Rainbows aren't real Apr 29, 2014
Filmmaker Sergio Toporek is credited with the following quote: 
The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don't just look at a rainbow, you create it.
It's part of a larger quote often titled "We Originated in the Belly of a Star" and often attributed to no one.  Or NASA.  It's confusing. 

As Alotta Hooey discusses, it's only partly true.  It's true that human eyeballs have photoreceptors that allow us to see in color, while many animals can see fewer colors or none at all.  So they would still see a rainbow, but it would be gray. 

However, it's not true that we create rainbows.  Rainbows happen because of light, refraction, and observation angle.  But it raises an interesting idea, related to the observer's paradox, which is the "phenomena where the observation of an event or experiment is influenced by the presence of the observer/investigator".  You can only see a rainbow under a certain set of circumstances.  Stand in the wrong spot, and it's not there.  Try to reach the end, and you'll never get there.  So the presence of a rainbow has a lot to do with the location of the observer, which is almost like the observer creates it. #science
Alcohol vs. marijuana Apr 28, 2014
Freakonomics did an interesting podcast about alcohol and marijuana, and specifically which is more dangerous.  The general view of economists is that alcohol has an enormous societal cost by way of addiction, drunk driving, and crime, while marijuana doesn't.  It's an interesting thought experiment to consider which would be accepted and which would be outlawed if we had no knowledge about them and they were discovered tomorrow. 

I think one flaw in the discussion, which was acknowledged, is that our present view of marijuana is skewed because of our current system of laws and our related lack of evidence.  We have plenty of evidence about the positives and negatives of alcohol, but marijuana is still an illegal drug for much of the world, so not only is there not much acceptance, there's downright criminal punishment. 

The idea of alcohol and societal cost is a little foreign to me, not because I can't see the societal cost, but because the vast majority of people I know don't contribute to that cost because they consume alcohol responsibly.  If anything, alcohol has a positive societal cost for me, because I enjoy it, and because the money I spend on it is adding to the economy.  That sounds like a justification, and it is, but it's true. 

One economist's opinion was that, all things being equal, if we discovered marijuana and alcohol tomorrow, marijuana would be legalized and alcohol would be outlawed.  I have trouble envisioning this, largely because of the delivery mechanisms.  Alcohol is a liquid that goes straight from container to mouth; marijuana is typically smoked.  I can't imagine smoking marijuana with dinner in place of wine, partly because smoke and food don't really mix, but also because of our society's stigma towards smoking in general.  Mix it into a tea, and then we'd really have something. #science
Venus day vs. year Apr 22, 2014
The amount of time it takes Venus to complete a rotation about its axis is longer than the amount of time it takes to complete an orbit around the sun, i.e. a Venusian day is longer than a year. #science
We were girls Apr 11, 2014
Today I learned everyone starts life as a female:  "Whatever your sex, everyone starts off as a woman in the womb."  Sort of via Inquiring Minds. #science
Cosmos mission statement Mar 12, 2014
From the intro to the first episode of the revamped Cosmos: 
"Test ideas by experiment and observation.  Build on those ideas that pass the test.  Reject the ones that fail.  Follow the evidence wherever it leads.  And question everything."
Hell to the yes. #science
On pseudoscience Feb 25, 2014
I'm torn on the topic of pseudoscience.  On the one hand, I clearly have no interest in things that "have the appearance of being scientific, [but lack] any of the substance of science."  But on the other hand I get annoyed when the things I believed were scientific turn out to be pseudoscientific.  Going through a list of pseudoscientific topics, I'm disappointed that things like chiropractic count as pseudoscience (although I think the classification is more on the "cracking your back can cure your allergies" side of things than on the "cracking your back can make your neck feel better" side).  To me it sounds not so much like pseudoscience but simply science which hasn't been firmly agreed upon.  This Daily Beast article mentions the Paleo Diet, which has been criticized for probably being based on incorrect assumptions.  But the book I read about it pointed to journal article after journal article about why its assumptions were true.  It bothers me that in the information age, it's nearly impossible to find accurate, true, unbiased, consensus-driven scientific facts on any subject.  There's science on both sides of many issues, and it almost always conflicts.  Why can't knowledge just be easy?  I don't know. #science
E-book weight (2) Nov 3, 2011
A computer science professor from UC Berkeley calculated that a 4GB e-book reader filled to capacity weighs about 0.000000000000000001g more than an empty one. 
"Although the total number of electrons in the memory does not change as the stored data changes," Dr. Kubiatowicz said, the trapped ones have a higher energy than the untrapped ones. A conservative estimate of the difference would be 10^–15 joules per bit. As the equation E=mc^2 makes clear, this energy is equivalent to mass and will have weight. Plugging this into Einstein's equation yields his rough estimate of 10^–18 grams.
Or, as another writer put it, about 2 tons less than the equivalent number of actual books.

(via Marginal Revolution) #science
Non-science (1) Sep 27, 2011
I don't like the term "political science."  If anything, politicking is an art form, not a scientific pursuit.  Lumping the two words together is a disgrace to the world of actual science. 

I feel somewhat the same about "food science."  I know there's actual science involved in the interaction between food chemicals and human taste buds, but in practice I just see chefs in a kitchen, which is inherently artistic.  Food scientists can take that as a compliment if they so choose. 

Slightly related:  Medicine as art #science
Artificial anus Aug 18, 2011
Exciting news (via Neatorama):
Science has produced lots of amazing things -- the hydrogen bomb, gene sequencing -- and now, an artificial mouse sphincter grown from human cells.
And by "sphincter," of course, they mean anus.  This topic could supply a lifetime's worth of jokes. #science
Candle through a barn door Jul 26, 2011
As Ripley's says, a musket can fire a wax candle through a barn door.  This video confirms it.  Ah, the wonders of kinetic energy.  Pretty much anything can be shot through pretty much anything if it's going fast enough. #science