What percentage of scientific publications are in Spanish?

Instead of just revealing the number in the title, imagine what you think it is and then follow the link here to find the number. By the way, it's in fifth place and German is second after English. The article doesn't say which languages are in between but I will guess French, and...Japanese.


For posterity's sake (if the link dies in a year, for example) I'll include a paragraph from the article, and just white it out.

El volumen muestra datos contundentes. En la base de datos SCI, que indexa 8.300 revistas especializadas de 150 disciplinas científicas, el 97% de sus más de siete millones de artículos publicados entre 2005 y 2010 está en inglés. El alemán es el segundo idioma, con un porcentaje inferior al 1%. Y el español aparece como quinta lengua, con un ínfimo 0,24% de las publicaciones.

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Justin Trudeau's Liberal leadership bid speech

Here it is in full:



A bit over half of it is in French, and with no interpreter jumping in as is the case most of the time with Canadian news. His French seems more commanding than his English which sounds rather gentle in comparison - I'll let native French speakers decide whether this is true or just my impression. Announcing a bid for the leadership now was certainly the right time for him - there will be no election until 2015, and considering how badly the Liberal Party did last time any semi-competent leader of the party should be able to pick up at least a few dozen seats and come out looking better for it.

So what is Trudeau's position on the Canadian Space Agency? Nothing on his site that I can find, and searches for "Justin Trudeau" and "Canadian Space Agency" not surprisingly only turn up articles on Justin Trudeau as leader vs. Marc Garneau (former head of the Canadian Space Agency). On the other hand, Marc Garneau as leader or Marc Garneau as potential Minister of Industry Science and Technology are both better than the status quo, so my vote for 2015 thus far leans towards the Liberals. Lots of time before then though. As a fairly niche voter, any party that offers a detailed plan (and more funding) for Canada's role in space as opposed to mere lip service is most likely to get my vote.

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What is the total sum of human potential?

There must be a paper somewhere on this subject already, but the right keywords to find one escape me at the moment.

Whenever one hears the phrase "what a waste", this is a reference to the human potential we believe should be discovered and developed, not squandered. Military spending is often said to be a waste, intelligent minds growing up in poverty and/or under a tyrannical government is a waste, unrecognized potential is a waste, dying young unnecessarily due to easily preventable diseases is a waste.

The opposite of this are the countries that we deem to be about as ideal as one could imagine at the moment at the beginning of the 21st century: your Luxembourgs, your Norways, Swedens, Denmarks, some would say Japan or Singapore, also Canada, Australia and the rest. None of these are absolutely perfect but they have something in common: people there are free to do and say what they want, the media is largely lacking in bias, those who want to succeed can do so if they put their minds to it, and a chance sickness or accident will not result in bankruptcy. Nobody is being denied entrance to university in Denmark because their family does not support the current government.

So let's set a relatively low bar for the ultimate limit of our human potential in the present. Our ideal situation is not a complete utopia, it's just what we've accomplished in a number of countries carried over to the rest of them. A worldwide Germany, let's say. We'll also want to cut military spending by about 80% since we're talking about a nearly ideal but still realistically achievable level. Military spending will still be around for patrolling waters, sending in troops for emergencies and so on, but we'll assume that most unnecessary spending has been cut to a minimum.

First of all, the world GDP. Current world GDP is $63 trillion. At almost 7 billion people that works out to $9000 per person. Our ideal world average (Germany) is $41000 per capita, so that's $287 trillion total - 4.5 times greater total output. Bump this up to a Denmark or greater level per capita and our total output could be some 8 times greater than now.

Total military expenditures: at the bottom of this page we see a total of $1.63 trillion spent on the military per year across the world. Added to that are a lot of pseudo-military and unreported figures, but we'll go with $1.63 trillion for now. Cutting that by 80% frees up $1.3 trillion for other things, the equivalent of adding one extra Spain. Considering the budgetary situation of a lot of countries right now we would probably just want to put most of this toward their account deficits.

On top of this though, our assumption that a large decrease in military spending is precipitated by increased peace means that we are erasing most warm and cold conflict zones. The border between Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia would be open, the US and Cuba would of course finally have a normal relationship, North and South Korea would not have a militarized border, and so on. I have no idea how to calculate the effects of that without some spending some serious time looking up the situation in each of these locations.

Literacy: total world illiteracy is around 18% right now, and achieving a worldwide Germany means a reduction to almost nothing - let's say 1%. That's 1.2 billion more people that can read that couldn't before, one extra China or India.

And...once again, I'm pretty much out of time (it's not the weekend yet). A very rough estimate though would seem to indicate that we as a whole are probably functioning at about 5% of our possible, yet realistic potential. That is, ideally we could be progressing one or two dozen times faster in pretty much every endeavour we are currently engaged in.

