Unraveling the Bayesian knot: the magic of probability

There is a wonderful maths problem called "the two children problem" invented by Martin Gardner and it runs like this:

you meet a friend in the street, you know he has two children but not their sexes. As you are talking a boy runs up who is introduced as your friend's son: what is the probability that the other child is also boy?

Intuition would say 50%, in this case intuition is wrong; I will now try to explain why before giving the answer.

First I want to explain some fundamentals of statistics. First and foremost is the concept of probability, this is intuitively easy to describe: "the likelihood of an event occurring" the actual calculation is also deceptively simple:
\[ \frac{\text{desired outcome}}{\text{all outcomes}} \]
where  desired outcome is all the ways of achieving the outcome you're interested in (for example a boy in the above problem) and all outcomes are all the possible outcomes (eg boy or girl) so for the sex of a child the result, as you would expect, is:
\[\frac{\text{boy}}{\text{boy}+\text{girl}} = \frac{1}{2} = 50\%\]

The above of calculation is very simple but problems arise when you start looking at adding probabilities. For example the probability of having 2 sons is $\frac{1}{4}$ there are 4 possible combinations of 2 children (2 sons, 2 girls, 1 (eldest) son 1 daughter, 1 (eldest) daughter 1 son) while  the probability of having a son or a daughter remains $\frac{1}{2}$ the probability of a particular number of sons or daughters changes. While this may not make immediate sense it is easier to understand by going to an extreme: instead of 2 sons what are the odds of 200 sons? (answer below, it's very unlikely; even without considering the physical problems). A series of trials like this is where the 'Gambler's fallacy' comes from, each trial is independent, it has no effect on the outcome of any of the other trials, but any particular combination has a different chance: having 199 sons then a daughter is as likely as 199 sons then another son. The chance of having just 199 sons and daughter is more likely as the order of birth doesn't matter. There is only one way to have 199 sons then a daughter but there are 200 ways to have 199 sons and a daughter.

This is the one of the big pit-falls of probability (hence the fallacy) at each trial (in this case birth) the probability is the same, any one of those 200 children has a 50-50 chance of being a son or a daughter but any particular combination of children will have its own probability. At this point the essence of the 2 children problem should start to become apparent.

So what the answer to the 'two children problem'? It's not actually $\frac{1}{2}$ or  $\frac{1}{4}$ , it's $\frac{1}{3}$. To understand this think back to the definition of probability, we know that for 2 trials with each trial having one of two outcomes we have 4 possible outcomes:

2 sons, 2 daughters, 1 son 1 daughter and 1 daughter 1 son

Now we know that one of those options, 2 daughters, is impossible because we already have already met one son so that leaves us 3 options: 2 sons, a daughter or a different daughter (say, an older or younger daughter). The two options for a daughter may seem needless but it is vital: we know that there were 4 states and only one of those states is removed (2 daughters). We know at least one child is a boy but nothing more, if we knew the eldest child was a son the probability of the other child being a son would be $\frac{1}{2}$  but unless we know that this is a similar case to having 199 sons and a daughter: more likely because there are more possible 'desired' outcomes.

This sort of calculations relies on a branch of probability known as Bayesian statistics which concerns itself with the combination of different probabilities. This example is among the simplest and already it clashes against classical intuition, the most impressive part is that the probabilities are exactly what we see when we go and test these systems (you can do it yourself with two coins instead of children).

Of course one other reason the two children problem causes such confusion is the utterly artificial way in which it is presented but real world examples do exist, for example: given the probability of a disease test giving the correct result and the probability of having that disease how likely are you to have the disease if you test positive? Just so you know the answer is not $\frac{1}{4}, it is different as each outcome is not equally likely (for example you might have a 0.2% chance of having the disease and a 1% chance of a the wrong result from the test). For those that want an even more mind-bending problem I direct you to the Monte-hall problem, or the inspiration for this post: the Tuesday two children problem (if you know the son you meet was born on a Tuesday how likely is it your friend has another son).



