Sunday 30 August 2015

Entertainment stuff from the week 24-30/8/15


Hi homicidal homogeneists,


'The greater a country's gender equality in employment, the higher its homicide rate'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-greater-country-gender-equality-employment.html

Now, i know i've done a mini-essay about the Ocean Dilemma...

''The Ocean Dilemma' - a scientific tool'

http://tapejarascience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/ocean-dilemma-scientific-tool.html

Which i define like this:

"Whenever presented with a Correlation, we should consider: does it indicate a Causation, a Consequence, or is it just a Coincidence?"


But...

Having 'learned' so much from masochistically researching Feminism, in recent weeks, i've become privileged divinely embraced by the intellectual unsurpassedness of being able to see anything i like in any study i come across.

Therefore, i shall not assess the study for its methodological flaws - i shall abuse it, and force it to say whatever i construe it to say.

For example, although the study is survey-based, i shall not point out that this is a quality of evidence second-worst from individual anecdote...

And i shall not point out that the study researcher says "Countries in which women are respected have lower overall homicide rates" which directly conflicts with what i want to say...

And i shall gloss over the methodologically-important part where she says that more equal societies have better-kept statistics, making them look worse than they really are, in comparison...

{This is probably the real cause of the correlation}

And i shall conclude thusly:

Equality is the fake reward of egalitarians, who sell vulnerable young women and girls the idea that they should conform with them. You see, egalitarianism is an MRA movement - a tool of the patriarchy, to keep us oppressed.

Do not think me presumptuous, when i say that those extra homicides are men killing women, because we all know they are, anyway. So-called 'equal' societies are actually killing young women and girls off, and suppressing this truth.

Which, by the way, is how we don't know about it. And why the patriarchal scientists (and religionists of Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, where the author is a fellow) didn't fund the study, nor pay to have it published!

Clearly, we must reject equality! Never let us forget that #notallmen are vile perpetrators of toxic masculinity, who must be avoided at all costs.

Shiver and quake, young women and children, for they are out to get you!

They sell you equality, and careers, and money, and freedom, in order to treat you unequally, to deny you careers, to keep you poorer than the millionaire pseudo-feminists who are their tools to deceive you (keep wearing the tinfoil hats) and to deprive of true freedom - freedom from men!

Quick, my pretties - although i don't say "pretties" in an objectifying way because we all know that it doesn't count when it's not men doing it - let's run away, to a lesbian commune, where we'll all choose to be 100% homosexual (because that's how lesbianism works; definitely, actually, as a fact!) and be free from men forever.

[cackles and screams, maniacally]



Or maybe it's just a metholologically invalid study?

No, that can't be true, or all those 'surveys' that find 120% of girls on campuses to be rape victims might be called into question too <s>

And even if the numbers are representative, then i'm sure we can just assume their causes, maybe to be sexism, rather than just disparities that might be caused by other things. <s>

{Nudge: the 'gender gap' in pay is one such example - where the studies are done, there is no observable sexist causation, but that doesn't stop sexists from claiming it, due to the claim's diplomatic convenience}


Leaving the sarcasm behind...


'Criminologist says Amnesty's call to decriminalise prostitution makes sense'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-criminologist-amnesty-decriminalise-prostitution.html

One of the claims produced by feminism is the one that evil, wicked, sinful male lust should be restrained, but women should not, for the purposes of using men's evil, wicked, sinful male lust to make themselves richer.

These feminists, for example (apologies if the link's broken by the time you read this) genuinely advocate the criminalization of 'buying' sex, but support the de-criminalization of 'selling' it.

Being feminist sexists (female-affiliated sex-factionalists) they completely fail to see that prostitution is not the domain of their puerile sex-war!

Men buy sexual services from women, and men buy sexual services from men; women buy sexual services from women, and women buy sexual services from men. Amnesty International's proposals (which they explicitly condemn) cover all of these situations, but because they see 'equality' (their bastardised form of it) as a boxing match, with boys in the red corner, and girls in the blue corner, they don't appreciate this.

To them, men wanting sex is 'evidence' of 'toxic masculinity' and so women being subject to male sexuality makes them victims... even if they're OK with it, and even if they profit by it.

So instead of supporting moves to make sex work safer for all; on the off-chance that it might make men happier too, the feminists decide that they must condemn the entire trade.

But only if you're
looking at it from one side of the counter. Because that's what men do. [facepalms]

The same stupidity is enforced in drug prohibitions, where the harm is caused by consumption of herbal potions, and the 'filler' ingredients in the various pills and powders available, yet one side of the bookkeeping account is criminal, and the other not - buy, but don't sell. Bonkers!

"Professor John Scott, from QUT's Crime and Justice Research Centre, said where prostitution was decriminalised the health of sex workers and clients had improved and rates of corruption, bribery and other forms of vice had dropped."

Oh noes - don't care for the clients - they're just sluts who want to put their genitalia somewhere. Noes! <s>

Clearly, anyone who actually cares about the whole human species, is going to care about all the people in this scenario - not treat it like sex-war propaganda fodder, the way feminism has motivated people to do.


Whether it's sex, or elation, or analgesia, or competitiveness, where you have a consistent and immutable desire for something, prohibition can never work.

Prohibiting something that is going to happen, regardless of what you say, can only lead to harm. Harm that you will have caused.

Traumatised organisms desire analgesia - you can't stop that. Either you help them find a better life, with less pain in it, or you care more about policy than people.

Pleasure-motivated organisms desire elation - you can't stop that. Either you help them find safe sources of pleasure, with known and measurable hazards, so that they can engage in informed consent, or you care more about policy than people.

Competition-motivated organisms desire self-advancement and comparison to their peers - you can't stop that. Either you help them run a bit faster, or jump a bit higher, with known and measurable hazards, or you care more about policy than people.

Sexually reproducing species desire sex - you can't stop that. Either you support people who sell and buy it, so that it's safer when it happens, or you care more about policy than people.


Whether it's sex 'cheats' or legal 'highs' or people trying to get 'outside their minds' or to win an athletic discipline, you can't stop people from trying - you can only hurt them while trying to stop them.

Prohibition doesn't work. And neither does factionalism. Including sex-factionalism.


In other news:

Welcome to penis island... i mean, um... no, it's genuinely not that kind of island :-P
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/sign-that-has-been-mistakenly-welcoming.html

Here's yet another case study of how journalism works: find a picture of someone wearing black, and then chinese-whisper the story into 'Cloaked figure is ‘dropping RAW MEAT on North Carolina playgrounds''. Well done, Daily Fail, well done. Seeing someone in clothes is not News; and the thing about proliferating uncooked meat was just completely made up, to develop the story! Classy.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/photos-of-mystery-person-in-black-cloak-sparks-spooky-speculation/

So someone has died in Honduras, and was declared to be by the medical professionals at a hospital, only for her coffin to be broken into, inside her concrete tomb, by her family, to find her... still dead. This was confirmed by the local hospital, again. What's so odd about this? Well, the family, and specifically her husband, insists that she was heard screaming, inside the coffin, inside the tomb, and so the husband broke the coffin open, to find her limp, dead body. There's no evidence provided that she was ever alive, after being declared dead the first time, but because this story's generally been reported 'for the human angle' (from the family's point of view) confusion has seeped in. IMO, if there was any screaming, it was family members' screams, or hallucinated through grief. Very sad, but there's nothing here for validating superstition.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/she-was-screaming-for-help-inside-the-coffin/

"declaration without publication is a red flag for baloney". So sayeth me, last week. And that goes for Stephen Hawking too. He's apparently claimed to have found a solution to the so-called 'information paradox'. This relates to the boundaries of black holes, and how they cause problems for various physical hypotheses in these extreme conditions. It's nothing to do with information, in the lay sense. Nevertheless, being called Stephen Hawking might presell books on the subject, but it doesn't win the minds of Cosmological scientists. We might actually find out what the publication means, in a few years' time, as publication would be followed by intense scrutiny, and interpreting, before any information were communicated to us.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/a-solution-to-the-information-paradox-we-need-the-information-first/

