 | The Emergency Water Station, developed by Aqua Sciences, has provided thousands of gallons of water for earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, since it arrived in the country on . . . more |
This week's Gather articles (12/12-12/19):
Finance
 | The annual Leonid meteor shower is expected to have a strong, very visible showing this coming Tuesday, November 17, 2009. Stay up late or wake up really early this Tuesday morning - between 3:30 and . . . more |
 | NASA announced Friday that it had discovered a "significant" amount of water on the moon . Project scientist Anthony Colaprete announced that the water measured about 24 gallons. This finding is based . . . more |
Owen Lovejoy, biological anthropologist and lead analyst on the team that discovered and examined "Ardi," or Ardipithecus ramidus, the oldest skeleton of a human ancestor ever found, was on NPR's . . . more
Scientists today announced the discovery of the skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus , nicknamed "Ardi," the oldest species of hominid ever found. The most complete skeleton of some 30 of these pre-human . . . more
Tomorrow, September 22, is the autumnal equinox and the official first day of fall for 2009. The equinox occurs twice a year: the vernal (spring) and . . . more
In March of this year NASA launched the Kepler observatory into orbit. The Kepler mission is a 4-year mission to observe 100,000 stars in 100 square . . . more
Just heard an excellent segment of On Point about Masdar City, currently being built in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, with the goals to be carbon neutral, produce 100% renewable energy, and generate zero waste. It was a fascinating interview, and I recommend taking a listen and checking out the Masdar website. It's a huge, ambitious project, but it's the sort of thing that can actually be a game-changer, serving as a model of sustainable living for green urban planning and development. Watch some of the videos, including this "fly through" of the city below - those Personal Rapid Transit pods are right out of Minority Report:
Very, very cool stuff. It's also important to see global cooperation take place in the heart of the Middle East to produce innovative technology and information/knowledge exports beyond the UAE's reliance on oil.
It's truly amazing, and it will be interesting to follow Masdar's development. I want to visit.
At the risk of offending the good folks at Web Log Solutions LLC, I felt obliged to post about this report that Scojo recently linked to. It's a paper by a team of geography professors at UCLA and is apparently the first scientific approach to finding Osama bin Laden. It's really a fascinating read. The team relies on biogeographic theories - normally used to predict how plant and animal species distribute themselves over space and time - including distance-decay and island biogeography (explained succinctly in the report). They use spatial scale analyses (global, regional, local) and rely on data like life history characteristics of bin Laden (i.e. requires a power source for his dialysis machine) to develop likely physical attributes of where he might be hiding (i.e. in a structure with an electric grid hookup or generator). Along with high-quality satellite images available to the public, they present a convincing case that narrows bin Laden's likely location down to a small area (they even suggest three structures in Parachinar, Pakistan as excellent candidates).
There are many assumptions made, but they are logical and the theory is testable, refinable and allows for practical, working hypotheses on bin Laden's likely location. Pretty amazing stuff.
A few thoughts upon reading this:
1) I hope the military/intelligence community has a team doing something of this nature already.
2) If not, get this report to Panetta!
3) Scooter already made the knocking-on-the-doors joke, so I won't touch that.
Props to GeoScoot for his initial post.
An interesting Economist article about the theory that cooking evolved as an essential human activity.
A pretty interesting article over at The Economist about the possible evolutionary reasons behind music. Many questions but few answers, aside from why that DB in the band gets more women than you.
I've been reading quite a few articles online recently about all sorts of good stuff. For your consideration:
Benjamin Franklin: The original city slicker? A fascinating man. I need to read more about him.
How do we handle the new Russia?
The end of science? Tell that to CERN.
On Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I admit I knew nothing about the man aside from his name until his recent death. I regret to say I have not read him - but I plan on doing so.
"In Praise of Melancholy." Not quite sure how I feel about this one. I imagine it would have appealed to me more back when melancholy dominated my life. But there's something to Wilson's deceptively paradoxical point that I do agree with. The highs are never as good without the occasional lows.
Dennett on consciousness, science, and religion. Excellent stuff:
It is seldom remarked (though often observed in private, I daresay) that many, many people who profess belief in God do not really act the way people who believed in God would act; they act the way people would act who believed in believing in God. That is, they manifestly think that believing in God is—would be—a good thing, a state of mind to be encouraged, by example if possible, so they defend belief-in-God with whatever rhetorical and political tools they can muster. They ask for God’s help, but do not risk anything on receiving it, for instance. They thank God for their blessings, but, following the principle that God helps those who help themselves, they proceed with the major decisions of their lives as if they were going it alone.That pretty much sums it all up, doesn't it?
Guy Sorman has an interesting article in the City Journal about economics as an increasingly credible science with practical applications. It enumerates ten tenets of economics. A nice piece.
