Seth Lloyd - Quantum Hanky Panky

You've probably heard Depak Chopra and other new-age quacks talk about 'quantum healing' and other similarly pseudo-scientific sounding phrases, so you might be feeling skeptical when you hear the words 'quantum hanky panky' and you see the picture of the pretty girl on the right of this entry, but this ain't Depak Chopra... this is Seth Lloyd, an MIT engineering professor who specializes in quantum mechanics (and especially quantum computing).

In the following presentation, and through the use of some fascinating examples (like photosynthesis, smelling and the avian navigational compass), this endearing geek extraordinaire (with a hilarious laugh, by the way) argues that there is growing evidence that biological systems engage in some ridiculously interesting quantum behavior. Biology, meet quantum mechanics... and make some babies!

In terms of the example about smell, sure, the lock-and-key mechanism may not fully explain what's going on, but why go to the quantum level when the differences in weight between the similarly structured molecules might do the job? Or has that hypothesis been eliminated already?
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Newt Gingrich - Atheist Islamist Takeover

In Plato's classic dialogue The Apology, Socrates is impeached on charges of impiety. The prosecutor, Meletus, argues that Socrates is an atheist, and that Socrates believes in gods not approved by the state. How could Socrates believe in gods and be an atheist at the same time, you ask? He couldn't... that's logically impossible, you might say.

Well, Newt Gingrich is worried that if Athens was threatened by the impiety of one Socrates, imagine how America will be threatened by an atheist radical Islamist takeover...

The Daily Show - Indecision 2012 - Base Race - Bachmann, Cain & Gingrich
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Wow... so he fucked all those women because he's a true patriot? Sweet, gonna use that excuse from now on :)

Of course, Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death, so although Gingrich is a blithering idiot making up fake propaganda, I wouldn't dismiss his power to mobilize the ignorant and bigoted just yet..
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Winter Time Lapse

If you thought winter was over a few weeks ago when the temperatures were starting to rise, you must have found the past week or so incredibly disappointing and frustrating... I know I did.

But however cold it's been, none of it compares to what Randy Halverson must have endured putting together the following magnificent video documenting the winter in South Dakota during sub-zero degree weather and -25F windchills... all for your viewing delight:

And if you thought that was great, Henry Jun Wah Lee is about to mesmerize you with his sequence taken in Yosemite National Park:

Suddenly I actually want to be there now...

And if you want more beauties of this sort, check out the time lapse tag.
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Robert Sapolsky - Are Humans Just Another Primate?

Every time scientists have tried to come up with a set of defining characteristics of what it means to be human, subsequent observation has revealed that there are other species who share those features previously thought to be unique to us...

We are faced with a puzzle: on the one hand, given our shared evolutionary history, we should expect to be quite similar to our evolutionary cousins; on the other hand, given our close genetic relatedness to chimps and bonobos, we should be more similar to them than we actually are. So what gives?

In the following absolutely fascinating presentation, Robert Sapolsky deploys a brief intro into many now classic scientific experiments. Armed with this evidence, he organizes the ways in which we are similar to other species, and how sometimes we take those similarities to hitherto unknown extremes. In the end, he posits his thoughts about some abilities and quirks that may not have any counterpart in the animal kingdom. Agree or disagree, this talk is certainly worth watching.

If you can't get enough Sapolsky, watch him talk about the weird world of toxoplasmosis, or listen to him explain how hormones can affect our minds.

And if you're outside the US and can't watch Hulu, you can also find the talk in the FORA.tv site.
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A Brief Introduction to Genetics

One of the things Darwin never understood was the mechanism responsible for the inheritance of the traits upon which natural selection would work. Of course, he knew the fact of inheritance, and even realized at some point that it must have a digital basis (else the end result would be a blending of traits upon which natural selection could not possibly work).

