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“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, 
Without knowledge or lustre or name.” 

Have you heard about the theory that there is a hitherto-unknown giant planet out at the edge of our Solar system? It sounds intriguing, although most scientists seem to be leaning against the idea now.

The Time article linked above also makes mention of a theory popular in the ’80s about “a faint, far-off companion star to the Sun was sending down a rain of comets when it reached just the right point in its orbit.” (The name for this hypothetical object was “Nemesis”, by the way.)

What I don’t quite understand is how, if it really is there, we could have gone this long without noticing it, since we can see well beyond the Solar system already.

Anyway, like it says in the article, the smart money at the moment says that the supposed giant planet probably doesn’t exist. But if it turns out that it does, I want them to name it “Yuggoth“.

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I was interested to see this Time article about us potentially getting a second sun next year. It has been cold lately, so that would help.

Naturally, though, killjoy scientists say it turns out not to be happening.

Most people talking about the possibility of two suns referenced the twin suns of Tatooine in Star Wars, but from the way the Time article described it, I thought it sounded more like the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall.

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I saw the Sun Bowl game on TV yesterday. It’s in El Paso, Texas and there was snow on the ground surrounding the stadium. I think they said it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit at game time.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, it was 52 degrees.

There are some people I know according to whose method of science these two facts would simultaneously prove and disprove the existence of global warming.

Some people have a hard time understanding that anecdotal evidence is not reliable. They also seem oddly incapable of understanding the difference between climate and weather.

I admit that I myself am pretty ignorant about climate science. My attitude towards it has always been like that put forth by Christopher Hitchens here:

“If it turned out to be that there was no severe global warming threat… then all we would have done would have been make a mistake in analysis, which we could correct for. But if it turned out that there was and we’d done nothing about it, than it would be too late to do anything at all.” 

This logic makes sense even if you, like me, have no idea if what the scientists are telling you is true or not. It’s a calculated risk.

Let me anticipate an objection that clever Republicans will venture. That is: what Hitchens proposes is nothing less than a modified, secular form of Pascal’s Wager. After all, the Republicans have long been repeating the line that the Climate Change people are nothing more than a new kind of Religious zealot.

This is a clever reply, but it is not a true one. Climate is an average of many readings of weather, and is therefore fairly easy to measure over time. This means that it is much easier to estimate the changing odds on Hitchens’ wager than on Pascal’s, where it is impossible.

I should mention that I wouldn’t expect this to actually work to change any Republican’s mind. The reason for this is that all methods required for dealing with the danger of Climate Change are anathema to both major sections of the Republican party.

First of all, there is what I call the “materialist” (or, if you like, “greedy”) wing of the party. This group is pretty well-exemplified by the Koch brothers, who are businessmen who realize that efforts at curbing climate change causing activities would hurt their profits.

Secondly, and perhaps less obviously, there is the fact that solving climate change would presumably require international co-operation. This is deeply objectionable to the Nationalist wing of the party.

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Reports the BBC: “Scientists have shown they can change people’s moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.”

Read the article. It’s pretty interesting; however, I’m not sure if they’re modifying people’s morality so much as how they judge actions in general. And frankly, people frequently fall into the trap of judging a decision–whether morality is involved or not–based on the outcome, not the information available at the time the decision is made.

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Scientists are exhuming the remains of 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe in an attempt to determine whether he was poisoned. Some even suspect that it was Johannes Kepler, a sort of assistant of Brahe’s at the time, who killed him.

Frankly, I don’t even know enough about science to understand what clues they can hope to gain from examining what’s left of a guy who died in 1601. But it makes for an interesting story.

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“The boys are all ready;
They’ve laid out the plan,
They’re setting the stage
For the man-made man.
We’ve worked out the kinks
In your DNA
So sayonara, kid
Have a nice day.”
—Warren Zevon and Larry Klein. “Sacrificial Lambs“. 2002.  

So, some researchers did a study and found out that there is a gene that predisposes people towards a “liberal” political stance. James Fowler, the lead researcher, said:

“The way openness is measured, it’s really about receptivity to different lifestyles, for example, or different norms or customs… we hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences will tend to be more liberal.” 

This is kind of what I mean when I talk about Cosmopolitan thought vs. Nationalist thought. As I said here: “nationalism places far higher importance upon symbols and traditions than does… cosmopolitanism.” So, Liberalism, or what I call “Cosmopolitanism”, is much more willing to experiment with different customs, symbols and societal norms.

Interestingly, however, I am politically what people consider a “Liberal” on most issues, yet I don’t particularly enjoy “seeking out new experiences” in my personal life. I very much enjoy having a routine and sticking to it.

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Private Buffoon has an interesting post about the history of cholera and how Dr. John Snow‘s study of it in 1850’s London led to our modern-day understanding of epidemiology.

I read a great book a while back about this called The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson. It’s a fascinating book, though I would caution against reading it when you’ve just eaten, or are about to eat.

Most of the book is about the Broad street cholera outbreak, but the last chapter is a philosophical rumination on the structure of cities and city life. Both parts make for good reading. Just be aware that the title of his post applies to much of it.

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I first learned about affirmations from Scott Adams’ book The Dilbert Future. Basically, the idea is that you write down whatever you want to achieve 15 times every day, and eventually you’ll get it. For example:

“I, John Smith, will become a millionaire.”  (x 15)

Assuming, of course, that your name is John Smith and you want to be a millionaire. If John did this enough, the thinking goes, he should become a millionaire eventually. In his book, Scott Adams recounts numerous instances in which this process worked for him. If what he says in the book is true, it’s pretty eerie. But I didn’t believe him when I read it, and I’m not sure I do now.

What really interests me isn’t even whether it works–though that would be useful, of course. But first, what I really want to understand is: how it could work; in other words, is it even theoretically possible? I realize that’s a strange thing to say, but it’s not as odd a concept as you might think–for example, some physicists believe that it’s theoretically possible to travel through time by entering a black hole–it’s just that there is nothing in the Universe that could survive the trip.

Scott Adams does have some theories on the nature of reality that could explain how affirmations work, but I am skeptical. I hate to try something out when I have no reason to think it will work other than anecdotal evidence.

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Dilbert.com

I meant to blog about this at the time, but I didn’t, so here it is now:

A week after the Gulf oil spill started, Rush Limbaugh said:

“You do survive these things. I’m not advocating don’t care about it hitting the shore or coast and whatever you can do to keep it out of there is fine and dandy, but the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”

Which, like virtually everything Limbaugh says, upset people. But he is right–sort of. But he also makes a huge mistake.

It has always seemed to me that people draw a distinction between “natural” and “unnatural”, but really they shouldn’t. After all, are machines not made from naturally occurring elements? People have merely interacted with these elements to produce a new organism which produces different output. It is as natural a reaction as one could wish.

Strictly speaking, anything which can be said to exist is “natural”, precisely because if it were not natural it could not exist.

Limbaugh seems to assume that because the oil will be absorbed “naturally”, it is okay. When in fact the planet’s reaction–perfectly natural though it may be–may have dire long-term consequences for the living creatures currently inhabiting it.

So yes, it is literally impossible to harm “nature”. Nature is everything. The worst we can hope to do is to alter our environment so as to make it unlivable. (Which, by the way, I don’t think the oil spill has come close to doing.) But the point is that just because something is “natural”–which everything is–has absolutely no relevance to whether it is good for human life or not.