A papyrus purporting to reveal the identity of a mythical character's mythical marriage to a mythical wife, is apparently back in the News again. Big deal. It first appeared (in the News) in 2012, and the only permitted evidence says that it's a modern fake. But then, superstitionists are never going to accept that, which is how it comes around again, and again, and again. Like Palcohol does. These things are all rubber-duckie memes, LOL.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/papyrus-of-jesus-wife-in-the-news-again-nothing-confirmed/

Way back in 2007, Mitch Benn did one of his most popular songs - Baby Knut Must Die - about the recently-born captive polar bear called 'Knut'. The song was about how an animal rights activist had declared he should be killed, in case he weren't happy later in life. Well, Knut died in 2011, and the cause has been found to be anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which is a type of autoimmune inflammation of the brain. It seems vicious poetic justice that it would have been better to kill Knut as a baby, before he could suffer it, later on. Why hast thou forsaken Mitch Benn, Flying Spaghetti Monster? Why??? :-D
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/popular-polar-bear-had-autoimmune-inflamation-of-the-brain/
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-knut-polar-closure.html

There's herbal non-medicine, and then there's animal non-medicine. "herbal non-medicine has too many ingredients in it; homeopathic non-medicine has no ingredients in it" Both extremes disqualify them from being considered Medicine. But it isn't just plants that are made of lots and lots of ingredients, and plenty of them poisonous -- many animals, like plants, deliberately produce poisons, to deter predation. A man in Shanghai recently died from using a toad-based 'folk remedy' to treat his skin condition. A woman with cancer, dying from toad-ingestion, at least meant she didn't have to die of the cancer she was hoping to be cured of. It's not just that we don't hear many stories of quackery in rural China - even people in highly-urbanised Northern societies, like the UK, mysteriously drop dead, with some herbal potion or overdosing supplement mysteriously lingering around. The true extent of such morbidities and mortalities are unknown.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/dont-eat-toad/

I dearly hope this is a case of Torygraph incompetence, and not Police incompetence. According to the Torygraph, the latest issue of a document from the UK College of Policing, which instructs officers on how to investigate cases, advises them to "not rule out the help of psychics" when they have "accredited successes". Golly gosh! No psychic-purporting charlatan has ever demonstrated anything other than a burden on police forces, and victims of crimes. There is no basis for thinking that someone who 'knows where the body is' is anything other than an unfortunate bystander, or worse, complicit in the crime. 'Psychics' should be arrested for presenting themselves as suspects, or perverting the course of justice - not treated as possible assistants. So if this story turns out to be true, i dearly hope the document gets corrected swiftly, before too much harm can be done.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/uk-college-of-policing-allows-alarming-opportunity-to-accept-psychic-assistance/

Funny the way all these deities prefer to communicate through food items (anything inanimate, really) than directly, to actual people, in ways that can be explicitly understood. This time, it's not crackers, or toast, or cheesy snacks, or even damp walls - it's an egg. A couple of Islamists from Leicester, UK, claim to have perceived the message "None to be worshipped except Allah", written in Arabic, on the side of an egg. One of them, 'Anisa, 36' said "I've heard about this sort of thing in the roots of trees and in the sky. It is a sign and I think it's a message to all Muslims to forgive and to have a clean heart" SRSLY?? It's a phrase that condemns heresy, and yet you think it's a moral messa... ah, what's the point? Superstition exists despite reality :-D
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/message-from-allah-found-on-egg.html

Lightbulb Syndrome strikes again! A french court has granted a believer in 'Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity' (EHS) a disability allowance of ~
800 ($912) per month, for a period of three years, while she's refusing paid employment. I'm sorry, but this is batty - she's not disabled - the condition doesn't exist. She doesn't need a wheelchair or medication, and she has no limitations on her travel or availability. EFS is one of the many rebrandings of Lightbulb Syndrome (my name for it) which is a purely psychogenic condition caused by technophobia. Whether it's WiFi, Wind Farms, Cell Phone masts, or lightbulbs, all of the symptoms are those of anxiety - not 'sensitivity' to anything beyond their mind. All the time someone is being told that their 'sensitivity' is real, the actual problem, that they actually have, is not being fixed. The worst thing that can possibly happen, for her, is to have a court validate her superstitious fear! Prevalence of Lightbulb Syndrome does not correlate with abundance of the particular technology scape-goated - it correlates with abundance of propaganda for the superstition. Where Fossil Fuel Companies seed propaganda against Wind Farms, Wind Farm Syndrome is bountiful - not where the Wind Farms are. The only solution is to condemn the false beliefs that cause the anxiety, and in turn cause the symptoms. Pandering to the problem can only make her worse.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-french-woman-disability-grant-gadget.html

This week's lesson in probability and risk understanding, comes through a flight accident, over the UK. An old but well-maintained aircraft was flying around the Shoreham Air Display, near where it crashed into a road, killing at least 11 motorists. This, of course, got a lot of copy in the sensationalist tabloid gutter-press; for example in The Torygraph "Air shows should be over the sea, it should not have been over that road" and The Times "Jet crash fireball forces air show safety rethink". The Daily Fail's headline was surprisingly short, but unsurprisingly ungrammatical: "How many more fireball dead?" Due to the tactfulness of the Fail, their report did not have a huge fireball on the front page, nor did it have "dramatic pictures & reports" on pages 4 to 9. You can verify that none of that was present, here. The problem with this reporting is that, firstly, these events are rare (the last such event, in the UK, was back in 1952) and secondly, those involved are willing! The intrigue to pilots, is the 'deliberately cultivated risk' involved. Unlike with rollercoasters, the danger is more real, more present, more available. Pilots like this risk - it's what motivates them to do crazy things. That is why all of the early astronauts were Air Force pilots - they were willing, risk-embracing, and partly-pretrained people who were in ready supply. In contrast, 1600 people die due to road traffic incidents every year, in the UK (enough for four deaths in every daily's headline), but their demises are generally rather banal and ignorable. Do their lives not matter? They apparently don't warrant a minute's silence, no matter what age they die at, or what local soccer team they played for. We all embrace artificial risks sometimes, and we should remember what that means - we might not come back, but we might at least die doing something we love. And the thing to remember, when we're the ones not embracing those risks, is that we should remember that over-committing to minor threats means we're not committing to more major ones. Just because a form of mortality doesn't make the front pages, doesn't mean it's less important.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-airshows-risky-strong-safety.html
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-shoreham-safety-airshows.html

Russia has lifted a ban on Wikipedia's Russian-language site, after just one night, stating that it had complied in removing information that people are not allowed to know. The information in question was on one page, about a kind of cannabis, but Russia's law stipulates that whole sites must be banned for a single breach on just one page. Wikipedia is apparently no exception. Censorship of one item, has spared the rest of the encyclopedia.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-russian-cancels-short-lived-wikipedia.html

Here's an update on what's going on with Politwoops - the site that archives Pollies' tweets, so that we can see when they're trying to deceive us, for diplomatic (power) gain. Back in June, it had been blocked by Twitter by some dodgy illogic, that depended on an inability to understand that Twitter is public, and that publicly-relevant information - such as the opinions of Pollies - are far more important than someone erasing a post about frangipan that was spellt wrong! Since Twitter's pro-censorship, anti-democracy stance was taken up, Politwoops has been blocked in 30 countries, and is looking close to dormant. Damn you, Twitter!
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-website-politicians-deleted-tweets.html

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Water, Water, The Water Of... Profit (SwaK#154)' (my upload)
https://youtu.be/LBtmQX6dpDQ

'Facts On The Vax - Flu Vaccinations Don't Cause Flu (SZ#357)' (my upload)
https://youtu.be/96gI1WdaCvs

'Hard Drive Diffraction Grating'
https://youtu.be/3zYAhEbBE_E

'Ultimate Bipolar Nebula'
https://youtu.be/394x4tV5WfE

'Slow Motion Contact Explosive - Nitrogen Triiodide'
https://youtu.be/DFfRqoIdArM

'Davis Aurini, 'cos its FUNNY!'
Davis Aurini, thy name is egomania. I know all the letters of the alphabet :-D
https://youtu.be/2yrOnhbsZqE