"[The deadly brain-eating amoeba] actually is using the brain for food," Yoder says. "So it is a very tragic situation for the person unfortunate enough to have that happen."
The martinis keep me young - science says so!
Who stirs a martini? I mean honestly.
A great night for the Celts and the Sox last night.
Perhaps the most compelling survival story of our time took place almost 100 years ago. This is a story of heroics, strength, fortitude and endurance. In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Second Officer Tom Crean and their 26 man crew launched a voyage from England to become the first polar explorers to traverse Antarctica. And so started the journey known as the Endurance expedition.Endurance Brewing Company was founded with two clear goals in mind: to bring awareness of this incredibly heroic group of men and to provide beer enthusiasts with award-winning brews that help stir the adventurous nature of the spirit within. For well over 3 years, Endurance Brewing Company has been creating a branding strategy and beer recipe that we think would earn the respect of every man of the Endurance Crew.
Our flagship ale, Endurance Pale Ale, is dedicated to Second Officer Tom Crean, who was regarded by many historians “as close to indestructible as any man that’s ever lived”. This smooth and crisp golden pale ale is rich in hops with a hint of citrus. Look for other Endurance Brewing Company beers shortly, but in the meantime, pour a tall, refreshing glass of Endurance Pale Ale, raise it high in honour of Tom Crean and the Endurance crew and enjoy one of the finest beers around.
Ed: This started out as a short commentary on Pinker's article. Instead I spent the majority of my day today rephrasing what he wrote. So take heed - there's quite a bit of overlap.
By way of Foonyor: Steven Pinker has an excellent article in The New York Times Magazine entitled, "The Moral Instinct." Pinker explores a few aspects of morality and our conception of it - is it innate? Is it something we learn? Are some of us genetically predisposed to be positive moral agents? What can we learn from the amoralization and moralization of certain topics? Is our political and social discourse heavily biased by an automatic moral association?
Pinker makes several excellent points. His exploration of the moral instinct - that automatic revulsion most of us get when confronted with the possibility of performing what are commonly regarded as immoral acts (harming others, being deceitful, etc.) - is fascinating. Does it make sense that we are genetically programmed with some sort of moral code? There appears to be a lot of evidence in support of it. Functional MRI tests of the brain show that there is a conflict between certain regions of the brain in test subjects when they are presented with dilemmas in which their action would directly cause harm to an individual. The conflict arises between that region which coldly calculates the moral weight of a situation - strict utilitarianism would always say that it is morally correct to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people (or, as a corollary, inflict the least possible amount of harm) - and that region which is believed to be involved in emotions about other people. A third region actually appears to register this conflict, so that on some level we are aware of this emotional/rational struggle. ("Well, it makes sense to sacrifice one man to save five but can I really bring myself to kill him?")
There is also very strong empirical evidence for some sort of basic universal moral code, as people everywhere generally regard certain actions as morally wrong (murder, rape, stealing, etc.). These can be divided into five broad themes, or spheres of moral influence: harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity. These themes keep popping up across cultures and carry moral weight within our own intuitions. Pinker talks about how these moral spheres even make sense from an evolutionary standpoint as a deeply rooted genetic moral code.
Of course a problem arises when we are forced to "juggle the spheres." If there is a universal morality, how can it be so varied across cultural lines? Pinker submits that while the moral themes are universal, the weight given them varies widely from culture to culture. This ranking of the spheres' moral value can be so deeply ingrained as to suggest that even questioning the ranking within one's own culture represents a moral corrosion. This is one reason why everything from racism to political discourse to religious strife are such nearly intractable problems - literal moral revulsion occurs when certain possible moral conflicts arise. This automatic moral trigger renders reasonable debate impossible before it even begins.
Pinker goes on to discuss specifically how a genetic predisposition toward being a positive moral agent - i.e., a good person - can actually be an evolutionary boon. He says that a reputation for fairness can only be acquired under strict scrutiny by actually being fair, and that such people can enjoy the reciprocity that comes with that reputation. However, he also adds this, which I think is perhaps the nicest line in the essay:
At least some agents evolve to be genuinely high-minded and self-sacrificing — they are moral not because of what it brings them but because that’s the kind of people they are.Of course not everyone has evolved with a moral code (or one to which he adheres), and this presents yet another problem: if our moral experience of the world is biologically coded, then what of our distinction between right and wrong? Is this nothing more than how we see different colors? Is our concept of morality as a metaphysical ideal useless or impractical? This gives way to a dangerous and debilitating moral relativism - "Well it's bad for us, but since it's ok for you...it's ok." Moral judgement would no longer be imbued with any authority or power.
Via the latest over at ScottInvestigates.com - an interesting article on how exercise helps to maintain what little you might have going on in the ol' noggin.