200 heads from 200 flips? its:
\[ \left( \frac{1}{2}\right)^{200} = \frac{1}{1606938044258990275541962092341162602522202993782792835301376}\]

Science: the other bit

I've been working in Japan for 2 weeks now and I've spent most of that time working on an experiment. Of that time about 1 day was spent taking data, the rest was spent working on analysis. Analysis is the bit of science that most people forget. People look at the LHC and expect it to run for a while and then spit out an answer. Does the Higgs exist? yes or no. Are there extra-spatial dimensions, how many? Can lepton flavour be violated? maximally or only in rare cases?

These are all questions that the LHC may answer, but not immediately, not even quickly in anything other than a scientific time frame and the reason for this is analysis. Analysis probably accounts for most of the time spent on an experiment. Before the LHC was even finished being built people had been running analysis for years and will run it for many more years once it shuts down. The reason for this is that every last bit of data has to be accounted for.

The experiment I have been working on for the last 2 weeks has been the calibration of a scintillation detector, to do this a radioactive source is placed near the detector and the detectors response is measured. This measurement then produces a plot that looks a little like this:

The big peak on the right is caused by Cesium 137. This peak lies at 662keV,  and is used to calibrate devices because the position of this spectral line can be calculated from what we know about the nuclear make up of cesium.

In this case it would seem to be a fairly simple analysis but it isn't a complete analysis, what about the two smaller peaks to the left of the big 662KeV peak, what is the huge peak near zero? The smaller two are called the backscatter peak and the Compton edge respectively, both are caused by scattering processes that the gamma ray (the source of the big peak) can undergo and ultimately mean not all the energy is accounted for hence the lower energy peaks. This leaves only the big left hand peak, caused by hard x-rays emitted when electrons move in their orbits (de-excite), gamma rays are caused by entire nuclei de-exciting hence their higher energy.

The above paragraph is a reasonable, qualitative analysis of the above graph but by no means is a full, rigorous analysis. For that the position of each peak would have to be calculated (for several other sources as well as cesium), carefully modelled using the expected curve which is then fitted to the data, the parameters produced can then be inspected and checked against the initial assumptions to see that there were no obvious differences from the expected.

The process above is what I did over the last two weeks. Two weeks of analysis for less than 2 days of data taking.

The LHC has orders of magnitude more complexity and a nearly unimaginably large amount of data taken every second (at the raw data rate it produces several thousand times more data than can be written to hard drive using current technology). The analysis of its data has been planned meticulously for the last decade, in fact the entire LHC has been modelled and simulated many times for various different possible physics scenarios (even black holes) over the last decade just so we'll have an idea of how it would look. These simulations have produced analysis procedures that can be applied to the data as soon as it exists. 

Once the initial data analysis is done it may be revisited several times: there are people in my lab working on data taken at the Zeus experiment (an smaller version of the LHC based in Hamburg, Germany). Zeus stopped taking data in 2007, 3 years later it is still being looked at and depending on what gets discovered at the LHC another round of analysis may begin: signals that were too weak to be noticed may be looked for with different techniques or better initial parameters.

Analysis is where the real science happens: experiments just make something to analyse. Already people are analysing the LHC: checking its calibration, looking for early signs of the Higgs. But the data taken now may be revisited a hundred times before it's fully understood, the meaning of ever last wrinkle, dimple and bump fully understood by which time the next set of experiments will be firing, fusing and flickering towards the next data set.

Homeopathic poisoning and other rubbish

This (should) be a short blog about a few things that have amused me today: firstly there is a wonderful story online at the moment about a homeopathic bomb. Although I think they missed a trick: surely making a homeopathic bomb is as easy as holding a few drops of what ever it is you want to explode above the sea and threatening to drop it (near instant dilution to an insane quantity plus sufficient shaking from waves should work wonders).

