Clipmarks | Kore7's clips

How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic (FAQ)

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:49:11 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: More common questions and myths answered at the source, thoroughly cross-referenced and conveniently categorized and sub-categorized by type of argument:

Stages of Denial

Scientific Topics

Types of Argument

Levels of Sophistication

A nice reference that's updated with fresh comments. Many "skeptics" often are unaware (by choice or by circumstance) that their common questions have already been addressed by scientists long ago.

Clip Source: gristmill.grist.org

Stages of Denial

There's nothing happening

Inadequate evidence

Contradictory evidence

No consensus

We don't know why it's happening

Models don't work

Prediction is impossible

We can't be sure

Tags: climate, global, global warming, climate change, environment, skeptic, skeptics, climatology, atmosphere, earth, science, debate, argument, faq, questions, answers, c02, glaciers, temperature, myths

French Atomic Bomb Test Photos from 1968

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:28:58 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Never-before-seen 40-year-old pictures of French atomic bomb tests have surfaced on the internet and they are simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. The epitome of historical human achievement and wanton destruction combined in one split-second.

These are four scanned pictures of hardcopies I possess of the French nuclear test codenamed Canopus, which was fired on 24th August 1968 in the Fangataufa Atoll. The French army had those pictures taken on site.

Full-size links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Clip Source: flickr.com

This shot was taken in 1968 by the French army in the Fangataufa atoll. Codenamed Canopus, it yielded 2600 kt.

Although this picture, like many of the series, is a work of the French Army (as far as I know) this is an original scan from a hardcopy I posess, and processed to remove dust and scratches.

A strange view on such paradise-like landscapes.

Clip Source: flickr.com

Tags: bomb, atomic, nuclear, blast, mushroom, cloud, 1968, french, france, photos

Repetition Makes False Beliefs Permanent

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 03:24:18 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Politicians and other unscrupulous types have long exploited what psychological studies are now confirming: due to the neurophysiology of the learning process, simple repetitive association between two concepts is enough to make false propositions "feel" true and well-supported.

Worse, after enough exposure to such associations, subsequent denials can strengthen the perception of the falsehood instead of weakening it. (This is a major reason why the stigma of a false accusation can persist even after innocence is proven.)

Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach

Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.

The research also highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

Tags: politics, psychology, bias, manipulation, urban legends, beliefs, brain, cognitive science, myths, learning

The Mathematical Lives of Plants

Mon, 07 May 2007 00:43:06 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand.
...
Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?

For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Each yellow nub in the center of this daisy is actually its own miniature flower, complete with a full set of reproductive organs. The buds form interlocking clockwise and counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

The golden angle is the angle subtended by the smaller (red) arc when two arcs that make up a circle are in the golden ratio.
Wikipedia

This sunflower has 21 clockwise and 34 counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

Plants form new seeds or buds from the center. In this picture, the circle labeled 1 would be the most recent bud. The circle labeled 2 would have been formed just previously, and it forms the golden angle with bud 1

An image of the tip of a Norway spruce branch, viewed through an electron microscope, shows small buds that are primordial. In this case, they will eventually turn into needles. The primordia form at the tip and then move outward and downward.
R. Rutishauser

This cactus, a Mammilaria moellerana, has golden-angle spirals.
Eleanor Farrington

Tags: math, plants, biology, symmetry, sprial, science, nature, geometry, fibonacci, patterns

How to Write Aphorisms

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:43:09 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Delacroix, Eugene (France, 1798-1863)

To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet.

According to James Geary, editor of the compendium Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, a truely memorable, quotable aphorism satisfies five laws:

It must be brief. It must be definitive. It must be personal — that's the difference between an aphorism and a proverb. It must be philosophical — that's the difference between an aphorism and a platitude, which is not philosophical....

And the fifth law is it must have a twist. And that can be either a linguistic twist or a psychological twist or even a twist in logic that somehow flips the reader into a totally unexpected place.

Now you know, so get to work!

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Hubbard, Frank McKinney (United States, 1868-1930)

A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.

