Blogger's Digest

Need to clean out the to-be-blogged-about items I've got building up in feedly. Prefer the one-post-per-link-or-subject approach, but the backlog is too daunting. So, it's a digest post. Possibly the first of several?

• The Sherlock Holmes class I wish UConn offered when I was a student
• Rolling Stone's Top 100 TV shows list is not terrible. Deadwood too low. Doctor Who too low. 
• Dangerous Minds resurfaces Theory.org Trading Cards
• Maybe police chiefs could focus more on not killing people, less on their stupid religious biases
• Maybe sheriffs could worry more about other police murdering people than where trans kids go to the bathroom
• Super abusive but cute greeting cards. I can think of a Wake County sheriff deserving a card ...
• Round up of free, classic audiobooks
• Know your cognitive biases
• Know your deplorables
• One of this blog's chief laments, as expressed by Samantha Bee
• Giving Justin Trudeau the side eye -- we're on to you, Canada.
• As an atheist, I guess I should see Sausage Party then? Hmm.
• The Pixies!
• Been working on the swimming and running. Once I get a new bike, will start the last training leg before attempting a sprint triathlon. Speeding safely downhill seems like a good thing to bone up on.
• Know your Derrida.
• My go-to means of viewing movies by ... emm ... occult means appears to have been put down by The Man so I've fallen way behind seeing hard-to-find movies that I really want to see, like High Rise.

Wow, We Are A Fragile Species (Vocal Fry Edition)

Can a Woman’s Voice Ever Be Right? -- The Cut:

Image via nymag.com

The public sniping at women’s voices reflects a deeper cultural anxiety about whether they have a right to speak at all. Classicist Mary Beard points out that this anxiety is historic, written into our cultural DNA. She writes, “Public speaking and oratory were not merely things that ancient women didn’t do: they were exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender … the tone and timbre of women’s speech always threatened to subvert not just the voice of the male orator, but also the social and political stability, the health, of the whole state.” This is our cultural inheritance, and its patterns play out on Twitter and the floor of the House of Representatives alike: “Women, even when they are not silenced, still have to pay a very high price for being heard.”

Hawking, Zuckerberg, and Team to Launch #StarshotProject

Starshot Project: Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg to send tiny rockets to Alpha Centauri in most ambitious space exploration project ever

image via spaceref.com

Tiny rockets are going to be sent into space to study the far universe in the most ambitious space exploration project in history. 

Scientists including Stephen Hawking and backers such as internet investor Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg will send “nano craft” deep into space to explore the most remote regions that humans have ever seen, by far. The hugely ambitious project could reveal deep secrets of the universe and will allow people to photograph one of the most likely places to hold life on other worlds. 

The Starshot Project hopes to get the tiny robots out to the Alpha Centauri star system, 25 trillion years away. Getting there through normal means would take 30,000 years – but the new project hopes that using the tiny rockets will allow them to get there in just 20.

Wow. Just wow. This is stuff NASA should be doing, but OK, still, this is awesome.

Little computers lead the way. Little drones. Then more little drones, then more ... as we get better at, we can send ones that are a little bigger, and if we push a bunch of a little drones out there, maybe, just maybe, they can find the raw materials to start building things. Little things at first, then bigger things, gaining size and complexity ...

Mining, building, preparing. A space station could be waiting for us before we even get there. (And, if we can do that, maybe we can build a way station, something in between to reduce the risk in case we can't get all the way there in one shot.)

It may not be possible. But imagine what we could do if gave settlers a chance at a fresh start, a new world with a new constitution that at least avoids the mistakes of all the ones up to now ...

Things could better in a way they may never where we can't escape our own history.

Just Busy Is All ...

via phys.org

Yep, I've watched "The Husbands of River Song" and hope to finally get my review post up this weekend. Trying to think of a way to incorporate thoughts on the other Moffat-y holiday special, "The Abominable Bride" along with it; but, things have been more hectic than normal since the run-up to the holidays, our family trip to Utah, my weeks of illness (nothing major, just a stubborn, exhausting chest cold and sinus infection -- all better now), and I'll probably need a refresher re-watch before finishing it up.

Also have it in mind it's time to make a mix CD for one of my distant friends. Am leaning towards a theme like North Carolina music through the years -- but not the stadium fillers like Clay Aiken, James Taylor, and Ben Folds, nor the folk/bluegrass/country old-timey stuff we're known for (though the Carolina Chocolate Drops will almost certainly be represented). Want to design it up like how archaeologists of post-anthropocene Earth, the highly evolved descendants of today's cockroaches, might speculate Hopscotch looked based on the scant few clues our civilization will leave behind.