'inFact: Did Jewish Slaves Build the Pyramids?'

https://youtu.be/1LNScgneyWo

'Amazing Water Trick DEBUNK'

https://youtu.be/NXCtgI2lkFw

'10 Amazing Science Tricks Using Liquid!'
https://youtu.be/HQx5Be9g16U

'Corpse flower blooms while emitting smell of death'
I, myself, saw an amorphophallus titanum (translated to English: 'shaped like a titanic cock') at the Eden Project, in Cornwall; but as expected by probability, it didn't infloresce for my convenience. It had already done so, and was showing fruit :-D
https://youtu.be/w2R9LZrZIQM

You can see my picture of it, way back in 2011, here:

‘Amorphophallus in Eden’

http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/127938656430/amorphophallus-in-eden-the-eden-projects

'‘The Iguana of Mars’

http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/127938674810/the-iguana-of-mars-is-there-life-on

'Cassini image: Dark side of Enceladus'

You might have to click to enlarge, LOL. All i see is a black rectangle, otherwise :-D
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-cassini-image-dark-side-enceladus.html

'A hubble cosmic couple'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-image-hubble-cosmic-couple.html

'Sisters Episode 8: John Travolta {The Kloons}'

https://youtu.be/BlwMO_QMWX8

'CRASH ZOOM - Orcs & Dorks'

https://youtu.be/ulcidTB4P1U

'Nerd³ Challenges! Mike Dynasty - GTA V'
Having seen how badly the D*ck Dynasty game sucked **ck, this one just had to be made :-D
https://youtu.be/R0mJ--6vqy0

'Crazy Moments in Construction Sim! (Livestream Highlights)'
If you think realistic physics are a predicate for a construction game, then think again :-P
https://youtu.be/PUdMdgLCzBA

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: vacuity -- lack of presence, whether matter or thought; the quality or fact of being devoid of something specified; something, especially a remark, that is pointless or inane

Quote Of The Week: "Without precisely defined sources, methods and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite" - Thomas Piketty

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'How to use Music for YouTube Videos'
https://youtu.be/keb40SxJk70


'Crows use intelligence to crack nutshells'
https://youtu.be/3lQ1ggTIrpY

'Jimmy's Secret Army'
https://youtu.be/oJ-9R6NCZ0A


'Authors’ Surnames'

http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/127938756590/authors-surnames-featured-here

'Mind-Controlled Movie: A Quantum Leap for Cinema?'
Semi-interactive films? They already exist -- they're called 'computer games' :-D
https://twitter.com/RichardWiseman/status/634470773760069633

'all-time weakest acronym'
https://twitter.com/CharlesFinch/status/619992460698107904

'Mountain Views'
http://tapejarascience.tumblr.com/post/127938797245/mountain-views-featured-here
.
.
.

Sunday 23 August 2015

Entertainment stuff from the week 17-23/8/15


Hi cheaters,


So, in the week that Ashley Madison got hacked, there's been a lot of hot air about the subject of... illicit sex.

Why are you blushing? :-P

The names of 39 million members of the meeting website have been made public, because private data going public isn't a bad thing at all, and because the Data Protection Act doesn't exist for a reason.

'Life's short, have you had an affair?'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-life-short-affair.html

Let's be clear: this is not data Wikileaks will be straining to get at - it holds no use for political accountability - it's just an opportunity to slutshame some people.

- frantic phone calls
- lawyers booking holidays with the flood of income
- spouses rushing to get STI checks

Mayhem, palaver, misery! The sky is falling...

'Ashley Madison faces $578M Canadian class-action lawsuit'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-ashley-madison-sued-membership-leak.html

But Ashley Madison is only one website, that has done very little to change the number of people getting nooky despite their spouses' rule-mongering.

Humans have done it; humans will continue to do it; and humans will give Ashley Madison a go if they were going to do it anyway.

'Things to know about Ashley Madison breach: Who's affected?'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-ashley-madison-breach-affected.html

According to lawyer Susan Moss, a "tsunami" of new court cases would follow the publication; but divorce attorney Michael DiFalco has said there would be "a dozen clients caught by text message for every client that might get caught this way."

This glibly follows the pretence that all of the profiles are genuine, however.

Associated Press had claimed to meet "a dozen people" who signed up, but never met anyone. And a husband and wife couple signed up out of curiosity, but nothing happened.

The scandalous assumption is that all of the 36 million e-mail addresses released, were those of married people betraying their spouses, even though they don't even have to have spouses, to sign up! People do have fantasies, you know.

According to PornHub's statistics for 2014, there were 602% more searches for "lesbian scissoring" by women than men, even though women are only 23% of the PornHub member population! [chinnyreckon] I think maybe some of those women are men, acting out the fantasy of being women. Don'cha think?

Even considering the fact that the total number is bloated with duplicate profiles, forgotten profiles, experimental profiles, and the profiles of consensually-present couples (for which it is easy to make up new e-mail addresses) there's still the unsubstantiated premise that what they're doing is morally wrong.

Unless it's actually wrong to want sex with people, then it's not scandalous to have found that some people want sex with other people!

If i, purely hypothetically, had an inter-species crush on, say, Hugh Jackman or Michelle Rodriguez [drools] but i were in a bestial relationship with you, then it wouldn't necessarily be immoral for me to grasp a chance with either of the aforementioned homo sapiens, with both wings, if the opportunity came along.

If i came home and gave you an STD, because i'd been an idiot, and hadn't used contraception {in my cloaca} then that could be legally classed as bodily harm, or 'battery' as it is in the USA.

That's immoral, because it's harmful. The deception can be harmful. The time spent 'bonding' with someone else, means time not spent with you - that can have a net harm.

But the actual humpy-dumpy itself is not immoral.

There's a reason 'cheating' is called 'cheating' - it involves breaking rules.

If i don't impose a rule on you, then you can't break it. If you want to flap over to wherever Hugh or Michelle happen to be, and chance your wing with them, then that's fine by me. I love you, and want you to be happy.

But i don't want you to make me ill, or neglect me, or anything like that. The solution is a mature, adult conversation about interests (desires), requirements, and how to nurture our relationship - not me imposing rules on you!

Imposing rules is an immature, authoritarian attitude - one predicated on insecurity, instead of affection - one that motivates us to lie, in order to achieve sexual satiety without being hurt by the ones we love.

Hunger, whether sexual, or foody, or powdery or leafy, or even Political, continues to exist regardless of the imposition of rules. Prohibition doesn't work.

So don't let your lovers cheat on you - give them permission! That way, you're 'in the loop' and can influence the way the scenario pans out.


'NASA reassures public that there is no asteroid threatening Earth'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-nasa-reassures-asteroid-threatening-earth.html

[sighs] If an asteroid were threatening Earth, you'd probably hear about it from NASA, or ESA - you wouldn't have to wait to hear what they think about it, later.

Even when i'm just repeating what other people have said, i think the fact that people still do this demonstrates that there's an ongoing need for my kind of blog, on the web!