The other wonderful homeopathic rubbish I came up with is DIY homeopathic treatments: why bother spending money on diluted belladonna? By swallowing a smallish doss yourself you can let it dilute in your stomach: all you have to do is jump up and down a bit then fall over as you die and the world will be a smarter place. It's all a conspiracy by big Homie to stop people realising they can make their own placebos at home.

In other 'news' if you haven't I suggest you go and check out blag hag where as a wonderfully skeptical responce to certain stupid Iranians Jen has instigated (and analysed) boobquake. Go read it. Now.

Anyway as I said this would be a short post so it shall be. There may be something longer cropping up soon as I try my hand at some fiction - you have been warned.

In the interim I must return to poking a Clock and Control board with a probe and code. I may write about it later (you lucky devils) until then: adios!

You may not be able to fly but at least it's for a pretty reason

This is an amazing picture of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, with its ash plume lit by lightening

It's just damn cool so I thought I would share.

Thought/rant for the day: "Isn't that odd" or when your just not thinking

I have acquired a new pet peeve: the rhetorical question "isn't that odd?". My peeve is not with the question: things that are odd should be remarked upon and investigated. It is the latter part of this that causes me the annoyance: that thing's aren't investigated.

Things that people remark "isn't that odd" to will be of one of two catagories: either something of at least passing interest (eg sun dogs or ice formations) or that is out of place ("I'm sure I put my keys here"), the cause of my irritation is that situations of the former do not provoke investigation. Often they won't even illicit 5 seconds of thought as to the possible origin of the subtle strangeness that triggered the observation. Why is this?

Why are we so blasé and jaded that upon being presented with something we don't understand or is strange we are more likely to dismiss it that give it even a moments thought? While this point has any number of reasonable answers I think it highlights something that is deeply wrong about how we approach the world we live in: we apparently don't think.

In one of my favourite books (Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) there is a point where Ford Prefect hypothesises that humans talk to exercise their jaws, he then adjusts this to the theory that by talking we stop our brains working. This should not be something we find funny.

I am not advocating full scientific investigation just a little more thought when using the the expression, if only as a form of mental exercise. I find that I feel much better when I walk home from university than when I get the bus. The reason for this is that on the bus I will read whilst when I walk I will think (in fact this post was born on the walk home today). Letting my mind wander as I walk presents me with many little puzzles that I love to work out eg. why is that when I bus I people watch while on my walk I am not offered this luxury? Because on the bus I pass people but when I walk I don't. I could list many other realisations that I have experienced but most of them, like this one are utterly boring. Why then do I encourage it?

It may seem a daft point but firstly because its relaxing, the act of walking is relaxing but so is the act of finding small problems and solving them: teasing apart the situation based on what you know and what you've observed gives an amazing feeling of accomplishment (this is especially nice when the day has yielded few results). The second reason why I would encourage you all to pause after uttering or hearing uttered the phrase "isn't that odd?" that occasionally you will discover something profound.

NB. While writing this I had to work hard not to get distracted by sun dogs or ice formations, these are subjects that I have read about before and even then the lure of re-reading and investigating them was strong (yes there is also an ironic confirmation bias in my selection of topics that interest me as examples here).

Anyway I'm done with my thought for the day, to those of you who made it this far: well done! 

The equation of Creation

This is a link on the so called "Equation of Creation" purportedly linking the Hydrogen Fine Transmission line (Hlf), Pi and the speed of light (measured in 'Thoms') to some strange "Omega Constant" (0.0123456789). This is the equation:

Hlf.π/Ω = C

For the rest of this post I'm going to attempt to disassemble the paper defending this equation.


The main thing that sticks out in reading this paper is that the author seems determined to prove he can do multiplication, it is littered with "if you multiply a by b you get c" I'm not sure if this is an attempt to sound scientific or what but its very irritating show's nothing.