It would be Gregor Mendel who would first come to understand and document this process when he noticed that organisms are endowed with discrete units of inheritance (that can even skip generations). Once he laid the foundation, a whole new science of Genetics would be born, and the scientists who took the baton would run for it like their life depended on it. Here is an extremely brief and equally impressive history:

Anyone want to swap genes? :)
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Hans Rosling - The Magic Washing Machine

I don't know about you, but when Hans Rosling speaks, I listen. It's like this adorable man is incapable of being uninteresting :)

In this TEDTalk presentation, he argues that the greatest invention of the industrial revolution is the washing machine. Of course, with population growth and the ever-expanding energy and pollution problems, the tree-hugger in you might want to object to such an irresponsible claim... but you forget this is Hans Rosling we're talking about, so there's going to be more to this claim than meets the eye :)

Check out some of his previous presentations here, here and especially here.
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Isabel Behncke - Evolution's Gift of Play, from Bonobos to Humans

When you compare the regular chimpanzee and the bonobo, one of the most striking differences is the presence of sometimes incredible violence in the former and the complete absence of it in the latter (at least as far as we have been able to observe over the past 50 years). Both species are wicked smart, and are fascinating in their own ways, but when it comes to getting along with others and being gregarious, there's probably no species on the planet, including humans, who can come even close to bonobos.

This lack of violence is probably not all that surprising once we consider that bonobo societies are matriarchal -feminists are probably wetting themselves as we speak :) -and that social bonding and even conflict resolution are achieved through daily orgiastic feasts. When was the last time you heard of someone wanting to get into a fight after getting laid? Exactly...

In the following TEDTalk presentation, cutie primatologist Isabel Behncke argues (and has the footage to prove) that much of what underlies all of bonobo's friendliness has to do with the fact that they have a life-long commitment to play. And if play is the basis for social bonding and conflict resolution, and it's working out well for bonobos, why not for us too?

I wouldn't mind playing with her :)

And if you want to learn more about bonobo awesomeness, check them out here and here, or just type 'bonobo' in the search bar above.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. - Letter from Birmingham Jail

We all know Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great orator. And of course, when you throw in a bunch of amens and hallelujahs, and when you talk about the promised land to a highly religious nation, it's a lot easier to incite their passion and support.

Call me a cynic if you want, but while I endorse the message of civil rights, I've always had some problem with his speeches. What I've always been impressed with, however, was the letter he wrote when he was imprisoned in Birmingham to a group of white clergymen who disagreed with his methods. Unable to give a speech to a sympathetic audience from his cell, he had to choose his words very carefully, and the result is a masterful defense of nonviolent protest and an articulation of the elements that can justify civil disobedience and its manner of execution.

The video below is a verbatim dramatization of that entire letter, performed by Corey Jones playing the role of Martin Luther King, Jr. (starts at about the 4 minute mark).

That's what they get for writing a letter to a man who's got lots of education and plenty of time to respond while sitting in jail :)
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Bill Maher - Catholics Come Home Spoof

Once the most powerful institution in the world, the Catholic Church has been experiencing the number of its faithful dwindle over the past few decades. I won't speculate as to why this is the case, but the point is that this real estate power house is in some trouble, which is why they decided to put together a series of commercials with high production value to invite back those people who consider themselves Catholics. Place your mouse over this bubble to watch an example.

Impressive, isn't it? I bet you didn't know they developed the scientific method.. Of course, when they applied this 'method' to people like Giordano Bruno, it was called burning alive at the stake for daring to question their absolutist dogma, and in the case of Galileo, house imprisonment... yay science!

Anyway, with recent news about even more cases of child abuse surfacing yet again, Bill Maher decided to help the Catholic campaign with a new catchy commercial:

Check out the real history of child abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests in this quick animation.
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Tsumanis 101

Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Japan has been recently devastated by the accumulation of horrendous circumstances due to the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. Lives have been lost, families have been broken, property has been destroyed, and infrastructure has been compromised. The most dangerous threat, the release of nuclear radiation, is still looming in the horizon of possibilities...

Obviously, there are plenty of things to be concerned about, and our first reaction should be to try to help those in dire need, but if you're curious to learn how tsunamis work (and need the extra push to help), here is a quick crash course to get you motivated:

Here is some footage of an amazing escape from the tsunami. These people managed to survive, and will now need your help.

Follow this link to find out more information on the Japan earthquake, including locating/helping family and friends.

And go here to find out how you can help.
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David Brooks - The Social Animal

Our mastery over the physical world over the past few centuries has been based on our newly acquired ability to understand the structural intricacies of that world. Understanding that world has required that we make certain reductive assumptions about how it works, and although they have been incredibly fertile, many of these assumptions, especially when applied to our understanding of human nature itself, have turned out to be rather simplistic, mechanistic and individualistic.