Maybe you should start one of your own, too [nudge, nudge] ;-)


In other news:

'Man makes $10,000 a month sending people potatoes' ""I would say the two things that hold everyone back in life is fear and doubt," Craig said. "The fear of failure and the fear of wasting your time, and the doubt that you can actually achieve something big on a huge scale"." Congratulations! You just came up with a total waste of time, that achieves nothing, except making you richer. And that's the entrepreneurialism 101 :-D
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/man-makes-10000-month-sending-people.html

Oh dear, Grauniad. Oh dear. They're apparently incapable of telling what a scientist is, and what mythology is. Scientists didn't say that. Their research has nothing to do with the subject of the article. And the article you published was written by someone who believes in the mythical city in question. Atlantis is a myth - it's never been anywhere! To hear more about Atlantis, follow the link to the Archaeology Podcast's episode on the subject.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/way-down-below-the-ocean-where-there-is-no-atlantis/

Ancient rock paintings - the possibilities are endless! Especially if you're earnestly trying to perceive something that's not actually depicted in them. For example, the pterosaur supposedly drawn in this painting, on a wall in Black Dragon Canyon, Utah, and rediscovered in the 1920s. A recent study has demonstrated that the drawings actually show two tetrapods, two humans, and possibly a river/cave/horn. Creationist Religionists, however, strenuously try to see a pteranodon in the paintings, so that they can turn around to real scientists, and say "Dinosaurs lived with humans, so religion's right and evolution's wrong. Checkmate, Atheists." People with the same motive, but a different superstition, perceive different things in such art - space aliens and spacemen, for example.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/creationists-foiled-again-ancient-rock-painting-is-not-a-pterosaur/

Week 2, in the Nazi Gold House. Last week, we had the story about the ~£11,000 gold bar, pulled out of the Königssee, in Switzerland. That story was wrong, though -- the Königssee is in Germany, not Switzerland [facepalm]. But this week, we have another Nazi Gold Hunt tale, with a missing train, full of gems and guns, apparently discovered, and claimed. The tale of the missing gem train is not new, and as yet there is no evidence that the claims to the train's discovery are true. The claimants are apparently seeking 10% of the value of the findings - this might well be a genuine demand, but even if a train exists, and they've found it, it's not necessarily the train. It's not necessarily Nazi Treasure.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/nazi-treasure-train-supposedly-found-in-poland/

Lab grown human brains are now a thing? According to a neuroscientist at Ohio State University, they have developed a human brain to the maturity of a five-week-old foetus', in a lab (but not in a foetus - that would be cheating!). The trouble is, they've decided to wave a big red flag that their claim's phony - their research hasn't been published... 'yet'. Big mistake. Clairvoyance isn't real, and Science knows it. But Media organisations don't care about that. For someone seeking fame and glory, declaration without publication is the way to go - pollies who claim clairvoyant evidence ("i know i'm right, and we will find evidence that i'm right, after you've elected me") are abundant - but there's no way to tell someone who's just excited about their research, and can't hold it in, from the majority of fakers, who make claims without recourse to substantiation. That's why declaration without publication is a red flag for baloney.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/lab-grown-brain-claim-announcement-without-peer-review-is-a-red-flag/

This case is an example of such clairvoyant policy formation. Charter schools (in the USA), academies (in England), free schools (in Sweden) and the growth of for-profit providers running schools in India and Africa, have been pushed by libertarian conservatism in those respective countries - the assumption that eroding regulation is somehow going to hand-wavily make people smarter. Or just richer. The proponents think 'small government' is better, or 'small anything' is better, or that schools are a good opportunity for profit, but instead of this honest presentation of motive, the subject is couched in terms of academic success, and doing what's right for the schools and the children. They have to do that, of course, to placate teachers and parents. But the evidence for the claim - that these unregulated schools are benefited by 'autonomy' is purely clairvoyant. The evidence to justify policies that have already been put in place, simply doesn't exist. This is not good pedagogy. This is not good schooling. This is not good science.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-opinion-evidence-success-independent-schools.html

Did you know that the Greenwich Meridian is actually in the wrong place? Not the theoretical location, of course, but the physical representation of it, at the Greenwich Observatory, in London. Due to the limitations of uncertainty, in the measurement that decided the line's location, in the late 19th century, the marker is 0.001472° out of place. The position was calculated by drawing a line between the stars of the celestial sphere (night sky) and the centre of the Earth; but the geology of the Earth's surface can cause minute deviations in the measurement of the location of Earth's centre. Mountains will divert plumblines! As a result, the line between the meridian and the Earth's centre is slightly askew, and so the line at the Greenwich Observatory is 102.5 m west of where it should be. You can check this by looking at a co-ordinates showing map, such as this one, where i have linked the exact location of the Observatory's 'meridian line'. Ignore the numbers on the tab (which give Blackheath Avenue's vague co-ordinates) and place your cursor over the pointy bit of the place-indicator. At the bottom of the screen, the specific polar co-ordinates are displayed, and you will clearly see "51.477..., -0.00147..." demonstrating that the location is 0.00147 (3dp) degrees to the west of the real Greenwich Meridian.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-greenwich-prime-meridian-wrong.html

Here's another example of Science working well - through self-correction. When Science finds it's wrong, it's the only thing around that can set wrongnesses straight, and that's exactly what it does. When the meridian's wrong, change it. When a paper's been fraudulently reviewed, chuck it. Credit to German based publishing company 'Springer' for retracting 64 articles, due to the addresses of peer reviewers being faked. Those publications were spread across ten different journals, whereas the 43 that the same company had to chuck out, last March, were all in BioMed Central. This might seem like a concession of pseudoscience, but acceptance of inadequacy is actually a sign of integrity. Superstitionists don't do the same - for them, it's all about PR. In case you were wondering about the scale of this problem, there have been only 230 cases of review fraud, in the three years studied, so that's 230/4,038,000 publications = 0.000057 that have to be retracted. Not very much! Peer review is still an important part of the scientific method, wherein the best method is still for the study authors to pick their own reviewers, as they will best know who is capable of it. Good journals can always override, and papers can always draw negative attention from peers who think the authors chose unwisely. Ultimately, the problems of publication bias, study size, and replication abundance, are vastly more retarding to scientific progress than peer review fraud.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-publisher-retracts-articles-fake-peer.html

"A Russian artist and sculptor has claimed that he met the mysterious and elusive Yeti in eastern Russia, and that the mythological creature even posed for a sketch". Just turn to the right a bit. Yes, that's your best side, love. Now, how would you like to prove that this is actually a picture of you, and not just a generic drawing made up by me? Ah, yes - of course - just scratch the bark in a way that i couldn't possibly have done. You're so smart, bigfoot... and a brilliant muse. Seeya later!
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/portrait-of-a-telepathic-yeti/

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Skydiving spiders show off their gliding skills'
https://youtu.be/SxO1N-90H8E

'Shelf Life Episode 9 - Kinsey's Wasps'

https://youtu.be/lHc5l4gQsro

'Rain Bomb: Rare 'Wet Microburst’ Caught on Camera in Stunning Timelapse'
https://youtu.be/a_G2KRzha7o

'Holmium (new) - Periodic Table of Videos'
https://youtu.be/HQahtzCU0BU

'Final Encounter: Cassini and Dione'
https://youtu.be/_kKfo7NCYTI

'Introduction to Food Marketing to Youth'

https://youtu.be/ZJvy3eNo-KQ

'The Devil's Purpose'
https://youtu.be/Oomtwqtkbjw

'The Sarkeesian Effect: REALITY BENDING FAIL!'
The comic incompetence of masculists David Aurini and Jordan Owen outstrips even Sarkeesian and McIntosh. Note to the audience: that doesn't mean the feminist bigots win, by default. Equality isn't a boxing match! "In the red corner, we have the males; and in the blue corner, we have the females..." :-D
https://youtu.be/pXhnVjQBBaM

'It's just an illusion'

http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-just-illusion.html

'Through The Window - Assassin's Creed Unity (Glitch) - GameFails'
Dat bitch gat style :-D
https://youtu.be/0tlT_qP_pwY

'5 Baffling Uses of CGI in Movies'
https://youtu.be/tAJqVfu6AqA

'5 Weird Ways Dragon Ball Was Censored'
https://youtu.be/mlO0lbWUjZc

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: retardation -- the act or result of delaying; the slowing of something's progress; in Physics, the opposite of acceleration, or negative acceleration; in Medicine, the decline of mental performance

Quote Of The Week: “It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.” - Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The New Millennium Edition

Fact Of The Week: Max Factor - the 'cosmetics' (aesthetic insecurity) company - is named after Max Factor, a polish businessman, and founder of the Max Factor company. The original spelling of his name was Maksymilian Faktorowicz. In 1904, fearing Christian persecution of Jews, in Russia, he migrated to the USA, where the Max Factor company was born. Also born there were three kids, including Frank Factor, who advised him to use the term 'make-up' in relation to 'cosmetics'. Before then, it had only been used by those in theatre and the sex industry.

