Two more for the list

One from the US, one from the UK:

Vaccination (Not using) - People who do not have their children vaccinated should be prosecuted for domestic terrorism and child abuse. - [source]

SATs (UK) - The union's outgoing president, Bill Greenshields, said he was confident a boycott would be successful."We will end this child abuse," he said. - [source]

Both have been added to "In the future, everything will be child abuse for 15 minutes".

More "burning holes with light" stuff
How I love it

The Amateur Transplants destroy an Easter egg by accident. I don't think there's any lensing going on - the plastic is flat - but the point closest to the light presents a smaller surface area to the sun, and therefore recieves a higher power/ unit area. [This is the same reason that you want to locate solar cells as close to the equator as possible]. The burn through looks cool, tho'.

[via Dr. Crippen]

No, they did not.

Myths about nukes

An otherwise interesting paper is marred by this:

"Since then, Americans have dreamed of exotic nuclear 

possibilities. Early advocates promised a future of electricity too 

cheap to meter, an age of peace and plenty without high prices 

and shortages where atomic energy provided the power needed to 

desalinate water for the thirsty, irrigate deserts for the hungry, 

and fuel interstellar travel deep into outer space.‘‘carbon-free electricity source’’ (1998). Patrick Moore, co-founder 

of Greenpeace, has publicly stated that ‘‘nuclear energy is the only 

non-greenhouse gas emitting energy source that can effectively 

replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand’’ (Environmental 

News Service, 2005). The nuclear power company Areva (2007) "

From Sovacool, Energy Policy 36 (2008) 2940-2953, emphasis mine

I appreciate it would be jolly convenient for anti-nuclear campaigners if the sinister cigarette smoking nuke-men in rakish hats had let the politicians astray with a lot of fast talk about monorails  energy which was "too cheap to meter", but -alas - it is Not True. 

The Daily Mash
On the expenses scandal

Emma Bradford, from Harrow, said: "I'd like to designate him as as my 'second MP', just for a couple of weeks, so that I can claim twelve grand to have him refurbished and then sell him to some really nasty Russian pimps."

Roy Hobbs, from Oldham, said: "I'd like to buy one of those four-slot Dualit toasters from John Lewis and spank him across the face with it so hard that I break both my wrists."

And Tom Logan, from Salford, added: "If you know that it's wrong now, then surely you knew it was wrong when you were spending my money doing up houses you bought with my money and then dodging capital gains tax even though you'd still have made a tidy profit and would, at least, have been able to return some of my money. You nauseatingly rancid lump of pox-ridden, cock-sucking pigshit." - [source]

Less laughing and more thinking

Greenpeace FAIL

I would quite like to be a Green, but this sort of rampant stupidity is quite off putting:

 

Yesterday we brought you the fantastical tale of the Brazilian government announcing their ambition to build 50 new nuclear reactors by 2050. No sooner had the disbelieving laughter died down here at Nuclear Reaction, along came the World Nuclear Association (WNA) with an amazing fantasy of its own. Wait until you see this – it’s amazing. There are comedians who would kill for this ability to make people laugh…

In its Nuclear Century Outlook report, the WNA has an upper ‘outlook projection’ of 11,000 new nuclear reactors being built by the end of the century.

Read that again. The WNA can envisage a scenario in which 11,000 nuclear reactors will be built in the next 92 years.

That means starting to build this October 120 reactors a year…

…which is 10 reactors every month…

…which is one reactor every three days.

I suppose that's why washing lines are an impossible technology: after all, if a sweater takes two hours to dry, all my laundry will take weeks... 

No-one is righteous 

Although plenty are self-righteous

6 in 10. 6 in 10. 

There is a reason Paul teaches that those who say "Do evil, that good may come of it" are condemned (Romans 3:8). 

No-one ever does evil for its own sake. The cackling Bond villain lives only in films. In the 80s, Private Eye did a spoof called "The Secret Diary of Colonel Gaddaffi", which consisted of "Monday: God up, GOD guided my breakfast, did something diabolical, went to bed. Tuesday: Got up. GOD guided my breakfast, did something diabolical..." and so on through out the week. All men in all places in all times who have committed abominable acts of wickedness didn't do it to laugh manically. They "pursue the good in a disordered way": they will the ends and ignore the means. "I was after a good end" and "I was following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg and will not work here.

