Collected Links (05-30-2022)

• Why much published research is wrong (problems with p-values, etc.)
• Calculating p-values: Wikipedia; Wolfram (discussion); Kahn Academy (slyt)
• Ceramics by Ariana Heinzman (on Colossal) -- hand made vessels, bright abstracted floral motif (mostly) surface decoration
• Wisteria in Japan (on Colossal)
  
• "Japanese Suburbs in Watercolor" (on Nag on the Lake) -- lovely
  
• Flora Yukhonovich -- abstracted Rococo paintings
  
• "Latecomers [Edited] Guide to Crypto" (via Tim) Annotated "grossly irresponsible" NYT tech article -- although some of the annotations are trenchant, a fair number are just sniping. "Crypto," of course, is not tangible property -- its proponents would have us believe it's a currency. It's subject to the same quasi-ponzi scheme and speculation driven concerns as any intangible asset; concerns that currencies are not pegged to any tangible standard, such as gold, have been the source of hand wringing for at least 150 years. That's repeated again in the annotations. Yet except in El Salvador (currently) crypto's not an official currency anywhere, it's not a necessary means of exchange, and it's highly speculative as an investment. It may have benefit for this who want to wash or shelter assets (despite the articles suggestions otherwise). But I'm not an investor. 
  
• Maps for proposed walks around London (on a blog called A Lady in London) (via Nag on the Lake)
  

How does Santa get Down the Chimney? Science!

Christmas is attendant with many mysteries -- like what the hell does it actually have to do with Jesus Christ? (um, nothing) -- but one important question is why does Santa use the chimney and also how does he use it (well, that's two questions) and why is it important that he's so fat (okay, three questions), but they all have one answer: air pressure.

This does not answer the question of how Santa gets back up the chimney, which I believe is not "by lighting a fire under his butt (that would just flood the house with smoke ... and kill Santa) but by being tethered to magic flying reindeer. 

We're Living in the Space Age, Dude

Beginning "I am sick of hearing people say that the Space Age is "over" because we haven't sent humans back to the Moon. Seriously? That's your complaint? ...," Annalee Newitz begins a rant at io9 on the incredible technology we now have in space and the incredible amount of knowledge we've gained.  And, indeed, we knew so little about space even a century ago that we had no concrete knowledge of the size of the universe, the amount of planets, suns, and galaxies in the universe, what in detail composed them, that there might be dark matter and dark energy, or how most of it worked. A century ago Einstein's writings on special relativity and the quantum, which are now fundamental to physics and chemistry, had only recently been published and were barely understood; his theory of general relativity was still a year away. Humans had few large telescopes, had no large rockets, and had never sent anything into space nor had any realistic plans to do so.  We now have a space station -- we've had space stations for several decades now.  Oh how things have changed.

So Newitz's article is an enjoyable rant and right.  No, we are not going today to other star systems.  Really?  Do you think that is going to happen?  This is the space age for the foreseeable future.

Newitz's rant, BTW, seems to borrow heavily in tone from Louis C.K., and he is damn funny (Newitz not so much, though that's not her point), so you should watch this:

Comedy Central

Will It Blend -- iPhone5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S3

The Blendtec blender man calls it a draw, but if you watch I think it is obvious that the iPhone blends a lot easier than the Samsung -- that is, Samsung wins! (My guess is that the Android operating system had no effect on the outcome.)

"Our Story in 2 Minutes"

The "our" in "Our Story" is mostly the US (well, that's the intended audience), but whatever; this is still great:

The Minute Physics List of Great Science Sites

Henry Reich who created and produces the great YouTube channel Minute Physics (which I ought to link to more, really), has produced a list of his favorite science sites. It's actually really good (why should I be surprised?):

Here's his list:

• Big Red Button - http://inception.davepedu.com
• xkcd - http://xkcd.com/1131/
• xkcd what if? - http://what-if.xkcd.com/3/
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?...
• Empirical Zeal - http://www.empiricalzeal.com/
• Sean Carroll - http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/b...
• Terry Tao - http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2012/12...
• It's Okay To Be Smart - http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com/post/...
• I ¶#@*ing Love Science -https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLove...
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day -http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
• Radiolab - http://www.radiolab.org/2012/dec/17/s...
• HyperPhysics - http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/...
• The Scale of the Universe - http://htwins.net/scale2/
• The Character of Physical Law -http://research.microsoft.com/apps/to...
• Fake Science - http://fakescience.tumblr.com/post/12...