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'Chairpacabra - The Elder Scrolls Online (Glitch) - GameFails'

https://youtu.be/ObNKNUWm3Fc

'My People Need Me - Far Cry 4 (Glitch) - GameFails'
https://youtu.be/7grFDY5P05E

'First Day On The Job - Fails of February 2015'
https://youtu.be/fh-ucbB3ovA?t=1m

You can't beat AC for glitches. You really can't :-D

'Horse Dance Surprise - Assassin's Creed Unity (Glitch) - GameFails'
https://youtu.be/kkhqHW1Hm0E

'Assassin's Creed Unity's Most Hilarious/Stupid Glitches'
https://youtu.be/jZDs1AR9qh8
.
.
.

Sunday 16 August 2015

Entertainment stuff from the week 10-16/8/15


Hi tax-avoiding linguistic letter-systems,


In other news:

The alphabet's about to get a reshuffle. It's being patented by Google, LOL. Soon, 'Google' will stop being the host company's name, and instead Google will be called 'Alphabet'. The subsidiary companies will be: Calico, Sidewalk, Nest, Fiber, Google Ventures and Google Capital, as well as some assorted others. It's hypothesised that the point of the reshuffle is simply an attempt by Google's CFO Ruth Porat, to avoid tax. You see - these female CFOs and CEOs are completely different to the "straight, white males" who used to run the shop, by cruel masculine rules of profit or else <s>. The battles between Google and the EU, over market dominance abuse, and Google and France over tax, have been long and arduous, and mostly not-blogged by me. Oh, btw, the Alphabet's already been banned in China :-D
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-alphabet-success-google.html

Science acceptance, and endless ritualised sex - what's not to like about Raelianism? Well, maybe the factionalised psychosis, which leads to a totalitarian drive to denounce others and declare superiority, that all religious (and otherwise) factions do, when they think they can get away with it. It wasn't long ago that we heard about the Raelians' new bid for an 'extraterrestrial welcome centre', but now they've issued a decree that "the Jews have been officially replaced and are ordered to leave the Holy Land". Honestly - Jews must go to an arbitrary part of the world; Jews must leave an arbitrary part of the world - when are you humans going to make up your minds? Oy vey! Raelianism isn't the first to adopt this attitude, of course - Christianity's done it, Islam's done it, and of course, Judaism's done it. That's where the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewy-Muzzy conflict has come from - the Jewish desire to displace Gentiles from their chosen centre of operations. Huge numbers of arabs have been deported, for the sake of Mother Israel's purity. The US-and-UK-Judaists-funded Elad Foundation is devoted to 'uncovering' archaeology that 'supports' this social cleansing operation. No superstitious faction is free from this motive to establish verisimilitude through power. All i can say is: a pox on all your houses!
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/oh-those-crazy-raelians-part-jew/

Did you see that picture of a light fitting, in Wyoming, this week? No? More than 1.8 million people saw it on imgur! Oh, all right, light fittings and Wyoming are boring. How about we call it a UFO, over Australia. Did you see that one? Well, no, of course you didn't, because it was a light fitting in Wyoming, but it's the claims of UFOyness that seem to have attracted the hits, LOL. Have a look for yourself :-D
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/fake-ufo-on-fakebook-in-wrong-part-of-the-world/

They didn't start the fire; no they didn't light it; but they tried to fight it. Or maybe they did start it. A meteorite certainly didn't. The vision of a meteor scorching its way through the atmosphere does not continue to be true, all the way to the ground. By then, the slowed meteor has been cooled by windchill, and could barely warm a neglected cup of tea. That means something/someone else must have started it.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/meteorite-didnt-start-the-fire-in-portland/

Has Nazi gold been discovered, in the
Königssee (lake), in Switzerland? Well, considering that it was minted in 1953... probably not. But whomever owned it in the past, it's estimated to be worth ~£11,000. Nazi Gold is the subject of many conspiracy 'theories' but i think gold-hunters will be searching for more regardless, in the Alpine lake, now that this has been brought up!
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/kid-finds-gold-bar-in-german-alpine-lake/

Australia's Minister for Indigenous Affairs has taken flack, this week, for suggesting that Vegemite could be used to brew alcohol, in 'marginalised' communities. To cut a long story short: although yeast is used to make Vegemite (the Ozzie version of Marmite) none of it survives the manufacture process. Vegemite could only be used to flavour the resultant beverage. And i don't think anyone wants that. But what's important about this subject are two things: prohibition, and racism. The fermentability of Vegemite has only been called into question, because of the still-uneradicated perception of 'Australians' and 'Abos' (people with continental ancestry) not because they're 'proper' Australians, but because they're 'different'. The non-documentary 'Rabbit Proof Fence' does an unnervingly good job of presenting this racist history. The very existence of a 'Minister for Indigenous Affairs' is a consequence of the perception that a big black fence line can be drawn between 'Abos' and 'Australians', the way lines can be drawn between 'blacks' and 'whites' and 'vaishyas' and 'shudras'. Where Prohibition comes in, is the perception that psychoactive drugs, like ethanol, create miscreant people (criminals), and so the 'criminal classes' must be denied access to alcohol. Sure, Australia's laws on alcohol consumption are stricter for everyone - the blood-alcohol limit for driving is zero, for example - but there has been no federal imposition on home-brewing since 1972. The fear of the Abo and his Alco is not a rational one, but it is an unsurprising one, when a country sees fit to have a whole different Department, for a population defined only by having local ancestors. It's true that they're less likely to stay in education; less likely to own their own home; less likely to engage in government; more likely to have mental health troubles; more likely to suffer chronic illness; and more likely to commit crimes and do jail time. But any decent sociologist knows that crime is mostly the product of environment - of poverty, and ill health - not of an innate property of criminalness. And of course they're more reticent to engage in 'White' things, like governance - the shunning is mutual! The only way to solve the problem, is to break the barriers down, and to help people on the bases for which they need it - not to treat them as if they're 'different' and give them 'their own' MP. All of the MPs are their own MPs! How many times does this lesson have to be learned, humanity? How many times?
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-alcohol-vegemite.html

St John's College, University of Cambridge, has announced that it is to make public, business papers belonging to William Philip Perrin - an 18th century Jamaican sugar-plantation owner, whose documents contain similar dispassion to traded slaves, as modern corporates devote to 'labour costs'. A note in the collection, described as "a list of Mr John Broomfield's negroes, with their age and valuation" catalogues 35 men and 19 women, as well as children as young as 14, who had been valued for sale as slaves. Men such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, who made it their responsibility to push for the Abolition Bill in 1807, were fighting against capitalist interests, in perpetuating the perception of people as property - objects to be fed and kept, but treated with little more regard than that. It's an attitude to living, feeling organisms that perpetuates, to this day, and it's why it's necessary for Workplace Rights, Trade Unions, etc, to exist. Distancing customers from the moral impacts of their businesses, is the key to keeping them going, and to keeping the money rolling in. It's a generic phenomenon, for organisations to want to control their image, for profit's sake, and one that can, and has in the past had, terrifying consequences.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-documents-reveal-price-britain-slave.html

New nicotine-eating bacteria could exacerbate the harm to tobacco-smoke suckers. Yay! <s> No wait, that can't be right, because the paper's titled 'A New Strategy for Smoking Cessation: Characterization of a Bacterial Enzyme for the Degradation of Nicotine'. Hmmm.... considering that nicotine is what nicotine addicts need, to feel satiated, and will continue to suck smoke until they are satiated, surely reducing the nicotine's effect on the brain, or the amount that reaches the brain, will just lead them to smoke more, to get the satiety they need. Huh? #addictionfail. This is fascinating research; but it sounds, to me, like the researchers've been encouraged by the PR department, to find some way to market it, and they came up with something that's completely backwards! If you want people to smoke less, you should increase their sensitivity to the ingredient that compels them to smoke. Duh! Or, try to wean them off that ingredient. Otherwise, the harm from all the other ingredients can only go up. I'm not surprised that they're described as 'chemists' and not as 'addiction experts' or something like that. If they were, however, that would be plain dishonest. Cool research; risible marketing.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-nicotine-eating-bacteria-day-smokers-habit.html

