I get a small amount of crank e-mail, and I usually don’t blog about it. In the case of Miroslav Provod, however, I’ve been mildly mailbombed for some time, and today he attached the above enigmatic image (titled “Kondenzátry 1″). Since his brand of whack physics is so whacky and also archaeology-related, I have now decided to inflict some excerpts from Mr. Provod’s latest boilerplate missive on you, Dear Reader.
I gradually found in further research that the phenomenon that I describe as “Cosmic energy” is actually static electricity.
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The imbalance of surface charge shows that objects feel attractive or repulsive forces. It is known that static electricity is caused by friction of different materials. This piece of knowledge inspired me to observe and do research with water quells and other water streams. In this way I found properties of static electricity that had been unknown.
These are three energetic parts - aura, zones and interzones. These are described in the article called “diagrams”. Yet unexplained energy of a field is caused by water flow and it’s friction with rock; it’s immeasurable with available measuring devices and metres. This energy goes through the surface of the earth and penetrates metals, concrete and also other hardly penetrable materials.
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I am aware that everything that I have published and will describe is only a small hint towards what needs to be explored. As an example I can write about findings from the experiments with groups of capacitors. The first finding is the fact that their charges have three energetic parts and these parts may be altered by changing the charge stored on the capacitors. I have further found that that by the contact of auras of more capacitors, a common aura is formed, whose volume is equal to the sum of volumes of auras of the individual capacitors. However, this is not true in all cases. Why - I don’t know yet.
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Nothing that is stated here is made up. I just copy the knowledge of engineers that built Stonehenge and other megalithic structures. Nobody will doubt the existence of static electricity in the ancient times and therefore we have to look at megalithic structures in this way as well.
The most important piece of knowledge found in my research is the fact that it’s possible to alter the charge on cellular membranes of organisms by the use of capacitors. It is also applicable in this case that the energy transferred could be chemically changed as needed. I won’t describe this effect in detail because it may be misused.
The research of cosmic energy could be faster if sceptics stop doubting its existence and pointing away from its further research in this way.
Note, Dear Reader, that nothing that is stated here is made up!
[More blog entries about physics, pseudoscience, skepticism; fysik, pseudovetenskap, skepsis, skepticism.]
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Written by on August 20th, 2008 with no comments.
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The Shy Albatross
A study of trawl fishing in South Africa suggests that around 18,000 seabirds may be killed annually in this fishery, highlighting trawl fisheries as a major threat to seabirds, especially several species of albatross already facing a risk of extinction.
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Written by on August 19th, 2008 with no comments.
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Video of a nasty argument between two debate coaches, one of whom mooned the other one in the middle of the argument, has been put up on Youtube. The argument took place in March at the CEDA national tournament. The older white guy with the beard is William Shanahan, who coaches the team at Fort Hays State University in Kansas; the younger black woman is Shanara Reid-Brinkley, who coaches the team at the University of Pittsburgh. They scream obscenities at each other before being pulled apart. She called him an asshole several times and he apparently decided to show her his asshole. Video below the fold.
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Written by on August 18th, 2008 with no comments.
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Chris Condayan, ASM’s public outreach and media guru (and the guy behind the scenes of MicrobeWorld), has an editorial in the latest issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology. Cleverly titled “Culture media,” Condayan encourages microbiologists to get involved sharing their knowledge online (and gives examples of ways they can do so). He notes:
As long as the internet remains free from regulation, every microbiologist has just as much access to online distribution as the BBC and CNN do. And in this day and age, if you don’t start sharing knowledge and news online, you may run the risk of becoming irrelevant in the near future.
If you can’t get your hands on the whole article, drop me an email and I can send it along.
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Written by on August 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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I got some old, old pictures of me, in the animal room at NCSU, holding one male and one female Japanese Quail (Coturnix japonica):
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Written by on August 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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I try to be careful when using the term “ignorant.” The dictionary definition could apply to anyone who is “unlearned” or “uneducated” in a particular area, i.e. I am nearly completely ignorant when it comes to quantum physics. I have always felt that the common usage of the term is more charged, however; that it not only indicates a lack of education but a lack of desire to learn anything about the subject at all. This probably stems from the root word, “ignore,” but whatever it’s derivation it is certainly not a compliment. It was somewhat unsettling, then, to read a review paper by an authority on ancient whales that asserted the public did not understand the evolution of whales due to 1) the obfuscating tactics of creationists, and 2) the public’s ignorance of published research. The first problem is still quite frustrating, but are we really expecting the public to keep up with what is going on in the technical literature?
If I was not at a large university I probably wouldn’t be able to learn as much as I have from technical papers. The subscriptions Rutgers holds to various journals has allowed me to get my hands on thousands of papers that have greatly aided my self-education. Before I made a concerted effort to seek these resources out, however, I never knew that I had the opportunity. Even if I had, if all publications suddenly became open access and all archives were digitized, there would be more jargon-filled material than I could possibly read. Can we really blame the public for not keeping up with what is printed in journals each year?
