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There's also the mystery that we live and move and breathe and die and love and somehow think it's not a mystery.

But if you want to stay within the realm of physics, consider this ultimate mystery (within the realm of physics) -- https://blogs.scientificameric...

Seems to me you like mysteries, and you are denying them to yourself.

• This generation it's social media and video games which are ruining kids' lives.
• My generation it was arcades (that's why John Connor as a kid in Terminator 2 is shown as a delinquent "wasting his time" at an arcade, and Flynn in TRON is a failure in life because he owns an arcade).
• Back in the 1950s it was rock and roll music.
• In the 1930s it was organized sports and baseball cards.
• In 1859 it was chess.
• In 1816 it was the waltz.
• And in 1790 it was books (novels, romances, and plays).

This cycle probably goes back to the dawn of civilization. Older people who don't understand why younger people like the things they do will always come up with criticisms why it's destroying the lives of youth everywhere.

You are conflating unrelated things. A taboo is just a cultural belief and otherwise has no real basis in reality.
Environmental impact of plastic bags is very much real. Dead whales washing up with kilos of bags in their belly is not just a "taboo".

I'm not. I don't believe whales are sacred. You can believe whales are sacred if you want. I think we should have laws to help people, not pretend to help someone's emotional or spiritual attachment to whales.

Also, it's not a whale, it's a story about a whale. And plastic enters the ocean from rivers in Asia and Africa, not because some New York resident forgot her cloth bags on a Tuesday trip to the shop

Making legislation on that is no different than making one against littering.

A dog died from eating chocolate. Ban chocolate?
A woman slipped on a banana peel and fell and broke her arm. Ban bananas?
A baby died of malnutrition because vegan parents wouldn't give her milk. Ban veganism?

Littering is already banned. We don't need to keep banning more and more things. Banning things doesn't lead to a sacred utopia, it leads to everyone looking over their shoulder all the time to make sure the police aren't around so they can live their lives.

... very real impact of our choices on others and the environment. It is easy to pretend they don't exist when the effects are somewhat removed by time and distance.

Getting a bag at the shop does not have the "very real impact" you're pretending it does.

If environmentalists really cared, they could start a foundation to give away cloth bags to grocery shoppers. That would make things better for people and satisfy the sacred whale issue. But they don't. They mostly only do things when they can make life worse for people -- make us sacrifice.

It's pretty impossible that complex reasoning, creativity, social and emotional intelligence, and sensory perception will ever be done by a machine.

I mean, all that machines can do for creativity now is create art in multiple styles including abstract weirdness like Dali, create photorealistic art based on crude drawings supplied as source material, write shitty stories, and create pop songs. There's no way that they will ever do more than that in the future, right?

I'm sure that they will never be able to sense emotions in people, nor will they replace a therapist. We certainly won't try to get AI to determine if people are likely to be criminals or re-offend if they have been convicted before.

Computers definitely will never be able to see and sort things, smell, recognize songs, or have a sense of touch or feel pain.

It's one thing to lay out soft skills that a lot of people don't have and say that's where jobs lie in the future. It's a whole different ballgame to ignore the fact that computers are already making inroads there, and already are better than some percent of the population at those things. Unless the authors are expecting technology to suddenly go in reverse, they're packing bags for a ship that's already sailed.

I agree but need to point out that 'identical twins' do not have identical genes.
So there are differences between twins and clones.

Repeat after me kiddies: Legal, Taxed and Regulated.

Better yet, how about just "legal"?

I see no need to tax it beyond what any retail item is taxed. Or regulated beyond what the law already allows, in that if it turns out to have been harmful then the seller is liable civilly, and if it turns out to have been harmful and the seller knew (or used ingredients that the seller ought to have known) were harmful then they are liable criminally. Until then, caveat emptor.

