Environmental racism

On the latest episode of Last Week Tonight John Oliver discusses how historic racial discrimination practices have resulted in poor and minority communities ending up living in highly polluted areas, where the life expectancy can be ten years below nearby communities that are not similarly polluted. He describes one community where the lead levels are hundreds of times above acceptable limit, so that signs are posted on yards telling children not to play on the grass or in the dirt! That is like asking children not to breathe the air.
[Read more…]

The problems with self-driving cars

Self-driving cars, like the AI technology they are based on, seem always to be just tantalizingly beyond our reach at any given time. I have been hoping that self-driving cars become a reality because I am getting on in years and there is bound to come a time when it will not be safe for me to operate a vehicle, even though I have been accident and ticket-free my entire driving career, except for one fender-bender and one minor infraction, both of which took place over three decades ago when I was young, wild, and foolish. (No, not really. Both were rather boring events.)

The loss of driving privileges can result in a deep drop in a person’s independence, especially in the US which has pretty bad public transportation services. Having a self-driving car would provide older people or those with any issue that prevents them from driving, from being housebound. Of course, these cars are initially likely to be expensive but over time the prices should come down. The catch is that even though these cars have improved tremendously, they still seem to be not ready for prime time.
[Read more…]

Webb telescope instrument alignment completed

The last major step in the development of the Webb space telescope, checking the alignment of all the instruments, has been successfully completed and all the instruments seem to be at the correct operating temperature. NASA has released images taken of the Large Magellanic Cloud to show the clarity obtained.

The image shows snapshots from each of Webb’s three imaging instruments, plus its spectrograph and guidance sensor. The images show a field of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a galaxy near the Milky Way about 158,000 light-years away. If it orbits our galaxy, it would be, by far, the largest satellite galaxy. But there’s a chance it’s just passing through or slowly merging with our galaxy.
…

Now that the imaging instruments are properly aligned, NASA and its partners will begin commissioning several science instruments. These are components within the imaging instruments that can do things like filter certain kinds of light, adjust the cameras to specific customizations, or apply a particular lens. That could take a few months, as could a few calibrations to confirm that the telescope is temperature-stable when it moves between targets. During that time, mission control will also monitor mirror alignment to make sure it stays in place.

NASA has also released a video of the event.

In a few months we should start receiving images of parts of the universe we have never seen before.

The idiocy reaches new heights

Samantha Bee talks about the latest obsession of right wingers and Republicans, that men are becoming less manly and more effeminate and that something needs to be done quickly to reverse the trend or the human race will die out. Or something like that. And one suggestion that they are advocating is a real doozy. She is all in favor of them going ahead and doing it.

I think that it would be far more productive for these men to stop worrying about their sperm counts and whether their genitals are getting enough red light and instead investigate why they are so insecure about their masculinity.

The doorway effect

(Pickles)

This cartoon that appeared this past week illustrates a phenomenon that we have likely all experienced at some point and that is called the ‘doorway effect’. I wrote about it five years ago, where I pointed to research suggesting that it is due to our short term memories being at least partially cleared when we go from one environment to another, such as by walking through a door.

The holdouts against the Sackler deal

The odious Sackler family that heavily promoted the use of their opioid drugs that has resulted in widespread addiction that led to many deaths and much suffering, have been pushing to have the courts sign off on a deal with state governments where their company Purdue Pharma, which is in bankruptcy, will supposedly pay fines that will go towards drug treatment and rehabilitation. The most noxious part of the deal is that the Sacklers’ ill-gotten personal fortunes will be largely untouched, they will not have to admit guilt, and they will gain immunity from future lawsuits by individuals. In other words, they will escape largely unscathed.

At the end of this month, [a New York] court – the second circuit appeals court in New York – will hear arguments over individual liability releases approved by a bankruptcy court charged with distributing Purdue Pharma’s assets. Those releases, another court found in December, weren’t authorized under the law and the plan was reversed.

But under the terms of the now-vacated deal, the Sacker family would contribute $6bn over 18 years to an opioid settlement trust. It’s a situation that angers Isaacs, and thousands of others, who feel that a measure of corporate responsibility may have been assigned, but Purdue’s decision-maker will never be held to account.

[Read more…]

Francis Collins, religious scientist

The geneticist has had a distinguished career and for the last dozen years has served as director of the National Institutes of Health, a massive federal agency that does basic research as well as fund the research of scientists in the US. The fact that he has served during three different administrations both Republican and Democrat shows that he has managed to avoid much of the partisan attacks that now routinely target prominent scientists, such as tthose on Anthony Fauci, who is head of one of the agencies that are under the NIH umbrella. Collins has been steadfast in his support of Fauci.

Collins is also an evangelical Christian, a fact that caused many people in the non-religious community to oppose his nomination by George W. Bush to be head of the NIH. But he has won over the skeptics by the way he has handled his tenure, with no evidence that he was driven by his religious beliefs in making scientific decisions.

He also wrote a best-selling book The Language of God where he attempted to reconcile belief in a god with science. I dissected that book in a 11-part (!) series of blogs back in 2009 where I pointed out the many flaws in his argument. But I have always respected Collins as a scientist and I especially admired his steadfast commitment to make freely available to everyone the data that were generated during the sequencing of the human genome, where he was named leader of the federal effort.
[Read more…]

Is it ‘gif’ or ‘jif’?

It is impossible to mandate language usage and saying that there is a ‘correct’ way to say or pronounce something is to invite endless challenges. This is true even if the word is a neologism of recent origin and the creator of the word tells you what they intended.

This is the case with the word written as ‘gif’, the acronym for Graphic Interchange Format. One hears both ‘jif’ and ‘gif’ (with a hard g) and the Oxford English Dictionary accepts both. Stephen Wilhite disagreed. He should know. He was the creator in the 1980s of this software that enabled the sharing of quality graphics even in the age of dial-up modems, that he shortened to the familiar acronym.

He died last month at the age of 74 and this article points to his acceptance speech when in 2013 he was honored with a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award where he announced his view in dramatic fashion.

Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate by Mano Singham

Continuing my policy of putting my published non-technical articles on this site, this article titled Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate was published by Physics Today in June 2002 (p. 48-51).

The background to this article is that back in 2002, the advocates of Intelligent Design creationism seemed to be everywhere, seeking to have their ideas included in K-12 school science curricula at least as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. These battles were fought at the state and local levels and involved state and local school boards. Ohio and Kansas were particular hot spots because they were revising their respective science standards and ID advocates saw an opportunity to influence the new standards, especially since school boards consist of elected people who may not have deep understandings of science and could be swayed by dubious arguments about what science was.
[Read more…]