The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

The whole list is worth a read.

The Loom as an interesting post discussing co-operation and cheating amongst slome molds:

After several hours, the Dictyostelium slug goes through another change. The back end catches up with the tip, and the slug turns into a blob. About 20 percent of the cells move to the top of the blob and produce a slender stalk. In order to keep the stalk from flopping over, these cells must produce rigid bundles of cellulose. Unfortunately, this cellulose also tears apart the amoebae that make it. The remaining amoebae in the blob then take advantage of the suicide of their slugmates. They slide up to the top and form a globe. Each amoeba in the globe covers itself in a cellulose coat and becomes a dormant spore. In this form the colony will wait until something – a drop of rainwater, a passing worm, the foot of a bird – picks up the spores and takes them to a bacteria-rich place where they can emerge from their shells and start their lives over.

If a particular mold can avoid becoming part of the stalk it could gain an evolutionary advantage, but as you would expect there are checks and balances in place to detect cheating. The rest of the article looks at the latest research on the topic and is worth a read.

An interesting post in which a chemist debunks reports in the paper claiming that the UK flight bombers intended to use acetone peroxides as their explosives.

The news this morning was full of stuff about “ordinary looking devices being used as detonators”. Well, if you’re using nasty unstable peroxides as your explosive material, you don’t really need any — the stuff goes off if you give it a dirty look. I suspect a good hard rap with a hard heavy object would be more than sufficient. No need to worry about those cell phones secretly being high tech “detonators” if you’re going this route.

A recent review of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s terrorist-catching performance has revealed that they’re focussing so much effort on the terrorist watch list that they’re increasingly failing to catch people with illegal documentation.

As CBP [Customs & Border Patrol] has stepped up its efforts to intercept known and suspected terrorists at ports of entry, traditional missions such as narcotics interdiction and identification of fraudulent immigration documentation have been adversely affected. Recent data indicates a significant decrease over the past few years in the interception of narcotics and the identification of fraudulent immigration documents, especially at airports.

So, if you really ARE a terrorist, get yourself some dodgy documentation and you now stand a better chance of getting in to the US than previously.

From: Bruce Schneier

Looks like the UK is following in the footsteps of the US and slowly becoming a nation of idiots. Today’s Guardian reports that over 30% of university students believe in Creationism or Intelligent Design.

In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism – the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years – to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design – that some features of living things are due to a supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin – evolution theory rang true for only 56%.

It’s finally over bar the shouting. Israel has had their arse handed to them on a plate by Hizbullah, and been shown up as not the force everyone thought them to be. They failed in all their main objectives:

- Hizbullah is as strong as ever

- Hizbullah will still be right up against the border

- Hizbullah still has loads of rockets left

Sure, they demolished half the country, but that’s the easy part when you’re the only side with an air force, and it’s still a total fuck-up, since the rationale behind it was that it would piss off the local population and turn them against Hizbullah. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Not only did the non-partisan section of the local population swing overwhelmingly against Israel, so did huge amounts of the global population. Israel has been shown to be the overly aggressive bully that it really is, and it’s going to be a very long time before they manage to re-erect the “woe is me” facade they traditionally use to justify their actions.

Finally, now that the Lebanese side of things has died down, expect to hear reports of Israel’s dodgy actions which occurred in Gaza while the world was focussed on Lebanon.

The Weathermakers, by Tim Flannery, looks at the problem of global warming and is a pretty timely read. Flannery breaks the issue down into a few key areas which he addresses in turn, starting with James Lovelock’s Gaia theory and how climate has changed in the past, what effects past changes have had on our planet and how the current CO₂ levels compare to historic ones.

He then goes on to look at the effects global warming has already had on things like coral bleaching, species extinction, sea levels and frequency of severe storms before tackling the science behind climate modelling, the accuracy of our current models and what those models predict for the future. Along the way he shoots down some of the myths put forward by the anti-global warming crowd, eg: that since plants breathe CO₂ an increase in CO₂ will provide unprecedented agricultural yields. This is currently doing the rounds in the US at the moment, with the energy lobby taking out full-pafe newspaper advertisements to promote this theory. Flannery shoots it down by quoting research which shows that plants are actually less productive in an atmosphere with increased CO₂!