Anyway onto the 'science': I'm going to work through this section by section skipping over a lot of stuff but trying to pick out the main points.


The paper starts out with some odd justification of "I'm a scientist and even I believe it" kind and then goes on to justification of the use of Hlf, as you can see from the wiki link yes this is an important frequency. Light at the Hlf frequency will penetrate interstellar dust etc yes SETI search on it (along with many other frequencies) so what there are lots of frequencies that are searched for all sorts of reasons. Hlf has some half hearted justification that if you wanted to  send a message to humanity you would use a frequency that we are looking on but that's about it. The justification for the inclusion of pi is that it has been suggested that Intelligent life might transmit at a frequency of pi*Hlf as there are no natural sources at this frequency and pi is a number that almost any advanced civilisation should recognise.


My first major issue with this is omega, this is an arbitrary number, 1/81 is roughly the ratio of masses of the Earth to the Moon

5.9736*10^24 Kg - Earth
7.3477*10^22 Kg - Moon
R = 81.298
1/R = 0.012300425594

but not anywhere near acurately enough to justify 10 significant figures and the claim that 0.0123456789 is attached to the Earth and the Moon, it just isn't. Additionally what is the obsession with 10 significant figures with all measurements, apparently other than this one. Having 10 significant figures on your estimate if you can only measure to 5.


The next section "Where is the science?" contains one of the more comic statements, apparently π/Ω gives a value in milliThoms, reading ahead a thom is also known as a megalithic yard. now fogive me but pi is a ratio, omega is an arbitrary number possibly a ratio of masses either way a ratio of ratios is just another number, not a distance.


Now while a frequency multiplied with a wavelength gives a speed I've yet to see any evidence that we have a wavelength with which to multiply. Anyway the rest of this section is mainly "wow our numbers give us the speed of light in an arbitrary unit how cool is that?!" as well as pointing out that this value of the Thom scales the hydrogen line to the speed of light, well whoop you can solve an equation!


Next section the mysterious 'Thom' is explained: originally it started out as a unit used in stone circles, the fact that a length that is roughly one standard human's pace was used throughout many many stone circles isn't that amazing is it? If I had the time (maybe later) I would see how accurate this number is, given that 0.8297 gives us fractions of millimetres I will be VERY surprised to see if there is evidence for this.


Anyway there is an "exact" method to calculate the Thom so don't worry - it's 1/366th  of the transit of Venus across the horizon. This section finishes with how it turns Atheists into Creationists and other such voodoo as well as how there is still more! yes, the Thom relates the circumferences of the Sun, Earth and Moon!


To relate the circumferences you multiply the full value of the Thom (0.829417864 metres) by some number (to get a second arc), then 360 (to get an degree arc) then finally by 366 to get the full circle. Now this is the first actual error I've found, but I'm pretty certain there are 360 degrees to a full circle as well as 360 arc seconds to a degree. For example using 366 Thoms to get a second then 360 and 366 to get the full circle you get 39,997.98kms, not bad given the Earth circumference is between 40,000kms and 40,008kms, using the standard number of degrees in a circle you get 39,342Kms not so good given that any number has been used. Further examples and their accuracy are given for the Moon and the Sun.


Using arbitrary numbers to get reasonably close to an actual number is not much of a skill or much of a challenge, especially when you are moving from values of an order 1 to order hundreds of thousands. The claim that:

As a side note, the values 100 and 40,000 used above in calculations of circumference, are not arbitrary numbers, but are very significant values in the large volume of research about the message embedded in the characteristics of the Solar system

is rubbish as well - until I see that evidence they are arbitrary numbers that help you get close to your goal value.


So what have we seen? Basically it is very easy to pick arbitrary numbers and make them look roughly like other numbers. For this to be evidence of a Creator I would expect much better than 99.9% accuracy especially given the very odd selection of units and mangled maths. As well as this complaint this whole paper has two massive errors: firstly the claim that π/Ω gives a length, unless you show me what Ω measures I will think of it as a number and nothing more, secondly in the proofs that the Thomis an exact proportion of the circumference of the Moon, Sun and Earth there are only 360 degrees in a circle.

