Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Artemis II return to Earth was inspiring. Iran war negotiations not so much.

Today was a yin and yang news day for me. I was deeply moved watching the Artemis II crew splash down in the Pacific after becoming the humans who have traveled furthest from Earth in the course of their journey around the dark side of the moon. I continued to be disgusted and disturbed by the state of the supposed cease fire in the Iran war, which is mired in confusion, mixed messages, and general incoherence. So I saw the best of what science and technology can achieve in the United States' inspiring return to the moon -- or at…
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Posted inScience

Scientist AI proposed as a way to keep us safe from “agent” AI models

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the dangers that AI (artificial intelligence) models such as ChatGPT could pose to humanity as they come closer to AGI -- artificial general intelligence. That would make AI models akin to a super-intelligent person, but with powers potentially much vaster than any person now possesses. It's easy to see how things could go horribly wrong. (Just imagine an AI version of Elon Musk that is 1000 times smarter with no way to control its actions.) The situation seems hopeless given the rush to create AI models with very little regulation. No country wants…
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Posted inScience

Artificial Intelligence explained to City Club by Willamette University professor

Last Friday Calvin Deutschbein, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Willamette University, gave a talk on Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as AI, to the Salem City Club. Deutschbein is holding a microphone in the photo below. He started off by talking about intelligence in general. It has something to do with (1) representing the world, (2) finding patterns, (3) predicting the future, (4) acting optimally. His example pertained to his cat. I'll adapt it to our dog. Mooka, our Husky mix, clearly is adept at making sense of the world. After all, ever since dogs became domesticated, probably via ancestral…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy Science

I don’t believe in free will. Here’s why.

Today the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of spent quite a bit of time talking about free will. This is one of my favorite subjects, for after pondering quite a few books about free will, or the lack thereof, I'm highly confident that free will is an illusion. I can't recall exactly how our group started conversing about it, but for sure I spurred our conversation by saying that I've started reading Robert M. Sapolsky's terrific book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. To give you a feel for his general view…
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Posted inScience

Science says first humans had black skin and tightly curled hair

Racism is ridiculous for lots of reasons. A big reason is that science finds no basis for concluding that physical differences between some members of our species, Homo sapiens, make those members inherently superior to other people. In fact, there's no such thing as race, according to science. More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "white" and "black" as discrete groups, claiming that these…
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Posted inScience

If you frequently think about sex, you’re likely to be a man

Seemingly the title of this blog post is a good candidate for top honors in the "Well, duh, that's obvious" pantheon of trite statements. But, hey, I learned about this unsurprising finding in the June 2022 issue of Scientific American, so it's decidedly science'y.  The article is called "Men Aren't from Mars, nor are Women from Venus." This, of course, is a mirror image of John Gray's 1992 book, "Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus." It's based on a study of studies involving the personality traits of more than 15,000 people. Cisgender people. Which means people whose gender…
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Posted inHome life Science Sustainability

Brown Oregon grass in October — climate change is very real

Yesterday I learned of a dire climate change report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Today I spread organic lawn fertilizer on parts of our rural yard where the grass is almost always greened up after fall rains. Not this year. And that's really weird.  I'm a creature of habit when it comes to fertilizing our yard. Twice a year, spring and fall, I spread organic fertilizer that I buy at Lowe's on both our shrubs/trees and our lawn. Some of the grass around our house is watered with a sprinkler system. Some isn't. We've lived on our…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Trump’s transgender policy is unscientific and unfair

A few days ago President Trump unleashed another ridiculous Twitter storm, this time about transgender people serving in the military. On Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that “after consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.""Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump added. “Thank you." Not surprisingly, these short sentences are filled with lies. …
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Some thoughts are like a rainbow, but others are more grounded

After about three months, I'm continuing to enjoy my daily morning Headspace guided meditations. (I've blogged about Headspace before, here, here, and here.) Today I heard Andy Puddicombe -- the Headspace founder who does the guiding -- talk about how thoughts are like a rainbow. Meaning, they are insubstantial, coming and going, while the "blue sky" of the mind is the ever-present backdrop to thoughts and feelings. In We Are Not What We Do, Puddicombe says: Sure, we have responsibility as to whether we choose to engage the thought and take it to the level of speech or action, but…
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Posted inSalem Salem, Open Your Eyes Science

Why being critical and contentious is a must for citizen activists

I've been called a "bomb thrower" by City officials and other members of the Powers-That-Be here in Salem, Oregon.  As I said in a blog post last year, I don't see this as an insult. Quite the reverse, in fact. I've been called a bomb-thrower by folks at City Hall. I guess this is supposed to be an insult. I consider it a compliment. I'm proud to speak out loud and powerfully when I see stuff going on in Salem that shouldn't be. My goal is to throw truth-bombs that open up minds and demolish barriers to seeing what is happening behind…
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Posted inReligion Science

