Why the Apollo images were so ghostly

The TV images we saw of the Apollo astronauts on the moon had a ghostly, grainy look. That poor quality lent support to the beliefs of some people that the moon landings were faked though the reasoning escapes me. If the video was filmed on a secret Hollywood soundstage by Stanley Kubrick, as some allege, then surely NASA could have shelled out a few extra bucks to make a better quality product? (I never quite understood why people would believe something so bizarre. Why would NASA and the top people in the US government cook up such a story?)
[Read more…]

How psychics and mediums ply their trade

I recently had two separate interesting discussions with some other expatriate Sri Lankan friends who did not know each other. Each independently recounted their experiences with what is called a ‘light reader’ in Sri Lanka or a psychic or a medium in the US. They both talked about the same person named Hendo Hamy who lived in a village. People would go to him with various problems and he would be able to deduce why they had come to see him, what the problem was, and the resolution of the problem. Both were highly impressed by his abilities.
[Read more…]

Spectacular encounter between sperm whales and orcas

The ocean off the southern coast of Sri Lanka sees regular visits of large pods of sperm whales and orcas (killer whales) sometimes numbering as many as 350. This attracts both tourists and marine biologists who study these huge animals. Sperm whales eat a diet that consists mostly of squid while the orcas are meat eaters that will kill and eat sperm whales if they can.
[Read more…]

The napkin ring ‘paradox’

Marcus Ranum sent along this amusing video that describes the napkin ring paradox. Basically it says that if you take any two solid spheres, however much they differ in size, and if you then remove a cylinder of material from each sphere, with the cylinder passing symmetrically through the center of the sphere such that the heights of the remaining solids (which look like napkin rings) are the same, then the volume of the two rings are identical.
[Read more…]

Avoiding politics and religion in polite society

We are all aware of the advice that in gatherings of family and friends, two topics that should be avoided are politics and religion. I was under the impression that this was a fairly recent development but in reading the book The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin (1996), I learned that it dates at least as far back as the 17th century and that such prohibitions were even included in the constitutions of scientific societies.
[Read more…]

The algebra conundrum: Why is it seen as so difficult?

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has commented on one of the periodic issues that occurs in mathematics education and that is what mathematics should form part of the general education of everyone. This time the discussion is over whether algebra should be a requirement for a basic general education. Those who argue for its removal say that it is not a skill that most people need in everyday life and that in addition, students seem to find it very hard and fail in large numbers.
[Read more…]

How ExxonMobil Corporation misled the public about climate science

ExxonMobil is under threat of litigation by the attorneys general of several states that they “violated, variously, racketeering, consumer protection, or investor protection statutes through their communications regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW)”, as stated by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their paper Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014) that appeared in the August 23, 2017 issue of Environmental Research Letters (vol. 12 (2017) 084019). Supran and Oreskes show that the internal ExxonMobil documents and research supported and done by ExxonMobil largely supported the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change while their public stance was largely at odds with it.
[Read more…]

There’s no such thing as ‘clean coal’

As concerns about the adverse effects of burning fossil fuels on our climate became more widespread, the coal industry launched a marketing campaign to try and resurrect the image of coal, the burning of which is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases. So the friendly sounding term ‘clean coal’ was brought in. But the more accurate term is ‘clean coal technology’ because the adjective ‘clean’ really modifies ‘coal technology’ and not just ‘coal. What is being talked about are ways to minimize the release of the greenhouse gases.
[Read more…]