As a final point below is the "proof" that my finger made the moon as I can use the length of my finger as a starting point for maths that calculates the Moon's surface area. This proof took about 5 minutes.

eg 8*8*16*365*100 = 37,000,000Km² the surface area of the Moon, 8 is the length of my finger (in cm), 16 is the average male age for puberty and 365 is the length of a year 100 is a special number we have evidence for.

Libel reform

This (should) be a quick post, for those of you who haven't seen there is a new website that I think you should all go an look at:
http://libelreform.org
it is a lobbying group that aims to improve the way libel cases are dealt with in the UK, have a read about on it have a look here for Ben Goldacre's info on it (he's one of the founders).

If you live in the UK and in any way care about science this is important, if you live elsewhere and care about science its important. If you don't care about science you should and then this is important.

Essentially our current libel laws are crap. The cost of libel in the UK is about 170 times that of mainland Europe, and the burden of proof is upon the defendant: ie when someone sues you for libel you are guilty until proven innocent.

For better (and probably correct) arguments about why you should give a fig about libel laws look around on the libel reform page as well as Ben Goldacre's blog or Jack of Kent's blog or just read up on what's happening to Simon Singh.

Please look at it and come to your own decision; this is important.

This is just cool

Howdy net!

This is going to be a very short post as I'm currently struggling to keep my eyes open (hooray for 12 hour day with 4 hours on public transport)

so I'll just leave you all with some awesome pictures

pretty pictures!

THE LHC HAS DATA!

Seriously cool stuff - they should be slowly stepping up the power over the next few months.

What has the Particle Physics ever done for us?

Other than this? i.e. the internet.

While the LHC may not be about to give you a new version of the microwave a lot of the 'spin-off' tech is VERY useful (HTML, radiation imaging for medicine, modeling systems used in finance etc click here for more). More direct uses are common as well this is a report from CERN on a new experiment that's just starting up to look at how cosmic rays may affect cloud formation and climate change. There are also experiments being designed that will create x-ray lasers (XFEL, LCLS and one in japan who's name I forget)use linear electron accelerators, to create x-ray lasers that will allow us to probe matter at even deeper levels: being able to image the absorption of chemicals into a cell, for example.

Anyway that's it - just a micro-rant on "what have the particle physicists ever done for us?"

The burning stupid

This really hurts my brain. To suggest that being secular is what has caused the reduction in the number of births and overall family size is stupid. To quote a parliamentary report I found:

"The number of births in the UK has declined throughout the
century [1901 to 2001], interrupted only by the two post-war ‘baby booms’ and
a secondary peak in the 1960s. " [1]

Unfortunately I can't find any information about relative percentages of secularism to any form of religion other than in 2001 when only 15.5% [2] identified themselves as having "no religion (inc Jedis)". Now this strikes me as not really a reasonable way of accounting for the massive drop in birth rates over the last century:

"Between 1901 and 1905 the general fertility rate in the UK was
about 110 live births per 1000 women aged 15-44. By 1971 this
had fallen to 91 and in 1997 to 597." [1]

Call me scientific but might it just be that the number of people surviving birth has increased: 140 infant deaths per 1,000 births in 1900 to 5.4 per 1,000 in 1997. With more people surviving birth you don't need as many children, life expectancy has also increased (75 for boys, 80 for girls in 1999 compared to 45 and 49 respectively in 1901). A longer life expectancy reduces the pressure to have children at a young age, or at all.

Anyway, moving on from the stupid argument my main interest is this: over the last year what happened? maybe I'm being more focused in my reading but the number of public figures (Tony Blair for example) basically slagging off those who take a humanist or secular world view has seemingly massively increased.

