Gray Matter at Wolfram Research

As I promised, I have visited the Periodic Table Table on the penultimate floor of the Wolfram Research building. This is a fairly tall building for Champaign, IL and contains some serious brains. We walked in, rode up to the top floor, and asked to see "The Elementary Mr. Gray." The receptionist chuckled, made sure that I claimed to have an appointment, and called down to the co-founder and interface designer for Mathematica Software, Theodore Gray. We were escorted down to his spacious office area, in which samples of every element in the universe are kept. Many on open display. One Corner of the Office Big SamplesI had budgeted 2 hours, and had to tear myself away after 3. There were huge samples of some things like 99.999999% pure silicon and a massive block of magnesium. There were pretty and ingenious samples of others. The pictures he took for PeriodicTable.com are excellent, but seeing them and holding them is an order of magnitude more impressive. I got to hold a nice chunk of depleted Uranium (kept in the safe with the gold and platinum and antique samples). Heavy stuff, and almost as big as my sample of equally heavy tungsten. Maybe I should mention the layers of security and cameras, in case anyone gets acquisitive. PeriodicTableTable and its creator Notice the lead pipe over by Hydrogen? It was last seen on my patio, and now is part of this collection. I hadn't realized that this brain trust is where Hollywood went to get correct math for the TV show Numb3rs. Wolfram staff may not criticize the inaccurate applications, but at least they make sure the formulas written by the actors match what they say they are doing and look cool. I often regret not having gotten a job at a brain trust back when I was young and quick. It was nice to visit such a place and to be made to feel a collegue. So, how shall I spin this as a serious post? Real science is a matter of playing with reality and seeing what makes it tick. To understand matter, one should see what there is of it. To understand the mathematical models on which our standard of living depends, it is good to know some real math. I find comfort in knowning that those who really know the math have fun with it.

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How I Got Into John McCain’s Pants

Well, it was this John W. McCain, and he wasn't in them at the time. We were in Cincinnati for a dance weekend, the Pigtown Fling. That's the same event that I mentioned last year when I didn't go to the Creation Museum. I didn't go there this time, either. But how did I get into John McCain's Pants? Well, dancing is hot work. It's like doing aerobics or jogging, but with hot and cold hotter running women flowing through your arms all night. So by the end of the evening, I was quite het up. It didn't occur to me to pull on long pants. We drove to our hosts house in the rainy wee hours. (Short dashboard video of driving "home" to the tune of "Hello, I must be Going") As we arrived and cooled down, I discovered that I had left my long pants back at the gym. I'd get cold knees in the morning. After a couple of hours of conversation, I got a good night's sleep. Note: At a dance weekend, anything over 4 hours is phenomenal. In the morning I got up to shower. When I returned to my guest room, I spied a pair of unfamiliar slacks neatly lain at the foot of my bed. I'd had a visit from The Trouser Fairy! No host was in sight; he apparently returned to sleep in. So I started my day in John McCain's pants. They eerily reminded me of a pair I'd owned some years back. Who'd'a thunk that Big John wore nearly my size? Here's a video of our group dancing during Earth Hour, the next night:

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JREF Censored on YouTube via DMCA

YouTube has suspended the James Randi Education Foundation channel, The FriendlySkeptic. JREF hopes to get it back soon. From the video information:

To complain to YouTube follow this link Scroll to the very bottom and click on "new issue" Select "suspended account" from the options and express your opinion. Download the video above from MediaFire The DMCA is a wonderful 1990's Act of Congress that lets printer manufacturers file a copyright to block third party ink refills in the name of protecting children from pornography. Clause after clause of this act are getting struck down by the Supremes, but still it limps along frustrating mostly legitimate users who run into it. Anyway, DCMA forces YouTube to suspend an account if anyone makes a claim that something uploaded violates a copyright held by another. Then, after cautious investigation, the account may be reinstated. Technically the filer of a false claim is liable to criminal charges. But this has apparently never been executed. The closest case I know of was Thunderf00t vs. VenomfangX, where a Creationist made a false claim of infringement on the author of the "Why People Laugh At Creationists" series. Meanwhile another prominent bastion of proper skepticism has been banned from YouTube.

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Educational Ruins

Anyone who has actually visited and studied ruins knows that they are created from orderly structures by a particular combination of forces. First comes neglect, when people either lose appreciation for the value of the thing and stop maintaining it, or they simply abandon it. Next comes vandalism, when people actively damage the structure to scavenge materials and souvenirs, to leave their own mark, or to intentionally destroy it. The latter is usually for religious reasons, as in purging earlier figureheads like Hatshepsut, Trotsky or the Bamiyan Buddhas. But this post is about an institutional edifice. Education in the United States is falling into ruins. Sure, it still is funded in a nominal sort of way. But people have forgotten its value. They even vote against tax increases necessary to maintain current standards. Schools are closing; one K-12 building in my neighborhood is now condos. My Junior High school was razed for a housing development. Pharyngula points out how the University of Florida is now planning to shut down its geology department as a cost cutting measure. Geology is the science that gave Darwin the leg up to understand how natural selection works before anyone else. Geology and its understanding affects meteorology, biology, sociology, history, exo-planetary studies, and more. Florida is one of the states in which regular attempts are made to insert Creationism into school itineraries. And geology is the biggest stumbling block to accepting a Young Earth. But I hope that is not their underlying reason. It is simple neglect of education in general. But there is a strong vanadlism movement afoot in this country. Anti-science forces are working hard to put non-scientific ideas into science classes. Texas is a recurring battleground as school administrators attempt to keep up education credentials in spite of the onslaught. Recently, a doomed law is running the gauntlet in the Texas legislature to allow unaccreditable private schools to offer advanced degrees. See Hank's A Master’s in Creationism. If that seemed too harsh, try Pharyngula's If you fail an IQ test in Texas, do they automatically put you in the legislature? Hank is Australian. Yet he cares about how this sort of behavior is making the United States seem ever goofier. To let our once-admirable education system crumble is a step backwards for the world.

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Flooded With Data

I had an urge to think through some implications of a world-wide flood, such as the one Biblical Literalists claim happened a few thousand years ago. Let's suppose that it happened, that the entire world was inundated all at once to cover the highest mountain, and that all surviving land animals and short-range birds were preserved in a single boat. What would the ecological landscape look like? gray worldFirst, all land animals would only be found on a single connected land mass. There is no way that any crawling creature could have reached Australia or the Americas from the Middle East. Most especially tropical animals. Secondly, we expect to see floral panspermia. That is, the waters would have carried every species of seed to every land mass all at once. Vanilla and cocoa and peppercorns should all be found growing in the same places throughout human history. Same for and chile peppers and coffee and potatoes. Wheat and maize should also be seen as combined staples of every ancient diet. Or the opposite: The flood waters killed off all the seeds except what was carried on the ark. Therefore, only the plants found in the middle east could exist anywhere in the world. Also, all modern animal species should be represented in every geological flood stratum. After all, a single massive drowning event doesn't distinguish between creatures of comparable size like an allosaur and an elephant or a trilobite and a mouse. Surely there must be abundant examples of these combined fossils. So it is easy to prove that such a flood actually happened. In fact, it must have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when Europeans first sailed to the Americas and found everything there to be just the same as back home.

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