Enough Jul 25, 2019
Sometimes it feels and sounds like we humans are running out of things.  There's overcrowding, homelessness, and poverty; people talk a lot about living on Mars (which is completely ridiculous). 

A recurring thought I've had is that there's enough of pretty much everything for pretty much everyone.
Sure there's overcrowding in cities, but go literally anywhere else and all you see is open space.  Most of the state of Arizona, for example, is just empty.  Sure it's hot and dry, but that didn't stop Phoenix or Las Vegas.  Overcrowding is a solvable problem.  It might be difficult, but it's not existentially impossible. 

Poverty is also completely solvable.  I haven't done the math, but my hypothesis is that there's enough money for everyone.  The ultra-super-mega rich can part with a few extra dollars, and poverty and homelessness would disappear in an instant.  Obviously it's a bit more complicated than that, and not all problems can be fixed by throwing money at them.  And then there's the whole "welfare makes people lazy" argument, which is dumb, but also irrelevant for my point.  My point is that there's enough money in the world to buy everyone enough food, clothing, and shelter.  There are a multitude of reasons why this doesn't happen, and few of them are reasonable. 

I'll add to this list: energy, which isn't limitless, but with the perpetual nuclear reaction happening at the center of our solar system (i.e. the sun), is essentially limitless.  We're running out of oil, and gas, and the wind doesn't always blow, and ... climate change.  But seriously the sun will put out more energy than we will ever use for much longer than our species will exist. 

Each of these are technological, organizational, and logistical problems.  There are enough resources, there's enough space, and there's enough energy to do pretty much anything. #science
Human animals May 28, 2019
An episode of the Freakonomics podcast called The Invisible Paw asked what makes humans different from other animals.  One scientist said,
The answer is: absolutely nothing. One by one, the supposed attributes that we had thought were unique to humans have been shown to be present in other species. Crows use tools. Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror. Whales form social networks of the same size and complexity as we do. Penguins mourn their dead. Gibbons are monogamous. Bonobos are polyamorous. Ducks rape. Chimpanzees deploy slaves. Velvet spiders commit suicide. Dolphins have language. And the quicker we get over the Judeo-Christian notion that we are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of the biome, the quicker we will learn to live healthier lives for ourselves and for the planet."
#science
HVAC rocket surgery Dec 31, 2018
I was complaining to my wife about how un-temperate our building was at work.  My go-to argument for everything is "It's not rocket science.  I do rocket science.  And this isn't that."  But her counter-argument was that HVAC is apparently more complicated and more difficult that rocket science and brain surgery.  We routinely launch rockets into space.  We routinely perform brain surgery.  But when was the last time you felt comfortable in an office building? #science
Burning up on re-entry Jan 31, 2018
There's a lot of confusion regarding why certain objects burn up on re-entry into earth's atmosphere.  There was confusion on my part until I figured out how to explain it to myself, if that makes any sense.  So here's the deal:  it doesn't happen because the atmosphere is hot.  In fact, the atmosphere gets thinner and thinner (i.e. less air) as altitude increases, so it's actually quite cold near space. 

Objects burn up on re-entry because they're going ridiculously fast.  And when a fast-moving object comes into contact with a stationary or slow-moving object (in this case, air), its speed energy gets converted to heat energy.  It's kind of like jumping into a pool.  Your speed slows down because you went from air (low density, easy to travel through) to water (higher density, harder to travel through).  But when you jump in a pool, you don't feel a change in temperature because you probably weren't traveling that fast on the way in. 

It's kind of hard to compare it to something that happens in normal life, because we don't experience those types of speed differences, like ever.  Objects in orbit around the earth are traveling tangentially to earth's surface at about 17,000 miles per hour.  The reason we don't know much about objects traveling at 17,000-ish miles per hour is because they would burn up in our atmosphere!  Some objects in space are moving much faster than that (such as meteors and asteroids that have been flung out of some other orbit).  In that case the speed difference can be much bigger, which tends to make things explode. 

There was a question online about why Felix Baumgartner, the guy who rode a balloon into space and jumped off, didn't burn up on re-entry.  The answer is simply that he wasn't traveling that fast because he didn't start from orbit.  Sure, he sped up on the way down, but only as fast as the air around him allowed.  He didn't start at 17,000 miles per hour.  He started at roughly zero. 

Finally, the way objects can avoid burning up on re-entry is to enter the atmosphere slowly over time instead of all at once.  That's achieved by choosing the right re-entry angle.  There's that line from Apollo 13:  "The re-entry corridor is in fact so narrow ... that if this basketball were the Earth ... the crew would have to hit a target no thicker than this piece of paper." All that's saying is that the angle at which you enter the atmosphere has to be pretty precise, but since the earth is much bigger than a basketball, the angle is much bigger than the thickness of paper.  Sometimes making things sound simple makes them sound more complicated. #science
Evidence at work Jan 30, 2018
I was in a meeting at work last week where a contractor was going through a Powerpoint presentation about their product, making statements like "it will travel [X] far" and "the sensor will operate accurately" and "our algorithm will avoid common pitfalls".  I was asked for my "expert" opinion afterwards, and instead of questioning every claim they made, I simply said this: 
"The contractor needs to provide evidence for stated claims instead of just assuming we'll believe them because they said it out loud.  In general, there were a lot of statements of fact without any evidence to back them up.  I'm not saying they were lying about anything.  But a simple [plot of results] or [data from a test] would do more to establish a fact than simply writing a sentence on a Powerpoint slide."
It's a little surprising to me that this type of thing needs to be stated.  But at the same time, I have no problem being the person who states it.  I've always been a little skeptical about everything.  And even if the final result turns out to be wrong, at least use critical thinking skills and logical reasoning to make your case.  Arguments from authority and proclamations by fiat are things used by dictators and strongmen.  State your claim, make your case, and prove your point with evidence. #science
Gender Dec 13, 2017
This Facebook post from a biology teacher about gender identity and gender expression is quite enlightening: 
I just commented this on a transphobic post that was all like, "In a sexual species, females have two X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y, I'm not a bigot it's just science." I'm a science teacher so I responded with this.