It's not Fox News, but it is Fox 6 Now. And it thinks it's seen a woman on Mars. LOL. "UFO Sightings Daily has brought attention to the picture, saying that the shape “looks like a woman partly cloaked.” In a YouTube video, it also points out images in that same picture that “may” or “may not be” a dwelling and/or a vehicle and tracks." I'm struggling to see any of that! It's just a rocky terrain. The powers of pareidolia must be weak with me, today :-D
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/curiositys-photos-reveal-not-woman-on-mars-but-how-silly-news-sites-can-be/

This, however, is a real observation. Valles Marineris, as can be seen in the picture, contains streaks of water ice, that flow downhill, every Martian Spring, carving the observed linear channels. It's not known how pure the water might be, however, but if relatively clean, it would be an invaluable source of H2O for any human who visited. Most Martian water is locked in ice, at the poles, so equatorial liquid water would be highly valuable to anyone who went there.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-image-seasonal-mars-valles-marineris.html

Which are better: cats or dogs? Well, evolutionarily, it seems cats have had the upper hand, as the extinction rate of canids in North America, over the last 40 million years, has been surprisingly high. The researchers suggest that competition pressure from felines might be responsible for this. But what about the extinction rates of cats? A race isn't a race, without comparison.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-competition-ancestors-cats-drove-extinction.html

Who are the girls on the negatives? I have no idea, but maybe you can pitch in...
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-thrift-yields-astronomical-mystery.html

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Bioresonance - Where Quackery And Religion Cross (SZ#348)' (my upload)
https://youtu.be/eHmQx-gj-EE

{By coincidence, the USA's Department of Defence has recently pledged money to 'test' some other of the claims of Scientology: to treat Gulf War PTSD victims. It turns out they're just 'detox' tricks, which can be highly dangerous}

'European Heatwave MELTED MY GALLIUM!'
https://youtu.be/k8YF_TZL8Vk

'China explosion could have OBLITERATED Yankee stadium!'
https://youtu.be/_hcwMwFbJKc

'Your periodic table is probably WRONG'
https://youtu.be/l-USbaS_LLA

'Counting Flamingos'
https://youtu.be/HAnrlLAWelc

'M25 and measuring the distance to stars - Deep Sky Videos'
https://youtu.be/R59JHIohXYQ

'Unique octopus sex caught on camera'
https://youtu.be/HbUKu1lz9pQ
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-octopus-unique-social-sexual-behavior.html

'The London Humanist Choir sing 'From so simple', inspired by Darwin's Origin of Species'
https://youtu.be/pbxB9eRUtUs

'Myanmar inundated'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-image-myanmar-inundated.html

'Good morning from the International Space Station'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-image-good-morning-international-space.html

'Rosetta's big day in the sun'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-rosetta-big-day-sun.html

'Dad³ Vlogs! The Bridge!'
https://youtu.be/Zp_buSKqHfg

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: carbuncular -- having the properties of, or relating to: a semi-precious stone; or a painful localized bacterial infection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue that usually has several openings through which pus is discharged.

Quote Of The Week: "Death is not an energy drink" - Simon Pegg

Article Title Of The Week: 'Teddy bear shot in drive-by shooting'

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff


'Excerpts from the Harry Hill Show 1'

http://youtu.be/NA0eUViTYak

'Excerpts from the Harry Hill Show 2'
http://youtu.be/1HUUHv_mvrA


'Spitting Image The Charity Song, 1990'
http://youtu.be/N43AOtI_g98
.
.
.

Sunday 9 August 2015

Entertainment stuff from the week 3-9/8/15


Hi african amazonians,


Please allow me to go all gooey over something utterly inevitable, that might not mean anything to you, at all...

'Tickets! Music! Quashed Rumours!
http://www.ganymede.tv/2015/08/tickets-music-quashed-rumours/

I'm such a fanfossil for RD. Fossil's latin for 'dug up', right. And that's exactly how i feel, right now :-P

If only something comic, like, um... someone hacking a transport company's software to display pornography instead of bus arrival/departure times... had happened.

Yes, that might cheer me up.

The text of the article hyperlinked above, says it was shown for 15 minutes; but the pictures say a 'technical hitch' might have impeded that. You can always trust Adobe Flash plugins :-D


Was Jenson Button gassed, while he was burgled? Apparently, not. What a shame - gassing works so well, in fiction!

'Mad gassers burgle Button, or not'
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/mad-gassers-burgle-button-or-not/


In other news:

Round, horizontal strip, vertical strip, or 'w' shaped? Why do animals have pupils the shapes they do? This is a question, to which the answer's been investigated for a long time. Congruent with the latest evidence, it's thought that pupil shape evolves to suit environment. Sheep, deer, horses, etc, have horizontal pupils, so that they can see the breadth of the landscape, even in bright light, when their iris is constricted. And according to this research, when they lower their heads to graze, their irises actually rotate (up to 50 degrees) to maintain a horizontal pupil. 82% of surveyed species with vertical pupils, had shoulder heights lower than 42 centimetres. The researchers have taken this to suggest that a vertical slit aids prey identification and distancing, when close to the ground. Animals that do not keep their eyes close to the ground, like big cats, dogs (by their lupine ancestry) and humans, have round pupils. Why any species might have round pupils instead of slits seems a mystery though, when slits have such better performance. Human round-pupilled eyes can only vary pupil area by a factor of ~10, whereas straight slits can achieve ~130, which means greater protection from bright light, allowing greater sensitivity in low light. Maybe round pupils are simply easier. Geckos and cuttlefish have 'w'-shaped irises, so that they can see in the dim light of caves, or the sea, but not get retinal damage from coming out into bright light. Their irises can change pupil area by a factor of ~300. Maybe the reason some clades are left with round pupils, is simply that it hasn't been evolutionarily economic for them develop anything better.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-pupil-linked-animals-ecological-niche.html

Are you dead or alive? Are you sure? How about a double-check. It's been demonstrated at the latest Def Con gathering - where people share information on hacking techniques, to stay ahead of the game - that it's possible to declare other people to be dead, for vengeful purposes; or oneself, for insurance purposes. By exploiting e-records databases (which are good for verifying legitimacy to customers) and posing as a doctor and funeral director, the speaker demonstrated two methods of gaining authority over death certificate application. The 'dead' person would only notice when they tried to do something like renew a passport. This area of research was inspired, a year ago, when an Australian hospital accidentally declared 200 patients to be dead. If it can be done accidentally, it can be done deliberately. The research also went into phantom births, which are even easier; but of course, it takes many years until that 'identity' can be used by anyone.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-death-online.html

What do beer, wine and bread have in common? That's right - bestiality! The yeast species utilised to produce all of these comestibles - Saccharomyces cerevisiae - first had its genome sequenced in 1996. Since then, it's been noticed that the species has two different forms, for many of its genes. That observation prompted the hypothesis of genome duplication and recombination, in ancient ancestors of modern Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genome duplication (where the genome doubles, but the cell doesn't split) has been common, across evolutionary timescales, and has facilitated greater complexity in biological form. But these researchers suggest that duplication didn't actually happen, in this case - they think two slightly diverged species of yeast hybridised (which technically requires bestial sex), doubling up many genes, but also providing the observed variation in the many other gene forms.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-yeast-genomeby-species.html

Here's some promising news in the world of Unclear Physics: Fermilab's NOvA experiment has found its first evidence of neutrinos oscillating, over a 500 mile path through the Earth. Because neutrinos interact so little with matter, no tunnel is needed; but it also means trillions of neutrinos have to be sent, every second, to increase the chances of some getting picked up by the detector at the other end. Neutrinos themselves oscillate between their electron, tau, and muon forms, so although all are sent as muon neutrinos, some arrive as electron neutrinos. The detector saw far fewer muons arrive than expected without oscillation, and more electron neutrinos too. Fermilab's success at conducting this experiment suggests more good news in this area is still to come, in the proceeding decades. How do neutrinos interact with the Higgs Field? What has their role, as the most common particle, been in the development of the universe? Only by further work can these questions be answered.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-fermilab-neutrinos-miles.html

