I came across two fascinating articles on my science blog reading today.
The first is from The Longevity Meme, a refreshingly libertarian science blog (why are so many sci-bloggers authoritarian progressives? A question for another post), whose name points to the obviously extropian focus. Caloric restriction has been a major focus in the life-extension community for decades. Unfortunately, it's always been questionable if the extremely promising results achieved in animals would ever carry over to humans. The deaths at fairly normal ages of such early CR standard-bearers as Roy Walford (a mere 79) certainly didn't help.
Anyway, the new study indicates that it might be protein restriction rather than caloric restriction which does it for us humans. Not impossible, given how long ago our biochemistry diverged and our already relatively long lives compared to most other species. If so, I'm glad I never want in for that Atkins crap.
Next, we have a summary from that dry firehose, EurekAlert (dryly written, but a staggering stream of info). It's one of those psychology things that seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but it's good to have it quantified anyway. The study shows that to make words more visible from far away, you get more bang for your back by separating the letters from each other than by increasing the letter size. Could be very handy for those of us making signs for trade shows and the like...
In programs like Word you don't have much control other than picking a font with a little more space in between the letters. For important graphics you might want to use programs like CorelDRAW (or the more common Adobe Illustrator for you conformists ;), which let you control "kerning" (fancy word for letter spacing, I think) on the individual character level.
March on, Mad Science!
(Yeah, I've been catching up on Girl Genius too :)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
We Also Review Books
Just so you don't think it's all TV, all the time.
So I've been re-reading Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", which I first read in high-school. I vaguely remembered liking it a lot back then, and was curious if it would still impress me.
The book was a triumphialist spin through superstring theory, which is still on pretty iffy ground ten years later. Making no experimentally-verifiable predictions will do that to you in a hard science like physics, although it doesn't seem to be such a shortcoming in the social "sciences". For the true-believers the proof is always right around the corner, so I didn't expect (nor find) any mea culpa admissions of over-zealousness in the updated 2003 intro. I think the publisheer would have done well to stick something in, though, to give it a little more context/perspective.
Since I had also recently read through Einstein's own popularization of his theories of relativity (the 2005 translation published by Pi Press), I was subconsciously contrasting it with Greene's presentation of relativity, which he included as a prelude to the attempt at reconciling it with quantum mechanics. Sadly, the two were like night and day.
Einstein spelled out the fundamental problems which lead him to his theory through abstract but tangible thought experiments (gedankenexperiment, IIRC), and then stepped through the entire chain of reasoning, proving with almost mathematical clarity exactly why his theory is necessary and inescapable. The experimental proof was just icing on the cake, and Einstein himself was convinced he was right before Eddington even set off to observe the eclipse.
By contrast, Greene's presentation consisted of little more than making seemingly outrageous claims (at least, outrageous when viewed from the common-sense perspective of the layman), and then dogmatically insisting that the claims had to be true because the experiments proved it. Now, I'm all for experimental empiricism, but that just won't work here. There's no way you can explain the experiments in sufficient depth here, with all the attendant mathematics, and Greene in fact did not. Instead it looks like hand-waving: "Trust me, I'm a scientist! Don't look behind the curtain!"
It's especially tragic because relativity in particular doesn't need it - just look at how Einstein himself did it. The case can be made that the experiment have to be the centerpiece for quantum mechanics, and I almost suspect that he gave them a similar presentation so the latter wouldn't look deficient by comparison.
Conclusion: Not as good as I remember it. Superstring section & quantum presentation is decent, take a pass on relativity, but too much boosterism for strings. Now I'm even wondering if it was a different book that I remember liking so much in high school. Well, there's always time to read some more :)
So I've been re-reading Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", which I first read in high-school. I vaguely remembered liking it a lot back then, and was curious if it would still impress me.
The book was a triumphialist spin through superstring theory, which is still on pretty iffy ground ten years later. Making no experimentally-verifiable predictions will do that to you in a hard science like physics, although it doesn't seem to be such a shortcoming in the social "sciences". For the true-believers the proof is always right around the corner, so I didn't expect (nor find) any mea culpa admissions of over-zealousness in the updated 2003 intro. I think the publisheer would have done well to stick something in, though, to give it a little more context/perspective.
Since I had also recently read through Einstein's own popularization of his theories of relativity (the 2005 translation published by Pi Press), I was subconsciously contrasting it with Greene's presentation of relativity, which he included as a prelude to the attempt at reconciling it with quantum mechanics. Sadly, the two were like night and day.
Einstein spelled out the fundamental problems which lead him to his theory through abstract but tangible thought experiments (gedankenexperiment, IIRC), and then stepped through the entire chain of reasoning, proving with almost mathematical clarity exactly why his theory is necessary and inescapable. The experimental proof was just icing on the cake, and Einstein himself was convinced he was right before Eddington even set off to observe the eclipse.