As a standard test: re-read what Lord Sacks said but substitute the word 'muslim', 'black' or 'gay' where he says "neo-Darwinists". Not sure a bastion of great "interfaith relations" is he now?

Gripe the second: WHAT THE HELL is a neo-darwinist with respect to religion? They have nothing to do with eachother unless you happen to be some knuckle-dragging idiot. If anyone out there seriously thinks that secularists or humanists work from any sort of Darwinian principle they are utterly mistaken. We just don't believe in God. Evolution is an utterly seperate argument and the continued muddling of the two is stupid.

Repeat after me: "Evolution, The Big-Bang, Cosmology, Chemistry, Geology have NOTHING to do with the fact that I don't believe in any deity". They may both come from the fact that I think about things and draw what I think to be rational conclusions but one does not cause the other. 



[1] www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf
[2] http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html

Smoking up a storm

yes ok I'll stop with the bad titles, this is the last one, maybe.

On to the actual purpose of this post: it appears that the government of our dear island has sacked Prof. Nutt from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The reason? saying that by changing the classification of drugs to "scare" people from them you were "devaluing" the evidence. The BBC report on the sacking can be read here and the report on his comments here.

My main gripe with this is the lack of respect that politicians (of all parties) seem to have for the people who advise them. If you are employed to offer advice on a policy your agreement with that policy shouldn't be a contingent of your employment.

In this case I think that the Prof. Nutt has a very good point: we allow the use of alcohol and tobacco (which can cause, among other, things cancer and cirrhosis) but ban the use of cannabis (a chance of developing psychosis or other neurological problems).

Moving on from this to a more general outlook this seems to highlight one of the main problems currently experienced by the scientific community: our expert advice (a few dozen years studying a small field) is routinely being over thrown based on 'gut-instinct' and anecdotes. There is a distinct distrust at all levels of society of those with expertise. This would be less worrying if it wasn't for the fact that often this expertise is replaced by much more dubious sources of information: how many people now will take the advice of someone who uses 20 minutes at the university of google to discover that vaccines are bad over someone who has spent a greater portion of their life researching and studying exactly how vaccines work.

I think this is more than just a new anti-intellectualism (which it is), I think it's the beginning of global future-shock. As technology and knowledge moves on people are becoming increasing terrified by the change and looking for simpler explanations of how the world works. The continued inability of science to do what people expect of it (why do we still have AIDS why isn't my car flying yet) has given people the impression that as a group scientists are detached from the concerns of pretty much everyone else.

This leads me back to the reports on the BBC: people no longer want experts. They don't want people who are willing to tell them that we don't have all the answers yet, to tell them that actually drug abuse is endemic in pretty much all societies and has been for years. People are actually losing a lot of the rationality that drove us to where we are now. I'm not saying that we are going to back-slide, just that we might move sideways a bit. As this century progresses the number of new technologies in people's lives will drive many to consider it magic. People won't want to be told that the nanotech injection they just received is very carefully molded to them specifically they will want to just know that the magic juice will cure their cancer.

Science has raised us so much higher than we have ever been before and now most people cannot see the difference between it and magic. It's a shame but for many people I think that the 21st century will be one of magic and will miss out on the wonder that we can create.

how habitable is the earth?

If you have any interest in futurism and possible extra-solar habitation (ie living on other planets) this is an excellent post by an excellent author

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html

The rise of journal sharing?

There is a very interesting (and short paper) on the impact of and ease of illegal sharing of journal articles here.

For those of the tl;dr (too long didn't read) variety basically a large number of journals that practice closed access (you have to pay to read articles) are having their articles shared via websites etc. The estimated cost of one of these websites to the 2,000 odd journals whose articles were republished as $1.4Million (based on $30.00 per article).

