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Experiments with hydrogen atoms could soon reveal whether particles that were long thought to be forbidden by physics actually do exist

Engineers have taught a simple submarine robot to take advantage of turbulent forces to propel itself through water.

Engineers have taught a simple submarine robot to take advantage of turbulent forces to propel itself through water.

A new study has uncovered the mystery of how mini sand dunes form on beaches and in deserts.

The Cosmic Microwave Background is one of the bedrock pieces of evidence for the Big Bang. It's described as the cosmic afterglow from the Universe's birth. However, new research calls into question our understanding of the CMB and what it tells us about the evolution of the Universe.

Here’s the comedy bit from a recent edition of Bill Maher’s “Real Time” (there are two; I’ll put up the other one tomorrow). The title is “New Rule: Retake the Flag!

He first gives examples of politicians using profanity, something they never did in previous decades. That bit is pretty funny.

Maher’s guests are Democrat Donna Brazile and Republican Mike Lawler, and after his bit on profanity, Maher, citing statistics on how few Democrats say they’re proud to be American, goes on to extol the USA in an unusual burst of patriotic fervor.  He says, for example, “The U.S is leagues ahead of the rest of the world on most of the progressive issues that are important to young people,” citing statistics about gay freedom, a rise in diversity, women and black people increasingly owning businesses,  and contrasting the U.S. with third-world countries (and the Middle East).  He goes on to deplore what is especially odious: the fact that young people often appear to regard Hamas as a role model (here I agree with him 100%).  He adds, “If the thought leaders in the Democratic Party keep encouraging and not rebuking the idea that America is cringe and the people who run Gaza are great, the Democrats are doomed. . . the Democrats’ problem is the energy of the party is with the young, and the young are with the terrorists. That’s not good!”  His comment on the AOC/Bernie Sanders rally is quite apposite, but watch to see it.

He finishes by extolling all the technical advances that came from America, like smartphones and Grubhub, presumably to show the kids that they’re living an American-buttressed life.

This is a bit too jingoistic for me, though I agree with Maher’s view that young Democrats often wrongly admire terrorists, and I laughed at the profanity bit.  But other countries are at least as progressive as America in some ways, and more progressive in others. Think of Canada or Europe, especially Scandinavia. In many of those countries the penal system is more rational and humane than America’s, and there is more paternity/maternity leave, help for old people, and free medical care for all.

I will not attribute this to Maher’s demonized Dinner with Trump, but he does have a point that America is a good country to live in (or was until January), and countries ruled by terrorists are not ones we should admire.  I think he just decided to extol what is good about America. Unfortunately, we’re not unique in many of the ways he extols.

 

 

The drug ubrogepant doesn't just ease the headache of a migraine, but also relieves symptoms like neck stiffness and fatigue if taken early enough

Finding out whether gravity – and therefore space-time itself – is quantum in nature has long been thought impossible. But innovative new ideas might be about to help answer this crucial question

The drug rizatriptan is often recommended for vestibular migraines, which cause vertigo as well as headache, but doesn't actually seem to be effective

Could some type of life find refuge in Venus' clouds? The detection of phosphine and potentially ammonia in the planet's atmosphere is posing that question. If life could survive there, would it be like Earth life? Or would it have a different molecular basis?

A team has developed Boccia XR, a rehabilitation program using extended reality technology that can be introduced even in environments with limited space.

A team engineers created a twisty high-temperature heat exchanger that outperformed a traditional straight channel design in heat transfer, power density and effectiveness and used an innovative technique to 3D print and test the metal proof of concept.

The universe is decaying much faster than thought. This is shown by calculations of scientists on the so-called Hawking radiation. They calculate that the last stellar remnants take about 10^78 years (a 1 with 78 zeros) to perish. That is much shorter than the previously postulated 10^1100 years (a 1 with 1100 zeros).

Massive ripples in the very fabric of space and time wash over Earth constantly, although you'd never notice. An astrophysicist is trying a new search for these gravitational waves.

Massive ripples in the very fabric of space and time wash over Earth constantly, although you'd never notice. An astrophysicist is trying a new search for these gravitational waves.

ChatGPT responses matched or outperformed epileptologists' responses related to the regions where epileptogenic zones are commonly located. Yet epileptologists provided more accurate responses for the regions rarely affected.

How might floating solar energy projects impact wild birds and vice versa? A paper outlines key considerations for a growing floating solar industry.

Getting a probe to the Icy Giant planets takes some time - a journey to Uranus could take as long as 13 years, even with a gravity assist from Jupiter. However, several ideas are in the works to speed up that process, especially given the increased interest in sending a probe their way. One of those ideas is to use an aerocapture system to slow a probe down once it reaches its intended target. A new paper from Andrew Gomez-Delrio and their co-authors at NASA's Langley Research Center describes how a proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) mission could utilize the same aerocapture technology that Curiosity used to dramatically improve both the speed and payload capacity of the mission.