This is all by way of saying I didn't want you all -- or you, if there's only one of you left -- to think I'd forgotten about the joint.

Anything you'd like to discuss in the meantime? #OscarsSoWhite? Me, I'd love to see more folks join Jada Pinkett Smith, her hubs, Spike Lee, and Michael Moore in declining to attend on principle. Actually, I'd especially like to see more Anglo actors and filmmakers step up and call out their brethren (my people, the "whites") ... keep Chris Rock as host, let the audience be nearly all black, asian, and latino; let's see how that ceremony goes and what we'd hear about the Academy being run as a white supremacist group then. I'd pop corn and watch the hell out of that. I bet Ruffalo's down.

As it is, I expected I'll just read about it the next day and see what highlights come out of it.

Or, we could marvel at the observation that David Bowie died, and suddenly there's a ninth planet out there.

bowie leaves us and then a 9th planet appears, i don't need to read your science article

— Stephen Bell (@atstephenbell) January 20, 2016

And, no, none of us were the first to hope it has a satellite we could name the "Alan Rick-Moon."

What else you got? Palin and Trump forming a mutual admiration society to amplify the accusation that Obama made Palin's son into a domestic abuser? Are there more despicable people alive than the GOP's celebrity grifters?

Snowstorm bearing down on the Northeast so climate denialists can point to snow somewhere on Earth where it's winter and deliberately not talk about how hot 2015 was?

Did I mention yet that we cut the cord and dropped cable? SlingTV, pbs.org, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime covering most of the bases, only struggle so far has been not being able to see the Huskies on the ESPN app. Treme, you guys. I think a lot of us slept on Treme. Finally gave House of Cards a try as well and might get hooked ... but I feel like they're walking a fine line when it comes to product placement. I don't mind my characters using brands, I mean, we all do, that's life. However, the degree to which a show can draw attention to it, or pretend it's not drawing attention to it, and still be a drama (as opposed to a fancy commercial) is the question ...

Oh, and how could I forget about the Duke losing streak?! How great is that? The way it rolls of the tongue ... Duke losing streak. Coach K so pissed he can't remember how to shake hands. Maybe the only good thing about 2016 so far?

New ☆ Tweet from @gregladen

The Arctic is Hot: New minimum sea ice cover for the date https://t.co/vSNTqghkrc via @Scienceblogs

— Greg Laden (@gregladen) January 6, 2016

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New ☆ Tweet from @Wonkette

Sad Dumb North Carolina Town: Stop These Solar Panels From Bogarting Our Sun! https://t.co/Pox51OXblE http://pic.twitter.com/smhfobzOm5

— Wonkette (@Wonkette) December 15, 2015

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Already staggeringly stupid, on the whole, humanity to get stupider as atmospheric CO2 levels increase.

Exclusive: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows | ThinkProgress: 

Success at Paris ... would buy us 5 to 10 years in the fight to avoid catastrophe. But we would still be on a path to 675 ppm, which is too high for both the climate change impacts and the direct human cognition impacts. Worse, that level of warming will likely trigger many major carbon-cycle amplifying feedbacks that are not included in the climate models, such as permafrost melting. So we must take stronger action.

Not all of you, especially not you, dear reader. That you are even seeing this tells me you are among the brightest minds on the planet. But, Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson are the leading GOP candidates for the Republican nomination for President in 2016, and every single individual who thinks either of those two would not be a fucking disaster as POTUS is objectively, measurably suffering from impaired cognition already.

That we need to be smarter, more sane, less ignorant as a species to understand the science of climate change, and come together to approve of public policy to address the crisis, while our current inaction serves only to make us collectively stupider, is terrifying.

There are reports dense population centers may be too hot for human habitation in my children's lifetime. Check the satellite imagery of Arctic ice melt over the few decades. It's grim stuff.

We are running out of time. We can't afford denialism.

New ☆ Tweet from @jljacobson | Carson campaign deathwatch starts now ...

Ben Carson Once Did Research On Fetal Brain Tissue http://t.co/NV5lzJIyBj Oh, the hypocrisy never ends.....

— Jodi Jacobson (@jljacobson) August 13, 2015

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Update: 3:40pm

Let me be clear, in case it's not obvious, that I don't think there's a problem with scientists using fetal tissue for research. It's the hypocrisy of using fetal tissue for research, then running as a Republican, with all the anti-choice, anti-science baggage that entails. What I'm curious to see is whether the base turns against Carson, or rallies around him.

Expecting it will be the former, but won't be surprised if I'm wrong.

