Science 2.0

A short while ago, SciFest 2010, the International Science Festival, was held in St. Louis.   Making the trip was a group from Jersey Shore, PA and they were invited because a teacher, Slater Harrison, is really good at 'air surfing'.If you have never seen the term air surfing, it was invented in the 1970s by Dr. Tyler MacCready, a fellow who studied philosophy at Yale and then geology at the University of Wyoming and Monash before becoming famous in amateur aerodynamics for the 'walkalong glider' - which looks like magic to many a young person's eyes, at least the way Harrison and his team of students do it.   First, here is a diagram of a walkalong glider.   MacCready no longer makes these so you'd have to find it on Ebay or make your own:

I don't get excited about the singularity the way some on Science 2.0 do (and certainly elsewhere) though I admire the optimism.    So when I got an email from a publicity person at PBS about NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O’Brien’s report on the upcoming match between Jeopardy masters Brad Runner, Ken Jennings and the super computer Watson I had to wonder if this would lead to more claims about an upcoming singularity and exponential leaps in artificial intelligence.

Nothing says science like Valentine's Day and we are positively littered with articles on neuroscience, chemistry and social aspects of romance.   Really, we cover it all.   Not sure who to date? Garth Sundem answers it in The Valentine's Day Man-O-Meter. Be sure to take it as gospel because he never just makes stuff up.  If you need even more help than that, here is his Ultimate Valentine's Day Toolkit.

Last year I attended a singularity conference and Ray Kurzweil's avatar predicted it was 25 years away.   Well, it's been 25 years away for a long time.  It's a nice, safe number, close enough that no one gives up and stops buying books (global warming will happen in 100 years, for example) and not so close anyone looks silly (Al Gore saying in 2006 that we were doomed in 10 years, for example) it if doesn't happen. In 1993, for example, Vernor Vinge said "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." 

I just got back from a vacation in Hawaii and for the entire time, I had laryngitis, or some sort of thing that made me unable to talk and my throat sore. So I could not speak.I tell you, I have never been so attractive to my wife, even though she married me because I am brilliant.   My lack of communication made her unsure if I had concerns about us and the relationship, it seems, along with an extra dose of 'cold' and 'distant'.  In reality she could not see me pointing wildly to the coffee maker and then my throat from where I was bedridden.

In case you don't know it, the Navy is not the 1970s "Village People" branch of the military.  These guys do some cool stuff and are making even cooler toys to do it with.Want to find future tech for megawatt-class laser beams in next-generation weapon systems?  The Navy.   Want to go completely science fiction and find work on a railgun with a projectile that rides an electromagnetic current to its target?  The Navy.

I enjoyed a drink one time with a fellow who was, even for science blogging, left of left.    I won't name names because it doesn't matter, he is a talented writer and a good guy but I always feel like he loves politics more than science and his persistent belief that Republicans/conservatives/right wing neo-cons/Nazis/(insert your favorite term here) are anti-science and progressives are not seemed rather odd.   But I have written about the Democratic War On Science many times.

Fantasy baseball as fans understand it today began in the 1980s but actual fantasy baseball, beyond kids trading baseball cards, began 50 years ago.   Hal Rickman, an accountant in New York City, started finalizing  work on something he had begun when he was much younger.   It was Strat-O-Matic Baseball.Rickman told USA Today's Mike James that as a young boy he rolled dice 5,000 times to make a table of probabilities and looked at baseball statistics in the newspaper to match probability to performance and see what would happen.   In 1961 he started producing the game and later the year Roger Maris would eclipse the ghost of Babe Ruth for the single season home run record.

In the 'gay sex is bad unless it's women' cultural milieu, a survey by a University of Texas at Austin psychologist determined that men are more than twice as likely to continue dating a girlfriend who has cheated on them with another woman than if she cheated with another man.The survey used 700 college students so calibrate accordingly - men may not like their girlfriends sleeping with another guy but a girlfriend sleeping with another girl is a porn movie.

In the quarterly lamentation about the need for science outreach in the U.S., what often gets lost is that not everyone will be good at science.   Lack of science knowledge is regarded as some sort of defect, but it is never an issue with the child, instead it is society or schools.   We need more funding for cartoon characters and flashy animation to explain science because that is what today's kids 'need', we are told.   If you are in that camp, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress will make you happy.   

Without question, a booming worldwide population and the need to feed them have resulted in greater greenhouse gas emissions.   The goal of any civilized society has always been to make food affordable to everyone regardless of income and we are converging on that rapidly.   If anything, the rising obesity problem is because we are reaching a Utopian ideal of enough food for everyone in richer countries.

If you are reading this article, there is a pretty good chance you do not believe the alignment of the stars when you were born determined your personality.   Especially if, like me, your sign recently changed but your personality did not.  Or you were born in the east rather than the west, in which case it didn't change but is still different.