Roosevelt, Eleanor (United States, 1884-1962)

A woman is like a teabag — only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.

Tutu, Desmond (South Africa, 1931- )

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Bunsch, Karol (Poland, 1898-1987)

Honest conceit is better than false modesty.

Morandotti, Alessandro (Italy, 1909-1979)

The kiss is an ingenious invention that prevents lovers from uttering too many inanities.

You recognize a true friend by how he lies to you.

Chekhov, Anton (Russia, 1860-1904)

Any idiot can face a crisis. It is this day-to-day living that wears you out.

Sato, Issai (Japan, 1772-1859)

There are always people who make big declarations. These are always people of little consequence.

Tags: aphorisms, writing, history, quotes, pithy, how-to, be famous!

Ancient Blueprints of Calculus Uncovered in Archimedes Text

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:20:11 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Details have been released from the nine-year-long reconstruction project to recover the Greek mathematician's writings from this one-of-a-kind find and the results are fascinating.

Buried beneath the surface of this gilded palimpsest, researchers discovered more extensive demonstrations of concepts such as infinite series, approximations, limits, and integral calculus than had been known to exist in ancient times.

Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed "a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics."

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.

The top layer of writing in this 700-year-old book describes Christian prayers. But underneath, almost obliterated, are the only surviving copies of many of the works of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.

The picture on the left is an ordinary photograph, with the Archimedes text barely visible. The picture on the right is a multi-spectral image, and the Archimedes text and diagrams are mostly legible.

Sometime after Johan Heiberg examined the book in 1906, someone painted gold-leaf images over four of the pages (left). Multispectral imaging couldn't peer beneath the reflective metal paint, but x-ray fluorescence imaging revealed the underlying text (right).

Archimedes computed the area of the curved figure (left) by enclosing it in a bigger one with straight edges (right). He then examined random slices to compute the volume—using the concept of actual infinity.

Tags: math, science, archimedes, calculus, infinity, greek, ancient, history, x-ray, book

Ten Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:41:24 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world.

Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Ten ways to make sure that peace stays dead

By Bradley Burston

1. There is only one side to any story. My side.

2. The people on the other side, children included, are undeserving of sympathy.

3. Even the maimed and the dead on the other side are undeserving of sympathy.

4. The term massacre may only be used to describe casualties on my side.

5. The automatic fire, bombing, shelling or other lethal action taken by my side are acts of self-defense. If there are fatalities as a result of fire by my side, whether intentional or incidental, they deserved to die.

6. The concept of drawing comparisons of moral equivalency or mutual responsibility for violence is, in all cases, obscene, disgraceful, artificial, mendacious.

All political, military, social and religious modalities can be reduced to pure victims and pure villains, which is to say, Us and Them, which is to say, Us and animals/murderers/mass-murderers/racist genocidalists/Nazis/Hitler.

Option 7A: The goal of the left, the center, this newspaper, its writers, even some of its readers, is the destruction of the State of Israel.

Option 7B: The destruction of Israel is a worthwhile goal.

8. If I am a pro-Israel extremist, responding to a pro-Israel moderate, I should attack and dismiss the writer as a whiner, a crybaby, a defeatist, a moron, a wimp, an imbecile, a self-hater, an extreme leftist, naïve, brainwashed, a pipe-dreamer, duped by the pro-Arab bias of the mass media, a traitor.

9. If I am a pro-Palestinian extremist, responding to a pro-Palestinian moderate, I should immediately dismiss the writer as a sell-out, a fool, misguided, an Uncle Tom, unaware of the real facts, duped by a the pro-Israel bias of the mass media, a traitor.

10. The depth of my conviction, that is, the degree of my extremism, is directly proportional to the distance from my home to the Holy Land. The farther away, the more foaming-at-the-mouth my fanaticism.

Tags: israel, palestine, palestinians, israelis, middle east, war, terrorism, peace, list, suffering, victimization, vengeance, revenge, compromise, enemy, sympathy, fanatacism, extremism, dead, politics

Why The Loudest are Often the Most Wrong

Sun, 06 May 2007 03:37:49 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: This classic paper by Kruger and Dunning, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, examines the psychological reasons for the unfortunately common correlation between ignorance and confidence.

