Science

Well, I can’t omit Bill Maher’s 8-minute weekly comedy monologue, especially because this week it’s about betting.  I’ve always called gambling, betting enterprises, and lotteries “taxes on the stupid”, because people who spend their money that way don’t seem to know that the expectation of money is far less than they’re spending.  And it’s a regressive form of taxation, as the poor spend more than the rich, both absolutely and relatively. It’s just an easy way for governments to raise money.  I don’t approve of government-funded gambling at all.

In this episode, a good one, Maher recounts the history of gaming in America, and although he opposes it, he also says it’s okay because he’s a libertarian.  On the other hand, he argues that gambling is un-American because it puts fate rather than initiative in control of your life. (Maher clearly is not a determinist.) You’ll appreciate the picture of a young, entrepreneurial Maher at 6:56.

Did I ever gamble. Well, when I used to be in a place that had slot machines I’d put a quarter in one and that was it (I never won). One time I really did want to make a substantial bet was when I was in Scotland some years ago, and wanted to bet that the Queen Mother would live to be at least 100. My girlfriend wouldn’t let me go into the betting parlor, and in the end I would have won: she lived to be 101. I was betting on her genes.

The guests include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland.

A colossal ancient impact may have reshaped the Moon far more deeply than scientists once realized. By analyzing rare lunar rocks brought back by China’s Chang’e-6 mission from the Moon’s largest crater, researchers found unusual chemical fingerprints pointing to extreme heat and material loss caused by a giant impact. The collision likely stripped away volatile elements, reshaped volcanic activity, and left a lasting chemical signature deep below the surface.

Physicists at Heidelberg University have developed a new theory that finally unites two long-standing and seemingly incompatible views of how exotic particles behave inside quantum matter. In some cases, an impurity moves through a sea of particles and forms a quasiparticle known as a Fermi polaron; in others, an extremely heavy impurity freezes in place and disrupts the entire system, destroying quasiparticles altogether. The new framework shows these are not opposing realities after all, revealing how even very heavy particles can make tiny movements that allow quasiparticles to emerge.

Once again, everything old is new again. The circle of disinformation is complete.

The post MAHA Leaders Are Recycling COVID Myths to Minimize Measles first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission is preparing to launch for a long-duration science mission aboard the International Space Station. During the mission, select crew members will participate in human health studies focused on understanding how astronauts’ bodies adapt to the low-gravity environment of space, including a new study examining subtle changes in blood flow.

I always say that one of the things that separates real science from pseudoscience is that while in both you’re allowed to say whatever crazy idea pops into your mind, in real science you’re obligated to take that idea seriously.

Here’s a video of NYT columnist Bret Stephens speaking at the famous 92nd Street YMCA in New York. (It’s 34 minutes long, and well worth watching.) I like Stephens’s columns quite a bit despite his identification as a “conservative”. He’s the paper’s best columnist on Israel and the Gaza War, and he’s also Jewish, and he’s a centrist conservative, not at all a MAGA conservative.

In the video Stephens gives a heterodox take on the “state of World Jewry.” His message is fourfold (I’m expanding on his own words here):

1.) The fight against antisemitism is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend and focus our energy elsewhere.

2.) Antisemitism is the world’s most unwitting compliment, for it is based largely on envy and resentment based on Jewish success.

3.) Proper defense against Jew-hatred is not to prove haters wrong by acting well, but to lean into our Jewishness irrespective of what anybody else thinks of it. As he says, “It goes without saying that there’s nothing  Jews can do to cure the Jew-haters of their hate. . . .And there is nothing we should want to do, either. . . If it’s impossible to cure an antisemite, it’s almost impossible to cure Jews of the delusion that we can cure antisemites.”

4.)  Jews don’t need a seat at the table of victimized groups. We should build our own table.

To me, the best part is his analysis of the psychology of antisemitism, which he think is not properly understood.  Here is one misconception: “We think that antisemitism stems from missing or inaccurate information.” (e.g., the lies of the Gaza war). The result is that people hope to erase antisemitism by correcting widespread misconceptions (“Israel is an apartheid state”, “Israel is committing genocide,” and so on.)