Almost all vape "juice" made in North America is already limited to nicotine and ingredients and flavourings that are on the FDA's Generally Recognized as Safe list and they limit the hardware to temperatures that those ingredients would already be exposed to during cooking. They do that for the very reason of liability. Pretty hard to argue that vape juice is harmful when it is nothing more than what you might get coming off a cake that's baking in your oven. So I'm not sure that the municipality of San Francisco would have a leg to stand on for most of it. Of course, if you're getting the cheap made in China stuff, well, you as a buyer deserve what you get when you buy stuff coming from a place where they use industrial waste in baby formula.

As far as those arguing that vape makers are "pushing" it to children, well, when it's just flavourings and a mild stimulant, how is that different from Mountain Dew, or any of the billion fruity energy drinks?

So, something like this?

Yeah its only some gene editing methods with crispr that could potentially cause cancer : https://www.scientificamerican...

It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.

Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.

That' a nice idea but there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...

https://www.scientificamerican...

They also tend to change the argument to avoid facing inconvenient facts.

https://www.scientificamerican...

It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.

Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.

That' a nice idea but there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...

https://www.scientificamerican...

They also tend to change the argument to avoid facing inconvenient facts.

https://www.scientificamerican...

I tend to leave enough room between myself and the car in front that I've never actually hit anyone that brakes unexpectedly, or anyone else in 30ish years, but there's plenty of evidence that red-light cameras increase rear end accidents, so not everyone is leaving enough room.

Chicago: http://time.com/3643077/red-li...

Houston: https://www.scientificamerican...

There's plenty of people that clearly shouldn't be allowed on the road, and my point is that you can't solve their lack of skill with cameras and absolute speed enforcement.

Ummmm.

I looked at that google link. It gave a whole page of links saying that we won't experience a runaway greenhouse effect.

Good to know.

Here's Scientific American (from the google links you gave) https://www.scientificamerican...
[a runaway greenhouse effect would require]: "about 10 times more carbon dioxide than most experts estimate could be released from burning all available fossil fuels."

Here's that Technology Review article you mention: "almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that it is unlikely to be possible, even in principle, to trigger full a runaway greenhouse by addition of noncondensible greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”

Even James Hansen, the least conservative analyst, says that a runaway greenhouse effect would require we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, including the tar sands and tar shale (which would put us WAY beyond anything anybody is predicting in the way of CO2 emissions.)

I didn't bother reading the Stephen Hawking quote. He said a lot of quotable things, but he is not an atmospheric scientist.

CO2 levels have been much higher in our planets history. In the days of the dinosaurs we had levels 5 times what we have today.

https://www.livescience.com/44...

In a few centuries we could hit the levels that the dinosaurs lived in at our current rate.

https://www.scientificamerican...

We should take care not to pollute and certainly take care of our one and only planet. That being said the sky is not falling and scaremongering isn't science.

You sound gay.

Enjoy your rat poison and birth control infused drinking water, ye dis-believer!

high co2 content good for trees...

Only briefly.

Robots can lead the way but to really exploit space, you need humans: https://www.scientificamerican... or https://www.wired.com/2012/04/... and here's a great paper on the subject: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pa...

It's not just one research plot in the Luquillo Mountains. There are cases of decline across the world.

Insects provide $57 billion in ecological services to the USA alone, and that's just dealing with quantifiable things.

https://www.scientificamerican...

PLENTY of available land in Colorado!

If you don't mind the alternating droughts, floods, wildfires and plagues of insects.

That last one is just about gone

So some civilization created a probe that can last in interstellar space for thousands, or even millions of years?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fuck yourself.

Seriously, no one is drawing conclusions, that is very premature. Read his list of facts to understand why we're not sure. It didn't help that the object was already well past us by the time we thought maybe we should study it.

From TFA https://blogs.scientificameric...

Of his 6 "odd facts" about the object, at least 4 aren't persuasive at all:
1) They did a paper projecting the estimated population of interstellar ejecta. They assert that 'stumbling' onto this implies a much higher population - how do they conclude that from a sample size of one? Even if the odds of running into such an object are astonishingly low, because they're non-zero the presence of ONE sample means nothing. His conclusions all flow from the assumption that the object was statistically common; I'm not sure that is much of a springboard for all of his other conclusions.

