Foucault's Pendulum

A couple of weeks ago we saw an awesome optical illusion created by a series of pendulums of gradually increasing length. Today we focus on a single pendulum, Foucault's pendulum, and the incredible insights (scientific and philosophical) that it can reveal.

The idea behind this kind of pendulum is quite simple: if you simply release it so that gravity does all the work, a pendulum will swing back and forth in a straight line. Foucault took this simple fact about pendulums and used it to prove empirically that the Earth rotates on its own axis: because the pendulum really does swing back and forth in a straight line and the Earth rotates below it as usual, the pendulum should produce the illusion of slowly rotating around the plane of the Earth, but that's just an illusion created by our point of view, being as we are, standing on a rotating planet!

But the awesomeness doesn't stop there. Because Foucault's pendulum is an instrument to measure rotation, you can always ask what the rotation is relative to... and then things can get spooky, as Darmouth physics professor Jim LaBelle explains:

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Non-Transitive Dice to Blow Your Mind

When it comes to games of chance, there's usually a fairly easy way to win: cheat. Of course, if you get caught, the price you pay might be your knee-caps...

Another way is to be up to date on your probability theory, play a game of non-transitive dice, and be careful about which dice you choose to play with.

Transitivity is a property whereby if A bears some relation to B, and B bears the same relation to C, then A also bears that same relation to C. For instance, if A>B, and B>C, then A>C. But not all games are transitive. Rock/ Paper/ Scissors would be an example of a non-transitive game because rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock (don't ask why).

Now, you might not think so (I certainly didn't), but it turns out you can make non-transitive dice, and if you play your cards right, or dice, I suppose, you can beat two different players at the same time. Here are two Cambridge professors explaining this mathematical insanity that's sure to stimulate your noodle:

And if that was too fast for you, check out a more detailed explanation that you can read as slowly and carefully as you need.
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Gay Parents Bashed in Texas

When a pair of lesbian mothers are harassed in front of their children by a homophobic waitress at a Texas restaurant, will other patrons come to their defense or just add on to the hatred? And don't forget, this is Texas we're talking about: Jesus land...

The following video clip will likely shock you, make you sick to your stomach, then make you proud of our Texan brethren... and finally hopeful that there is a light at the end of the tunnel :)

Hat tip to Charlie for this one!
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Julia Sweeney - Letting Go of God

Religious faith has at least one thing going for it: it gives you comfort... as long as you don't think about it. My own intellectual journey into eventual atheism started with a serendipitous reading of Nietzsche (which also hooked me into philosophy). Once he raised certain questions, I went to 'the greats' for answers: Aquinas, Leibniz, Avicenna, Kierkegaard, Anselm, Berkeley, Augustine, Lewis, etc. These thinkers were fascinating, and had lots of great things to say, but their answers to the big question never seemed quite satisfactory... more like rationalizations of certain prejudices and already-held beliefs than real discoveries of truth.

For comedian Julia Sweeney, this roller-coaster journey of questioning and spiritual growth started when two Mormons rang her doorbell one day. In her efforts to find the nature of God, she went to Bible class, tried to become an altar boy, then a nun, became intimately acquainted with Jesus -in more ways than one :), traveled to the East and learned about the undiluted non-California version of Buddhism, read Karen Armstrong, got into Deepak Chopra and new-age mysticism, until eventually she hit upon the study of nature itself, science, and (once she overcame her previous misconceptions about it) finally started seeing the world with new eyes, full of wonder, curiosity and courage... and then she had to deal with mom and dad :)

The general story is probably familiar to many nonbelievers, but it's the hilarity with which Sweeney tells this coming-of-age story that makes this a must-listen. So sit back, relax and prepare to question, think and laugh:

And if you're curious about how things are going with her daughter, listen to what happened when she asked Sweeney about the birds and the bees...
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What to Do about the Rapture

This whole Rapture thing strikes me as complete nonsense, but of course, I could be wrong. There really may be such a thing, and if you really believe it's real, then I'd ask you to put your money where your mouth is: if you truly believe that you will be taken from this material world, please be so kind as to donate all of your earthly possessions to worthy charities and projects that work on helping the poor and destitute. They'll need all the help they can get before things get truly apocalyptic...

