Another Reason to Write for the Blog: It's Good for You

Research has shown that writing and re-writing your personal story, which in slightly disguised ways is what we do with this blog, makes you a better person and increases your happiness.  See "Writing Your Way to Happiness."

Response to prior post…because…starting the new year right…etc.

I found it! It's the opening of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist". The song is called "Kangana" and performed by Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad.



From a commenter on the music:

Its not purely a Sufi composition, it has a huge classical/Hindustani music touch in it, as the lyrics itself denote being partly in Brij (language spoken around mathura and Agra) partly in Persian. The brij lyrics are originally an incident based on the amorous dialogue between Krishna and Radha, when Krishna snatches away her Kangana (bangles or a sort of bracelet) and Radha is pleading to Krishna to return her the Kangana.

I like this version even better. It is stunning!


Or play them simultaneously (start bottom, then top) for a real religious experience.

Education

We often tout education as a primary ingredient for solving problems in the world, from the economic (higher paying jobs) to the political (more knowledgeable voters) to the social (understanding the environment). However, education may not be the powerful solution we think it is.

In issues such as vaccinations, justification of the Iraq war (weapons of mass destruction or El Qaeda), how the rest of the world viewed the Iraq war, whether the troop surge reduced violence, and climate change, education actually increases people's dissonance with reality.

Reality (as best as we can figure it out) is that vaccinations are beneficial, WMD and El Qaeda were not justifications of the Iraq War, the rest of the world was against the war, the troop surge did reduced violence within Iraq, and man's carbon emissions do contribute to global warming. However studies have shown that agreement with these issues decreases as education increases. I'm sure we can come up with many reasons for this, such as educated people use more sophisticated ways to justify their views.

In my mind the greatest benefit of education is the appreciation of how little we know ("Recognize your limits" as Pete [the near doctor] has said) along with the passion to learn more. The result of this educational benefit is something that you needn't be highly educated to attain—humbleness. And that, hopefully, will trump ideology, the bane of education.

Response to Comment in Prior Post (Because They Won't Let us Imbed in a Comment)

I'm guessing that you are referring to the song played at the opening and closing credits of Inside Man -- a Spike Lee project starring Clive Owen and Denzel Washington:





But the song is originally from a Bollywood Movie, Dil Se. The movie itself is actually pretty dopey, but the scene involving the song is crazy good.  It has nothing to do with the movie plot but is a dream sequence.  By the way, Spike Lee added horns at key places which were not in the original.

Starting the New Year Right -- Taking Five in Lahore (another mental health break)

For your holiday/end of year discussions: Final Maps of 2014

My particular favorite, and the one that sums up the Ebola panic beautifully, is number 8.

14 Maps that Explain 2014

Longest Night

Tonight is not only the longest night of the year.  It is also the longest night, for any given location, in the history of the earth. 

 

See Tonight will be the longest night in the history of Earth

Correction:  For reasons explained by the Vox post I linked to, tonight will be plenty long but, as far as we know, the longest night in Earth's history likely occurred in 1912.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Rudolph

On December 9th, at 8 PM, Christmas television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, celebrated its 50th anniversary.  It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on NBC.  I was 11 when it first aired.  Back in the day, it was broadcast only once a year.  Now, if you're like me and missed the initial broadcast, they'll be many more opportunities.

Anyway, one part really stands out for me.  Who can forget it?

Place:  The Island of Misfit Toys

Charlie-in-the Box: Well it's Christmas Eve, but....
Spotted Elephant: Looks like we're forgotten again.
Dolly: But Rudolph promised we'd go this time.
Charlie: Oh, guess the storm was too much for them.
[sound of jingle bells in the distance]
Might…might just as well go to bed and start dreaming about next year.
Dolly: I haven't any dreams left to dream...[sobs] We’ll never get off this island. Never.
Elephant: Wait a minute…. What's that? Is it? Is it?
Charlie: It sure is!! It's Santa and look! Rudolph is leading the way!
Dolly: You can see his nose from here!

No matter how many times I see it, I still get all choked up.

We always knew this.

Run to Stay Young

A Thought for Thanksgiving

On November 18 of this year, Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., was installed as the ninth archbishop of Chicago, America’s third-largest Roman Catholic diocese, with 2.3 million members.

In an interview given shortly before his installation, he said this: “The pope is saying some very challenging things for people. He’s not saying, this is the law and you follow it and you get to heaven. He’s saying we have to do something about our world today that’s suffering; people are being excluded, neglected. We have a responsibility, and he’s calling people to task.”

Finally, somebody gets it right.

Blase J. Cupich

Harveys in the News

Giving credit where credit is due.  Report examines shared fire chief for New Salem and Wendell.  (And I always thought that MMA stood for Mixed Martial Arts)

The Card Game That Must Not Be Named

It turns out that for many years Bill Clinton's favorite card game was Hearts.  That all changed when he visited Steven Spielberg during the 1996 presidential campaign and was introduced to an even better game.  Spielberg Deals Bill Clinton Into a Beloved Card Game.