By contrast, Greene's presentation consisted of little more than making seemingly outrageous claims (at least, outrageous when viewed from the common-sense perspective of the layman), and then dogmatically insisting that the claims had to be true because the experiments proved it. Now, I'm all for experimental empiricism, but that just won't work here. There's no way you can explain the experiments in sufficient depth here, with all the attendant mathematics, and Greene in fact did not. Instead it looks like hand-waving: "Trust me, I'm a scientist! Don't look behind the curtain!"
It's especially tragic because relativity in particular doesn't need it - just look at how Einstein himself did it. The case can be made that the experiment have to be the centerpiece for quantum mechanics, and I almost suspect that he gave them a similar presentation so the latter wouldn't look deficient by comparison.
Conclusion: Not as good as I remember it. Superstring section & quantum presentation is decent, take a pass on relativity, but too much boosterism for strings. Now I'm even wondering if it was a different book that I remember liking so much in high school. Well, there's always time to read some more :)
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Fringe
They almost had me. So I'm watching, thinking "X-Files derivative, right? Seems more science focused, which is good. Female lead got down to her undies in the first episode - just like Scully did, although not as hawt (the red hair must do something for me). Did they switch the gender roles in terms of believer/disbeliever? Maybe. Seems like it could go places..."
And then they ruined it in the last 5 minutes. I turned it off, didn't even catch the ending.
Why? The monologue by Agent Supporting Character to Agent Female Lead seemed to have been scripted by an unrepentant Marxist (and the Marxists have a lot to repent for). His take on the problem with this world is that the government doesn't have enough power. Yes, in the age of the PATRIOT Act, that's their complaint. And based on the ham-handed representation of Massive Dynamics earlier in the show, you can see where this is going. Oooh, big scary corporation must be destroyed! Poor, idealistic government!
Blurg. When I hear socialism, I reach for my barf bag. And the remote control.
And then they ruined it in the last 5 minutes. I turned it off, didn't even catch the ending.
Why? The monologue by Agent Supporting Character to Agent Female Lead seemed to have been scripted by an unrepentant Marxist (and the Marxists have a lot to repent for). His take on the problem with this world is that the government doesn't have enough power. Yes, in the age of the PATRIOT Act, that's their complaint. And based on the ham-handed representation of Massive Dynamics earlier in the show, you can see where this is going. Oooh, big scary corporation must be destroyed! Poor, idealistic government!
Blurg. When I hear socialism, I reach for my barf bag. And the remote control.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Commercial Terminator
OK, I keep promising myself to start this blog, but never get around to it. Maybe starting with some fun stuff will do it :)
So I did a little Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles marathon last night on hulu.com, and I'm grooving to the show. The unresolved time-travel issue still bugs the back of my head, but OMFG is Summer Glau hawt. Loved her since Firefly, especially that scene in Serenity where she whupped a whole frelling Reaver army. Also the music choices were inspired, in particular the Johny Cash tune in the finale and the Samson & Delilah song in the 2nd season premier (took me a while to find that one, but I'm listening to it now - nice).
Now here we get to the title of this post: They had one commercial they ran at every interstitial break in the shows. Given that I saw 10 episodes, with like 5 breaks in each, I must have seen the commercial 50 times last night. And I saw it again today when I caught the Fringe premiere (which had me until the end, but that's for another post). And as the commercial was running through I realized I had no idea what product this commercial was for.
This isn't even the usual complaint that the commercial sucked. I actually liked it. It was funny, had some cute child actors, effective visuals, and memorable voice work by the mom/narrator, and I knew it was for a cell phone, a carrier, and computer store stocking the phone with the carrier's service) (do the three split the commercial costs?) - but I had no idea which of any of three categories. Still don't. Can they build their brand that way?
Any way, now I made it over the first post hurdle, more to come :)
So I did a little Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles marathon last night on hulu.com, and I'm grooving to the show. The unresolved time-travel issue still bugs the back of my head, but OMFG is Summer Glau hawt. Loved her since Firefly, especially that scene in Serenity where she whupped a whole frelling Reaver army. Also the music choices were inspired, in particular the Johny Cash tune in the finale and the Samson & Delilah song in the 2nd season premier (took me a while to find that one, but I'm listening to it now - nice).
Now here we get to the title of this post: They had one commercial they ran at every interstitial break in the shows. Given that I saw 10 episodes, with like 5 breaks in each, I must have seen the commercial 50 times last night. And I saw it again today when I caught the Fringe premiere (which had me until the end, but that's for another post). And as the commercial was running through I realized I had no idea what product this commercial was for.
This isn't even the usual complaint that the commercial sucked. I actually liked it. It was funny, had some cute child actors, effective visuals, and memorable voice work by the mom/narrator, and I knew it was for a cell phone, a carrier, and computer store stocking the phone with the carrier's service) (do the three split the commercial costs?) - but I had no idea which of any of three categories. Still don't. Can they build their brand that way?
Any way, now I made it over the first post hurdle, more to come :)
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