As David Brooks explains in the following thought-provoking and funny TEDTalk presentation, because of our intellectual drive toward quantification, we've focused a lot of attention on those aspects of our humanity that can be measured while ignoring many of the more subtle, rich and complex intricacies of what it means not only to be human but to be a social animal.

Drawing on insights from philosophers like Aristotle and David Hume, and from the cognitive and neurosciences, Brooks attempts to lay the foundation for certain concepts that could provide the basis for a more enriched and nuanced understanding of who we are, as well as set the stage to solve many of our economic and political challenges.

And for similarly relevant entries, check out Daniel Pink on our carrots-and-sticks incentives mentality, or Matthew Taylor on 21st century enlightenment.
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Fashionable Chameleon

No matter how many chicks you banged when you were the quarterback of your local football team, or how many keg-stands you could do you in college, or how well you can impersonate Lady Gaga just because you have an Adam's apple, you'll never be as cool as this little guy :)

All we can do is be jealous :)
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Powerful Quake/Tsunami Hits Japan

As you're probably all aware by now, Japan has been hit by a powerful earthquake/tsunami combination, the likes of which has caused massive amounts of destruction. My thoughts are with the victims of this natural disaster.

And here are some pictures from The Big Picture showing some of the devastation:















While the number of dead is in the hundreds, which is horrible enough, I do have to agree with a comment made on Twitter by Dave Ewing:

The headlines you won't see: "Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes." But it's the truth.

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Colbert Celebrates Lent by Giving Up Catholicism

A couple of days ago you may have seen a bunch of people walking around with dirt on their foreheads: they were Catholics and the dirt was really ash in the shape of a cross pressed against their foreheads by someone who's probably implicated, or about to be, in some case of child abuse. Oh yeah, he's also wearing a large dress... Don't say I didn't warn you :)

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the season of preparation for the resurrection of Jesus, and his subsequent meeting with the Eastern Bunny, on Eastern Sunday, or something like that... And the tradition is to give up something that really matters to you for forty days. Stephen Colbert decided to give up his religion :)

But you can't just eat bacon to be Jew... you also have to walk the walk...

And by that I guess I meant talk the guilt trip :)
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Salman Khan - Using Video to Reinvent Education

If you're an investment broker or an analyst at a hedge fund, there are probably a few things that are almost certainly true about you: you have craploads of money and the idea of doing something with real social value (and for free) is foreign to you :)

Fortunately, one such man, Salman Khan, decided that he'd rather make a meaningful contribution to the world instead of just rolling in dough, and created in the process Khan Academy, a non-profit organization with the goal of improving education by making it globally accessible to anyone, completely free of charge, and as he describes in the following TEDTalk presentation, that's only the beginning:

Check out some other radical (and fascinating) ideas on how to improve education.
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Brian Cox - The Forces of Nature

Philosophically, the idea of forces is kind of shady. While we don't want to outright deny the notion, we also don't want to ignore the danger of possibly believing in what could turn out to be the scientific equivalent of leprechauns. The first problem is that 'forces' are not things experienced directly; rather, they are inferences produced on the basis of other experiences, and as inferences, these could turn out to be misinterpretations of what might be entirely different phenomena.

Take the case of gravity. Before Einstein, it was believed to be a force in the classical sense, but post-Einstein, our understanding is that gravity is not so much a force as an illusion of a force produced by the curvature of space-time.

So, while Brian Cox introduces forces as the 'agents of change" of the universe in the following video clip (and does a nice job of explaining the basic history behind their discovery, understanding an unification), one should still be aware that he's treading in conceptually dangerous territory, and that just like philosophy devoid of science is likely to get itself in trouble, science would be equally foolish to eschew the importance of philosophical analysis. Let's make love, not war :)

I'm kind of curious... whatever dark energy turns out to be, is it possible it might provide evidence of a hitherto unknown (and possibly even unsuspected) new force?

And if you want a fuller treatment of these ideas, check out the Elegant Universe tag, and especially the documentary Atoms, with Jim Al-Khalili.
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The Cell - The Hidden Kingdom

We take it for granted today, but there was a time when not only did humanity not understand the nature of cells, we didn't even know they existed. That would all start to change when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a draper and tradesman, would peek into a drop of water through his superior microscope (not to say anything of what would happen when he peeked into a drop of semen) and discovered a world hitherto unknown, full of microscopic life. The baton would then be taken up by luminaries such as Robert Hooke and things would never be the same again...