A secular Easter thought: “spiritual” isn’t supernatural or religious

My wife and I had a pleasant Easter Sunday. We didn't celebrate it. Being non-religious, this was just another day for us. We simply lived it. I got several yard chores done. Spread bark and organic fertilizer. Laurel sprayed poison oak, then walked dogs at the Humane Society. Meaningful stuff. Pleasingly real.  Many other people spent part of their day worshipping a God, and Jesus, we don't believe in. A good share of those Christians consider that folks like us are missing out on the most important part of being human: believing in a divine other-worldly side to reality. Well,…
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Posted inReligion Salem Science

There’s a better message than the “Christmas story”

Before getting into the main part of this post, let's warm up with some compelling tweets today from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I love them! QUESTION: ThIs year, what do all the world's Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday [Comment: Tyson failed to mention atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Daoists, and so many others who don't believe in the Christ part of Christmas. But he only had 140 characters to work with.] On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642Merry Christmas…
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Posted inSalem Science Sustainability

Global warming is real, David Titley tells Salem City Club

If there were any global warming deniers in the room at today's Salem City Club meeting, I don't see how they could have listened to Rear Admiral (Retired) David Titley and not been persuaded that climate change is happening; it poses a huge threat to humanity; and we need to combat it. Titley was crisp, organized, humorous, entertaining, and thoroughly believable. The guy's credentials are impressive.  David W. Titley is a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and the founding director of their Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk. He is also NOAA's chief operating officer. Before assuming these positions,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science Sustainability

Republican denial of global warming makes me hate the GOP

Progressive Democratic me actually is a pretty moderate guy. I was raised by a very conservative mother. I grew up reading Bill Buckley and National Review. I have right-leaning friends. As a long-time Oregonian I fondly recall our state's Governor Tom McCall, along with Senators Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood -- Republicans. I can forgive today's GOP for taking misguided stands on the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, and other domestic issues. I can accept their hawkishness on Iran, the Palestinian issue, and other foreign policy matters. But there is one thing that makes me freaking angry when I hear…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Climate change is the big job-killer, not EPA carbon regulations

It was an interesting juxtaposition of truth-telling and fear-mongering. Sunday night my wife and I watched the most recent Cosmos episode, which was about global climate change. Scary scientific conclusions, as recapped by the LA Times. Here's the thing: Nature doesn't care about your politics, or what you want to be true. It just does its thing according to the well-established rules described by science. We ignore reality at our peril. The sharp rise since the late 19th century means that the average global temperature is rising, with some pretty devastating consequences for our environment. Melting ice caps, rising sea…
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Posted inSalem Science

Brian Greene makes physics Wow! at Willamette U talk

Hugely encouraging, given how scientifically illiterate so many of our nation's citizens are (I'm talking about you, global warming skeptics, evolution deniers, and anti-vaccine fanatics)... Smith Auditorium was almost completely filled for Brian Greene's talk at Willamette University tonight. Greene is one of the most gifted popularizers of science, today's Carl Sagan in many ways. He also is a highly respected scientist in his own right, being a theoretical physicist and string theorist. My wife and I had seen him on television numerous times. I've read all of his books. But seeing him in person made us realize what a…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Human-caused global warming continues as predicted

Thankfully, the influence of global warming deniers appears to be shrinking steadily. Reality has a way of weeding out those who fail to respect it. Even though this can take a while, truthful facts win out in the end. But fossil fuel industry-funded deniers, aided and abetted by anti-science media outlets like Fox News, continue to distort the disturbing truth of how humans are warming the Earth's climate much more rapidly than nature has ever done it on her/its own. For example, when I briefly channel surf onto right-wing talk radio, fairly frequently I hear that "global warming has stopped."…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science Sustainability

Oregonian story downplays global warming science

Yesterday I emailed a reporter for the Portland Oregonian that writing a story about global warming and including a mention about how some are skeptical the planet is getting hotter is akin to ending a story about a fossil discovery with "but some scientists doubt evolution is real." That would be absurd. Evolution is a scientific truth. So is global warming. There's no doubt among the vast majority of reputable researchers in either field about these facts.  So it bothered me when the reporter, Scott Learn, tossed in this sentence near the end of a story about how a national…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

“New Scientist” says Obama will win. I love science.

Ah, I love science. Especially when it supports my political leanings.  This week's issue of New Scientist (September 29, 2012) has an opinion piece by Jim Giles, a consultant for the magazine. It's title and subtitle: No contest. Don't believe the US presidential opinion polls. Barring a political earthquake, Barack Obama will be re-elected at a canter, says Jim Giles. Hey, makes sense to me. Here's some excerpts: FROM tabloids and broadsheets to left-leaning blogs and conservative talk shows, the US media has been united on one point in recent months: the presidential election is too tight to call.  ...But…
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