              Youtube Channels he lists:

• Veritasium - http://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium
• Sixty Symbols - http://www.sixtysymbols.com/
• Periodic Videos - http://www.periodicvideos.com/
• Crash Course - http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse
• The Brain Scoop - http://www.youtube.com/thebrainscoop
• Smarter Every Day - http://www.youtube.com/destinws2
• Vi Hart - http://www.youtube.com/vihart
• George Hart - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTl0...
• Numberphile - http://www.numberphile.com/
• Vsauce - http://www.youtube.com/user/Vsauce
• TED-Ed - http://www.youtube.com/teded
• MinuteEarth - http://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth

Helping Scientific American's Michael Shermer with Basic Statistics

Michael Shermer, who writes for Scientific American -- but, I might add, is not a scientist (he has a PhD in history and calls himself "Dr. Shermer") -- has a recent column entitled The Liberal's War on Science. To the extent the thesis of that column is that there are a lot of liberals who hold unscientific ideas and values, he's right. And he is right to decry that in general.

But that is not, alas, his thesis.  As you can tell from his title, he argues that liberals taken as a whole are against science. I don't know if all liberals should be lumped together except for the most general purposes any more than most conservatives should. But, regardless, such lumping he does, and he gets it a bit wrong.

Let's look: he states that 41% of Democrats are young Earth creationists (he says 58% of Republicans are), and that 19% of Democrats doubt global warming (while 51% of Republicans do). Accepting these as valid (he does not provide the study), they still unfortunately do not support his thesis of a "liberal a war on science." Let's help him.

By his numbers 59% of Democrats -- a majority -- are not young Earth creationists. So if "not being a young Earth creationists" is a measure of being "scientific" (and all Democrats are liberals, as he equates them), then a majority of liberals are scientific. Hmmm. And, by his numbers, a majority of Republicans, 58%, are not scientific.  Likewise, if believing in global warming is a measure of being "scientific," as he asserts, then the fact that 81% of Democrats believe in global warming would mean the majority of liberals are scientific. On the other hand, the fact that a majority of Republicans, 51%, doubt global warming, would make them not scientific. Again, hmmmm.

Upcoming Posts at Galileo Feynman

When I began this blog I imagined a mix of posts on art and politics, music and culture, science and society interspersed with short essays on a variety of more philosophical subjects. I haven't had much chance to focus on the essay side -- which I'd normally post under the tag Blah blah blah, among others -- but I thought I'd mention what's in the hopper. It's all pretty nerdy, so abandon all hope if you're looking for something else. A lengthy list follows bellow the break.

National Geographic Photo Contest Winners ... At Last!

It's three weeks since National Geographic was scheduled to announce their photo contest winners .. and now that it has done so I admit I'm a little disappointed. These aren't bad photos -- they're great photos -- but the judges overlooked a lot from what they had to choose from, in my view. I've covered the entries previously, and I've linked at the end of this post to my collections of what I thought were the best photos of the 22,000 submitted. Ah well ...

Grand Prize and Nature Winner

Maker's Special: How to Handle Electrostatic Discharge

Found at Neatorama.

How We Know the Earth is a Sphere

And after these things I saw four angels standing on the fourcorners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

Revelation 7:1-3

Yes, yes, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but still it is valuable to consider how we know things:

I would add we know the Earth is not flat for many other obvious reasons, like, if it were flat gravity would be markedly greater in its center, tidal forces would tear the Earth apart, meteorites or comets could make holes the Earth (depending on how thick the Earth was and how large the meteorite or comet), seismological tests would not make any sense (since they disprove the flat Earth), plate tectonics would not make much sense, satellites would not orbit the Earth in the manner they do ... we could just go on and on.

2012: Best-of Lists

I promised to post 2012 best of/wrap-up lists before the end of 2012, which just goes to show you how good my promises are. Well, I am finally doing it, below the break, but let me note, first, that Miss Cellania has a bunch of really good collections of lists from around the internet -- you know, if you really needed these you could have gone there:

• Music wrap-up lists
• Books wrap-up lists
• Movie year end lists
• Sports wrap-up lists
• TV wrap-up lists
• Science wrap-up lists
• Advertising wrap-up lists
• Tech and games wrap-up lists
• People oriented wrap-up lists
• Internet news/events/video wrap-up lists
• Photograph best-of lists
• Blog wrap-up lists
• News wrap-up lists
• Miscellaneous wrap-up lists 

That's a lot to go through (as if one really needs to go through every best-of list), so here's the best ones, in my view (as if one really needs to go through any best-of lists):

Instant Snow! (and Why to Start with Very Hot Water Instead of Room Temperature or Cold Water)

There's a persistent myth that cold water will boil faster than hot water (I guarantee it doesn't) and that hot water freezes fast than cold water (under some limited conditions it can). But in this video we see hot water instantly converted to snow in very frigid air. Cold water would not do this. Why? I'll let the tumblr Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics -- which is where I go this -- fully explain after the break, with a short amendment, but here's the short answer: the thrown hot water forms into small ice crystals as it freezes; cold water would stay more clumped together and become ice balls and hail.

