This is a question on the Philosophy of Science examination paper for the BPhil at Oxford, as set last year.

"Does the success of a scientific theory justify belief in the entities that the theory posits?"

Indeed the paper has a related question:

"Must a good scientific explanation of the occurrence of an event refer to some of its causes?"

The student manual includes the helpful suggestion that all questions are, of course, liable to interpretation.

It (catching a ball) was easy, I was 35 or so and for the first time  in my life caught a ball! To be able to do this I had to learn how to think  with both OPTIC and Brain Generated vision. Psychology has no clue we have two forms of vision that happen during the autism lack of eye contact and one is deep internal thoughts that cancel out optic vision. The other is normal optic vision that all humans share and most people use all the time with out much exception. 

"Renewable fuels got a "bit ahead of themselves in the public eye in 2008 when gasoline was over $4 a gallon and the race to biofuels was on," said Chris Kraft, president of Nashville, Tenn.-based CKFutures.com. "High fossil fuels lead to high demand for ethanol, which lead to historically high grain prices, which made ethanol as expensive as gasoline." <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Spring Forward

Spring forward.
Seize the daylight hour.
We have but too few summers.
All mortals must fall back
in our autumn years.


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Picture via Wikimedia, public domain, courtesy of P. Ingerson

We tend to think of firewalls as either trying to keep people outside from getting in, or to keep those inside from looking out. The Chinese have firewalls around government websites to protect them from prying eyes, as well as around the whole country to stop their people from seeing the whole big bad web. But I can't think of an example where other people will build a firewall around you to keep you in your place. It's like having the wall around your property built by all your neighbours; why don't they like you?

They Might Be Giants serve up another slice of power pop for kids with "I am a Paleontologist". One of the better videos in their science series.

How to explain resonance to a non-scientist? A few years back I heard a guest speaker on BBC Radio 4 trying to explain the resonance effects of pulsed microwave radiation on the brain in contrast to the thermal effects of the carrier frequency: sadly he failed miserably. What is it about resonance that makes it so hard to explain?

I have taught it to A-level students and to undergraduate engineers. Electrical engineers, in particular, need to be thoroughly familiar with the phenomenon and yet, I could see that its significance eluded them. There are few, if any, good visible examples in real life. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is one famous example, where strong winds set the bridge oscillating. Eventually it hit its resonant frequency and collapsed.