When it comes to the impoverished understanding of evolution in America it is easy to blame the media for misrepresentation. Yet as frustrating as bad reporting might be it does not exonerate scientists from doing what they can to educate the public. Indeed, we have little room to complain if we are not actively working to keep the public up to date through easily-understood essays, articles, books, documentaries, and other mass-media venues. New discoveries about whale evolution provide a perfect example. Years ago I remember watching an episode of the TLC show PaleoWorld that featured the evolution of whales from mesonychids. Since that show aired I had never heard differently, so I was quite surprised when I e-mailed an archaeocete researcher two years ago and found out that whales had evolved from artiodactyls. I felt a little embarrassed for being so out of date but then again I had not seen any updated accounts of whale evolution.
Even now one of the most impressive evolutionary transitions ever documented has received sparingly little attention in popular outlets. The popular book on the subject is still Carl Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge, and while I don’t mean this as a knock on Carl’s excellent work the content of the book is sorely in need of an update. Stephen Jay Gould had also tackled the topic a few years earlier in an essay collected in Dinosaur in a Haystack, but I can’t think of any more recent popular accounts. Maybe I have not paid close enough attention, but it does appear that we keep pounding the rostrum, demanding good science coverage, but are doing sparingly little to actually bring it to the public.
I can’t blame the public for not keeping up on the latest research printed in technical journals. For most of my life I was unaware that such publications existed, and even if I knew of them I would probably consider their contents indecipherable. We cannot continue to blame the public for not being aware of science if we continue to talk amongst ourselves and expect the interested parties to come to us. This is particularly true in a media landscape dominated by the creation/evolution debate. There are far more books and articles about the offense some people take at having an ape ancestry than how we know chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the first place. There is certainly a place for refutations of creationist nonsense but we should not let our opponents dictate the content of the debate; we need to better communicate scientific discoveries simply because they are so fascinating. If we continue to just mutter amongst ourselves about the “unlearned” perhaps we are the truly ignorant ones.
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Written by on August 13th, 2008 with no comments.
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IANAE (that’s I am not a person with severe physics envy but who is compensated for this fact by earning a higher salary than a physicist), but I do not understand Brad DeLong:
Traders! Read the second page of the statistical release before you press the button!
Meredith Beechey…and Jonathan Wright have details:
FRB: FEDS paper 2007-5: “Rounding and the Impact of News: A Simple Test of Market Rationality”:
Abstract: Certain prominent scheduled macroeconomic news releases contain a rounded number on the first page of the release that is widely cited by newswires and the press, and a more precise number in the text of the release. The whole release comes out at once. We propose a simple test of whether markets are paying attention to the rounded or unrounded numbers by studying the high-frequency market reaction to such news announcements. In the case of inflation releases, we find evidence that markets systematically ignore some of the information in the unrounded number. This is most pronounced for core CPI, a prominent release for which the rounding in the headline number is large relative to the information content of the release.
If the market is only reacting to the rounded number, why should a trader pay attention to the unrounded number? Is this just a case of sipping at the cooler of the efficient market hypothesis (i.e. surely the market will eventually revert to the unrounded number.) Or am I missing something?
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Written by on August 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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Looking for a global energy-policy strategy? We know very well how to stimulate the innovation and production of new technologies using policy instruments. So strategizing among ourselves about taxes vs. research grants vs. industry subsidies vs. moratoriums vs. caps vs. emissions standards vs. everything else, may not be the most productive use of concerned citizens’ time. The truth is that the day the US government decides decisively to tackle the issue, they’ll use most of these tools simultaneously in a shotgun strategy (think WW2, the New Deal, the Cold war, going to the moon, the war on terror…). The question is not which policies to use or not use, but whether we’re actually going to do anything significant at all.
This is a frequently forgotten point among environmental academics: in a democracy, we are the government. We tend to model government as a second party that interacts with the people, but in reality, the government merely reflects popular views and is far less (if at all) independent. And so, swallowing the hard truth, if democracies around the globe have failed to implement effective energy policies, its because we have collectively chosen not to implement such policies. If the current administration faced a clear majority of the population screaming for action, they would have taken it already. Having failed to observe such actions, we should infer that we haven’t been screaming for them appropriately. (I’ve written a little about this issue in a working paper here). My guess is that frustrated readers of this blog will point to disinformation campaigns as the root of popular inactivity. Such an accusation suggests a solution.
Our global strategy involves implementing policy instruments around the world in some coordinated way. This requires strong leadership from the United States, which requires the prioritization of this issue by our leadership. However, our leadership will not take the issue seriously so long as a sufficient fraction of the American population remains passive on the issue. And passive Americans will likely remain so unless they are provided with accurate information about the consequences of passivity. Our global strategy must begin with teaching Americans what climate change really is, where uncertainty actually lies and what consequences of inaction will foreseeably be. Such an education campaign must be overwhelming in both scale and accuracy of any opposing disinformation campaign. The aim of a such a campaign will be to turn the upcoming presidential contest into a horse race to the top, with both candidates trying to outdo the other in the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of their energy/climate policies. There is little reason to suspect that energy/climate cannot be the number one issue of this election, if the country is informed properly.
Don’t think this is possible? Here’s three papers from the academic world to chew on.
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Written by on August 11th, 2008 with no comments.
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