ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 506
April 22, 2016
Why Have So Many People Died In 2016?
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Prince passed away yesterday, April 21. Northfoto/Shutterstock
In case you haven’t noticed, 2016 has already been a terrible year for celebrity deaths. We are just four months in and we’ve had to say our final goodbyes to actor Alan Rickman, producer David Gest, autobiographer Howard Marks, architect Zaha Hadid, wrestler Chyna, writer Harper Lee, sitcom actress Doris Roberts, starman David Bowie, and now indefinable musical pioneer Prince, to name but a few.
Chernobyl: New Tomb Will Make Site Safe For 100 Years
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Tim Porter/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, there’s still a significant threat of radiation from the crumbling remains of Reactor 4. But an innovative, €1.5 billion super-structure is being built to prevent further releases, giving an elegant engineering solution to one of the ugliest disasters known to man.
Before Fusion: A Human History Of Fire
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Hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. NASA/SDO (AIA)
We humans are fire creatures. Tending fire is a species trait, a capacity we alone possess – and one we are not likely to tolerate willingly in any other species. But then we live on Earth, the only true fire planet, the only one we know of that burns living landscapes. Fire is where, uniquely, our special capabilities and Earth’s bioenergy flows converge. That has made us the keystone species for fire on Earth.
A Researcher Just Accidentally Developed A Battery That Could Last A Lifetime
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A nanowire compared to a human hair. Thai et al./UC Irvine via YouTube
Poor battery life is the number one complaint when it comes to smartphones and laptops. As a wireless society, having to tether ourselves down to power up our gadgets seems more and more a nuisance. And while researchers are looking into wireless charging, if batteries were better we would have to worry less.
It’s Earth Day: Get Busy!
It’s that time of year again. The time when the Earth starts to wake up. Flowers are popping, bees are buzzing, and everyone (humans and animals alike) is emerging from their homes, rubbing their eyes and thinking…yikes, where have I been all year?!
Yep, it’s spring and with it, the incredibly fun and well-timed Earth Day, a day to celebrate our lovely little planet. This year, the head honcho here at NCSE headquarters, Ann Reid, has given us the opportunity to take Earth Day as a service day. Given the chance I immediately popped out of my chair—how would I spend it? Cleaning trash from the Bay? Petitioning for a carbon tax? Lounging by the pool? All valiant ideas, but following the NCSE mantra of working locally, I decided to do my service by giving back directly to my little neighborhood—in fact, a place right in my backyard, by organizing a work day at my community garden.
Now, I know many of you see “community garden,” and you think, snoozy little tomato factory with cat ladies and pinwheels abounding. And well, it’s true I do own a cat (and a pinwheel, as it turns out), but this garden is particularly special because of what it represents to me and my community: partnership and collective action to enact change.
Fifteen years ago this land was abandoned by its owner, overtaken not just by weeds, but trash, and even the occasional drifter. An eyesore on a major throughway that you’d learn to ignore. Dismayed by the state of the property, several members of the community took action, jumping the fences and starting to dig. First they worked the hardened earth, then they grew plants to feed themselves, and then they built a vibrant and lively community to feed others. When I moved to the neighborhood, I often visited—on a busy road it was remarkable how the spot had acquired the quiet appeal of a secret garden. Sitting in the back with the chickens in the shade of sweet plum trees you’d never guess you were feet from a highway or the bustle of a city.
I soon found a corner that had yet to be cultivated and started to dig in—but I have to say not only was the earth hard and unnourished, it was full of trash. Each shovelful of dirt revealed a shattered bottle or discarded candy wrapper from decades before. I’m certain when people tossed this trash, they never considered that so trivial an act, compounded by similar carelessness of others, would eventually result in an area of urban blight. That’s not so different from what led to climate change—individual actions had unintended consequences, eventually creating serious problems for subsequent generations. But this garden also fills me with hope. Each time we gardeners pull out an old sock or toss on more compost, we are working to remedy the problems of the past. We are repairing the damage that was once done to the land. The challenge has inspired a collection of gardeners to work together to make a better future for our community. What seemed overwhelming, and too big for any one person to tackle, has yielded to the patient, combined efforts of many.
That is really the message of Earth Day—the power of individuals working together to remedy the past, and preserve the future. How are you spending your Earth Day? Will you be picking up trash along a river? Refurbishing the trails at a regional park? Share ideas in the comments below! Need more ideas? Just Google “Earth Day service opportunities [your location here]” and you’ll find lots of places where your help will be welcome. For example, here’s the list of opportunities near NCSE’s headquarters in Oakland.
Photographs courtesy of We Bee Gardeners.
Fossil Friday
From the Jurassic it came! But what is it? If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or a 300 kV FEI Titan Themis scanning/transmission electron microscope and a FEI Quanta 3D FIB/SEM dual-beam focused ion beam instrument—my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and I think I may need the bifocals—and mail them to NCSE, 1904 Franklin Street, Suite 600, Oakland CA 94612. Or just leave a comment below.