You couldn't make it up. Well, maybe you could, if you were feeling particularly vindictive. Religious superstitionists have been flocking to a dry patch in a clay-surfaced wall, to marvel at its, um... dryness? It certainly can't be a miraculous prophetic communiqu
é, can it! "We believe it is a vision of our prophet". Hmmm.... Nigerian Rationalist Leo Igwe has commented: "A school teacher describes it as a 'true sign from God' but did not state why God sent the sign to muslims in Bamako not in Gao or in Sikasso. A BBC reporter says the religious sign is a 'drying patch of cement in the shape of a standing woman'. A standing woman? Now the issue is : Why do Malians describe a 'parch of cement' as a religious sign? If Tijani muslims believe in miracle signs, does it mean that they should take any sign to be a religious sign- including a sign on a toilet wall? What makes a sign religious? What makes a particular sign an islamic, not christian, religious sign? How does one differentiate a religious from a non religious sign? And who determines what is a religious sign in the first place?" Too much logic, Leo. You'll never pass your Knuckle-dragging Theology exam, like that :-P
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/mali-wallmark-low-quality-miracle-save-your-money-dont-bother/

This has to be the worst hoax of all time. It shows a tiny picture of an anaconda, crudely photoshopped into a tropical river-scene, populated by some dark-skinned people. They're all looking the wrong way - away from the camera and the snake (so it's not possible to tell exactly who/where they are) but the description says they're in Africa. On the Amazon. With a weight-measurement and kill-o-meter running to four significant figures, and a detail of how many Royal British Commandos it took to kill it. Tut tut tut. First: the Amazon is not in Africa. Second: the Amazon River is a lot bigger than that. Third: who brought the scales that can weigh so much, with so much accuracy? Fourth: who brought the kill-o-meter that could judge so many deaths with so much accuracy? Fifth: what would the Royal British Commandos be doing there? Sixth: why wouldn't the Royal British Commandos be pictured, seeing as they supposedly got the glory for killing the snake? Seventh: there's no such regiment as the Royal British Commandos! Either this is a staggering case of incompetence, or it's a parody. Poe's Law strikes again :-D
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/08/giant-snake-photo-hoax/

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Tricks to get honey off bees!'
https://youtu.be/9AvB2pjY-R0

'Secrets Hidden in Images (Steganography) - Computerphile'
https://youtu.be/TWEXCYQKyDc

'NASA | Arching Eruption [HD]'
https://youtu.be/0aHYmAcy69g

'NASA | A Story of Ozone: The Earth's Natural Sunscreen [HD]'
https://youtu.be/0mDr9w8bQw4

'NASA | ISS Nighttime Compilation [HD]'
https://youtu.be/sWMh4fsGt2I

'What Dawn Discovered on Vesta and Ceres'
https://youtu.be/dzAOXdeJJb0

'Extreme Physics BBQ'
https://youtu.be/yrJFesJY1w8

'Sea "alien" spotted off the coast of Angola'

https://youtu.be/MVHlHBqo_Hs

'Sentinels catch traffic jam'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-sentinels-traffic.html

'Algae bloom in Lake St. Clair'
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-image-algae-bloom-lake-st.html

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: immolate -- to kill, destroy, or sacrifice by burning

Quote Of The Week: “Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.” - George Bernard Shaw

Fact Of The Week: In 1972, British Water Board worker Bill Thorpe pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and by the next day, all of the water had drained away! He thought he was just pulling up bunkum, but it was actually a forgotten plug, for draining water into the nearby River Idle. Being a canal, it was only the water between Whitsunday Pie Lock and Retford Town Lock that drained away - that's also how it managed to empty entirely. To see a picture of Bill, holding the plug, click here and scroll down.

{Where the hell did i hear about that? On #153 of the Skeptics with a K, of course.}


------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'NASA | ISS Timelapse: West Coast of the Americas [HD]'
https://youtu.be/3DBVIQgsX3A

'NASA | ISS Timelapse: Aurora Australis [HD]'
https://youtu.be/vcpgma7jrcg


'Breve test de personalidad'
Are you paranoid/drunk/childish/racist/high/stupid?
http://micro.cibermitanios.com.ar/post/126238959840/breve-test-de-personalidad


'A Bit of Fry & Laurie: Australian Soap'
https://youtu.be/bV3tfauw3vQ

'Fry and Laurie Shakespeare Master Class'

https://youtu.be/eOBV7DS65S8

'A bit of Fry and Laurie - Judge Not'

https://youtu.be/SVRODdXVI3Q


'Queen TOP 5 unreleased tracks part 01'
https://youtu.be/uTF88Wbnx5o

'Queen TOP 5 unreleased tracks part 02'

https://youtu.be/zIXiz3y_MEc
.
.
.

Sunday 2 August 2015

Entertainment stuff from the week 27/7 - 2/8/15


Hi palm-bearers,


I've been down with influenza again, this week, so that's my excuse for the paucity of writing. Curse flu's high mutation rate!

{Oh, btw, Blogger appears to use cookies. Like the whole WWW does. But now blogspot has to tell you about them. I hope cookies make you happy, LOL}


The Good Thinking Society published each of these videos, in the last week. It seems so obvious, now, why they say the same thing in parting, every time...

'Good Thinking Investigates: Palmistry (Part 1)'
https://youtu.be/SaUZRRUAn7I

'Good Thinking Investigates: Palmistry (Part 2)'
https://youtu.be/M5c0vmkLw44

'Good Thinking Investigates: Palmistry (Part 3)'
Bloody hell, Harry!
https://youtu.be/UndHjweWWoA

Palmists, like many quackery-mongering bullshitters, claim that their 'powers of intuition' are what give them results - they don't 'need' knowledge. If you've already seen Part 3, i think you'll have noticed very little room for intuition, LOL.

In reality, it's all Barnum Statements (ones vague enough to apply to many people, while sounding like they apply to very few) and Cold Reading (getting the victim to think they're being served, when really the victim's doing all the work) but the idea that intuition plays a role, is one that switches off the perpetrator's self-criticism abilities.

If it's not about clearly-defined cause and effect, then it's all about handwavey intuitive magical-thinking, and if the latter is how 'it works' then that means it's OK to think like that. And if it's OK to think like that, then the victim has genuinely been served well, regardless of what the actual effects on them might have been.

It's this disconnect from evidence of reality that terrifies me - it's a kind of cultural psychosis - the ideas rattling between people bear no relation to the world they actually live in!

From Palmistry, to sexism, to migration, the key to getting decisions about our futures right, is to "ask only 'what are the facts?' and 'what truth do the facts bear out?' Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. Look only, and solely, at what are the facts"


In-and-on-or-around-this-date-or-time-of-year:

The 6th of August is the 70th anniversary of the first dropping of an atom bomb on a city, when the 'Enola Gay' aeroplane was used to drop 'Little Boy' on Hiroshima, Japan. Realisation of the use to which the products of their research had been put, motivated the scientists to initiate the movement colloquially known as the 'ban the bomb' movement, of which the above-quoted Bertrand Russell was a supporter. He was actually arrested, at the age of 89, for a 'breach of the peace' at one of the movement's public demonstrations.

The 6th of August is also the 125th anniversary of the murder of murderer William Kemmler, by electric chair, in Buffalo, USA. He was the first person to be murdered this way, in accordance with legal statute. According to viewers of this semi-public event, the first electrocution failed (although it had worked on a horse, the day before) and the second caused blood vessels to rupture and Kemmler's body to cook. The New York Times reported that "an awful odor began to permeate the death chamber, and then, as though to cap the climax of this fearful sight, it was seen that the hair under and around the electrode on the head and the flesh under and around the electrode at the base of the spine was singeing. The stench was unbearable." The history of State-sanctioned murders is as full of botch jobs as the history of 'orthodox' murders seems to be!