And just remember, if you don't donate to the poor and sick, some jerk (probably a homosexual) is likely going to go through your stuff and rub it all over his gay body :) I don't imagine you'd like that, so don't let those queers get into your stuff. Donate it to the needy...

In the meantime, I plan on making the most out of this silliness. Tomorrow I will leave somewhere on a park or the pavement a pair of shoes, pants and a t-shirt in roughly the shape of a human being whose body was sucked by Jesus' celestial vacuum. For an added effect, I'll also leave an ice cream cone melting where my hand would have been... that should get a couple of gullible idiots wondering whether the shit is about to hit the fan for them. I hope there's thunder and lightning when this happens. That would be awesome.

Then I will dress up like Jesus, go to church, tell everyone this is finally my second-coming, and sign autographs for anyone who hasn't died of a heart attack... hopefully the padre will have a nice stock of wine and crackers for me, but I may have to decline on the pre-pubescent ass :)


Update: Here's the latest development in this all-too important story:

Figures...
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Pendulum Waves

Pendulums have been around for a very long time, at least since the 1st century, when the Chinese polymath Zhang Heng used one to build what is widely considered to be the very first seismometer in history.

The rigorous and scientific study of the properties of pendulums, however, didn't start until the 17th century, when Galileo took up the question. Undeniably, Galileo did some great and unprecedented work, but one can't help but wonder how much easier and productive his time could have been if he had thought up of this beautiful little experiment (without just becoming mesmerized by the optical illusion created by it):

And here is another beautiful version of the same basic idea.

And if you're curious about how seismometers, including Zhang Hen's, work, listen to this:

And if you want more on pendulums, I'll post an awesome entry on Foucault's pendulum soon. Stay tuned.
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Jon Stewart Kicks Some O'Reilly Ass

If you have an opinion with which I disagree, that's fine. I don't expect everyone to be right all the time :)

In fact, there's a good chance that in many subjects, my opinions are just plain wrong. What I do have a serious problem with, though, is double standards: conveniently applying arbitrary standards whenever they suit you, and then ignoring the same standards when they don't suit you... that kind of sleazy inconsistency just drives me up the wall...

So, when Fox News recently started going ape-shit crazy over a rapper who got invited to the White House for a poetry night, I'm glad O'Reilly ended up inviting Jon Stewart for a little lesson in basic critical thinking/ass-kicking skills:

When he's right, he's right... a ban on assault weapons would be a GREAT way to celebrate police officers and all the great work they do protecting us... ball's on your court, O'Reilly :)
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Lecture 3 - David Hume and the Problem of Induction

Look at Newton's cradle on the right and ask yourself this question: what justification do you have for thinking that it will continue to behave in the future the way it has behaved in the past?

This is not something you know a priori, through pure reason alone, since it implies no contradiction to imagine this behavior might change. It's also not something you know a posteriori, through experience, because your experience is of the past, and the question confronting you right now concerns the future. If you think that you can appeal to past experience to support the idea that nature is regular, you'd be begging the question, since past experience is a good indicator of the future only if you assume the orderliness of nature, which is the very point in question. Yes, your head is probably spinning right now from that massively circular argument...

And yet, this assumption that nature behaves according to regular and predictable principles is the very basis of virtually all our knowledge about the world, ordinary and scientific, so it's kind of a really big deal. In this week's lecture, Professor Millican gives us a brief introduction to the empiricism of David Hume, as well as one of the questions for which he is most famous: the problem of induction...

Click here to see the course slides

And check out how John Stuart Mill's attempt to solve this problem through his methods of induction.
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We're Not Home, E.T. Please Leave a Message...

Are we alone in the universe? I have no clue. My guess is that we probably aren't, but the odds of ever finding other forms of intelligent life are so small that one may wonder why we have SETI in the first place. This is one of those strange cases in which a complete absence of evidence is no evidence of absence... unless it is, but then how would we know the difference? (As you can tell, I'm somewhat ambivalent on this issue).