Lower Your Voice Pitch To Persuade
YouTube is full of videos that promise more power and influence. All you've got to do is: <>
But it turns out, you may already deepen your voice—without realizing it. Just like you already use nonverbal cues, like crossing your arms behind your head. "So we think just like those kinds of nonverbal postures, changes in voices probably happen without us thinking, without our conscious awareness."
Joey Chang, a social psychologist at the University of Illinois. She and her team suspected people who do deepen their voices while speaking might hold more sway in an argument. They tested the theory by recording 191 university students as they debated, in small groups, about which equipment would be most essential after a disaster on the Moon. Oxygen tanks? Heating units? It's an old psychology game.
They found that group members who lowered the pitch of their voices during the game—both men and women—were more likely to rally the group around their ideal supply list. They were also rated as more influential by team members and outside observers. "And this approach ends up being effective in that, if you lower your voice, chances are you'll probably be more effective at becoming leaders and influencing others, because it changes how others see you." The results are in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. [Joey Cheng et al, Listen, follow me: Dynamic vocal signals of dominance predict emergent social rank in humans]
The key is, initial voice pitch didn't matter. It was whether the voice got deeper during the exchange with their group. Meaning people of all voice pitches may possess the power to persuade.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Zombies Are Taking Over The World – And We All Want To Be A Part Of It
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Secret Cinema
As a video game player, I am used to running from hordes of zombies, navigating treacherous post-apocalyptic wastelands, and fleeing from one disorientating location to the next. But nothing could prepare me for the experience of Secret Cinema’s latest event, based on Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, the film frequently credited with transforming the zombie from a moaning shuffling figure into a screaming fast-moving crazy.
April 21, 2016
Disrupting the Classroom, or How Self-Styled “Education Reformers” Always Get It Wrong, Part 3
In Parts 1 and 2, we examined AltSchool’s ideas about how to “disrupt” education using data and technology. But the problems with education are not only due to a lack of technology, and they are certainly not due to teachers, teacher tenure, teachers’ unions, flawed lesson plans, or grading rubrics. The real problem is poverty.
According to UNICEF, one in three children in America grows up in poverty. That is probably a significant underestimate, given that the way the US calculates the poverty line bears little relationship to the actual cost of living. By the time these children take their seats in (usually overcrowded) science classrooms, where they are expected to distinguish mitosis from meiosis and to apply Newton’s laws of motion, they have good reason to be suspicious of adult figures. The lessons of the science classroom must seem completely divorced from the hard reality these students face.
Assigning homework makes optimistic assumptions about a child’s home environment. Access to a quiet space to work, a family supportive of schoolwork, and even tutoring support on tough topics are basic things that many students (particularly in high poverty areas) don’t have access to. This is the reality for too many children in this country.
Then into the impoverished lives of students march self-styled “education reformers,” equipped with naive ideas about how to “disrupt” schools, but politely avoiding the real issues students face. The magical thinking of such “reformers”—Technology will make it different! We’re going to shift the paradigm! Lazy teachers will work harder if we just remove the stability of tenure and threaten their jobs!—crashes against the reality of student poverty. Any “reform” which does not first address the literal hunger in children’s bellies cannot work. Any “disruptive” idea that does not first acknowledge that children cannot learn when they are afraid, or when they don’t know where they are going to sleep that night, is simply doomed to failure.
AltSchool is typical of many such would-be “reforms” in that it focuses on “skills that would be useful in the workplace of the future.” But this is a myopic vision for education that doesn’t bode well for the young children attending AltSchool. Ask yourself this: which facts you learned in third grade apply directly to how you make your money today?
Worse still, the focus on education as a direct path to specific employment has the effect of transforming education into a commodity. The commodification of education encourages a lost generation of students to think of themselves as consumers and of their teachers are mere cashiers exchanging data for tuition. That’s not what education should be.
The commodification of education is particularly toxic for science education, which already struggles with the perception that science is merely a list of facts to memorize. In this model, students are given information or lab procedures to memorize, without ever being asked to consider the why rather than the what. This is the resigned surrender of Khan Academy videos, where even the most nuanced topics are reduced into 10-minute nuggets for easy memorization, but devoid of critical thinking, deep questioning, or challenging interaction with a mentor. In such a commodified education, students might learn the difference between mitosis and meiosis but they won’t learn the more important thing: the process of science.
If we really want to reform education, and if we really want science education to teach how science operates, the steps would be to reject all future “reform” fads, to let teachers at last do the job they were trained to do, and to have the courage to address the real reason behind so much student failure: poverty. Maybe the next fad to come out will address these issues, and finally disrupt the disruptors, allowing teachers to teach.
Science Moves and Shakes Time’s Top 100 List
This year 14 scientists, engineers and technology developers earned spots on Time magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People. The categories include pioneers, leaders, icons, titans and artists, and most of this year’s names were in the pioneer category. Scientific American looks back on its coverage of these groundbreaking individuals.