Main reason to suspect they'll turn on Carson, the way they didn't on the Duggars, is they could care less about pedophilia because it's happening to something other than a fetus. (Zygotes, remember, are magical soul angels that musn't be prevented from being born.)  Carson, apparently did some science with fetal tissue and that's pretty much go to make him a monster their eyes. Doesn't it?

Also, Carson is black. It must have been killing them to have to pretend they weren't scared as shit of him this long.

I haven't checked whether the #tcot crowd has weighed in yet, so off-the-cuff with these remarks. Not sure if Fox/Breitbart/Drudge has even broken the news to them yet?

First stop on the RW Nutters response to the news: Drudge Report. Hmm... They have Carson "news" on the front page, but it's not what I thought it would be. (Well, in retrospect ... )

Fox News? I went to the Politics page and found 1 reference to Carson leading polling in Iowa.

Well, I'm sure the twitterers will be all over it, even if their gatekeepers are trying to tamp down any controversy...

I scrolled to find a lot of obvious lefty tweeters using #tcot to share the news, but a curious lack of reaction. Top conservatives seem to be more interested in celebrating Jimmy Carter's cancer and imagining elaborate email conspiracies around Hillary Clinton. Go figure.

But, I did see something from Breitbart in there, so let's hop over to that raging dumpster fire. Yep, a link on the front page. The article hasn't got much comment or activity on it yet, surprising for news that broke hours ago?:

What little there is for comments is, at least at this early stage, about what I predicted. EOD's head must hurt, because he can only discuss it for an instant before veering off on the usual ACORN / Planned Parenthood vilification. Glorious Cause though, he's speaking troof to power.

Anyways, some of these GOP candidates are bound to start dropping soon. Carson, I think, just took the lead over floundering Rick Perry in the campaign death pool.

Future of Life Institute Sounds Autonomous Weapon Warning

FLI - Future of Life Institute

Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.

Via NPR

How we should be discussing the hoax sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood

Donating Fetal Tissue After An Abortion Or Miscarriage Is Totally Legal — And It's Actually A Great Thing | Bustle

Planned Parenthood facilities are one among many hospitals, tissue banks, and clinics that collect and store donated fetal tissue. All of them charge small fees for donated materials, as storage isn’t free, and securing facilities to maintain confidentiality costs money. These facilities all act as the third party between patients and the biomedical research firms that process donated tissue and make it available to researchers in either fresh or frozen state. Your donation could go into research that prevents miscarriages, helps treat abnormalities of fetal development, contributes to genetic therapies to treat conditions like Parkinson’s, and a variety of other medical advances. 

That’s pretty cool, and a far cry from the ghoulish nightmares being painted by the right in an attempt to shut down Planned Parenthood. The pro-choice fight requires a lot of battles, but if the right is going to turn your body into a political football, you might as well punt it and contribute to medical research that will save lives. 

Brain-Linked Monkeys Form Superorganism, We Are Probably Doomed

Brain-Linked Monkeys Form Superorganism, Deftly Control Robotic Arm — NOVA Next | PBS: 

Neuroscientists are still many, many years away from linking human brains, but the research points to some tantalizing possibilities. First, such research requires sophisticated brain-computer interfaces, which, once perfected, could allow people to deftly control advanced prosthetic limbs.

I, for one, welcome our Cybernetic Monkey Overlords.

New ☆ Tweet from @HistoryInPics

This day 46 years ago, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. http://pic.twitter.com/MiIob4KnUT

— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) July 20, 2015

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New ☆ Tweet from @POTUS

Pluto just had its first visitor! Thanks @NASA - it's a great day for discovery and American leadership. http://pic.twitter.com/FfztBSMbK0

— President Obama (@POTUS) July 15, 2015

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Don't Believe In Evolution? Try Thinking Harder.

Don't Believe In Evolution? Try Thinking Harder : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR: 

Image via GreenBook

Yet, a third possibility — and one I find compelling — is that effects of cognitive style interact with cultural input. Creationism and belief in God might be "intuitive" for many Kentucky undergraduates not only because these beliefs align well with basic human tendencies, but also because these are the beliefs they grew up with and that dominate their communities. What might require analytic and reflective thought isn't (just) overriding cognitive systems that govern intuition, but overriding the norms of one's upbringing and peers. 

These possibilities are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. The fact is, there's a lot we don't know and the reality is likely to be complex. But the new findings by Gervais — and the findings on which they build — already point to the richness of human belief. Evolution isn't controversial for scientific reasons, but it is controversial, in part, for psychological reasons.