We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine. As Miller (1993) perceptively observed in the quote that opens this article, and as Charles Darwin (1871) sagely noted over a century ago, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

(PDF here.)

Clip Source: gagne.homedns.org

Abstract
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Tags: ignorance, crank, cranks, troll, trolls, skill, psychology, learning, confidence, expert, study, science

Evolution for Creationists, Busting the Evolution Myths

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:07:58 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: www.abarnett.demon.co.uk

Evolution - what YOU need to know

Evolution is a fact. Shocking and controversial this might sound, but bear with me. I'm not talking about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. I'm talking about the changes in the gene pools of all species that occur every single day due to births and deaths. If you accept that most members of a species do not all have the exact same DNA (which is easily demonstrated), and you accept that sexual reproduction combines the DNA of two parents to form a slightly different combination of genes, and you accept that not all creatures survive long enough to be able to reproduce, then....

Tags: evolution, facts, science, creationism, god, biology, education

Atheists Need to Chill

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 04:05:26 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Michael Shermer makes a point that needs to be made. Atheists need to remember what they stand for, not merely what they are against. Ridicule and contempt have no place in science, and haters should not tarnish its reputation by association.

In the words of the greatest consciousness raiser of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech: "In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline."

If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Anti-something movements by themselves will fail.

Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe.

Positive assertions are necessary.

Champion science and reason, as Charles Darwin suggested: “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public

Rational is as rational does.

It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind.

The golden rule is symmetrical.

If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.

Promote freedom of belief and disbelief.

As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

Tags: atheists, atheism, secular, humanism, science, religion, civility, extremism, freedom, belief

How to Use First Names

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 15:10:09 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

In the world of influence, names are money. Schoolteachers know it. Bartenders know it. Salesmen know it. Very polite children know it. These people have figured it out. A name well used makes any person feel seen. When someone uses my name, I know that he has at least considered me in some fashion, that my presence has registered. It conveys a substratum of intimacy, a level of connection, a sense that life does not have to be lived in a torpid fog of anonymous comings and goings.

Clip Source: www.esquire.com

How to Use a Name

1) Use a person's name the same way you would a good piece of punctuation--to accelerate expression, to pause in the middle of a thought, to reconnect to the subject of the conversation. Its position in the sentence matters.

2) A name should be used as an invitation, a means of pulling someone into the conversation. Only a mother is allowed to use a name as a rebuke.

3) Don't put a person's name at the end of the sentence by rote. That's just an old salesman's trick, and it sounds like as much.

4) Greet people by their names whenever you can. It's polite, for one thing. But this part of the routine is like a muscle; it gets stronger every time you do it. Soon you will remember more names and be able to use them better.

5) When you start a sentence with someone's name, mean what you say. Make that name part of a larger compact between you.

6) Forgive people when they forget your name, but use their name when you do.

Tags: name, greeting, polite, social, intimacy, person, people, life, advice, howto, list

25 Greatest Science Books of All Time

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:26:37 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The Origin of Species (1859)

Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species, in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Clip Source: discover.com

1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie]

3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687)

4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632)

5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)

6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.)

7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543)

8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916)

Clip Source: discover.com
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947)

11. The Double Helix by James D. Watson (1968)
12. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger (1944)
13. The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan (1973)

14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson (1971)
15. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)

18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1985)
Clip Source: discover.com
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by* Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands (1963)

21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey et al. (1948)
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)

23. Under a Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (1943)
24. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665)

25. Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)
Honorable Mentions

Tags: science, book, books, reading, best of, list, history, literature, discover, darwin, newton, galileo

Why America Will Survive George W. Bush

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:53:01 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Otto von Bismarck saw how American blunders led to American power and allegedly said that God has a special providence for drunks, fools, and the United States of America.

Walter Russell Mead (of the Council on Foreign Relations) puts Bush's 8-year stint in the White House into proper perspective.

America's foreign policy has been short-sighted and often self-defeating from the get-go, alternately collaborative, passive, and interventionist. And, yet, miraculously, we always come out ahead.