2) it's moving very slowly - essentially we raced past it. He observes that only one in the neighborhood of 500 stars is moving that slowly. (And then opines that this would be 'optimal to camouflage the origin of a probe' and 'it's like a buoy we raced past, could it be part of a communication net work'? Anthropomorphic tinfoil hat, anyone? Of course, again: single sample. It could be BILLIONS of years old, from well outside the local 500 star group, to say nothing of the literally-infinite number of possibilities of caroming around bouncing off crap or (my guess) slowing due to passing through any number of dust/debris clouds.

3) ejecta from planetary systems would likely have high energy vs local rest frame, this was barely moving. See points 1 and 2 above.

4) the inferred geometry from the 10:1 brightness curve variation observed only sustains if you assume its homogeneous or at least its reflectivity is. While not a bad GUESS to suggest it's a tumbling needle-shape, there are also a LOT of other explanations for such variation (to use only my example above, it could be an icy object (high albedo) that's passed through heavy carbon dust clouds (very low albedo to the surface that's facing such clouds). It wouldn't take an oddly proportioned object nor much spin to result in a highly-fluctuating brightness.

5) lock of heating even though it passed close to the sun (inside orbit of mercury)
and
6) slight deviation from the predictable Keplerian gravity-calculated path, comparable to the shift from outgassing (but there's no evidence/suggestion that this happened, and in fact some evidence it DIDN'T happen)

5 & 6 are IMO meaningful. I fully agree with him that we should both a) work on very high speed probes that COULD in fact catch it before it leaves the solar system (by God yes!) and b) look for more high-inclination objects around our large gas giants to see if we can find anything 'caught' by their wells historically (he doesn't mention that chronology is against us here; if they were caught, they would be high-off the ecliptic, wouldn't be very stable, and would likely either impact one of the Jovian moons or ultimately end up in Jupiter itself relatively quickly).

I strongly doubt (though I certainly wish it were true) that this is an artificial object of extra-solar origin. There are too many other more-reasonable explanations. The breathlessness and hand-waving of the SA article are unworthy of an actual science publication.

Then again, the fact that this was published in SA doesn't shock me, it's 'standards' over the last 20 years have dropped to about that of Reddit.

1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.

Maybe we could just blow it into the air and/or dump it into the sea, just like the coal-fired plants do.

https://www.scientificamerican...

That is *exactly* what is happening with Depleted Uranium. It is being used as munitions where it becomes pyrophoric creating a ceramic like dust that is an inhalant. You can see the effect that it is having on the local population.

1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.

Maybe we could just blow it into the air and/or dump it into the sea, just like the coal-fired plants do.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Wind turbines will change the local climate, and if large enough farms are used, the article concludes it could affect the global climate.

That's true and good but LED bulbs aren't exactly devoid of toxic materials. They often contain lead, arsenic, and other materials that need to be properly handled when disposing of them. Safer than CFLs in most cases but not anything you want to go around licking if you get my point.

Not a lot of surprises there.
Arsenic is often used for semiconductor doping (for GaAs junctions) because of its electron properties. Lead is used for soldering, which you'll find, surprise surprise, in pretty much all electronic and electric devices.
But the (un)scientificamerican article is about the same kind of stupid like people claiming that flu vaccines contain Thiomersal which contains mercury and will lead to authism. You could also say that table salt is comprises of chlorine and sodium. Both of which are caustic and a serious health hazard when they're on their own. But when you have them forming an ionic bond and result in what we call table salt, they become something different.

Suffice to say that this arsenic is in pretty solid from inside of the semiconductors. It won't escape them easily.
Unless you grind those LEDs up and then spread them around in the environment or eat them, and or use other methods to extract those elements like bio leaching , these substances in LEDs ought to be of no big concern.

