Patrick Julius's Blog, page 6

Brilliantly written, but scientifically mediocre

JDN 2456395 EDT 11:25.

 

Jennifer Ackerman's Chance in the House of Fate is a joy to read, its finely-crafted prose effervescent with the childlike curiosity and wonder that characterizes the greatest visionaries and scientists. It will thoroughly refute the claims of anyone who thinks that science diminishes the sense of awe and wonder in our lives; Ackerman will fill you with a sense of wonder and mystery unlike any you could ever find except through science.

Passages like these will r...

I lost a family member today.

JDN 2456394 EDT 11:50.

 

My cat Dot, of 17 years, died today. We euthanized her by lethal injection, but she was dying anyway; I don't think she would have lasted much longer anyway, she would merely have suffered more.

I didn't choose Dot; she chose me. I was about 7 years old, and she was a kitten of a few months old. We came to an old farmhouse where a cat had given birth to a large litter that the family was unable to care for; most of the kittens had already been claimed, but two li...

Jezebel's approach to sexual harassment

I have mixed feelings about this article on Jezebel. Obviously sexual harassment is a problem, and we do need to talk about it... but is this the right way to talk about it? 

(By the way, as to what Obama said, here is the full quote: “You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” the p...

What if gravity is like centrifugal force?

JDN 2456392 EDT 11:55.

 

I was thinking today about centrifugal force, and how to decide whether it really qualifies as a real force, rather than an artifact of a bad reference frame. What does it mean to say that a force "really exists", and how could we tell?

Well, I came to the conclusion that it really isn't a real force, because there's no mechanism for it to happen, no virtual particles exchanged. Also, it's always directly proportional to your inertial mass, which is pretty darn f...

Reflections on TEDxUM 2013

Reflections on TEDxUM 2013

 

JDN 2456390 EDT 16:06.

 

Two days ago (JDN 2456388, Friday 5 Apr 2013) was TEDxUM 2013, the fourth annual installment of the University of Michigan's chapter of TED. In case you didn't know (where have you been?), TED is a global conference series, originally "Technology, Entertainment, and Design", but now an eclectic memetic beast dedicated to all things innovative. If you haven't watched any TED videos, you must do so; but be sure you have some time t...

If we found something paranormal, we wouldn't call it paranormal

JDN 2456387 EDT 16:50.

 Since I won $2500 of his money (The James Randi Educational Foundation scholarship), I felt I should probably read some of James Randi's books. I happened upon Flim-Flam!, which is older than I am, and yet... the nonsense it catalogues and refutes is pretty much the same stuff we're dealing with today. Why, just this last Tuesday I had someone try to convince me that quantum mechanics allows precognition, citing Daryl Bem's 2010 precognition experiments, which rea...

Mathematically elegant progressive taxation

 

Writing fiction often gives us opportunities to explore different ways the world might be. I devised a tax system for the Terlaroni that suits their social-democratic and mathematically-minded approach to the world... and discovered that it actually seems like a pretty good idea.

The current US tax system is progressive, but not very much. We still require people below the poverty level to pay taxes, capital gains rates are much lower than ordinary income rates, and there is basically...

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories is a very mixed bag, as I suppose is to be expected from an anthology of short stories by different authors. It's extremely long, and not very quick to read, which is why I took so long to get through it. Most of the stories aren't that interesting, but a few are excellent and they make it worth getting the book just to read them.

 

"The Raft of the Titanic" I found spectacularly boring; it doesn't go anywhere and takes many pages to get there.

 ...

Puritanical hedonism

JDN 2456375 EDT 22:14.

 

There is a segment of our culture that prides itself on pleasure without consequences; "party all night"; "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints"; "wrong in all the right ways"; "so delicious it's sinful", "YOLO". A lot of people who speak this way seem to think of themselves as very rebellious and counter-cultural; I don't think they are at all.

I actually think this kind of hedonism is deeply puritanical. It inverts the conclusions of purit...

I am fed up with the disability community.

JDN 2456366 EDT 11:34.

 

No, not people with disabilities. I feel great compassion and solidarity for people who suffer from disabilities, whose biological impairments would be painful enough without a society who misunderstands and abuses them. Indeed, I count myself among their number; migraine is one of the top 20 leading causes of disability in the world.

I'm talking about the disability community, the activists and radicals who tell us we should accept disability as part of glorious...