I was just reading Richard Dawkins’s engrossing essay on sex, gender, and wokeness, and something struck me—a notion that’s not original since it occurred to Rebecca Tuvel when she wrote her infamous essay for Hypatia, a feminist philosophy journal, on “transracialism” Tuvel’s essay pointed out the philosophical and moral parallels between declaring you’re a member of your non-natal “race” (again, I prefer “ancestry”) and declaring that you’re of  your non-natal sex.  Yet Tuvel’s philosophical analysis of this issue, an analysis which I applauded, got her in hot water. As Wikipedia notes:

 

The feminist philosophy journal Hypatia became involved in a dispute in April 2017 that led to the online shaming of one of its authors, Rebecca Tuvel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis.  The journal had published a peer-reviewed article by Tuvel in which she compared the situation of Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. When the article was criticized on social media, scholars associated with Hypatia joined in the criticism and urged the journal to retract it.  The controversy exposed a rift within the journal’s editorial team and more broadly within feminism and academic philosophy.

In the article—”In Defense of Transracialism”, published in Hypatia‘s spring 2017 issue on 25 April—Tuvel argued that “since we should accept transgender individuals’ decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals’ decisions to change races”.  After a small group on Facebook and Twitter criticized the article and attacked Tuvel, an open letter began circulating, naming one of Hypatia‘s editorial board as its point of contact and urging the journal to retract the article. The article’s publication had sent a message, the letter said, that “white cis scholars may engage in speculative discussion of these themes” without engaging “theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism”.

On 1 May the journal posted an apology on its Facebook page on behalf of “a majority” of Hypatia‘s associate editors. By the following day the open letter had 830 signatories, including scholars associated with Hypatia and two members of Tuvel’s dissertation committee. Hypatia‘s editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz, and its board of directors stood by the article.  When Scholz resigned in July 2017, the board suspended the associate editors’ authority to appoint the next editor, in response to which eight associate editors resigned.  The directors set up a task force to restructure the journal’s governance.  In February 2018 the directors themselves were replaced.

And of course Rachel Dolezal was also demonized when she was outed as having been born white although claiming she was black. She was fired as president of the local NAACP, and, as Wikipedia notes, “dismissed from her position as an instructor in Africana studies at Eastern Washington University and was removed from her post as chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane over ‘a pattern of misconduct'”. All for saying she was black when she was born white. I do believe Dolezal assumed her black identity honestly. It didn’t seem to be a ruse, and, indeed, why would she fake being a member of an oppressed minority unless she really believed it. It surely wasn’t a trick or a ruse.

Richard has been writing about this disparity/hypocrisy for years, most notably in his website post, “Race is a spectrum. Sex is pretty damn binary.”  The title is of course correct, but pointing it out on Twitter cost Richard the 1996 Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. And that was for simply raising the question of any relevant difference between being “transracial” or “transsexual”. The AHA acted shamefully in that case, and I’ve washed my hands of it.

Indeed, since race is more spectrum-ish than is sex, it would seem to be MORE JUSTIFIABLE to say you’re a member of a non-natal race than of a non-natal sex.  After all, people like Barack Obama are of mixed ancestry, and can claim whatever they want with biological justification (in his case, white or black).  But if he felt more Asian, why couldn’t he claim he was Asian? After all, race, like sex, is supposed to be a social construct.

This came back to me when I considered the case of Kat Grant and her essay for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which I documented here. That fracas resulted in my published response being taken down, with the consequence that I resigned from the FFRF along with Richard and Steve Pinker.  And the FFRF declared that it dissolved the honorary board of which we were all members (though, curiously, it’s still on the web). Grant’s essay, “What is a woman?” implicitly accepted sex as a social construct and ended this way (bolding is mine):

All of this is to say that there is an answer to the question “what is a woman,” that luckily does not involve plucking a chicken from its feathers. A woman is whoever she says she is.

Yes, a woman is whoever she says she is. Clearly, sex is a social construct here, and you can be whatever sex you want, regardless of your natal gamete-producing system.  Grant was widely applauded by many on the gender-extremist side, while my response was taken down by the FFRF for being hurtful and offensive (you can still read it here, here or here).

 

This fracas, which I call “The KerFFRFle,” has reminded me of the seeming hypocrisy of regarding both sex and race as social constructs, but allowing you to declare whatever sex you feel you are, but not allowing you to declare whatever race you feel you are. Transracialism would seem especially laudatory because one would think it would be a bold move to declare you’re of an oppressed minority group. (Again, I prefer “ancestry” or “population” to “race” for reasons I’ve explained many times.)

I am not taking a stand on these issues here, but merely trying, as did Richard, to understand the difference.  And so I ask readers?

Why is it okay (indeed, applauded) to be transsexual but not transracial?

 

Plummeting temperatures forced some human populations to adapt to the new conditions thousands of years ago, but the changes they made varied widely