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.
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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.
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I am constantly impressed by the imagination of people who dream up new sporting contests. For example, here is one event from the 2017 Marblelympics, where teams of marbles compete with each other. In this exciting event, the marbles travel on tracks that go underwater.
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.
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I have a soft spot for clever visual illusions and this one involving perspective shifting tickled me.
(Via Jason Weisberger)
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.
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As I said, I was not that excited about the total solar eclipse that passed over sections of the US yesterday. Maximum totality occurred some distance south of where I live and was reached at 2:30pm Eastern Time. It turned out that I had to take my car in for some recall work and so I was in the waiting room from 1:00pm onwards. The TV set in the room (you cannot escape the pervasive presence of TV in any public area it seems) was tuned to CNN and I was astounded that they talked about nothing but the eclipse for the entire 75 minutes while I was waiting.
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As I have said before, I am not that excited about the solar eclipse that will occur over parts of the US on Monday, partly because this is a well-understood and highly predictable event. But I find the myths that used to surround this event before the science of it became known to be quite fascinating. Here are a few.
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There seems to be a lot of excitement about the solar eclipse that will pass over the US on Monday and many people are making plans to go to places where they can get the best view. You can see those locations here. The path of the total eclipse goes quite close to me, just south of where I live but I will not bother to make even that small effort.
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I have been invited to give a talk on the topic of genius on Friday, August 18th. The talk is part of a series of monthly events organized by a group known as the Cleveland chapter of Creative Mornings. It is a global program with chapters in cities all over the world and each month all chapters feature programs on a single theme and this month it is genius. You can learn more about the event here and on Facebook and on this month’s theme here.
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