I'm not a big fan of intellectual property (IP) laws (maybe because I have nothing to protect) but I feel that several things have come into play in recent years. The IP laws are now as likely to protect large companies from individuals as the opposite (in fact more likely as an individual will rarely have the resources to cover legal costs) and the rise of the internet which has blurred the line of what can actually be protected. Is code something that you can patent? that particular bit of code or the concept behind it. These issues have already been met by firstly music, then movies and now slowly the publishing world (look at the trouble google is having with news that they license and various books).

In the case of scientific publishing the real question is whether we should pay for information. Prior to the internet a lot of the work of publishers was exactly that: editing and publishing articles that would then be bound together and sent to those who were interested often costing a lot of money in the process. Now in the publishing world most of the work is done electronically, editing and organisation of the information is still important but the cost of actually printing the article is often no longer an issues as people will read the papers online. Should we then be paying up to $30 for an article?

I don't think we should. Information is at its best when everyone can access it, creating a situation in which multiple people can all review and learn from someone's contribution is far preferable to creating an arbitrary barrier for people to cross. This is especially true in the case of the sciences where people are interested but only a very minor percentage will want to pay up to $100 for a paper that they're only interested in browsing. The upshot of charging people to learn is that you create a capitalist market for information. On the internet this means that people will go where it's freely available (eg wikipedia) or where it's free but wrong (eg Answers in Genesis). As part of the purpose of science is the propagation of knowledge forcing people to pay to get good information seems counter-intuitive. This is more of a problem now when information is so freely available in general and people are treating science more and more like magic: either something to be feared or avoided as un-knowable. Giving good and easy access to genuine science will mean that those who are interested can get hold of the actual information that is needed and make their own mind up about it. I'm not saying this will stop websites like Age of autism from spreading misinformation but with access to genuine papers on vaccines or the LHC people who might otherwise take these websites at face value (especially when presented with the scientific world hiding its information behind a pay wall) they may read up and find out the real facts.

While this is a very similar situation to the one found in the entertainment industry I think the subtle differences make the case stronger for open access journals. While the entertainment industry should be free in some form (I pay for the cinema and yet still insists on adverts why!?) funded through pay-to-dodge ads or a pay-to-own system etc. The journals system should be completely free, a lot of journals already have adverts if these moved onto their websites in a "pay for the ad free premium version" system I would be more than happy.

"It's only a theory"

Interesting program on BBC iPlayer called "It's only a theory" hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter, first episode has a very interesting man on talking about the possibility that the first 1,000 year old person has probably already been born. Seems to be a reasonable argument based on bell curve concepts.

The idea is that people being born now will likely have access to technology that will extend their life significantly and once they get old (again) the process will repeat to the point that essentially life will be sustained ad finatum.

The guy presenting the argument is awesome (HUGE beard) bit of a strange program not too well created, interesting idea with a reasonable approach to science but somewhat trying to hard for jokes that aren't really there.

Cool stuff

Frstly: the Chap Olympiad, a very daft but fun event recently held in London here's a link to an ITN report on it.

Secondly: big news in engineering and opto-electronics (if it gets off the ground) scientists have set up 'circuits' such that light can be used to open and close gates. This is important as it means that fully controlable gates can be made either way here is the report.

Sorry about the lazy reporting feeling tired and working on a programming project. Will probably update some information on it soon

Sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

Well one out of three isn't bad. Here is a summary of some interesting reports on drug use. These interest me for a couple of reasons: I have tried various chemicals and enjoyed them; I have read (well skimmed) various government reports most of which go against the accepted wisdom that 'drugs are bad'; finally I have always wondered why people are so blind to the affects of alcohol/tobacco and so vocal on the affects of everything else.

While this is the age old argument there is VERY little reason why alcohol should be acceptable while cannabis or MDMA isn't. There are two reasons for my confusion; firstly while none of these drugs are safe (don't believe me look up liver failure from alcohol and permanent psychosis for cannabis) secondly I fail to see how most people don't realise this. I would expect it's from the propaganda that says drugs are bad you are hooked the instant one touches your lips (or vein or what ever) and that they will kill you in seconds.

