Post your Favorite Cartoons !

Thank you, I'd be delighted !! :-)

I'm sorely tempted to take you up on that ..... as locally the flying is presently craptacular. The sky is usually bad, and when it isn't then it's the ground. Only 1/2 out of two runways ( grass ) are serviceable, and it's been wet for so long that the reeds have grown high either end and the ducks have moved in !! So it's short-field technique plus risk of bird strikes to boot. I haven't been up since March. Still, it's better to be on the ground wanting to be in the air than vice-versa. :-)

Cheers, Mike.

xkcd on Faster Than Light Neutrino story

Midweek Musings

I am often both amused and dismayed by misunderstandings upon the basic premise of scientific method, to wit : it is meant to allow refutation by physical demonstration. A way of reliably aligning our internal mental milieu to the external world. So I reckon it's a question as to whether some prefer to actually do that or not, and I guess that depends upon people's varying expectations of 'emotional security'.

Some prefer unalterable dictum quite regardless of contrary hints from the real world ie. keep thinking some codex to avoid discomfort from change ( mind you that can keep the mind rather busy deflecting and rationalisng the inevitable contradictions ). See Area 51 et al. For me and no doubt many others a preference to refinement with new knowledge is an advantage to be embraced - that generally can lead to better outcomes. Well, it certainly does in medicine !

[ I'm especially reminded of the dual Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and his high-dose Vitamin C campaign which has given anti-oxidants ( however defined ) a mythical status. That area sorely needs a rigorous large double-blind control with crossover trial to sort out whatever truth might be there. It's a good example of how one can deduce people's emotions or intent or prejudice on the topic, by how they respond to a proposal of such an ironclad method of resolution. Meaning that if one is that sure of the outcome to be demonstrated then why be resistant to this route of investigation ? Surely it would great to have it validated by such a 'gold standard' method? NB The usual answer from proponents is that it's already been proven to that standard ( which it hasn't ) and then various rhetoric/advocacy techniques ensue ..... all too frequently aiming at money transacting. The classic response in many instances is 'I assert, hence the onus is for others to disprove' which is what three year olds do ..... :-) ]

Though you don't see the people who say "gravity is only some law" walking off clifftops in disgust of the science of physics. But I have seen the equivalent behaviour in, say, those who drive cars too fast. So a matter of degree then ? :-) :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Mind you there is that clever chap who got the Nobel for quasicrystals - that's what the electron microscope was showing him, so he told us about that - a rather late validation of his work. So part of the resistance to intellectual change is group think.

I strongly urge any of you to read 'The Trouble With Physics' by Lee Smolin ( who ironically now works at the Perimeter Institute ) for his take on string theory as a group behaviour rather than as an experimentally validated science. I always cringe watching Michio Kaku on his Discovery Channel spruikers talking of string theory as the 'best and only' Theory of Everything : he definitely misses the point that it's the Science of Everything we should be aiming at. Any theory is going to fail as science without an experimental lead, so being the 'best and only' clueless candidate theory is nought to crow of.

Roger Penrose is an intersection here : his non-periodic tiling of the plane ( a projection from five dimensional crystals ) explains quasicrystals neatly, while his personal intercession with the publisher got Smolin's book published.

( edit ) Doesn't anyone teach basic propositional logic anymore ? That is : a false premise implies anything, even the truth ..... so one's arrival at some point doesn't per se validate any part of the journey, including your origin ! The only alternative is to give up on cause & effect as applying at all, or equivalently call it random.

Time to shut up Mike. Yeah neutrinos ... more power to them if they go too fast! :-) :-)

I really wish that was funny instead of poignant.