But he argues that Jew hatred is “not the result of a defect of education,” It is, instead, “the product of a psychological reflex. . . .  It’s not just a prejudice and belief, but a neurosis.” Antisemitism preceded the founding of the state of Israel, and therefore can’t just rest on the presence of a Jewish state. He further argues that Jew hatred doesn’t come largely because “we killed Christ,” which is just one excuse people use to justify their bigotry. Instead, says Stephens, people hate Jews because of the virtues of our religion (e.g., the love of life rather than death), and, most of all, because Jews have been successful. A quote: “They do not hate us because of our faults and failures; they hate us because of our virtues and successes. The more virtuous and successful we are, the more we’ll be hated by those whose animating emotions are resentment and envy.”

To Stephens, the obvious conclusion is that it’s a fool’s errand for Jews to try to earn the world’s love.

As for building our own table, it seems to involve “Jewish thriving”: “a community in which Jewish learning, Jewish culture, Jewish ritual, Jewish concerns, Jewish aspiration and Jewish identification. . . . are central to every member’s sense of him or herself.”  He thinks that this can be done both culturally and religiously. (I don’t know how pious Stephens is, or what he believes about God and the Old Testament, but he seems to be more religious than I thought.) Building our own table further involves expanding Jewish education, building more Jewish cultural institutions and creating more venues for Jewish philanthropy, de-wokeifying liberal Jewish congregations, and “reinventing publishing” so it is not as antisemitic as it is now.

As an atheist but also a cultural Jew, I’m a bit put off by the overly religious nature of Stephen’s suggested cure. After all, Jewish schools are founded on the truth of Judaism, which is, like that of all religions, pure superstition. But yes, Jews need to de-wokeify (the ones who voted for Mamdani, for example, seem to me deluded) and not act like victims.

And I agree with Stephens that it’s time to stop trying to prove to the rest of the world that we’re okay. That is truly a fool’s errand, and what has happened since October 7 proves it. The more Israel tried to help Gazans dispossessed by the war, the more Israel (and Jews) was hated. It seems to me that antisemitism is now worse than ever; there are daily pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demnonstrations (e.g. “From the river to the sea. . “) all over Europe, Jews are killed en masse in Australia, and universities cater to pro-Palestinians and “encampers,” failing to enforce their rules when they are violated by antisemites.

In the end, Stephens avers that the precipice of Judaism is but a step away from its zenith, and we’ve failed to recognize the imminence of our downfall.  But he’s still hopeful, finishing this way:

“All this was understood once, and will be understood again. Until then, we will, again, endure the honor of being hated as we continue to work for a thriving Jewish future.”

Besides the overemphasis on religious Judaism, my only criticism is that Stephens, like all academics in the humanities, reads a pre-written paper out loud, rarely looking at the audience. But I’ll excuse that, for his talk provides a lot of food for thought—and for argument.  And I think his main argument, encapsulated in the four points above, is correct.

I’ve run on too long: listen to the talk (if you’re a religious or a cultural Jew, you must listen to the talk):

Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus in 1986 recorded radiation levels so extreme they baffled scientists for nearly 40 years. New research suggests the spacecraft caught Uranus during a rare solar wind event that flooded the planet’s radiation belts with extra energy. Similar storms have been seen near Earth, where they dramatically boost radiation levels. The discovery reshapes how scientists think about Uranus—and why it deserves another visit.

Astronomers propose that an ultra-dense clump of exotic dark matter could be masquerading as the powerful object thought to anchor our galaxy, explaining both the blistering speeds of stars near the center and the slower, graceful rotation of material far beyond. This dark matter structure would have a compact core that pulls on nearby stars like a black hole, surrounded by a broad halo shaping the galaxy’s outer motion.

Astronomers propose that an ultra-dense clump of exotic dark matter could be masquerading as the powerful object thought to anchor our galaxy, explaining both the blistering speeds of stars near the center and the slower, graceful rotation of material far beyond. This dark matter structure would have a compact core that pulls on nearby stars like a black hole, surrounded by a broad halo shaping the galaxy’s outer motion.

We’re back with the Caturday felids: three items and several more for lagniappe.

