Entirely unapologetic, pro-science thread (post your best!)

[Hermes]

To give this thread the proper tone, I give you a short comment from the man voted the smartest public figure in the UK;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOyP44Xu5FA[/youtube]

What lead up to that comment;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik[/youtube]





Edit: Fixed link to first clip; original was removed.

[Hermes]

[Hermes]

Letter to Eric Gutkind (partial)
Albert Einstein (1954)
Translated from the German by Joan Stambaugh...

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and `rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes

Yours, A. Einstein.

http://www.relativitybook.com/resources/Einstein_religion.html

[Hermes]

[Hermes]

[Hermes]

Dr. Norman Borlaug ...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPosEhkx5vI[/youtube]

... has changed the world with science, saving billions of people from starvation.  Nobody else comes close.  He's over 90, has cancer, and is still trying to make the world a better place.  Don't agree he's worthy of praise above all other living people?  Bite me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_q6SJh0ZvM[/youtube]

[Hermes]

Vaccinations ... stopped more agony, pain, and death.  Smallpox, for example, was not a trivial disease  and you no longer have to worry about it because of scientists;

[Hermes]

Polio is also no longer a fear.   Dying or surviving as a cripple to live a short and painful life are no longer issues...thanks to the hard work of scientists.

...yet, ignorance and fear (often backed by religious leaders) could bring it back on us;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/15/pakistan.topstories3

[Hermes]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M[/youtube]

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us its different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

                                                   -- Carl Sagan

If this does not stir you, does not tug at your tear ducts, I don't know what could move you.

[Hermes]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUeI0bzigEY[/youtube]

[Hermes]

"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth, available everywhere by single access on command." - Edward O. Wilson

Well, thanks to E. O. Wilson, and the work of thousands of others, imagination is not necessary;

The Encyclopedia of Life
http://www.eol.org

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species. Each site is constantly evolving and features dynamically synthesized content ranging from historical literature and biological descriptions to stunning images, videos and distribution maps. Join us as we explore the richness of Earth’s biodiversity!

Note the slider bar for Detail on the left above the Table of Contents for the species;



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NwfGA4cxJQ[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28T7q01pG50[/youtube]

[Hermes]

This February, skip Valentine's day and fall in love with science all over again...

Darwin Day - February 12th, 2009
Darwin's *200th* birthday,
and the *150th* anniversary of the publication of

The Origin of Species
by means of natural selection

Darwin Day
http://darwinday.org/

[Hermes]

Jacob Bronowski
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA[/youtube]

  It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

  Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

  I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

                                 -- Jacob Bronowski 
                                    The Ascent of Man

Context for the Cromwell quote;

"... This experience left people facing a terror which was even deeper than that of religious division: the fear of moral relativism.  Many people seem to have been quite unable to combine firm faith in their own religion with the acceptance that the other person's might be right, and therefore did not need to be persecuted.  In being asked to tolerate the other person's religion, they felt they were being asked to lose some of their faith in their own.  We know Cromwell's famous exhortation to the Scottish Covenanters: 'I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.'  What is not so well know is the Covenanters' reply: 'Would you have us to be sceptics in our own religion?'  The voice is still heard today, and attempts to find a convincing answer to it are still continuing.  It is not until a convincing answer is found that the Reformation will finally cease to be politics, and become history."

The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain -- John Morrill
http://books.google.com/books?id=Xe0YCV2ad8gC&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq="would+you+have+us+to+be+sceptics+in+our+religion%3F"&source=web&ots=N3xPWrZ4XK&sig=XKveTD98trqhIW8iDp1lVEd2jvg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

My answer to that is if there were no religions, there would be no conflict.  Religions force people into bigoted conclusions and ensure perpetual divisiveness.

[Davedave]

If someone can show me how to get the Youtube thing to work on non-Youtube streaming videos, I'll update this post to embed them rather than make them links.

These are a few of the better videos from Ted.com, in my opinion.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_drori_on_what_we_think_we_know.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/adam_grosser_and_his_sustainable_fridge.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_ewald_asks_can_we_domesticate_germs.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_wants_to_grow_energy.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

[PingTheServer]

I like the pale blue dot.

Nobody can really comprehend the vastness of the universe, which conversely shows our relative insignificance.  If more people tried to grasp what we know about the universe outside of our pale blue dot, I think we'd have a much better perspective on ourselves as a collective people.

[Hermes]

Agreed.  This thread has enough to inspire a few lifetimes, and yet to acknowledge reality it is at best an introduction to what is waiting to be understood;

      “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” --Dr. Carl Sagan

[Irish]

The "Pale Blue Dot" video was by far one of the best videos I have ever seen. Just puts into perspective the vastness that our little home is situated in. Wow....

[Hermes]

Agreed.  It's a charmer and inspires crowds.

That said, Jacob Bronowski's speech at Auschwitz is a close second, but for entirely different reasons.  I've included a bit of history on his choice of the Cromwell quote.  I think it is relevant to the conversations that go on here all the time.  To me, it focuses on the issue of bigotry -- caused by having to be the one true dogma -- that dogmas (religious or not) all suffer from.  While eliminating religion would not eliminate bigotry, unless religions reform themselves they remain forces for discrimination and divisiveness...and often worse.

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php?topic=1509.msg28897#msg28897

[Hermes]

German Doing Well After Double Arm Transplant
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GATCiaeuK0E[/youtube]

World's first double arm transplant patient delighted
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/3158287/Worlds-first-double-arm-transplant-patient-delighted.html

The world's only transplant recipient of two full arms said the feeling of being whole again was "indescribable".
A German farmer's woken up from a fifteen-hour operation to a brand new pair of arms after the world's first double transplant.

Karl Merk, a German dairy farmer whose arms had been amputated after an accident, said he felt like a "whole man" again as he spoke for the first time since the operation in July.