Progress, however, was slow... had to be slow. Science had to contend not simply with religious dogma and medieval assumptions but with the lack of a proper cell theory, so before we arrived at a proper and basic understanding of what cells are, where we can find them and where they come from, we sort of had to stumble upon a number of dead ends.

That story, as Adam Rutherford makes clear in the following documentary, is absolutely fascinating

And if you want to be fascinated even further, check out The Invisible World.
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Jury Selection Proving Difficult in Trial of "The Jury Killer"

You may have concocted some strategy at some point to get out of jury duty, and if you've ever been prosecuted for some crime you (allegedly) committed, your lawyer may have had some say in the jury selection process, but only The Onion can come up with a plan to guarantee that no jury ever dares mess with you :)

Genius... :)
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Tim Minchin - Thank You God

Plenty of religious believers believe in God because they've had some personal experience of a 'miracle'; that is to say, they've been confronted with something that (in their own minds at least) could not have happened by any natural means, and so they take this 'mystery' as evidence for a transcendent explanation. That's what I call water-tight logic :)

As we all know, it is impossible for anyone to win the lottery, for a football team to win the Supberbowl, or for people who may have been misdiagnosed to be cured of their non-existence disease... just as it is equally impossible that our judgments may be clouded by cognitive biases, by the power of expectation and by our uncanny ability to reinterpret data to fit in with our beliefs.

So, when some bloke by the name of Sam told Tim Minchin that God had cured his mom's cataracts, Minchin had to admit (with an awesome song) this proved not only God's existence but his benevolent awesomeness :)

Now what I want to know is why God hates amputees :)

If that was somehow too fast for you, you can follow along here:

I have an apology to make.
I’m afraid I’ve made a big mistake.
I turned my face away from you, Lord.

I was too blind to see the light.
I was too weak to feel Your might.
I closed my eyes; I couldn’t see the truth, Lord.

But then like Saul on the Damascus road,
You sent a messenger to me, and so…

I have had the truth revealed to me.
Please forgive me all those things I said.
I’ll no longer betray you, Lord.
I will pray to you instead.

And I will say “Thank you, thank you, thank you God.
Thank you, thank you, thank you God.”

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.

I had no idea but it’s suddenly so clear now.
I feel such a cynic. How could I have been so dumb?

Thank you for displaying how praying works:
a particular prayer in a particular church.
Thank you Sam for the chance to acknowledge
this omnipotent opthamologist.

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.
I didn’t realize that it was so simple,
but you’ve shown a great example of just how it can be done.

You only need to pray in a particular spot
to a particular version of a particular god,
and if you pull that off without a hitch,
he will fix one eye of one middle-class white bitch.

I know in the past my outlook has been limited.
I couldn’t see examples of where life had been definitive.
But I can admit it when the evidence is clear,
as clear as Sam’s mum’s new cornea.

That’s extremely clear! Extremely clear!

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.
I have to admit that in the past I have been skeptical,
but Sam described this miracle and I am overcome!

How fitting that the sighting of a sight-based intervention
should open my eyes to this exciting new dimension.
It’s like someone put an eye chart on the wall in front of me
and the top five letters say: I C G O D.

Thank you, Sam, for showing how my point of view has been so flawed.
I assumed there was no God at all but now I see that’s cynical.
It’s simply that his interests aren’t particularly broad.

He’s largely undiverted by the starving masses,
or the inequality between the various classes.
He gives out strictly limited passes,
redeemable for surgery or two-for-one glasses.

I feel so shocking for historically mocking.
Your interests are clearly confined to the ocular.
I bet given the chance, you’d eschew the divine
and start a little business selling contacts online.

Fuck me Sam, what are the odds
that of history’s endless parade of gods
that the God you just happened to be taught to believe in
is the actual one and he digs on healing,
but not the AIDS-ridden African nations,
the victims of the plague or the flood-addled Asians,
but healthy, privately-insured Australians
with common and curable corneal degeneration?

This story of Sam’s has but a single explanation:
a surgical God who digs on magic operations.
It couldn’t be mistaken attribution of causation,
born of a coincidental temporal correlation,
exacerbated by a general lack of education,
vis-a-vis physics in Sam’s parish congregation.