First, an 18-minute video from Meowtopia about how cats see humans. It’s designed to prove that cats aren’t just using us, but that we are “their secure base.”  It’s a mixture of true facts mixed with some dry humor, somewhat like a toned-down ZeFrank video. The them is cat psychology: “What are cats thinking?”

It turns out that we are actually “Super Providers” whose purpose is to provide food; in other words, we are vending machines made of meat.  But we also mean one thing to them: “Safety.”

The video invokes a lot of scientific research on cats, is full of interesting results, and is well worth watching.

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Click below to see an article from the Washington Post showing that “pet-friendly” hotels are actually biased against cats.  (The article is archived here.) What gives?

 

An excerpt; the article begins with cat staff checking into a “pet friendl” hotel in Amsterdam.

“Hotels will say they’re pet-friendly, but they really mean dogs,” said Erin Geldermans, who adopted “Liebs” in Colorado. “So we’ll show up with our cat, and they’re like, ‘Oh, sorry, cats aren’t allowed.’”

Cast into the night without a room, Geldermans and [their tabby cat Liebchen] landed on their feet, finding more inclusive accommodations at the Jan Luyken Amsterdam next door. The hotel didn’t even charge them a pet fee. However, the experience was a stark reminder that, for jet-setting cats, it’s a dog’s world.

Travelers who vacation with their feline companions say they have encountered an anti-cat bias around the world. They come across it in airports and on planes, at hotels and vacation rentals. The owners say they must often overcome hurdles to earn the same trust and acceptance granted to dogs.

“This is discrimination,” said Anna Karsten, a France-based travel blogger who has faced a double standard when traveling with her Ragdoll, Poofy. “It’s a higher risk, apparently, which, if you think about it, is outrageous. The cat is literally going to sleep, but the dog might destroy the entire room if it’s stressed.”

During check-in at a rental in the Dutch city of Leiden, Karsten had to provide references that Poofy was a model guest. Stung by a previous incident involving cat pee, the apartment’s owner said the family would have to keep Poofy in a “cage.”

After several minutes of negotiations, the two sides agreed to sequester the cat in the bathroom whenever the family was out. Karsten abided by the rule the first day but eventually left the door ajar. By the end of the week-long stay, the host had experienced a change of heart.

“She loved the cat,” Karsten said triumphantly.

REFERENCES??  The lesson is that if you travel with your cat, be sure that any “pet friendly” accommodations your reserve consider cats as adequate “pets.”  Actually, cats are not pets but owners, and we are their staff.

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We all know of Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office .  He was rescued from the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, and has lived at 10 Downing Street for 15 years. Larry is now 19: technically an old cat, but still quite spry, running about outside the Prime Minister’s home and the object of many photographs. He’s gone through five Prime Ministers!

Here’s a 15-minute BBC News video showing seven times that Larry caused mischief.  He’s not a very good mouser; he’s said to have caught only 3 in his 15-year tenure.  Don’t miss Obama’s meeting Larry at 5:40.  There are many comments about Larry from Prime Ministers, journalists, and so on.

This too is an excellent video.  If you want more Larry, his Twitter feed is here.  Don’t miss the BBC journalist Helen Catt (that’s right!), who comments throughout.

Lagniappe: Larry turned 19 a few weeks ago.  Here is what he wants to tell us on his birthday, including how old he’d be in human years.

Extra lagniappe: Japanese road signs. Slow down for cats!

Still more lagniappe from the Facebook group Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit: A new and excellent Swedish law.  If we have any Swedish readers, please confirm this.

New simulations reveal that both H1N1 and COVID-19 spread across U.S. cities in a matter of weeks, often before officials realized what was happening. Major travel hubs helped drive rapid nationwide transmission, with air travel playing a bigger role than daily commuting. Unpredictable transmission patterns made real-time forecasting especially difficult. The study highlights why early detection systems are critical for slowing future pandemics.

Today we have urban wildlife, from Marcel van Oijen in Edinburgh.  His notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Urban wildlife in Scotland: Vertebrates

Marcel van Oijen

 

We live in Edinburgh South and our back garden borders a small woodland. The following pictures were all taken in the garden over a number of years, but I sorted them by month, from January to November.

Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are among the first visitors to our garden each year. They have become very common in British cities. There are about 400,000 foxes in the U.K., and roughly one third are city-dwellers.