With the unstoppable rise of a global capitalist economy, Mead makes the case that America, for all its past and current faults, will continue to be the inevitable leader of this new international buoyancy. Not even our latest mistakes (unprecedented though they may be) can derail such a powerful incentive that is the modern American world trade system.

Which means, more than ever, we're literally all in this together.

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

Failing Upward

Nothing in the field of international affairs is as scandalous and as perplexing as the fact of American power. From Revolutionary times to the present, virtually all observers foreign and domestic have agreed that Americans don't do foreign policy well.

Moralistic, uninformed, unsubtle, alternately isolationist and hyperactive, hamstrung by a clumsy constitutional process and a public that oscillates between fatuous idealism and ignorant bellicosity, U.S. foreign policy has been shocking the world for more than 200 years.

And, worse still, we win. For two centuries, the United States has astounded critics with its bad foreign policy--and, for two centuries, the United States has steadily risen to an unprecedented level of power and influence in the international system.

The spectacle is often surreal. The United States seems to wander nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another

like a version of the chronically oblivious cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

Tags: america, usa, bush, foreign policy, world, history, war, empire, trade, economy

Giant Turkey Chases Boston Woman, Pecks Bottom Repeatedly

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:24:30 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

When dispatched to the scene of a turkey, [Brookline police animal control officer Pierre] Verrier offers advice instead.

He tells people not to feed them, not to be intimidated by them, and to keep their distance. Still, some people cannot help themselves. They need to be near the turkeys.

Distance-shmistance, we want to be near the turkeys. I, for one, am against the city of Boston trying to regulate mutually consensual human-turkey behavior. A light ass-pecking never hurt anyone, am I right?

Even though this incident happened right near my apartment, I have not been lucky enough to experience any super-sized turkeys on my errands, sadly. Look at the size of that sucker...he's gotta be like 12 feet tall!

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Turkeys take to cities, towns

BROOKLINE - On a recent afternoon, Kettly Jean-Felix parked her car on Beacon Street in Brookline, fed the parking meter, wheeled around to go to the optician and came face to face with a wild turkey.

The turkey eyed Jean-Felix. Jean-Felix eyed the turkey. It gobbled. She gasped. Then the turkey proceeded to follow the Dorchester woman over the Green Line train tracks, across the street, through traffic, and all the way down the block, pecking at her backside as she went.

"This is so scary," Jean-Felix said, finally taking refuge inside Cambridge Eye Doctors in Brookline's bustling Washington Square. "I cannot explain it."

Tags: turkey, bottom, pecking, boston, thanksgiving, gobble, giant.turkey.uprising

Is the Search for Aliens a Good Idea?

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 03:21:14 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

One thing is clear from our searches for ET - there is nobody transmitting strong interstellar beacons in our local vicinity. If "they" are out there, they are keeping quiet, prompting the question that they might know something we don't.

Listening for transmissions from space is rational; intentionally announcing our presence to unknown civilizations borders on irresponsible. On Earth, radio technology and nuclear weapons were invented within only 50 years of each other. Any civilization with the capability to receive and understand our beacons will likely have figured out worse.

Humans are bad enough at co-existing as it is without near constant war. Could you imagine being forced to enter foreign policy negotiations with another species like our own? It would be calamitous.

Clip Source: comment.independent.co.uk

Meet the neighbours: Is the search for aliens such a good idea?

The fact is, and this should have been obvious to all, that we do not know what any extraterrestrials might be like - and hoping that they might be friendly, evolved enough to be wise and beyond violence, is an assumption upon which we could be betting our entire existence.

The late Carl Sagan, the American astronomer who died a decade ago, also worried about so-called "First Contact". He recommended that we, the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos, should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes. He said there is no chance that two galactic civilisations will interact at the same level. In any confrontation, one will always dominate the other.

it's likely that any creature we contact will also have had to claw its way up its own evolutionary ladder and may possibly be every bit as nasty as we are - or worse.

Tags: alien, aliens, planet, radio, space, war, civilization, science, politics, humans