"The feeling is indescribable. Every day I gain more mobility," said Mr Merk as he showed off the arms, which are being supported by a special "corset" while the healing continues.

Six years ago Mr Merk lost his arms in a farm maize threshing machine. Found by a colleague as he lay bleeding to death, he screamed: "Kill me, kill me!" But the man saved his life instead.

Doctors at the teaching hospital of the Technical University in Munich then planned a world first: to transplant two arms at once. The procedure was conducted over two days in July.

A team of 40 surgeons and nurses working in two operating rooms removed the arms from the donor, who had died only hours before, and transplanted them to mr Merk, who had only been left with small stumps just below his shoulders following his amputations.

The first step was to expose the muscle, nerves and blood vessels to be connected. Before the bones of the donor could be cut, blood vessels in Mr Merk's arms were filled with a cooled preservation solution.

Both arms were then removed exactly at the point matching the patient's arm stumps. First the bones were joined, then arteries and veins to ensure blood circulation as quickly as possible.

The surgeons then attached the muscles and tendons, then the nerves and finally the skin.

Doctors have been closely monitoring Mr Merk's progress ever since, as he undergoes physical therapy as well as psychological counselling.

The doctors said in a statement that there had been "no sign" that Merk's immune system was rejecting the foreign tissue, as was feared before the procedure, and that his scars were healing well.

The medical team said that hand and lower arm transplants were still rare and that the Munich operation, by attaching an elbow joint as well as an upper arm, posed a greater challenge for the immune and circulatory systems.

[Goodkat]

^^God did it! It's a miracle!

[Hermes]

Crafty too ... the whole time his arms were being re-attached  there wasn't a god in sight.

[velkyn]

to those who make water drinkable. 

"Professor Georg Alexander Krause, engineer and inventor, is the first to develop the method of using electrolysis to deposit silver ions in polluted water in order to bacteriologically clean it. 

In the 19th century, the Swiss professor of botany, Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli shows for the first time the disinfectant qualities of silver. He uses the expression “oligodynamics” on his discovery. The oligodynamic effect is still used today for the preservation of drinking water Trinkwasser in mobile water containers (on board ships, aircraft, in camping). 

The disinfectant effect of silver was known already in antiquity. It was noted that water in silver vessels stayed drinkable longer than water in other vessels."
http://www.katadyn.com/

"The Berkeley Lab technology could also substantially lower energy and other operating costs of arsenic removal. This arsenic removal system does not require energy intensive processes like electrodialysis or reverse osmosis. Energy requirements for system operation will be limited to electricity for pumping water into the system, and mixing and transportation of raw and waste materials to and from the site."

http://www.lbl.gov/tech-transfer/techs/lbnl1742.html

more about arsenic removal: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6136970.stm

[Hermes]

Repost from: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php?topic=1997
If you are not familiar with the Beyond Belief lecture series, you are in for a treat!

Previous years can be found here;

Beyond Belief 1 - Science, Reason, Religion & Survival
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival

Beyond Belief 2 - Enlightenment 2.0
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0


This year, the theme is based on Carl Sagan's belief that Science can act as a candle in the dark to push back our collective ignorance and allow us to see reality.

Beyond Belief 3 - Candles in the Dark
Videos: http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-in-the-dark

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark is the third in an annual series of conversations: an ongoing project to foster and promote the use of reason in formulating social policy. This year, we asked participants to propose a Candle -- a potential solution to a problem that they have identified in their area of expertise or informed passion.

In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan wrote:

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

At The Science Network, we embrace scientific meliorism (last year's meeting, after all, was entitled Enlightenment 2.0). We support science in its search for solutions. Can we better understand the neural underpinnings of human nature, our decision-making processes, the dynamics of trust and fear and human flourishing?

This U.S. election year, when science and reason in the nation's deliberations have been repeatedly challenged as irrelevant or elitist, and science seems to be estranged from society, Sagan's words sound prophetic -- an alarm call. Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark is our response.

[cmotdibbler]

a couple of things on my drive

[Hermes]

Cool snake.

[cmotdibbler]

On a lighter note, has anyone heard of MCHawking? Hilarious Science-themed rap using a Steven Hawking voice synthesizer. Warning: some language is NSFW.

What we need more of is Science:
http://www.mchawking.com/mp3_files/WhatWeNeedMoreOfIsScience.mp3

[Hermes]

On a lighter note, has anyone heard of MCHawking? Hilarious Science-themed rap using a Steven Hawking voice synthesizer. Warning: some language is NSFW.

What we need more of is Science:
http://www.mchawking.com/mp3_files/WhatWeNeedMoreOfIsScience.mp3

Yep.   Here's a link to 2 MC Hawking videos and 1 LHC rap video;

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php?topic=1946.msg40797#msg40797

[PingTheServer]

On a lighter note, has anyone heard of MCHawking? Hilarious Science-themed rap using a Steven Hawking voice synthesizer. Warning: some language is NSFW.

What we need more of is Science:
http://www.mchawking.com/mp3_files/WhatWeNeedMoreOfIsScience.mp3

The mighty Stephen Hawking is a fucking Quake GOD!

[Hermes]

Watch the video below for some strange and ground breaking stuff.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-in-the-dark/v-s-ramachandran-1

Amputees can't always get replacement limbs, and stroke victims and other injury victims develop pain and inability due to a misprogrammed nervous system.  Pioneer research by V.S. Ramachandran and others now allows cronic pain and disability to be dealt with where surgery and medications have not helped.

From the site;

V.S. Ramachandran is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at UC San Diego. A former BBC Reith Lecturer, he co-authored Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, with Sandra Blakeslee, and is the author of A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness and a forthcoming book on human uniqueness.