Silicone Droplets on a Vibrating Sheet and Wave-Particle Duality

This video from Through the Wormhole, a series narrated by Morgan Freeman that used to air on the Science Channel in the U.S. offers an interesting analogy at the visible level to the quantum property of wave-particle duality. (N.B. The video's commentary is a bit over blown, and it is important to understand that, no matter how much we wish to be able to compare phenomena we know exist, due to repeated experiment, with ones we can easily see and grasp in everyday life, that is something of a fool's errand.  The forces that operate at the level of the very small are not ones anyone intuitively understands. You cannot intuitively understand it because, strictly speaking, there is no macro scale paradigm. That doesn't mean metaphors are useless -- they can be very valuable -- but we need to keep in mind they're metaphors.) Link via the tumblr Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics.

Bill Nye on the Age of the Universe and Creationism

Motion in Slit Scan Videos, Photos, and Cinematography.

timeRemapExportHD from Adrien M / Claire B on Vimeo.

This video -- a sort of dance using a slit scan technique -- was filmed using a Canon 7D SLR camera shooting at 60fps and then is played in slow motion. It is just really awesome. Yes, that is an English sentence.

A Few Words on Valuing Education, Intellectual Attainment, and Science, and the Role of Religion

In the United States education is primarily provided by state and local governments rather than the federal government. Indeed, for many U.S. states, education is the largest budget item. Nonetheless, federal contributions still are very large -- about 10.8% of the overall funding for primary and secondary education. At both the state and federal level ideological issues have intruded into the attempt to teach facts.

Scientists for Obama

It's a New York Times day for me, evidently.  It reports:

Sixty-eight Nobel Prize winners in the science fields, including the two Americans who won this year’s chemistry prize, have signed a letter endorsing Mr. Obama over his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.

“President Obama understands the key role science has played in building a prosperous America,” the laureates wrote in a letter that was released on Wednesday. Mr. Obama “has championed investment in science and technology research that is the engine of our economy.”

The signers said that Mr. Romney, by contrast, “supports a budget that, if implemented, would devastate a long tradition of support for public research and investment in science at a time when this country’s future depends, as never before, on innovation.”

If ad hominem arguments matter, this matters.

"Christiaan Huygens": Ah Nuts, I've Been Saying It Wrong

Christiaan Huygens was a brilliant dutch physicist who possibly ranks in the class of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz and yet, of those, the one so few people (in the U.S.) seem to know about. For what it's worth, he wrote an early version of what became Newton's second law of motion (no, Newton did not come up with this stuff all by himself), invented the pendulum clock, demonstrated that light has wave properties, independently discovered the balance spring, discovered coupled oscillations (see also!), solved the tautochrone problem (which was critical to the creation of a useful pendulum clock), used an early geometric form of calculus predating Newton, developed the theory and formula for centripetal force, wrote the first lengthy work on probability, designed a large tubeless telescope, was the first to understand that Saturn has a ring around it, discovered Saturn's planet Titan, was the first to draw the Orion Nebula, designed an early internal combustion engine that was intended to work with gunpowder, and designed a pocket watch (an outgrowth of the balance spring), among many other inventions. His father, grandfather, and brother were also very successful (his father, though Dutch, was knighted by both England and France and is historically one of the Netherlands most famous poets as well as a composer and was a friend of John Donne and an acquaintance of Rembrandt and Descartes (who lived in the Netherlands for 20 years)).

So, okay, here's the deal: it turns out pretty much everybody who isn't Dutch has been mispronouncing his name all along.  According to Wikipedia it's pronounced like this; according to the video below it's {Huh}{clear your throat or something}{ens}. Also, while we're on it, Euler is pronounced {oiler}, Leibnitz is pronounced {laip}{nits}, and Newton is pronounced {New}{ton}.  Dr. Lewin, below, is right: I've got no idea how to say it.

BTW, Dr. Lewin's other physics videos are also awesome. Via Neatorama.

"Light Drive" by Kim Pimmel

This is a stop-motion video by Kim Pimmel, who photographs colored lights using very long exposures in dark spaces.  There's no computer graphics here.  Rather, his photos are made using more or less everyday objects (as you can see at the beginning of the video) and stringing them together stop-motion style.  At Flickr Pimmel has a large set of photos, some of which explain his techniques further, and at the always great Colossal, where I first saw some of Pimmel's images, there's a set of large sized stills of Pimmel's work.  The net effect of the long exposures and stop motion is that what looks like it is happening very fast must have taken place over a lengthy period of time -- in fact, the time compression may be part of what adds to the beauty.