SETI has recently had to deal with some major cuts to their funding, and although I don't expect us to find intelligent life outside of our planet any time soon (it's hard enough finding it on this planet), I don't think that the program should be closed, or even reduced. Its importance to me isn't about whether it manages to hear from E.T. It's about a certain conception of human vision and curiosity. To me, keeping SETI alive, or closing it, says more about us than it does about possible aliens, so the question really boils down to what we want to think of ourselves...

But even if we ignore that, Carl Sagan has some words, inspiring as ever, concerning the importance of this kind of research.

And as you can tell, this is not a new issue. Carl Sagan already addressed it in his book Contact:

And seriously, the budget for SETI is really a drop in the bucket. It's not like we're talking crazy amounts of dough here...
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Paul Nicklen - Tales of Ice-Bound Wonderlands

You may remember the story of how photographer Paul Nicklen came face to face with a leopard seal, one of the Antarctic's top predators. Obviously, since he is the one who told us the story, you know he survived the encounter, but what you may not know is why he was there in the first place.

In the following TEDTalk presentation, Nicklen tells us of his childhood dream of getting people to become more acquainted with the wonders hidden beneath the ice. More importantly, and through the use of incredible photographs, he makes a passionate plea for conservation as he explains the importance that the polar caps have with respect to the food cycle: that's where it all starts.

For more on conservation, check out the environment tag.
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Star Wars - Existentialist Edition

I don't know exactly what French-speaking existential philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus would have thought about films like Star Wars... and while I can see some respects in which the movies deal with philosophical issues, my guess is that the existentialists might have thought the famous trilogy indulged in too much mauvaise foi (bad faith) for their taste.

But what if the franchise were written as an existentialist film? This is what it might have looked like :)

For more, both serious and funny stuff on existentialism, click the tag.
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7 Billion

You've probably seen some animated videos trying to explain the significance of recent demographic and social trends (here, here and here, for instance).

Today we have one more explaining the significance of the fact that the planet is populated by 7 billion of us. The clip is beautifully done, and although it seems that its main objective is to clarify things and put them in perspective, it wouldn't be complete without touching on a few of the social and environmental implications of such a realization.

And if any of this is making you wonder about the ethics of helping those in need, philosopher Peter Singer can help organize your thoughts in just 3 minutes.
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Lecture 2 - Introduction to Modern Philosophy

After a brief introduction to ancient philosophy and the intellectual revolution started by Galileo and Descartes in the 17th century, Professor Millican begins to provide a concise and fascinating summary of the intellectual developments and questions that the new science and philosophy would produce.

To begin with, we start with an account of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes is mostly famous for his political philosophy, but in the context of this course, his importance is due to his thorough commitment to a naturalistic and scientific account of everything, including minds. His materialism, as you might imagine, was immediately understood to imply atheism, which is why he received the dubious distinctions of being considered the monster of Malmesbury, as well as the cause of certain natural disasters. Pretty powerful for a guy who didn't believe in hocus-pocus :)

Being dissatisfied with the Cartesian account of matter as extended space, Robert Boyle would produce a theory of matter as being composed of tiny corpuscles. He also introduced the idea of empty space, thereby clearing the conceptual landscape for Sir Isaac Newton to come up with his universal laws of motion. Newton's predictive success was unimpeachable, but his instrumentalist introduction of the notion of a 'force' of gravity got many wondering whether we were back to postulating obscure and occult explanations a-la Aristotle or a-la Christianity. Wisely, Newton claimed not to understand the nature of such a force ("I feign no hypothesis"), only that its postulation (right or wrong) helped him describe the phenomena experienced with more accuracy than any previous thinker. David Hume would jump on this idea soon.

Finally, we move on to John Locke's empiricism, as well as to Malebranche's occasionalist attempt to explain the necessary connection behing causal inferences, and to Bishop Berkeley's idealism as a response to the skepticism that kept coming from all directions.

Click here to see the course slides.
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Happy Birthday, David Hume!

Today marks the 300th birthday of David Hume, almost universally agreed to have been the most important philosopher ever to write in English, and certainly one of my favorites.

It's rather strange (and disheartening, really) that his name hasn't achieved the level of popular recognition that Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant have received, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that his ideas challenged many notions that most of us consider sacred (and I'm talking about concepts like causality, induction, substance, and the self... I won't even get started with religious notions, which are really child's play).

