn't extended to the main Flickr website itself, though, and existing tags from the web don't show up as tappable hashtags in the app.
By adopting the language of the app-driven mobile web, the Flickr app...
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