In other news:

New Horizons data has nudged researchers at a possible subterranean ocean, deep inside Pluto. If true, then this hypothesis could explain some of the geological unexpectedness seen there, where a frozen planet would not be expected to show activity. It's also been released, that Pluto's atmosphere has been fluctuating in density. If the tholin-formation hypothesis, mentioned last week, is right, then Pluto's brownness is inversely proportional to the amount of atmosphere it has. So Pluto's colour might fluctuate, out of phase with its atmospheric presence. Interesting :-)
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-horizons-hint-underground-ocean.html

Brown Dwarf LSR J1835+3259 has been observed to have 'powerful' auroras. Brown Dwarves are stars so small that they haven't kicked off on nuclear fusion, so they barely shine. They're basically more like huge planets than small stars. This discovery makes it clear that Brown Dwarves are highly planetty, in that they draw in material, to their surface, and have a malignant (hydrogen) atmosphere to excite the charged particles in. Being 18.5 light-years away, however, means the only proper picture of it is an artist's impression, LOL.
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-brown-dwarf-stars-host-powerful.html

Lithium has been found ejected by a supernovaing stellar system, for the first time ever. This is interesting, and baffling, because lithium is associated with young stars. A decade ago, the prevailing wisdom (according to my memory) was that stars would have 'burned away' most of their lithium into heavier elements, by the time they reached the main sequence, and so finding lithium signatures in a star indicated youth. But old stars, of course, are associated with supernova events. So how has this star gone supernova, while containing lots of lithium? Maybe contamination from another body hitting it reduced its pressure-building ability, and caused it to collapse in on itself. Maybe. I think we should wait for the astrophysics researchers to see what they find.
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-lithium-star.html

The board director of the Chiropractors Association of Australia has been forced to resign, after being caught assaulting a baby in a pediatric (children's) hospital. She sneaked in to 'treat' the baby, for god-knows-what. It's the official pseudo-medical position of the International Chiropractic Association that "Chiropractic care can never start too early". In the real world, Chiroquacktic is not a therapy of any kind, as it is predicated on a superstitious belief in subluxations. It bears no relation to genuine anatomy. Physical assault of children, under the guise of 'manipulation' therapy can damage their joints and cartilage, and even kill, by breaking bones, joints and blood-vessels. This is why evidence accrual should always be the precursor to considering an intervention as a potential treatment. It must never be allowed to be 'found later'.
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/07/hmm-wonder-why-chiropractor-would-have-to-sneak-into-a-hospital/

When will it be free to sing 'Happy Birthday'? Well, in the EU, no later than the 1st of January 2017, and in the USA, no later than 2030. But the copyright itself is dubious. The song (lyrics+tune) were first printed at least as early as 1912, but for some reason, they were allowed to be copyrighted in 1935. Warner/Chappell Music then bought the company that owned the copyright, in 1988, and have since made a mint out of it. Whether that copyright should be respected at all, given that they didn't come up with the work - neither tune nor lyrics - seems uncontentious to me, but not to those who think Warner/Chappell's ordasity should be respected. The ins and outs of Intellectual Property Law have always been ad absurdum, and this is no exception. The emlinked article, below, relates to a filmmaker's discovery of a credited manuscript from 1927; but that's much later than 1912, so should it really change anything? Well, given that W/C shouldn't own the use of a traditional song at all, let's hope so. Otherwise, technically, we might all owe W/C money, every time we gather to sing it for each other, at Birthday parties. The conditions tend to include boundaries of relatedness and number, so if you invite extended family around, you might have to pay the fee! Bonkers.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/filmmakers-fighting-happy-birthday-copyright-find-their-smoking-gun/

Eukaryotes, it turns out, are rampant sex maniacs! What are eukaryotes? Well, imagine the tree of life: the biggest family-groupings are eukaryotes, bacteria and archaea; so eukaryotes include animals, plants, and fungi; and each of these include single-celled and multi-celled organisms. Multi-cellecular organisms as large as we are, of course, find it easiest to reproduce our forms through sexual reproduction, whereas single-celled organisms always just divide, like bacteria. Right? Wrong. The basics of sex (not the inney-outey stuff) covers the fusing of genomes, which requires cell-splicing. Cells have to merge, for genomes to splurge; and without that, there's no mixing of genomes (sexual reproduction) going on. Biologists have found that cell fusion, nuclear fusion, and recombination, do exist in single-celled eukaryotic species, in animals and plants. At least, the genes are there, packing these tiny organisms out. The researchers suggest that lack of direct observation of physical protist sex, is purely down to natural frequency, and the amount of time spent looking for it. Given that Sally Le Page watches flies bonking all day, i expect her to do a video on this, at some point. Get on it, Sally :-P
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-sex-eukaryotes-common-believed.html

It's not going well for Solar Impulse 2. Since setting a record flight time, for any kind of plane, it's been forced to ground until it can repair battery damage. The repair bill's estimated to come in at €20 million, which will have to be found before it can leave to cross the USA, and then Europe.
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-solar-impulse-20mn-euros-flight.html

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

We have two fantastic videos to start, this week. Chance is clumpy, LOL

'PROBLEMATIC'
https://youtu.be/OSPwHn0ugkQ

'Use Cream That's Cheaper - a parody of Don't Fear The Reaper'
https://youtu.be/Osptj2x9_7k

'Why Insects Love Summer – Flight, Fights and Booze'
https://youtu.be/HCW79bxW0Fk

'Tesla Model S P85D | Fully Charged'
https://youtu.be/DDKuE-3WOJk

'Bone-Chilling Sounds Picked Up by Spacecraft'
*bone-chilling sights. This is the sound of light - electromagnetic waves ;-)
https://youtu.be/ook0Nqqj73k

'NASA | Rover's-Eye View of Marathon on Mars [HD]'
https://youtu.be/-4USii0T0HE

'Rivers of Energy Inside the Sun 4K'
https://youtu.be/7CjMgVGYHUY

'How many chess games are possible?'
https://youtu.be/Km024eldY1A

'How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life | Jon Ronson | TED Talks'
The tyranny of the extreme left-wing's lust for eroding other's power is terrifyingly mundane, compared to the sobriety of the centre. You can see more of Jon Ronson here, and hear him through my comment, which is still the most recent :-D
https://youtu.be/wAIP6fI0NAI

'STEREO-A spacecraft returns data from the far side of the sun'
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-image-stereo-a-spacecraft-side-sun.html

'Stormy seas in Sagittarius'

http://phys.org/news/2015-07-hubble-image-stormy-seas-sagittarius.html

'NASA satellite camera provides 'EPIC' view of Earth'
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-nasa-satellite-camera-epic-view.html

'Concordia Antarctic research station in winter'
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-image-concordia-antarctic-station-winter.html

'Sentinel-1A captures southern Bavaria'
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-image-sentinel-1a-captures-southern-bavaria.html

'Mars Express: Flying over Becquerel crater [HD]'
https://youtu.be/n1vS7CC7E-g

'Stare at the dot!'
There are no tricks to this. Just watch and do.
https://youtu.be/AkK3Z0i4mME

'SYMPHONY OF SCIENCE - WAVES OF LIGHT'
https://youtu.be/5FiNZvuOkzY

'The Darkness - Last Of Our Kind (Official Video)'
This is what happens when you get Darklings to perform your music video for you. Fantastic :-D
https://youtu.be/4Hi_kzzSXhY

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: borborygmus -- the scientific name for 'stomach rumbling' produced by liquid/gaseous fluid moving around the coils of the intestine, by peristalsis

Quote Of The Week: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool" - Richard P. Feynman

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'The Darkness - Get Your Hands Off My Woman'
This is what Darklings are really like, LOL
https://vimeo.com/67931467


'the Wikisinger'
https://vimeo.com/132408379

'Soundcheck Spaß'
https://www.facebook.com/gamperanddadoni/videos/534172180055323/?fref=nf

'Sand Sculptures'
https://www.facebook.com/mouawadpascal/posts/452908161556680

'Acatenango Volcano, Guatemala'

http://micro.cibermitanios.com.ar/post/124447316840/volcan-acatenango-en-guatemala


'Red Dwarf Theme'
This sounds like the best orchestral gig ever :-D
https://youtu.be/quTktctks30

To see the rest of the gig, follow the links to her YouTube channel, or click here.
.
.
.