6 in 10. The symbol of our faith is a torture device. How can people hear of a man half-drowned or another locked in a box with insects and think "Yes. Of this I approve. Now, I must hurry to Bible study".  

[Statistic via Ben Goldacre]

Viral marketing

Innovative

Spotted in the window of my local news-agent.  

Blinded by the Sun

Much better than the Mail

Two good bits of "setting fire to stuff with light and laughing manically" news:

[1] Meat cards make business cards from MEAT and LASERS.  

[2] Google engineer Alan Davidson has got a huge Fresnel lens and has used it to melt stuff. All great fun. If they want to get more evenly done bacon, I'd get a copper heatsink and cook the bacon on that. 

And the prize for chutzpah goes to...

"Imperial Matters", the Imperial College alumni mag which a mate has just shown me. From

the Winter Edition:

New Identity for Imperial College Business School

In August 2008, the Business School at Imperial College London changed its name from Tanaka Business School to Imperial College Business School. The change was made to enphasise that the School is an integral part of the College by incorporating the Imperial College name directly into its title. 

The renaming came after research suggested that its previous name was not strongly associated with Imperial College London. [Imperial Matters, Winter 08-09, 33, p.4]

I am little surprised "research" didn't show this, instead. Good save, PR guys! 

Fantastic

It's coming to get you

Via Chris Applegate, this is the Daily Mail's artistic impression of a solar storm:

We should also brace ourselves for an attack, not only of The Red Sun Of Death, but also of arguments that look like this:

It's the sun wot dun it! This means that we can keep on releasing CO_2 without any consequences whatsoever. Silly warmenists - they would have got away with it if it hadn't been for we meddling bloggers. Isn't it remarkable how someone with an O Level physics can totally pwn an entire scientific community? 

Thank GOD I'm not a climate scientist - there no well-funded lobby, and no well-meaning half-wits, trying to pretend that gallium arsenide is a con to raise funding and that lasers are a liberal myth.

Then she runneth...

 ¹The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

 ²Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.

 ³Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.

 ⁴So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

⁵And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.

⁶Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,

 ⁷And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

 ⁸Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.

 ⁹For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.

John 20:1-9

Meh

Oh, Mr. Moffat...

Well, it was fun enough, I suppose, in its own way, but

1) "Oh, you are so kidding me" is EVERY BIT as irritating as "Oh, you have got to be kidding me"

2) Enough with the sodding applause, already. Really, this ruined the Christmas episode, and is increadibly self-indulgent and wanky.

3) Why did someone think that Malcolm was a good idea? 

"But why do you call it good Friday?"

A difficult question 

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5 

An open letter to Jacqui Smith MP

From "a quondam lover of England"

From the Japan Times :

When recently I fell in love for the first time (at 40-something) — to an Englishman — I felt happiness overflowing. Career and caring for my elderly parents mean I cannot consider leaving Japan, but at least I would be able to get married in beautiful England.

Think again. Unromantic apparatchiks have taken over the U.K. To get married in England, even to an Englishman with his own property in England, I need a visa. (My husband-to-be comes from generations of English and Irish stock — and his grandmother was a Claypole, archetypically English, from the same family tree as Oliver Cromwell.)

I can visit the U.K. freely for business or pleasure for six months, but for a fleeting visit to get married I need a visa. We can get married in Japan, the U.S., Canada, France or Italy without a visa between us, so why is the U.K. different? Where is the reciprocity so beloved of diplomats?

My next surprise was that the U.K. no longer has visa officials in Japan whom I could approach. Visa applications have been outsourced to an Indian company owned by a Swiss travel concern, which then sends the form and passport to Manila for processing.

Was Japan consulted? How would Britons react if visas for Japan were handled in Russia or Mongolia?

First I had to fill in an online application. After standard information about age, address, marital status, etc., I had to supply my father's and mother's names, their dates and places of birth, whether I had a criminal record, had been deported from any country, or had been a terrorist or involved in war crimes or genocide. 

Read the whole thing here.

Words that do not inspire confidence

An occasional series

The laser – dubbed a weapon of mosquito destruction (WMD) – has been designed with the help of Lowell Wood, one of the astrophysicists who worked on the original Star Wars plan to shield America from nuclear attack.

