The design of the standard passenger airplane seems to be pretty fixed where there is a central fuselage that houses passengers and cargo and the wings that provide the lift. But via David Pescovitz I learn that KLM is funding a new design where the central fuselage is eliminated and passengers and cargo are seated in the wings, as shown below.
This cartoon illustrates a phenomenon that we are going to see a lot more of if people continue to be allowed to avoid vaccinating their children.
Last month I posted about the fascinating Studio 360 public radio show on the making and impact of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey that led me to read a detailed book on the subject Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, And The Making Of A Masterpiece by Michael Benson. Today, Studio 360 had the second part of the show, this one focusing on how the film’s computer HAL portrayed Artificial Intelligence and technology, how its predictions compare with the reality now, and the impact the film had on subsequent science fiction films.
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I have written about how rich people often behave like jerks, such as ignoring the major role that luck played in getting them to where they are now and also drive arrogantly, as if they own the roads. These were largely impressionistic views, based on either my personal experience or reading about the behavior of others. So it was nice to come across this article that summarizes some studies that suggest that my impressions had some correspondence with reality.
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On May 20th, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures instituted a new standard for the kilogram mass. A metal block kept in a hermetically sealed vault in Paris had been the mass standard for 130 years. New standards were also introduced for the unit of current (Ampere), temperature (Kelvin), and the mole.
It used to be the case that standards for the basic units used in science had been defined in terms of macroscopic objects like this and thus could be easily understood. But the need for increasingly precise and unvarying standards meant that these were no longer suitable and standards have increasingly shifted to using the fundamental constants of nature and getting from those to the familiar quantities involves quite a long chain of reasoning. The kilogram is the last remaining physical object to be so displaced.
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I like watching British police procedurals and a key person in those stories is the forensic pathologist who determines the cause of death and other particulars that help the investigators solve the crimes. These people are portrayed as highly trained, highly skilled medical professionals. I had assumed that in the US, the people who did similar work were similarly trained. Silly me. You would think that by now I would know better.
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He gives a good summary of the proposals, all of which are perfectly reasonable, as opposed to the absurd claims made by its opponents about what it says, and that there are some hopeful signs that the tide is turning on this issue and that more conservatives are ceasing to be denialists and are becoming alarmed at the consequences of doing nothing.
That is a blatantly clickbait-and-switch post title. Anyone expecting to read about the origins of romantic outings involving two people will have to look elsewhere. What this post is about is how the idea of assigning consecutive numbers to the years originated.
We now routinely assign a numbered year to events in recorded history, so that I can write that Bishop Ussher’s year of the creation of the Earth was 4004 BCE or that the American revolution was in 1776 CE. This sequential numbering of the years enables us to immediately fix an event in relation to other events. The system seems so natural that one feels that it must have always been in place and did not have to be invented at all, let alone have a definite beginning. But classicist Paul J. Kosmin says that there was a time when this system of numbered years did not exist and that events were placed in a historical sequence using various circumlocutions that had only local validity.
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We have all seen migrating birds traveling in a V-formation. It has long been speculated that this pattern is chosen because it reduces the energy required for flight in the birds that are at the back. But so much fine-tuning of positions was required to save energy by this method that some researchers doubted that this could be the reason and suggested alternatives, such as that the better navigators were in the front for others to follow or that this formation reduced the risk from predators.
But scientists were able to attach devices to a flock of birds and noticed that the birds were not just locating themselves precisely with respect to the lead birds as predicted by the aerodynamics of fixed wing aircraft, but that they were even synchronizing the flapping of their wings to achieve maximum energy savings.
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A Kentucky teen who sued his school because they required all students to be vaccinated has now been diagnosed as having chicken pox.
A US teenager who took legal action against his school after he was banned for refusing the chickenpox vaccination now has the virus, his lawyer says.
Jerome Kunkel, 18, made headlines last month after he unsuccessfully sued his Kentucky school for barring unimmunised students amid an outbreak.
His lawyer, Christopher Weist, told US media that the teen’s symptoms developed last week.
The student had opposed the vaccine on religious grounds.His lawsuit argued the vaccine is “immoral, illegal and sinful” and that his rights had been violated.
…“These are deeply held religious beliefs, they’re sincerely held beliefs,” Mr Wiest said.
Just because a belief is ‘deeply’ and ‘sincerely’ held does not make it reasonable. People can deeply and sincerely believe all manner of absurd and even harmful things.