Here is just one example of his incredibly sharp thinking (from his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding): in this quote (known as Hume's fork), he summarizes the insight that any alleged piece of knowledge must be able to satisfy one of two basic conditions in order to deserve to be listened to:

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Good-bye religion!

And in this one (from his Treatise of Human Nature), he argues that reason cannot work as a cause of action:

A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high. It is impossible, therefore, that this passion can be opposed by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction consists in the disagreement of ideas, considered as copies, with those objects, which they represent.

Good-bye morality as a rational enterprise :)

Cheers to you, bon David!
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Dark Matters, PhD Comics Edition

As the famous cartoon to the right shows, our views of the world have a tendency to be limited to the range of our experience (as they should), but we should always be aware that there's probably more to reality than what we can experience, and that the possibility of new discoveries is not simply a thing of the past: our science is still in its infancy, and that means that most of what's left to be discovered is still out there, waiting for the next creative person to figure out how to find it.

In the following video, Jorge Cham (creator of PhD Comics) talks with two astrophysicists about dark matter and how the Large Hadron Collider will help answer what it is. And, by the way, the whole thing is animated (sort of) RSA Animate style:

To me, the mystery isn't so much how much is still left to discover... it's how much we already have...
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The Wedding Banners

Here in America, we love our freedom of speech. Sure, sometimes we use it ill-advisedly, and sometimes we want to shut up those with whom we disagree, but free speech is one of the core principles of a good democratic republic.

So, when the British Crown banned footage of the wedding in any comedy or satirical program, they weren't counting with the fact Jon Stewart and his team could re-enact the wedding and after-parties video-game style. The picture to the right is just the teaser :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - The Wedding Banners Uncensored
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Oh, William has been a naughty boy... And what's up with those hats?!?!?
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Peter Millican's Introduction to General Philosophy

You know what's missing from your life? More philosophy. Sure, the practical benefits may not always be obvious (though they are most decidedly there), but philosophy deals with the deepest, the most elusive, the most important and the most interesting questions human beings can think of.

Here at the philosophy monkey blog, we've featured Michael Sandel's popular course on Justice before. Now we get to cross the ocean and switch from Harvard to Oxford, as philosopher Peter Millican gives us a fascinating overview of modern philosophy (with a beautiful English accent) in eight gripping lectures covering everything from the nature and sources of knowledge to skepticism of the external world, Cartesian dualism (and the mind-body problem), primary and secondary qualities, the problem of induction, free will and determinism, and the metaphysics of personal identity.

In today's first lecture, Professor Millican traces the history of philosophy from its roots in Ancient Greece and Rome, and how it would undergo a revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries, as great thinkers like Galileo and Descartes would rebel against the previously unchallenged authority of Plato, Aristotle and religious dogma, and would attempt to develop new and useful methods of inquiry. The world would never be the same again...

Click here to see the course slides.

And check out the rest of this excellent course.
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Obama & Seth Myers at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Disclaimer: there is a chance I may have broken some ribs over the weekend. If that's the case, I'll probably slow down on the funny entries for a while because unfortunately, apart from sneezing and getting up in the morning when your ribs are broken, nothing hurts more than laughing. Sadly, I know this from experience :(

For Barack Obama, however, this has been quite the week. The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner was held over the weekend and President Obama, after just having released his long form birth certificate this week (oh yeah, and fulfilling the promise to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden), got a chance to have a little fun and roast conspiracy 'theorists' like Fox News, the tea-baggers and Donald Trump...

But even Joe Biden, in my humble opinion, is no match for The President's Speech starring George W. Bush.

And here is Seth Myers with some more:

Wow... you can tell Donald Trump did not have a good time :)

Check out the 2009 White House Corresponents' Dinner speech.
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Osama Bin Laden Finally Dead

It's been almost 10 years since Osama Bin Douchebag masterminded the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil.

Last week, it seems, he was hunted down and killed. The body was secured by US forces, and subsequent DNA tests have confirmed his identity. Here is President Obama addressing the nation in an official declaration that we finally got the bastard:

I would have preferred he be brought to justice and made pay for his crimes, but I'll settle for a world in which he no longer exists...
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