First of all, in a sexual species, you can have females be XX and males be X (insects), you can have females be ZW and males be ZZ (birds), you can have females be females because they developed in a warm environment and males be males because they developed in a cool environment (reptiles), you can have females be females because they lost a penis sword fighting contest (some flatworms), you can have males be males because they were born female, but changed sexes because the only male in their group died (parrotfish and clownfish), you can have males look and act like females because they are trying to get close enough to actual females to mate with them (cuttlefish, bluegills, others), or you can be one of thousands of sexes (slime mold, some mushrooms.) Oh, did you mean humans? Oh ok then. You can be male because you were born female, but you have 5-alphareductase deficiency and so you grew a penis at age 12. You can be female because you have an X and a Y chromosome but you are insensitive to androgens, and so you have a female body. You can be female because you have an X and a Y chromosome but your Y is missing the SRY gene, and so you have a female body. You can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but one of your X's HAS an SRY gene, and so you have a male body. You can be male because you have two X chromosomes- but also a Y. You can be female because you have only one X chromosome at all. And you can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but your heart and brain are male. And vice - effing - versa. Don't use science to justify your bigotry. The world is way too weird for that shit.
I've sent it to a few people who've asserted that gender is simply what's written on your birth certificate.  I don't claim to understand all this, but I'm at least open to the idea that it's not as simple as it seems. #science
America catching up Jun 2, 2017
Trump just pulled out of the Paris climate agreement.  This move was ridiculously widely criticized, but I think he's actually onto something.  America as a nation isn't really good at starting things.  We're better when we're second, like with the industrial revolution (England was first, America created the modern economy) and the world wars (Europe started them, America finished them).  But actually probably the best example of this was the space race.  The Soviet Union won the space race.  They launched the first satellite into space, and later the first human.  America claimed victory by being the first to reach the moon, but that simply ignored the previous achievements by the Russians.  And the whole reason there was a "race" was because America got beat.  That, coupled with some military tension, turned it into a competition, and any competition America enters (not begins), America wins.  So in a way, pulling out of the climate agreement could be a good thing.  Other countries like China and Russia will take the lead and improve the earth while getting fantastically wealthy.  Then in another 15 or 20 years, America will blow the competition out of the water and claim victory. #science
Experimentalism May 17, 2017
I guess I would call myself an experimentalist in the sense that, in the quest to solve a problem, I'm willing to try anything, regardless of how unconventional the solution is or how anecdotal the outcome might be.  This kind of goes against the scientific method a little bit, where you're supposed to develop an educated guess, not a wild ass one.  And that guess should probably be based in some sort of reality, preferably with some sort of valid reasoning.  But I always come back to the simple fact that if it works, it works.  I have a fairly rigid worldview, but I'm somewhat open to having my mind changed by actual results. 

This comes up a lot with medical treatments for illnesses and injuries.  There's a lot of quackery online about taking some supplement or applying some magical oil to cure something "doctors don't want you to know about".  Despite the lack of solid science supporting many of these types of treatments (and usually the abundance of solid science disproving the claims), I'm open to at least a few of them.  But at the same time, I'm fine with rejecting them when they turn out to be useless.  Too many people like to focus only on positive outcomes and simply ignore the negative ones.  If your solution doesn't work, reject it.  Simple as that. #science
Accept the answer Apr 21, 2017
One of my coworkers just said a pretty profound thing.  We were talking about how the Cassini spacecraft used nuclear power, and people at the time were scared of the prospect of a nuclear anything flying over their heads.  Even in the event of a disaster, the amount of radioactive material spread out over the earth's surface would've been indistinguishable from other naturally-occurring radioactive sources.  In other words, it was a non-issue.  I said, "People are pretty dumb."  I corrected myself and said, "But don't be afraid to ask the question."  He responded with, "And don't be afraid to accept the answer." #science
Nuclear bomb inevitability Mar 7, 2017
From reading Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, it struck me that the invention of the atomic bomb was essentially inevitable.  Particle physics was a hot topic at the time, and scientists were discovering various things about chemical elements and what happened when you applied different forces and stresses to them.  It was eventually found that certain radioactive elements emit a bunch of energy when a small amount of energy is applied to them.  All it took was for somebody to think, "Huh, I wonder what would happen if we started a chain reaction?"  The geopolitics of the time assured that certain world powers were always in the market for more powerful weapons, and the general fear of the era necessitated "the good guys" figuring it out before "the bad guys" did.  The ferocity of the battles in the Pacific against the Japanese showed that surrender was out of the question, so a ridiculously strong message needed to be sent to assure victory.  It's easy to question it in hindsight, but it's nearly certain that human beings would've invented the nuclear bomb eventually. #science