The only LED bulbs I've ever had burn out were the cheap ones bought at the dollar store.

Then you haven't bought as many as I have. I've had a fair number go bad including some expensive ones. Don't get me wrong, most last a really long time and work great but I've had some pretty pricey ones fail for various reasons. Still better than incandescent bulbs by a country mile but not failure proof. Brand does seem to matter somewhat in my experience but it's not the only factor. You need a fixture designed so the heat they do produce won't fry the electronics. I've lost a few to that problem before changing the fixtures. They also seem to fail fairly early in their life if they are going to fail in most cases. And some percent seem to fail for unknown reasons regardless of make or model.

Also, there's no mercury in LED bulbs, unlike fluorescent bulbs.

That's true and good but LED bulbs aren't exactly devoid of toxic materials. They often contain lead, arsenic, and other materials that need to be properly handled when disposing of them. Safer than CFLs in most cases but not anything you want to go around licking if you get my point.

What do you think they use inside canned food these days? I'll give you a hint, but it wasn't BPA plastic. Not even back in the 1800's.

Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman — 19 April 2015

The chapter on the cans is among my favorites. It contains not just a biography of the can and its extreme usefulness but also a description of the quest by a small number of people to stop them from imploding, self-Âdestructing and interfering with the food and drink they encapsulate.

Rust by Jonathan Waldman — 3 April 2015

Waldman is concerned about the chemical ingredients of epoxy can coatings, especially bisphenol-A, which may leak into the drink or food contents.

Its impact on health is controversial — some authorities maintain that it can disrupt human hormones and increase the risk of cancer and other disease, others insist that it is harmless in the concentrations likely to be absorbed even by a dedicated drinker of canned beverages.

Unsurprisingly, Waldman's suspicious questions about BPA did not make him popular at Can School.

I'll give you a hint: whatever the coatings contain (much is shrouded in secrecy) they contain plenty of BPA.

Dossier: Can coatings — December 2016

The most common epoxy coatings are synthesized from bisphenol A and epichlorohydrin forming bisphenol A-diglycidyl ether epoxy resins.

There's an insane amount of these epoxy resins manufactured in America, and then spread very, very, very thin, them maintained in constant contact with food or drink, for days or weeks or months (during highly variable storage conditions, too).

Sperm Count Dropping in Western World — 26 July 2017

The results, published in the journal Human Reproduction Update, showed a 52.4 percent decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3 percent decline in total sperm count among North American, European, Australian and New Zealand men.

Not exactly a smoking gun.

BPA is well known as a potent source of smokeless powder.

I'd love to see a graphic of epoxy can liners over the past 40 years denominated in m^2 hour per capita (average duration of food contact times total coated area of container in constant contact with food until food consumed). It just might tell a sad tale of sad tails.

Indeed. This whole thing is about as ingenious as https://blogs.scientificameric..., perhaps more so as it is even more obvious. It takes some actual insight and common sense to see that though. Sadly, both are rare and not correlated to intelligence and education.

Scientists do not only have a duty to perform good research (many do not, sadly), but also to inform the general public about the meaning of their results. This study is perfectly valid (if scientifically worthless) and nicely demonstrates that an experiment or study may not imply the things a non-expert may think it does. As such, it serves as a nice warning. Another one about as ingenious is this one here: https://blogs.scientificameric...

I hope that this study wins an IgNoble as well. Note that the IgNoble in no way implies that the research so honored is bad. Dunning and Kruger won one for what is perhaps the most important discovery in Psychology of the last century. It just implies that something is really, really messed up. In this case it is the way _other_ studies using the same, standard methodology are interpreted and generalized by the press and other non-experts.

pretty sure I read some news that said they did an analysis of yada yada and decided there was no such thing as seasonal affective disorder. googled it... https://www.scientificamerican...

Especially since we know that 90% of the plastic in the ocean is deposited there from just 10 rivers.