Magpies (Pica pica) come in droves to our garden. They are fascinating to watch but tend to frighten off the songbirds and steal their food:

Occasionally we see sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus) plucking pigeons apart until what is left is small enough to fly away with. The magpies resent the sparrowhawks invading their territory, and gang up against them:

Carrion crows (Corvus corone) usually come in pairs; this one was an exception. The way it walked, paused, looked around, nodded its head, inspecting everything – it all suggested confidence and cleverness:

We do not often see Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), but regularly hear them pecking away when walking in the woodland behind the garden:

The mammals we see the most are our American friends, the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). They tend to chase ach other away, but these two were friendly, maybe young siblings:

We are always surprised to see amphibians because there is not much open water in our neighbourhood. This summer visitor is a Common Frog (Rana temporaria):

Wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) are almost as acrobatic as the squirrels, and we see them climbing up the stems of plants and jumping onto the birdfeeders:

We don’t see hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) often enough – we would like them to eat more of the slugs that invade our house from the garden:

This is the more common behaviour of the Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis): entering supposedly squirrel-proof birdfeeders and being nasty to each other:

We often see pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) around the golf course one kilometer away, but last November was the first time one came to see us:

Strange as it may seem, the prospects of finding advanced high-tech aliens somewhere in the cosmos will likely depend on finding exoplanets that like our own earth harbor large amounts of accessible energy-dense coal.

An international team of researchers have published two papers that reveal a new model for how the magnetic field of the Milky Way evolved.

Recently published data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) of the galaxy Messier 87 facilitate new insights into the direct environment of the central supermassive black hole. Measured differences in the radio light on different spatial scales can be explained by the presence of an as of yet undetected jet at frequencies of 230 Gigahertz at spatial scales comparable to the size of the black hole. The most likely location of the jet base is determined through detailed modeling.

Isn’t the FLRW metric way generic? It lays out the basic assumptions and tells us how the universe should behave, but it doesn’t say WHAT the universe is made of.

The flow of ice at Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica has sped up dramatically due to the disintegration of the ice shelf in front of it, and this could lead to faster sea level rise

The old Groundhog Day trope is this, “As the tradition goes, if the groundhog sees his shadow, we will have six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, an early spring is coming.”  The holiday is celebrated on February 2, and over the years the tradition has come to center on Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who lives in the eponymous Pennsylvania town.

Every year on February 2, a group of top-hatted men called the “Inner Circle” haul the hapless rodent out of his hibernation, slap him down on a lectern like a pancake, tap him with a cane, and then wait a bit. Then they lift the groundhog into the air and proclaim, via a poem, whether or not he saw his shadow. Here’s this year’s prediction: Phil did see his shadow (so they surmised) so we’re in for a long winter:

Of course the exercise is ludicrous, and Phil’s record of predictions is abysmal: about a 35%-40% accuracy.  But I can prove from first principles that this exercise is futile from the get-go.

Here:

To determine if the groundhog sees his shadow there must be

1.)  The possibility of a shadow (i.e., the sun must be shining), and

2.) If there is a shadow, the groundhog must have the ability to see it, and we have to know if he did or did not.

But if there is no shadow, as when the weather is overcast like this year, then the groundhog has nothing to see or not see, so he clearly cannot see his shadow whether or not he looks.  Thus, if the weather is overcast (as it was this year), you don’t need a damn groundhog: there will be an early spring. (As you see above, he is said to have seen his shadow! Oy!)

If there IS a shadow, then you have to determine whether the groundhog saw it.  I doubt that we’re able to do this, as Punxsutawney Phil is not trained to indicate whether or not he saw his own shadow. Thus if it’s sunny, the prediction becomes indeterminate.

Therefore there is only one possible predictive outcome, and that depends solely on whether the weather is sunny or not. The sole prediction is this (here it comes): no shadows possible, therefore an early Spring. That is, of course, bogus as well.

You could diagram this with a decision tree, but I think my logic here is impeccable given our inability to detect qualia in groundhogs. And this indicates why Phil’s bogus “predictions”, based on what the top-hatted men say, have been so inaccurate.

Science funding cuts in the UK are expected to be a "devastasting blow" for physics research, affecting international projects such as particle detection experiments at CERN