[source, link via Liberal Conspiracy]

Fusion Confusion

Extrapolation saves the nation

Hello, Google Groups uk.railway - thank you for reading this post about fusion, I hope that you enjoyed it. I'd like to pick up on a couple of responses:

A. I became a physicist for the money, the women, and the fast cars[1]. However, I think that there are plenty of us on RA salaries who would be quite surprised by:

"Meanwhile, gullible politicians will fork out more tens of billions of 

pounds for the highly paid scientists who promise much but never deliver 

anything except a greater number of ever-larger invoices. " 

The comments section is available for those who wish to name all these "gullible politicians" who dish out largess - I want my share. Mr. Poulson is challenged by Recliner, and subsequently retreats from the claim:

"Perhaps it should be "overpaid" in view of their [lack of] results "

Those work-shy physicists, eh? They should get a job and go to college.  

B. As I stated in the post,  

"I don't hold a brief for fusion, but I think the assumption - that fusion is a fantasy and that the plasma jockeys are spending their grant money on slow horses and fast women - should probably re-examined."

I was merely comparing progress in the semiconductor industry - which no-one attacks - and the progress to date of fusion. The graph does not claim that "a commercial plant would have worked by 2005 ". It shows the rate of increase in the "triple product" - a figure of merit associated with nuclear fusion. Even were this achieved, there would still be issues with removing the products of fusion and the energy produced from the reaction.

C. As Jeremy Double notes, the gap between the discovery of nuclear fission and working civilian reactors was less than 30 years (Rutherford was sceptical about the possibility of nuclear power to his end...). The claim that it will take hundreds of year to commercialize to fusion seems to me to involve a strong assumption.

D. Does anyone have a source for the claim that fusion is 15/30/50 years away? It doesn't sound like something a scientist - however overpaid - would say. Is it just one self-publicist mouthing off? An over-zealous PR department? A campaign for funding? Or is it a media myth like "scientists in the 70s predicted a global ice age" or "nuclear industry baddies claimed they could produce electricity too cheap to meter"? 

If it is one of the latter, let's kill it off now.

[1] I was disappointed.

Quote of the day

Epitaph

It’s becoming apparent that there’s a divide between people who are quantitatively minded, and people who aren’t. I don’t think people in the latter category can understand quite how viscerally people in the former category react against the misuse of numbers.

Nobody likes being bullshitted. I think that’s universal. However, not everyone has a feeling for whether or not a numerical statement is bullshit. The numbers quoted by Amnesty are bullshit, that’s become quite clear. The difference is between those who think that the qualitative argument - that domestic violence is a big problem that particularly affect women - is all that matters, and those who think that the accuracy of the quantitative description of that problem also matters.

I can’t stay on the fence here. Quantitative accuracy matters. The modern world has been constructed by people who cared about the value of quantitative accuracy, from antibiotics to the contraceptive pill to the internet. If you take advantage of these things, you have no place bashing people who are obsessive about quantitative accuracy: your way of life depends on them.

And let’s be quite clear: when people who care about quantitative accuracy criticise your figures, it’s not because they oppose your political positon. It’s not because they’re your enemy. It’s because you’ve got your numbers wrong. Quantitvely-minded people care about this in the abstract, regardless of the political context. In doing so, they are upholding an important value that transcends politics. Truth matters, and nobody should be criticised for upholding that value. - [source]

That's the science writer Iain Coleman, who elegantly summarizes the divide over Amnesty International's problematic statistic. 

Thought experiment

But no entanglement

Pretend you've never heard of Hardy's paradox. Would this article make any sense at all?

The comments on the article are shear joy, too.

[via John Derbyshire]

A disturbing thought

Which we shall not ponder too closely

I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.

[source]

Myspace Kills

Will no-one think of the children?

[Following the Susan Greenfield's "rather indulgent" claims regarding social media,  a guest post from my mate Ice-G]

A magnificent article from The Times :

"Social networking sites can provide a "constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognised, and important". Greenfield continued. This was coupled with a distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation, which were "far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses" and "require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously".

With only a few minor modifications it may be improved:

The Guardian can provide a "constant reassurance to academics – that they are listened to, recognised, and important". Greenfield continued. This is coupled with a distancing from the stress of the peer review process and real discourse with experts, which are "far more perilous as ones views may actually be challenged."  Furthermore peer refereed publications "require a real sensitivity to evidence, a body of theory and most worryingly can sense bullshit, those sneaky molecules that I release and which others smell subconsciously".

Ice-G