Except it's not. 90% of the plastic that reaches the ocean FROM RIVERS comes from just 10 rivers. The actual number you're looking for is closer to 25%. We discussed this only yesterday: https://www.scientificamerican...

Something useful to know when assholes want to ban things in the US and Europe: it's not your plastic.

Say no to zealots and totalitarians.

I don't really care whose plastic this is, it is affecting my life so I'm in favour of doing something about this problem. Nobody ever put out a forest fire threatening to burn down his house by sitting on his ass and thinking: "I don't care, I didn't light this fire".

Something useful to know when assholes want to ban things in the US and Europe: it's not your plastic.

Say no to zealots and totalitarians.

Not sure how this is suddenly news. It's been called out since the very first IPCC report, and known long before that.

This is part of why nuclear power and hydroelectric power aren't exactly green. Far better than fossil fuels, sure, but much worse than an equivalent solar or wind farms in terms of CO2 release. The amount of concrete used in both nuclear plants and hydroelectric dams is massive. It dwarfs the pads for solar panels and wind turbines.

But like everything, it's complicated. Turns out that over decades, concrete actually absorbs a large amount of CO2. It seems to be close to half that released when making it. If carbon capture could be used during production, over its lifetime, concrete could become carbon negative. And alkali-activated cements seem to be on the horizon, taking industrial CO2 byproducts and making them into concrete-like structures.

I think you have to look at the whole supply chain for Solar before you start the celebration. Solar is also very polluting and uses more resources than nuclear.

Not sure how this is suddenly news. It's been called out since the very first IPCC report, and known long before that.

This is part of why nuclear power and hydroelectric power aren't exactly green. Far better than fossil fuels, sure, but much worse than an equivalent solar or wind farms in terms of CO2 release. The amount of concrete used in both nuclear plants and hydroelectric dams is massive. It dwarfs the pads for solar panels and wind turbines.

But like everything, it's complicated. Turns out that over decades, concrete actually absorbs a large amount of CO2. It seems to be close to half that released when making it. If carbon capture could be used during production, over its lifetime, concrete could become carbon negative. And alkali-activated cements seem to be on the horizon, taking industrial CO2 byproducts and making them into concrete-like structures.

ARPAnet also started with just four nodes: https://www.scientificamerican...

I think it's worth explaining about starvation mode. It's not a medical term, it's the popular name for what happens when you reduce calorie intake. The body reacts by conserving energy, reducing the amount of energy it burns at rest, i.e. the amount it would use if you did nothing all day. This is accompanied by feeling tired and hungry.

This study and article about the study are very enlightening:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.scientificamerican...

As you can see the test group went from an average resting calorie burn of 2600/day to 1900/day. So a loss of 700 calories/day burned, or about 1.2 hours of vigorous exercise like fast cycling or jogging, before it even starts to have an effect on their weight.

And of course, they feel tried all the time and being obese have to be careful about not injuring themselves during exercise (jogging is probably a bad idea), and have to carefully plan meals. Few people have the time to do this, especially when they have to work and need to be reasonably awake to do so.

This is why the "just eat less, do some exercise" advice doesn't work.

Here's an interesting study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

A more readable write-up here: https://www.scientificamerican...

TL;DR the people studied lost weight but ended up in an unsustainable position, and put a lot of it back on. Not to mention the other health problems they suffered as a result.

Yes, SuperKendall. Water is blue.

Actuaklly water is not blue, it only appears blue because of its absorption characteristics with respect to different wavelengths of light.

You just can't get past that mindset about "privileged Americans" and lotteries and border lines and whatever you are outraged about today.

Well of course not. How can I get "passed this" is this is exactly the bullshit I'm calling you out on.

Sell your crazy someplace else, "bro". We're not interested.

Not being interested in solving the world problems you are causing is par for the course. Keep blaming everything on everyone else.

Oh look America was the only one of the G20 who again declined to work on parts of the Paris accords this week. American Privilege is not "my" mindset. It's yours.