It is this second point that depresses me the most; the double standards I can understand to a degree: people are comfortable with booze but the rest is strange and scary, fine. The second point though raises a much more dangerous truth: that we should lie utterly to children and ourselves. This isn't the science "this is mostly true but not everything" lying this is out right driving fear in to people's hearts to the point where those people who genuinely need help (ie addicts) cannot admit it most of the time because of the stigma and hence are denied what should be an avenue out for them. It also raises the worrying question of what else we let ourselves be feared into (ID cards anyone, net monitoring?)

This is a wonderful highlight of an endemic problem in our society: that expertise is no longer trusted, in any way. I'm not saying we shouldn't question what we are told be experts or anyone, but they are experts for a reason. The number of government policies that are created despite experts turning round and saying "what you planning is rubbish" is a sad indicator of something found at all levels of society.

I hope it ends soon...

More joy from YouTube and the Discovery Institute

Two related videos today, both by the same person highlighting what will become an interesting problem online: the use of cease and desist notices to take down and censor content. This is nicely tied to another irritant of mine which is creationism (now going by the name of intelligent design). This is the sort of insidious anti-science that could set us back years if it gets accepted. Firstly ID explicitly relies on a none testable hypothesis: that at some point all of life was designed at a deep level. This can only be tested if they can prove that a biological is irreducible, that is that there is no way in which it could have been produced naturally, this in itself is the definition of supernatural.

Moving away from my loathing of ID the second part that is interesting is the use of law to smash websites; especially hosting sites like youtube. These sites have to comply quickly (I expect they use automated services) as failure to do so makes them liable BUT it does mean there is an easy was to remove content that you don't like.

Luckily the internet does not forgive and it does not forget.

Here are the vids, the first is the vid that was taken down the second is a vid about that act.

Chiropractic and other fun

Two interesting posts that I'm linking to today. First is a very funny letter being sent out to various chiropractic peoples informing them that they should be very careful about what they claim to be able to help with. Second is an interesting (American) post on the break-down of their government's spending.

Starting with the latter (the government spending) click here the blog itself is a favourite of mine with lots of interesting physics and astrophysics posts but what is genuinely interesting is how the break down of spending appears: only 0.8% is on science and technology combined. all it beats is general government. That's NOTHING, I find it highly annoying when people complain about the costs of for example the LHC; especially as they rarely realise that the $5 billion (I think ~£4bn) is spread over about 25 years of total R&D compared to the Olympic games which will no doubt run to more than its predicted £4bn budget for not even 1 year of heavy use. Anyway an interesting post and one well worth sending to the 'science is a waste of money' brigade.

The former post I won't comment on other than to say that considering that Simon Singh currently has to prove that the claims of the BCA were deliberately misleading this seems to be a wonderful piece of evidence that they may have been...

This, sign it, NOW

This is a petition on the Simon singh case - sign it.

This would be funny if it weren't so true

This article sums up the onion pretty well. It's funny. It's accurate. And painfully true.

I don't know if it's just my tinfoil hat blocking my ears but when you see stuff like the Simon Singh case the various insanities that are always about (ie creationism and vaccine quackary) it just seems that anti-science is on the rise (ironicly often helped by the 'net).

This is a problem on a number of fronts. Firstly anti-science generally goes hand-in-hand with loss of critical thinking which is not what you want in a democracy - even more so given the current economic and political climate (hello BNP, anyone?) The second reason is that in the increasing technical age that we live in loss of scientific thinking doesn't help anyone. Our current knowledge is close to pushing science far beyond anything we've previously seen: both nanotech and biotech have the potential to fundamentally change how we live beyond even what the internet has done. This will not be helped if half the population are unable to think critically and more importantly unable to get hold of the information that will help with this.

Now more than ever we need GOOD science writers and a GOOD flow of information. Here's hoping it happens