Kip Thorne (Gravitational waves, black holes, Interstellar)
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO detected gravitational waves and confirmed a century-old prediction by Albert Einstein this year, 32 years after its founding. Astrophysicist Kip Thorne was the leading founder of LIGO and thus played a vital role in this major physics breakthrough. Thorne also consulted on the sci-fi hit film Interstellar, working closely with director Christopher Nolan to help craft a science-driven story.
Kathy Niakan (CRISPR, genomics)
Kathy Niakan made headlines when she received U.K. authorities’ permission to use CRISPR, a genomic editing system, on human embryos. Niakan is using CRISPR to study the effects of genes on human development in order to better understand embryonic health, infertility and pregnancy. The edited embryos will never be implanted in a womb, but in order to work with them, Niakan had to navigate a delicate and controversial field.
Marc Edwards & Mona Hanna-Attisha (Flint water crisis)
Although residents knew there was something wrong with their water supply in Flint, Michigan, it took two scientific whistleblowers to get the lead poisoning crisis taken seriously. Virginia Tech civil engineering professor Marc Edwards, an expert on water corrosion, conducted a study that uncovered high levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water, while pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha tested the children of Flint, proving they had significant lead poisoning.
Alan Sterne (New Horizons)
Engineer and planetary scientist Alan Stern first tried to get a space probe to Pluto more than three decades ago. When New Horizons reached Pluto in 2015, sending back wave after wave of high-resolution images and data, Stern’s passion and dedication as principal investigator had helped make it happen. New Horizons’ findings have fundamentally changed how we think about the dwarf planet, and will go on to explore the Kuiper Belt to further our understanding of the solar system.
Lee Berger (Homo naledi)
Homo naledi, a newly identified species of protohuman, has been making headlines since its discovery by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, whose team recovered more than 1,500 fossil specimens representing at least 15 individuals from a cave in South Africa. The remains were found in a deep chamber, possibly indicating that Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its dead—a trait thought to be unique to Homo sapiens. The find is controversial, but decidedly fascinating.
Hope Jahren (women in science)
It has been a tumultuous year for women in science, with sexual harassment scandals erupting at multiple institutions. Hope Jahren, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who researches fossilized plant life, refuses to keep quiet about the widespread issue of harassment and discrimination in science. By calling out science’s sexism problems, Jahren hopes to address the toxic culture that’s causing women to leave the field.
Dan Carder (VW emissions scandal)
The Volkswagen emissions scandal revealed that although VW vehicles passed Environmental Protection Agency regulations, they were actually emitting 35 times the maximum permitted levels of nitrogen oxides. The cars used software that could cheat on emissions tests by artificially lowering emissions during testing conditions. Dan Carder, an engineer at West Virginia University, tested the vehicles at the request of the International Council on Clean Transportation and brought the corporation’s fraud to light.
Sunita Narain (air pollution in India)
Sunita Narain’s organization, the Centre for Science and Environment, has been fighting air pollution in India for just shy of two decades. Narain, an environmentalist and activist, has pressured the Indian government to embrace pollution-alleviating recommendations and has advocated for India’s forest-dwellers and indigenous peoples who are often falsely blamed for environmental problems.
Palmer Luckey (virtual reality)
Virtual reality has been heralded as the next step in entertainment for decades. And now Palmer Luckey, the 23-year-old founder of Oculus VR and the inventor of the Oculus Rift, is making that next step happen. Whether used for video games or as emotive tie-ins to films such as The Martian, or for recording real-world tragedies including the Syrian refugee crisis, the virtual reality technology pioneered by Luckey is being put to use all over.
Priscilla Chan & Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
The husband-and-wife team behind Facebook is putting its wealth to use in the form of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. They announced that they are committing 99 percent of their wealth to tackling social inequality via measures aimed at improving education, funding disease research and empowering communities.
Sindar Pichai (Google)
The new CEO of Google, engineer Sindar Pichai, has been involved in developing many of the company’s most-used products including Google Drive, Maps, Chrome and Gmail. He also oversees Android.
Yuri Milner.
TechCrunch/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Yuri Milner (Breakthrough Starshot)
Russian entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner does not shy away from big ideas. Along with theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Milner heads Breakthrough Starshot—a $100 million plan to use lasers to propel minuscule spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. Milner is no stranger to funding space-related projects: He also committed at least $100 million to support SETI in the form of Breakthrough Listen, hunting for extraterrestrial life. His Breakthrough Prize has supported neutrino experiments and abstract mathematics.
Tim Cook (Apple)
When Steve Jobs died, Apple’s next CEO had an intimidating role to fill. Tim Cook stepped up and has garnered much admiration for his leadership of the company. He has recently been in the news for refusing comply with the FBI’s request to help unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone out of concern for the digital security of millions of Apple customers.
Youyou Tu .
Credit: Bengt Nyman/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Youyou Tu (Nobel Prize for discovery of artemisinin)
When studying traditional Chinese medicines, pharmaceutical chemist Youyou Tu discovered a new drug for treating malaria. She extracted artemisinin by soaking—not boiling—sweet wormwood, following an ancient recipe. Artemisinin is now a main line of defense against malaria and earned Tu a Nobel Prize, making her the first woman in China to win one.
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