Fun stuff in depressing times

Last week, Jon Stewart decided to rip into CNBC. By the end, I was left with more faith in astrology than the talking heads. It's one of his best segments this year ... hilarious!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

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Then, Cramer complained. He felt he was taken out of context. Huh? Baiting The Daily Show? Well, here's Jon Stewart's response. Poor Cramer. Why is he allowed on TV again?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

In Cramer We Trust

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Important Things With Demetri Martin

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Economic Crisis

On the subject of faith in things that are completely unsubstantiated, like "experts" on TV, here's Joel Stein critiquing the lack of faith in science of liberals. It is hugely entertaining and so very accurate.

Finally, I have been depressed of late of the complete dearth of conservative ideas that address the current economic woes. I was so relieved, therefore, to read David Brooks, finally, critique Obama's policies in an intelligent way. If only conservatives could have adopted such a posture, we might have the response we needed to the crisis instead of the response we settled on, which will probably prove inadequate (I hope I am proved wrong in this).

PS: I must give a shout out to Grain of Sand, who had presciently predicted in November that we would see the type of shocking performance of GM we have witnessed in recent weeks. It might have been cheaper to put the GM staff in the US on a government payroll and start from scratch! Chapter 11 anyone? It's what its there for.

First use of telescope

For years, Galileo has been credited as being the first man to observe the moon through a telescope and to make detailed drawings of the moon. Now it seems that Thomas Harriot, a wealthy Englishman, had made very detailed drawings of the moon's surface well before Galileo.

The discussion in the article ponders why Galileo is so famous and not Thomas Harriot. Unfortunately, this is often true in Science. Darwin, though he did write the most comprehensive work on the origin of species, was not the first to come up with the ideas. There are several preceding claims. Similarly, Marconi probably wasn't the first to invent the telegraph. Newton and Leibnitz both arrived at entirely different formulations for calculus (and a lot of what we use today is based on Leibnitz and not Newton). One could go on and on.

It is curious, but it does seem that often scientific breakthroughs have been arrived at somewhat independently by multiple people at the same time. The person usually credited is usually not the person who was first, but the person who did the most to popularize the breakthrough. In that sense, it is right that Galileo is the one credited.

Stonehenge in the US?

It seems that there are rumors of a weird underwater circular stone structure discovered in Lake Michigan. Some are hypothesizing that this is a US version of Stonehenge. It's probably a hoax though, although were it to be true, it would make a very interesting discovery.

History according to the vanquished

The common view of science in the West is that the world discovered science only with the advent of Newton, Descartes, Copernicus, Kepler, etc. The truth, however, is somewhat more murky. This article by Jim Al-Khalili discusses the contributions of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, an Iraqi scholar who lived in the 10th century AD, who had experimentally proven many of the findings about light and celestial bodies that Newton later describes in his works. He even invents a pin-hole camera. What the article fails to discuss is whether these ideas influenced Newton. They may well have, even if it was in oblique ways. Newton was an avid reader and his reading included ideas by many foreign authors. Ideas are memes. They percolate and survive, often skipping cultural barriers in unexpected ways.

Should India receive a Dinosaur Tax?

I've often heard the idea toyed around that the world should perhaps pay Brazil an oxygen tax. No, the UN isn't seriously contemplating that.

But now, methinks, the world owes India a Dinosaur Tax. There's new evidence that suggests lava flows, and related sulfur emissions, in India led to the decline of dinosaurs.
It's a nascent investigation but you can read more about it here.

Higgs Boson - addressing Dhakks

Dhakks asks in an earlier post whether the Large Hadron Collider is worth the billions that are being spent on it. My answer, quite simply, is yes. In fact, my only regret is that the US abandoned the even bigger Superconducting Super Collider in 1993. They should probably build it now, or an even bigger one.

I have two reasons. The first is my bias towards supporting scientific research - knowledge for knowledge's sake.

There are a number of problems with Science as we know it today. Most of the world lives comfortably unaware of the extent of ignorance and incongruity that the Human race is condemned to. If you'd like an entertaining version of our lack of knowledge, I would recommend "A Brief History of Nearly Everything."

A quick summary is as follows. We don't really understand where life came from or indeed what life is. We have discovered, just of late, that most of known biology is but a small fraction of life on Earth, most of the rest we don't know and don't understand. In Physics, the two great theories relativity (the theory of really big things) and quantum mechanics (the theory of really small things don't agree at the crucial point where they meet, and if we look into space and try to explain everything we see with existing theories, then the only explanation is that 96% of the Universe is made of stuff we don't know anything about. This is only the stuff which we know that we don't know. Who knows how much we don't know we don't know.

The experiments on Large Hadron Collider will, among other things, test the current standard model of the quantum physics, look for the Higgs boson, and start looking at whether String Theory is really valid. All this for a cost less than the amount the US spends on potato chips in a year.

These are just the experiments currently scheduled. Over time, it could yield surprising results that enable us to explore the reaches of what we don't know.

Does this knowledge have any practical value? Not immediately. However, those theorists working on quantum theory in the early 20th century could never have imagined the types of technologies their theories made possible. So, the results it generates could be the foundation of science and technology in the future. It all depends on what we learn, and we won't know that until we try.

However, there is a second more practical reason for building it.

The LHC is undoubtedly going to be the best particle accelerator in the world for many years to come. This means that the over 40 years of dominance that the US has had in the world of particle physics may end, as the best and the brightest from around the world will congregate to Europe and not the US for particle physics. That could, very soon, have noticeable economic consequences for both the US and Europe, and may be well worth the $2+BN that Europe has shelled out.

LHC ... worth it?

In an effort to wake some sleeping bloggers ... let me pose a question.

Yesterday I happened upon a clip of a town-hall style meeting that was apparently held near where the CERN facility (the mega-blaster, earth-consuming blackhole-creating gizmo) just recently came up. The clip was from the year before construction began, to give local residents a voice. This lady stood up and asked why they were spending 100s of millions of dollars to find out whether the Higgs boson exists? Also, what's the value of answering (or starting to answer) the Higgs boson question now vs. in 20 or 50 years?

What's a good answer to that?

Btw - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project has direct costs of ~£2.6B; that's just the cost of the collider and detectors. Not including the costs of operating it, labor, etc.

Thoughts?