CelticBear’s Musings

Been busy. Here’s a few items of science interest for you! Enjoy.

A really amazing couple of animations from the Cassini probe exploring the Saturn system:

♦ Cool Cassini Animations

One shows the “shepherd’s moon” Prometheus moving around in its space in Saturn’s ring, pulling out threads of the ring! The other is Mimas, or the “Death Star,” rising behind Saturn.

Next up: 5 planets and a sweetspot:

♦ Astronomers find 5 planet system!

Most of the systems scientists have found so far have been planet-less or have only one or a couple planets. At least, with the technology we have so far. Finding a 5-planet system, nearby, as Phil Plait (The “Bad Astronomer“) says: “Finding a system so close implies that they are common throughout the galaxy.” He also explains how one of these 5 planets happens to live in a special region of distance from its star that suggests conditions that are favorable for water developing on the planet. Promising!

Alright, moving from the cosmos to Earth science issues–some pseudoscience of interest:

An oldie but a goodie from the Skepchick:
♦ Homeopathy (is) for Dummies

I don’t now recall how or why I got back to that post, but I did. It’s an amusing and informative explanation of homeopathy and its silliness. Well, it would be just silly if it weren’t for the sad fact that thousands, perhaps millions of people in some degree, believe this woo and put their faith and health in it. Placebo effect can help only so much; some people use homeopathy for very serious illnesses, and that’s sad.

Speaking of sad, a fantastic post discussing the sad state of the battle of evolutionary science over Intelligent Design Creationism:
♦ Should We Let Creationists Dictate Our Time: A Response to Tristero

“Mike the Mad Biologist” discusses the way in which the ID’ists have the money, time, backing, and fanaticism to spread their woo while real scientists are too busy doing work to try to find the right social dynamics, public relations, marketing, to convince people of the reality of evolution. At the root, it’s a battle of marketing and the ID’ers have the resources to wage a more effective ad campaign than science does:

Every morning the creationists/ID supporters wake up and have one job: to debunk evolution. They can search the web and journals, practice their public relations skills, and hone their standard public presentations. This is due to the massive funding of institutes whose sole purpose to deny evolution (e.g., Jonathan Wells had his Ph.D. paid for by the Rev. Moon-yes, that Rev. Moon-so he could better attack evolution).
Contrast this with evolutionary biologists. Every morning we wake up and have to conduct research, teach, sit on university committees, write grants, review manuscripts for journals, and so on. We would also like to occasionally have a personal life. When it comes to publicizing the case for evolution, we are outgunned and outfunded.

Scary! But that’s life in the modern world: Marketing creates the reality we accept. (See Jean Baudrillard and “hyperreality”).

And finally for today:
♦ It’s possible that your stupidity will affect your ability to understand this post

This intentionally inflaming and scandalously phrased post title by Cognitive Daily tries to make the point that we approach qualitative and qualitative statements differently, more so when it applies to something we have greater emotional reactions to. We have to be aware that doctors, for example, will often use occasionally misleading qualitative statements for particular reasons that could unintentionally lead to misunderstandings of probability.