The Atlantean Triangle

Atlantis is in the news once more, and then some, so I thought I'd cash in on it analyse the stories scientifically to see what is being claimed.

In a world of missing links and UFOs, bimonthly instances of the apocalypse and scientific scare journalism about chemicals and biology, Atlantis still reigns supreme as the thing most often discovered time and again. Since 360 B.C. everyone has wanted it to be real.

Really, when you had Plato creating your press releases that is to be expected. Who doesn't want to find a city of gold and Poseidon hanging around? The man knew how to turn a phrase.  

Well there's a new article "May Atheism Succeed Demographically" that has invoked another variant of social Darwinism, yet again.

Certainly there are many situations in which one might utilize the concept of evolution, in describing a variety of scenarios.  In general, the point may be to demonstrate that something changes over time, usually with the perspective that it may be improving or adapting to some situation, although such a directionality is not a requirement. 

The Authentic Biography OF H2O

as told exclusively to this author


Thanks to its marvellous memory, water tells some tales of its adventures down through the ages.

With the recent rescue of three young women in Cleveland, held for over a decade by a kidnapper, we are now subject to the useless speculations of the media.

Why the news media feels compelled to ask inane questions and foment greater misunderstandings isn't clear.

In December, when a Republican berated the CDC for not finding links between vaccines and autism, science media was outraged.  Yet for years prior to that, Democrats had made the same claim with no mention of their political affiliation at all.  In that same hearing Democrats did it and corporate science media never discussed it.  

Only the Republican got attention, just like only Michele Bachmann got attention for using an anecdote as evidence about a vaccine during the last presidential campaign, though Senator Barack Obama said he was unconvinced that vaccines didn't cause autism during his campaign in 2008 and it got almost zero coverage elsewhere.

It isn’t Monday, but I’m puzzled every day of the week.

Alice is puzzled too; she’s playing with a new tetrahedral die. Each face has a different positive integer on it, but the numbers are peculiar. Alice quickly notices that if she rolls the die and adds up the numbers on the three exposed faces, she always comes up with a perfect square. “That’s clever!” thinks Alice.

Assuming that Alice’s tetrahedral die uses the smallest possible numbers, what is the sum of the numbers on all four faces?

Richard Holmes - Falling Upwards

Falling Upwards.  What a wonderful title for a history of ballooning.

As someone with more than a slight interest in the history of science and technology*, I intend to buy a copy of this new book.

Falling Upwards is a wonderful history of the early years of ballooning, crammed with adventures and musings. Beginning in the 1780s with the generation that thought travel would be revolutionised by the balloon, it finishes at the end of the 19th century, when ballooning appealed only to those wanting something “refreshingly unreliable: a means to mysterious adventure rather than a mode of mundane travel”.

Compare the following situations:

1 - You dial the number of a call center, and the automated system informs you that the estimated waiting time is eight minutes.

2 - You dial the number of a call center, and the automated system tells you that the estimated waiting time has a uncertainty of plus or minus one minute.

Which automated system is providing you with a more informative answer in your opinion ? Could you base on the information provided by the first one your decision to hang the phone and go for a beer or stay on the line  ? Or would you be more confident of your decision (not necessarily the same!) based on the information provided by the second statement ?

Two Armstrong EKG Readings - A Question Of Provenance


[edit]
This article has been updated - please see:
One Small Step - Two Small Strips ( Or Maybe Three )



I recently posted an article: Neil Armstrong's Heartbeat - EKG Up For Auction.  Unsurprisingly many other news sources have featured the same story, after all, this is a unique item.