Next up is a look in more detail at what will happen if things continue as they are, including a look at how plants and animals adapted to temperature changes before (by migrating) and how human infrastructure and agriculture is likely to hamper that process. He also talks about the effects of warmer oceans and their effect on food production as well as the effects on the ocean’s ciculatory systems.

The penultimate section deals with potential solutions to the problem, noting that we solved the ozone hole problem in a reasonably short time with a concerted international effort. He talks about Kyoto, both good and bad, and how it’s here to stay, the costs of fixing the problem versus those of doing nothing, the downside to plans to encourage the oceans to take up more CO₂ by fertilising them with iron and finally, why a hydrogen economy will never work.

His final section is where he offers solutions that will work, focusing on the golden trio of hydro, wind & solar before introducing nuclear power, which seems to be making a comeback for two reasons: one, it emits very little greenhouse gases (about the same as hydro/wind/solar when you include lifetime costs) and two, more and more scientists think that global warming is a much greater problem than that of nuclear waste.

Flannery concludes by giving a few easy ways for the individual to start making a difference, including tips for reducing energy consumption and offsetting that which you can’t easily reduce. The book is well worth a read, and while it’s certainly alarmist in places, that’s probably what’s needed to get people to start taking the process seriously.

I’d started exercising again this week after yet another unforced layoff. Decided to alternate run and bike days for the forseeable future. Nothing hectic, just get out and do roughly 30mins a day and take it from there.

Went for a run in Centennial Park on Tuesday and it was great. The weather’s getting better as the days get longer, so it was a perfect 21C and great light as the sun started setting. All went well and I was quite enthusiatic about exercise again.

Wednesday saw me head out on the bike for a lap of a slightly hill course around the back streets of Vaucluse. Again, nice temperature and a bit of sun and all was well with the world.

I returned to Centennial yesterday for another run and now it’s all gone pear shaped. The weather was a bit colder due to wind chill, but I did my usual run without issue, only to find my right knee giving me all sorts of trouble last night. Any squat/lunge type of movement causes pain, as the tendon attaching to the lower front of my patella seems to be inflamed. I didn’t do anything stupid, or any obvious trip, so I’m at a loss to explain it.

No more running for a while though ;-(

B: 11.3km – R: 8km

WorldChanging.com has a post on an aspect of the nuclear power debate that I hadn’t considered before, namely what happens when there’s a water shortage?

Nuclear plants need lots of water for cooling purposes and as a result are usually situated beside a river. As global warming raises temperatures of the rivers, and potentially reduces the water flow through them, there’s less water around to cool the reactors and they have to be shut down temoprarily. This has already happened in France, Germany and the US, and it would be particularly relevant here in Australia given the fact that we’ve been in permanent drought around Sydney for six years at this stage.

The Caot Institute has a paper titled A False Sense of Insecurity (97KB PDF) which looks at the real risks associated with terrorism and compares them to risks encountered in everyday life.

Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.

Kind of puts it all in perspective really. And for this the US has spent almost a trillion dollars on wars in Iraq & Afghanistan? Sounds like a complete waste of money to me… unless, could it really all be about oil?? ;-)

The article also makes the point that we are letting the terrorists by becoming unnecessarily worried and that our governments, particularly the US Government, are deliberately inflaming public opinion:

What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: “How worried should I be?” Instead, the message the nation has received so far is, as a Homeland Security official put (or caricatured) it, “Be scared; be very, very scared — but go on with your lives.”

Or, as John Howard likes to say, “Be alert, not alarmed”. However, while this approach would be admirable, and certainly preferable to the current one, it would probably fail as the general public has an inability to understand relative risk. The article notes that an American’s odds of dying on an airline flight is around 1 in 13 million. You would get the same odds in a car, on the safest roads, after only driving 11 miles! Worth a read.

Hat tip to Bruce Schneier