Random Thoughts

The Light Of Reason The greatest tool ever invented by kings and dictators was propaganda.  Disinformation can help to win wars.  In WW2 the German naval codes were broken at Bletchley.  At about the same time, a new type of radar had been developed to detect surfaced submarines.  The U-boats would run surfaced at night to re-charge their batteries.  The code-breaking allowed allied aircraft to narrow down the search area so that the radar could be deployed more effectively.  An aircraft guided to a search area by good intelligence could be further guided by its…

In this paper I will discuss the details of the Stephen Hawking announcement, that he believes that aliens could be in outer space that roam like nomads conquering planets to steal their resources and then move on to the next target. This completes an image that I have seen of Hawking, coming into greater focus, over the last couple of decades but which probably began before he completed his book,  A Brief History of Time. The focus of a man who is fairly brilliant on one hand but in general, repeatedly fails where his brilliance should have allowed him to avoid his missteps, and instead…

You know you've lost a lot of intellectual capital when ridiculous parodies of your work generate hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube - and threatening to sue is just making the whole thing sillier. Michael Mann of Penn State isn't happy.   Everyone who had any sort of a clue knew his hockey stick regarding global warming wasn't literal but it also wasn't unethical.  An internal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing despite the unfortunate use of the word "trick" by researchers referencing his methods and "hide the decline" has become something of a rallying cry for…

Okay, this is just insane but Bango, the Milwaukee Bucks' mascot, pulled off this ridiculous feat Monday night at the Bradley Center, climbing to the top of a 16-foot ladder and then doing a backflip(!) slam dunk of a basketball. I refuse to even climb anywhere near the top of a 16 foot ladder and, to me, the 6 feet down to the basket might as well be distance to the Grand Canyon.  But he was undaunted as you shall see: It's not all balloons and ponies for flying reindeer though.  A year ago he tore his ACL (do morphologically suspect reindeer have those?) doing a stunt at the All-…

In my family it seems that we all have some degree of Autism.  I personally am convinced that Autism is genetically linked, and varies in intensity.  From the hardly effected at all high functioning person with Aspergers syndrome, to those who will need care for life.  In my family we have a wide spread of that spectrum.  In particular, my sister who was diagnosed with Autism and treated in elementary school as if that always meant low function. My sister was diagnosed with Autism at the age of about 6.  She seemed normal then regressed in certain ways…

Politicians may only tell us what we want to hear, but not just because they're vote hustlers looking to stay in office. Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, say it's also because voters interpret everything elected officials say based on their own political views. The authors argue that "it is possible for two well-informed groups of people faced with the same evidence to reach completely different conclusions about what should be done." They highlight a recent American study where three groups who described themselves as either Democrats, Republicans or Independents were…

If you find politically vocal celebrities annoying, you may be able to take comfort in new research  which suggests that movie stars are unlikely to influence the outcome of political elections. Two new studies from North Carolina State University show that young voters are not swayed by celebrity endorsements of political candidates – and sometimes voters like the candidate less as a result of receiving a celebrity's endorsement. God bless America's young people. The research was presented April 22 at the 68th Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago…

This made me laugh, albeit in mirthless recognition of how many human follies this could be applied to. From the inimitable xkcd. I don't know why, but it reminded me of politics in Thailand. Today I had a choice of entertainment; 5 minutes walk to the north I could have witnessed this scene: whereas 10 minutes walk to the south I could have been here: I'm sure you'd agree I was spoilt for choice. Thai politics is currently colour-coded for ease of reference: there are red shirts, yellow shirts (with the occasional light blue), and there are now multicoloured shirts, and not forgetting the…

Recently, I observed that the mirrors in most barbershops (in India) are placed at a large distance away from the customers (at least three feet). Barbers usually ask myopic customers to remove their glasses during the haircut. This creates a problem because the image is made at least six feet away from cusomers. Most myopic people are unable to see things clearly at such a distance without their glasses. A possible solution is to place the shelves sideways and hang the mirrors on walls(the mirror should not be more than a feet away from the…

Most of the 350 million facebook users around the world spend more time searching for specific content than aimlessly browsing news feeds or friends lists, according to research conducted at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Researchers have dubbed the practices "social searching" and "social browsing."  People engage in social searching when navigating facebook in search of certain information about a specific person, group, or event; users engage in social browsing, on the other hand, when surveying the general landscape, such as their newsfeed or wall, without looking…