Barbie Does Daemons

Who says you can’t change the world…a little. Recently Mattel released a new children’s book titled “Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer.” (Later, they claimed it was released in 2010.) Wow! Barbie’s coming into the late twentieth century…until one starts reading it. I’m not sure how it got started, but it may have been Pamela Ribon who discovered the book and wrote about it on her blog. She found the book beyond banal, to being breathtakingly abominable.

Shortly, it caused such popular persecution and parody on the web that Random House pulled the book and Amazon dropped it. Now Mattel has apologized.

Thus in our internet age, democracy (or pop culture) voting works in magical ways. Whimsically, someone hacked up a way to write alternate versions of the book. Here are some geeky examples.

Serial

Many of the better quality blogs are touting the relatively new show by This American Life, called Serial. If In Progress is not in the "better quality" realm, then it is probably I who is dragging it down. As reparations,  I'll recommend the show. Be sure to start with episode 1.

Bigger Than Ebola

The U.S. panic over ebola is dwarfed by the Parisian tiger scare. Sure ebola may kill you, but so can a hungry tiger, and it is 155 pounds. For those living east of Paris, it is as mysterious as the killer virus, as no one knows where it came from. "The unbelievable tiger alert" dominates Parisian news. "It's been running for 48 hours and it hasn't eaten, so yes, I'm worried," said local resident, Jean-Francois Ameur.

Tiger expert Gilbert Edelstein, from the Pinder circus, said the best response to coming face-to-face with the stripy beast, thought to weigh around 70 kilogrammes (155 pounds), was to “scream as loud as possible.”
“Even better, scream in German. The guttural sounds could scare him away,” added Edelstein.

Leave it to the French to always come up with the appropriate use of German awareness. 

How are you affected by Nightly News?

Here is a short, painless quiz about your perceptions of your country (if you click the U.S.). It's nothing earthshaking or traumatic, but just another reality check that we are often led slightly astray. I didn't do too badly except about the percentage of Americans over 65.

This blog is on the internet, so I feel I can post this

Annual Report from the Edge of Science, aka 'Cold Fusion'

Last year’s post on the state of “Cold Fusion” or “Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction” (LENR) ended with the lines, “for such possibly breakthrough technology, events are progressing rapidly. Hopefully we will soon see if this is a false positive or not.” That turned out to be enigmatically prescient. Two significant events happened last year.

1. Defkalion’s LENR device, the Hyperion, was tested in a public demonstration streamed on the internet. Apparently, when the results were in, the device failed to produce any excess heat at all, reminiscent of the original Pons-Fleischmann experiment. That was the conclusion of high energy physicist Luca Gamberale in a report on the demonstration. The company, as a result, seems to have all but collapsed.

2. Andrea Rossi’s device, the E-Cat, also had a demonstration. Six researchers from Italy and Sweden tested the device for 32 days. The extended time allowed more rigorous testing than previously, and would help determine the long termed stability of the device. The team concluded:

“The quantity of heat emitted constantly by the reactor and the length of time during which the reactor was operating rule out, beyond any reasonable doubt, a chemical reaction as underlying its operation.” 

“The isotope composition in Lithium and Nickel was found to agree with the natural composition before the run, while after the run it was found to have changed substantially. Nuclear reactions are therefore indicated to be present in the run process, which however is hard to reconcile with the fact that no radioactivity was detected outside the reactor during the run.” 

“In summary, the performance of the E-Cat reactor is remarkable. We have a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible.”

The scientists, being trained in ‘known’ physics, are almost comically skeptical and at one point in the report say:

“However, as discussed above, it is of course very hard to comprehend how these fusion processes can take place in the fuel compound at low energies. Presently we should therefore restrict ourselves to merely state that an isotope shift has occurred in Lithium and Nickel. We refrain from speculations in any dynamic scenario making this reaction possible at low energies. The reaction speculation above should only be considered as an example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”

To repeat, their explanation is an “example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”
Here is a copy of the report.

You may purchase one of Rossi’s 1 mega-watt E-Cat plants for a reported $1.5 million.

There are many, many organizations working on this technology, but, as far as I can tell, all are very poorly funded with the exception of Rossi’s E-Cat. I continue to hold no belief (one way or another) in the practicality of the technology, but report what I find.

You are free to speculate on your own as to its practicality, and also as to why the press does not report on LENR activities.

Addendum: I probably should add that, as you would expect, the results of the report are not without controversy, which is a good thing (re: faster than light neutrinos). There are those who argue that the 6 scientists, though respected, did an inadequate job, especially in measuring input energy to the system.

Lies About Aging

You know, they… they say that age kills the fire inside of a man.  That he hears death coming.  He opens the door and says, “Come in.  Give me rest.”

That is a pack of old damn lies!  I’ve got enough fight in me to devour the world.  So I fight.

                    -- Zorba the Greek

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

                    -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Dr. Ellen Langer is a social psychologist and a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University.   Interestingly enough, she studied under Philip Zimbardo, seen in this recent post about the power of authority to get people to do evil.  Anyway, she suggests that we may have more power to control aging than we think:  What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?

Yet Another Captivating Map

I recommend viewing on Full Screen.  Otherwiser it's difficult to see.