Not sure it's a matter of thinking harder, more a matter of slowing down and thinking at all? But that short changes System 1, what it does is cognition, too, but System 2 needs to do the heavy lifting here, and it won't unless it's allowed a crack at it.

#TenYearsLater If You Could Teach the World Just One Thing ...

cryptonaut-in-exile: If You Could Teach the World Just One Thing ... 

That's a ten-year-old blogpost I can polish off a bit and fix the link for. So, here's that old post in the c-i-e post format I've settled into:

---

If You Could Teach the World Just One Thing ...

... And now, here is the most difficult thing that I wish people understood. True design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything, because the designer himself is left unexplained. Designers are statistically improbable things, and trying to explain them as made by prior designers is ultimately futile, because it leads to an infinite regress. 

Natural selection escapes the infinite regress, because it starts simple, and works up gradually - step by step - to statistical improbability, and the illusion of design. 

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The link in the OP was dead, but spiked-online is still going strong.

Science proves there were exactly three pop music revolutions.

Science proves there were exactly three pop music revolutions, so that’s settled |Newswire | The A.V. Club: 

Culture Club via Retroland

The first revolution comes in 1964, with the dying out of traditional jazz and blues chords during the British Invasion of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The second occurred in 1983, when new technology ushered in the ascent of synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers—meaning Eurythmics were more of a musical revolution than The Clash, which it will please everyone to know. The last revolution took place in 1991, with the mainstreaming of rap and hip-hop, which researcher Dr. Matthias Mauch describes as “the biggest...rap and hip-hop don’t use a lot of harmony. The emphasis is on speech sounds and rhythm. This was a real revolution: suddenly it was possible that you had a pop song without harmony.”

Men at Work, Culture Club, Eurythmics ... not names generally clubbed in with the Beatles & Stones, or with Public Enemy, N.W.A., & EPMD.

Recognize.

What Makes Sleep Paralysis Scary

What Makes Sleep Paralysis Scary | Sleep Disorders: 

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (1781)

Imagine waking up to find you can't move a muscle. It's dark, but you're sure you feel a presence in the room, hovering near your bed — or perhaps sitting on your chest, crushing the breath out of you.

This weird phenomenon is known as sleep paralysis, and a new study finds that understanding why it happens helps people feel less distressed after an episode. Believing that sleep paralysis is brought on by the supernatural, on the other hand, makes people feel more unnerved.

That supernatural thing we all at one point or another in our lives felt ... it was all in our minds. Every time. Every kid who dies and sees heaven ... nope. Every ghost in your grandparents' house ... wasn't there. Every inexplicable sound, transcendent vision, or mysterious touch you felt in the dark ... they all have an explanation, you just didn't know what it was.

It's all in our minds. And perhaps, all you zombies are only in mine?

Better try something easier to master than ping-pong ...

Can you win at anything if you practise hard enough? - BBC News: 

Rory Scott, a coach who has trained juniors who later played for England, watched Sam in a recent tournament.
His verdict? "He is nowhere near the standard of the top under-11 player in the UK."
Why did the project fail? One reason might be that Ben chose the wrong sport.
"It is probably the most difficult sport to pick for this challenge," says Steve Brunskill, head coach at the Swerve Table Tennis Centre in Middlesbrough.
"Table tennis has the smallest court, the smallest ball, the smallest bat, the quickest reaction times, the most spin, and it's the only sport where you play on one surface but stand on another.
"You have to play so much to develop the skill, co-ordination and timing, and you have to learn to cope with different styles of opponent."

New ☆ Tweet from @DavidOAtkins

Evolution needs to be taught in middle school as incontrovertible fact. Teachers who can't handle that should find another job.
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) March 29, 2015

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Teaching Evolution at UK

Orion Magazine | Defending Darwin: 

Painting by Alexis Rockman

Some students take offense very easily. During one lecture, a student asked a question I’ve heard many times: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” My response was and is always the same: we didn’t evolve from monkeys. Humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. One ancestral population evolved in one direction toward modern-day monkeys, while another evolved toward humans. The explanation clicked for most students, but not all, so I tried another. I asked the students to consider this: Catholics are the oldest Christian denomination, and so if Protestants evolved from Catholics, why are there still Catholics? Some students laughed, some found it a clarifying example, and others were clearly offended. Two days later, a student walked down to the lectern after class and informed me that I was wrong about Catholics. He said Baptists were the first Christians and that this is clearly explained in the Bible. His mother told him so. I asked where this was explained in the Bible. He glared at me and said, “John the Baptist, duh!” and then walked away.