Another day, another standard. Your standard du jour is the Paris Accords, which actually takes us full circle.
Sadly that one is still a loser for you and your outrage.

The CO2 emissions of the signatories to the Paris Accord have gone up. The US emissions have gone down.
https://www.scientificamerican...

Should your thoughts clear sufficiently someday you may comprehend the difference between talking about change and effecting it.

Sawmill accidents don't erase fingerprints. They do, however, liberate the finger for anyone to use, if they can't find it for re-attachment.

Actually, if you handle wood at a sawmill with bare hands instead of gloves, your fingerprints get worn down. So, just stop wearing gloves and the problem will take care of itself...

"The most prominent of those problems involve bricklayers—who wear down ridges on their prints handling heavy, rough materials frequently—or people who work with lime [calcium oxide], because it's really basic and dissolves the top layers of the skin. The fingerprints tend to grow back over time. And, surprisingly, secretaries, because they deal with paper all day. The constant handling of paper tends to wear down the ridge detail."

https://www.scientificamerican...

Seems like "getting Windows 10" is like "getting the clap."

The U.S. Association of Clap Germs, USACG, objects to that as an offensive, disrespectful comparison. Clap germs claim to be far nicer than Microsoft.

This was not the first time there has been that kind of objection. Multiple Sclerosis germs have objected to Microsoft sometimes being abbreviated as MS.

That's what a plane is. For an example of a powered, wingless aircraft with no moving parts, see this flying saucer based on a similar principle.

Got any historical examples of a powered plane with no moving parts?

But hey, I found one for boats.

The ENCODE project says you're ignorant.

Nope, not that simple:

https://www.scientificamerican...

Same diet, different gut bacteria - one group gets fat, the other stays lean.

The old (calories in - calories burned) model is overly simplistic and ignores a couple decades of research that shows that obesity is more than just a willpower deficit.

Add to that the discovery that neurons have differering genomes. They're modified via retrotransposons.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.scientificamerican...
http://epilepsygenetics.net/20...

So we've a genetic algorithm inside each neuron in the neural network, on top of everything you mentioned.

No. It's because there's only so fast you can expand. I'm not sure what world you live in where nearly doubling cell capacity in six months isn't an impressive scaleup rate, but in my world, that's pretty dang impressive.

The ICE car Im looking at buying next is about as fast as the maxed out model 3, costs less,

What sub-$59k (not counting tax credits or fuel savings**) ICE car are you referring to that nearly does 0-60 in 3,3 seconds?

** - About $1k per year for the average US driver, $2k for the average European driver, and about $3k where I live. So e.g. in 5 years of ownership that's $5k/$10k/$15k.

has a longer range

Almost certainly depends on the conditions. The Tesla Model 3 Performance goes further in city driving than the BMW M3 even if you credit the BMW to a full tank every day. If you assume that the Model 3 is charged to 90% every day and the BMW averages a 60%-full tank at any random point in time, the Model 3 goes further in combined-cycle driving as well. The M3's range is obviously far more variable, which is of course not a good thing.

refuels faster

Yes, detouring regularly on your way to or from work to drive to a gas station so you can pay out the nose for the privilege of standing outside in whatever weather you're in to pump carcinogens into a tank is so much faster than plugging in when you get home and disconnecting when you leave.

But hey, if you like wasting your life... Maybe we can find you a cell phone that you don't plug in at night, but rather have to detour out of your way to "cell stations" once a week to fill up - would you be interested in that?

is not produced by a sociopath.

Which of the 45 thousand employees at Tesla responsible for the design and construction of the vehicles are you referring to?

a bazillion gas stations

About 150k. On a relentless, steady decline that EVs are only going to accelerate. Meanwhile, the number of car-accessible electric sockets in the US alone surely numbers in the billions.

And remember, unlike EVs, cars must visit not-at-home gas stations at regular intervals.