Greetings Science Fans,
問候科學迷們
Wènhòu kēxué mímen (Mandarin)
Man6hau6 fo1hok6 mai4 (Cantonese)
[Over half a million Bay Area residents speak Chinese at home.]
“Scienceploitation” is the misuse of science to influence the governed. Examples:
- Fossil-fuel-industry-picked climate-crisis deniers wrote the government’s 2025 Climate Synthesis report. [Note: Direct U.S. government subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry is about $140 per person per year.]
- David Geier, a conspiracist who claimed vaccines cause autism, heads an HHS study on the links between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder.
- The Administration halted mRNA vaccine research because of imagined “limitations” of the technology.
- The Administration halted research and support of renewable energy because it claims wind and solar energy are wasteful, expensive, and harmful to agriculture and the environment.
- The Administration has withdrawn billions of dollars for scientific research from Universities and billions from federal agency science research.
I strongly urge you to watch this short video of Fareed Zakaria’s take on U.S. science.
Question: What is the political ideology that is based on notions of the nation’s superiority and exceptionalism, with a government led by a strong, central authority that emphasizes military power, suppresses opposition, squelches independent centers of thought, and scapegoats minorities?
Answer: Fascism
There are hundreds of #WorkersOverBillionaires Labor Day demonstrations planned. Find one near you. Let your neighbors – and the world – know that things are not OK.
RAFFLE
Noelle? Where are you? Your guess of 228 was closest to the eOracle’s 209 so you won the James Webb Space Telescope t-shirt, but my emails to you have not been answered.
Who could turn down an R2D2 color-change LED lamp. (R2D2 is ‘flat’ rather than 3D as it appears.) It’s 23 cm tall with stand. You can let it change color or choose your favorite. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith <at> gmail <dot> com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000.
PHYSICS
This neatly shows how the fabric of space is distorted with waves propagating from a mass that is accelerating radially (i.e. going in a circle). Those are the gravitational waves that LIGO detects from the spiralling mergers of massive objects like black holes and neutron stars.
Sign up for a physics course on Zoom taught by Professor Andrew Fraknoi
Atomic Science for Poets: The Mysterious World Inside the Atom
Tuesdays Oct. 7 – Nov. 11 from 12:30 to 2:30pm via Zoom
It is brought to you by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University. “No background in science or math will be assumed or necessary, but some of the ideas might just make your brain sizzle.” Space is limited: Register early.
- Sign in or create a free account HERE
- Join the Institute HERE (a modest $55 fee)
- Register for the class HERE
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK – My Picks
IMAX: Space the New Frontier Monday multiple times, The Tech Interactive, San José, $
SETI Live: Life in Titan’s Ocean? Livestream Thursday 11am
Separating Hope from Hype in the Search for Alien Life Livestream Thursday 4pm
After Dark: Unplug and Play Thursday 6 – 10pm, ExplOratorium, S.F., $
First Friday: Close Encounters Friday 6 – 10pm, Chabot Space & Sci. Ctr., Oakland, $
World Shorebirds Day Bird Walk Saturday 10 – 11:30am, Alviso
ConnectFest Sunday 10am – 2pm, San Francisco
PALEONTOLOGY
Before there were dinosaurs, our planet harboured many species of reptiles – as it still does. This beastie was about 25 cm from nose to tail tip and sported an intriguing huge colorful crest likely made of cartilage. ¿For wooing lady Mirasauras?
Yikes. That spiky weaponized tail puts this two-ton dinosaur in the family of ankylosaurs. But those meter-long neck spikes are beyond anything we have seen before. I wonder how they mated. Spicomellus afer lived about 160 mya. It was herbivorous, so the Nightmare of the Week goes to our next creature.
Kostensuchus was a walking terrestrial crocodilian. It had hips that nearly replicated those of dinosaurs which would have improved its speed for catching prey. Its 3.5 meter length made it smallish compared to aquatic crocodilians of its day (70 mya), but large enough and fast enough to gorge itself on human time travelers. Kostensuchus easily qualifies as our Nightmare of the Week!
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
Livestream video from the ISS: Watch Earth Live (but maybe mute the soundtrack)
12m Radar Reflector Deployed in Space – NASA – 1 min
Solar Farm “Panel Sheep” – RE Alliance – Tony Inder – 1.5 mins
The Mediterranean Sea: Ancient Cataclysm – Hannah Fry – 2 mins
General Relativity: 7 Levels of Complexity – Minute Physics – Henry Reich – 5 mins
New Dark Matter Clues – Sabine Hossenfelder – 5 mins
Skepticism: Your Mind’s Most Underrated Defense – Big Think – Alex Edmans – 6 mins
82,000 year-old Footprints – History with Kayleigh – Kayleigh During – 8 mins
¿Is it Aliens? – Star Talk – Neil deGrasse Tyson – 11 mins
Gimbal UFO Analysis – Mick West – 21 mins
¿Is Xylitol Actually Good for Us? – SciShow – Savannah Geary – 12 mins
Meatless Meats of the Future – Sci Show – Stefan Chin – 15 mins
Debunk the Climate Nonsense – Just Have a Think – Dave Borlace – 17 mins
Reasons We Refuse the Metric System – Type Ashton – Ashton Schottler – 19 mins
Lutetium – Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschman – 23 mins
Lithium-Ion Battery: History & Danger – Veritaseum – Derek Muller – 34 mins
You may have noticed that i often sign off encouraging you to practice empathy with people of other ideological and social realities – and even with other living things – in order to realize their existence and their reality is much like yours, and in that realization it becomes easier to feel compassion toward them. However, there is also tactical – or strategic – empathy. Tactical empathy is understanding how others perceive things in order to negotiate with them or to manipulate them. Child-rearing, for example, requires empathy for compassion, for negotiation, and for manipulation. Political campaign advisors use tactical empathy to manipulate voters. Wranglers use tactical empathy to induce horses to cooperate with riders. You are not a horse, but you are a voter and a target for manipulation.
Have a fun week and expand your bubble of empathy – with compassion in mind
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“Good liars are skilled at reading others well, putting them at ease, managing their own emotions, and intuitively sensing how others perceive them.”
—Pamela Meyer, American author, fraud examiner, and entrepreneur
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