And it couldn’t be that all these pious people are liars.
It couldn’t be an artifact of confirmation bias,
a product of groupthink, a mass delusion,
an Emperor’s New Clothes-style fear of exclusion.

No, it’s more likely to be an all-powerful magician
than the misdiagnosis of the initial condition,
or one of many cases of spontaneous remission,
or a record-keeping glitch by the local physician.

No, the only explanation for Sam’s mum’s seeing:
they prayed to an all-knowing superbeing,
to the omnipresent master of the universe,
and he liked the sound of their muttered verse.

So for a bit of a change from his usual stunt
of being a sexist, racist, murderous cunt,
he popped down to Dandenong and just like that,
used his powers to heal the cataracts of Sam’s mum – of Sam’s mum!

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum!
I didn’t realize that it was such a simple thing.
I feel such a dingaling, what ignorant scum!

Now I understand how prayer can work:
a particular prayer in a particular church
in a particular style with a particular stuff
for particular problems that aren’t particularly tough,
and for particular people, preferably white,
for particular senses, preferably sight,
a particular prayer in a particular spot,
to a particular version of a particular god.

And if you get that right, He just might
take a break from giving babies malaria
and pop down to your local area
to fix the cataracts of your mum!

Hallelujah!

And if you want more, check out Tim Minchin's poem Storm, or watch him tell the Pope where to shove it.
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The President's Speech

I'm of the opinion, right or not, that anything said with a British accent automatically sounds more intelligent by virtue of that fact alone. Now, if the erudite King George VI of England, confronted by one of the most challenging circumstances of all time, had a really difficult time with public speaking, can you really blame our former hillbilly president for not being able to put two sentences together?

The King had Lionel Logue's unorthodox methods to help him. George W. Bush had someone else...

Then again, there's only so much a single man can do...

Major hat tip to Russ!
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Peter Singer - Evolution vs. Ethics

From its very inception, the theory of evolution by natural selection has been misinterpreted by social reformers of all kinds. Opponents argue that it endorses a psychopathic 'nature red in tooth and claw' approach to social problems. Proponents argue the same (they just prefer to use Herbert Spencer's dictum of 'survival of the fittest').

The problem with these interpretations, of course, is that they are both instances of the naturalistic fallacy: taking a description of the world (an is) as if it were a prescription (an ought). David Hume showed, way before Darwin was even on the scene, that this is a logical problem: in an argument, a valid conclusion is supposed to be entailed by its premises, and you just can't reach an evaluative conclusion (one with an ought) based on purely empirical premises (ones with is's). Sorry, not going to happen.

So, taking a scientific view of the world cannot, without the aid of auxiliary hypotheses not themselves empirical, provide the basis upon which our moral judgments ought to rest (no matter what Sam Harris tells you). Evolution explains how things have worked, not whether that's how they should work (from a moral point of view).

Nevertheless, as the following lecture by philosopher Peter Singer shows, there are important and fascinating lessons that evolution can teach us about ourselves and our likelihood of reaching good or bad moral judgments, given our evolutionary makeup. And although these findings don't tell us what choices to make, they should make us aware of the biases we are likely to fall prey to without realizing it.

And if you want to learn more about the trolley problem, you could listen to the RadioLab guys talk with Joshua Greene on the subject.
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Lord Robert Winston - How Science Changed Our World

It is just not possible to deny the ubiquitous impact that science has had in all of our lives. The very fact that you're reading these lines on a computer or mobile phone (and are probably addicted to both) attests to the incredible power and influence that scientific innovation exerts on all of us, especially considering that much of the technology simply didn't exist until quite recently.

And while scientific blunders are inevitable, and controversies will always arise for good and bad reasons, the record speaks for itself: we are better off today than our ancestors were in the past.

So, what are the ten most important scientific discoveries or innovations of the past half a century? Well, any list will have some sort of subjective bias built into it, but Robert Winston has a few eclectic and deliciously fascinating nominations, from lasers so powerful they may finally help us finally produce nuclear fusion, to methods of contraception, the world wide intertubes, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research, microchips, functional magnetic resonance imaging that helps us see the brain in action, bionic prostheses and much, much more...

What else would you nominate?
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