I’m optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren’t still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you’re in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for saying so.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The marketplace of ideas is truly a wonderful thing.
Category: Science
Friday Quote – Steven Novella
When someone looks at me and says “I know what I saw,” I am fond of replying “No, you don’t.” You have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under.
Dr. Steven Novella, neurosurgeon and skepticism advocate
A HUD For Your Car
This looks interesting. Very interesting.
I wonder if one of the apps would give you cool reticles, so you can pretend to get missile lock on that annoying car in front of you. FOX TWO, MF’ER!
Personally, I’d like to play with it before dropping $300-$400, but I’m still cleaning up drool.
H/t Alan
And You Wonder Why We Can’t Take You Seriously
In a somewhat humorous twist, this claim was issued in “The Margarita Report.”
I will admit to believing in climate change, and even that humanity has played a role in it. Empirical evidence has shown it’s not been quite the radical increase that most of these groups have been shrilly screaming about, but there’s been some.
Now, let’s for a moment assume that all of their claims about climate change are true and we do face a global catastrophe. What will produce the technologies needed to reduce carbon emissions, or possibly even reverse the effects? Which economic system has been responsible for developing a high tech industry base?
To those groups who wrote this Margarita Report: be quiet, grow ups are talking.
Things my niece and nephew probably won’t experience
Sometimes the amazing becomes the mundane, and it isn’t until it’s gone that we realize how amazing it actually was. What am I talking about?
The brother and I went to Oklahoma to visit family. During a long conversation with our uncle, we were talking about growing up in Florida during his days and ours.
One thing I remember fondly is every so often hearing the windows rattling and realizing that it was the shuttle flying over. It happened enough that it was a curiosity, but relatively mundane. Now that the shuttle is gone, and my niece and nephew aren’t likely to experience something like it, I realize just how amazing it was that we had a spaceship flying over our heads to land.
Navy Rail Guns Closer to Reality
According to this article from Ars Technica, the U.S. Navy is set to field test its new rail gun in 2016 aboard the USNS Millinocket. The video in the article is pretty nifty as well.
It makes me wonder if/when we’ll be switching out our chemically-propelled small arms for hand-held versions of these. FSM, I love living in the future.
Happy Birthday Norman Borlaug!
You would have been a hundred today.
A person who probably saved more lives than anyone else in human history should be better known.
Even by me.
H/t Borepatch
Multivitamins Don’t Help
According to three new studies, multivitamins don’t work against heart disease, cancer, early death, or declining cognitive ability. This just adds to the evidence that multivitamins do little more than give you expensive pee.
“Enough is enough,” declares an editorial accompanying the studies in Annals of Internal Medicine. “Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements.”
Why? Because most people get enough vitamins through the foods that they eat.
Better nutrition and vitamin-fortified foods have made these problems pretty much history.
Now when public health officials talk about vitamin deficiencies and health, they’re talking about specific populations and specific vitamins. Young women tend to be low on iodine, which is key for brain development in a fetus, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Mexican-American women and young children are more likely to be iron deficient. But even in that group, we’re talking about 11 percent of the children, and 13 percent of the women.
So, unless your doctor (doctor, not woo-practitioner) prescribes a vitamin for a specific deficiency, quit wasting your money.
The Japanese Have Armed The ISS
The Japanese have attached a cannon to the ISS. Supposedly, it’s for launching small satellites called Cubesats.
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blockquote>J-SSOD stands for JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer. According to the Japanese space agency, “it is a mechanism for deploying small satellites designed in accordance with CubeSat design specification (10cm×10cm×10cm) that transfers the satellites from the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo’s airlock to space environment and releases them on orbit.<\blockquote>
Don’t be misled! This is the first-generation KEW launcher for the UN!*
*Yeah, I know that’s so much bullshit. I just wanted to see what sort of readers that spiel would bring. Actually, it’s pretty damn cool.
H/t Tam
Friday Quote – Sean Carroll
We’re not allowed to call the Higgs boson the ‘God Particle’ anymore because now there is evidence that it exists.
Sean Carroll, physicist and author
Giggle, chuckle, HAHAHA!