However, I am willing to be corrected on this. Are there any papers available on exactly this subject? Total *ideal yet realistic* human potential, that is. What the world would look like if everywhere was about as well-developed and peaceful as Germany, Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, etc. Sources or opinions, please.

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Aubrey de Grey's Ted.com video on living to be 1000

I finally got around to watching this video by Aubrey de Grey on his work to extend life past 1000 or so. The point he makes in the beginning is that he is not claiming that we are on the verge of finding a way to suddenly live to 1000, but rather that once we learn to extend life by 20-30 years or so, that extra amount of time will give research the leeway to extend it by another few decades, and another few, and eventually further refinements will bring it into the hundreds and 1000+ years.

In the beginning he brings up some of the arguments that those opposed to his work give for why we simply shouldn't live to a few hundred and 1000+ years. Now, I do agree with him that we should work on life extension and that there should be no problem with trying to live as long as possible.

That said, I do have an actual argument against it (a devil's advocate-type argument): extending life into the thousands of years would essentially guarantee everyone a violent death. Instead of death taking place at around 80-100 on the bed in one's sleep, we would live such long lives that the way we would usually end up dying would be through violence, drowning, falling off cliffs, starving with our arms stuck under a boulder, what have you. All fictional stories about immortals deals with this issue, and that's why we have Highlander with death only taking place with a lopped off head, or vampires who can live almost forever but end up dying in burning pain when tricked into being led into the sun, and so on.

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How to cure insomnia (okay, how I did)

The Globe and Mail has an article here today on sleep deprivation and its effect on society - basically that far too many adults believe that they don't need a full night's sleep in order to function and end up falling asleep at their jobs, making bad decisions, etc. etc. I was quite an insomniac until my mid-teens, but this went away after about a few months training myself to dream lucidly.

Most now know what lucid dreaming is but in case you don't, it is simply dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming, instead of dreaming under the impression that you're still awake, no matter how weird the dream may be. You're at home and a pack of rabid wolves begins breaking down the door and you're afraid even though it makes absolutely no sense that wolves would do such a thing, or you get on the bus and realize that you forgot your pants and are embarrassed even though there's absolutely no way you would make it to the bus stop without realizing that you have no pants, etc.

Moments like this are keys to lucid dreaming, as you can teach yourself to constantly check for events that don't make sense, upon which you become lucid within the dream. The dream continues as usual, but now you know that it's a dream and can do what you want. You may decide that you've had enough of the wolves and will now just ignore them, or you might decide that you don't care that you don't have any pants on the bus, or look around for a pair to put on, or may just jump out the window and begin flying (though sometimes staying in flight is a bit tough).

However, before getting to this point there is a preliminary step: writing down your dreams. This is because there is no sense in learning to dream lucidly if you still don't remember most of them, and the best way to remember them is to write them as soon as you wake up. Without doing so they will tend to vanish within just a few minutes of waking up, and if you do something unrelated to your dreams as soon as you get up (check your email, begin making breakfast...) then you'll almost certainly forget most of them.

So how did this cure my insomnia? Easy: it turned the dream world from a daily chore into a more complete world of its own that I began to look forward to entering every night, and instead of lying down and thinking "okay, now stay still and stop thinking and get X hours of sleep" I began to think about the recurring places in my dreams that I might explore in further detail that night, and that seems to have a preparatory effect in bringing your mind away from the physical world and towards the next. I can't guarantee that this will cure insomnia in others, but this is what worked for me. Mind you, I did not begin attempting to dream lucidly with this goal in mind (I never really minded being an insomniac), it was simply a side effect. It would be interesting to hear if anyone else has done the same thing.

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First complete sauropod embryo found after spending decades on the shelf

This is interesting - it turns out that a Soviet expedition from the 1960s that included a number of items that were shelved for decades actually found a complete sauropod embryo, that was only discovered now thanks to scanning electron microscopy and neutron tomography. One of the books I read the most while young was this one:

which was about the life of an apatosaurus (then called a brontosaurus) beginning with its time as a baby as it hatched and ran away from tiny predators (some of her siblings didn't survive that), and then further on as other brothers and sisters either were killed or moved away, finally leaving us with the main character as a fully-grown adult, who then becomes a mother and lives to a ripe old age with the formerly ferocious predators just tiny gnats in comparison with her now huge body. So actually having a complete specimen of a sauropod inside an egg is a nice touch to our understanding of their life cycle.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on the "science should be used to improve life" argument

If you have an hour on your hands you may want to check out this recent interview on the Science Network with Neil deGrasse Tyson on a ton of issues related to communicating science, and if you only have a few minutes this part 35 minutes and 40 seconds in is particularly good. It's a particularly good answer to the argument that science should be used (entirely) for the elimination of suffering, from which comes the lazy argument that the (pitifully small amount of) money spent on space should be spent at home in order to bring human suffering to some unspecified level before we colonize the Moon or spent a billion here or there on gigantic telescopes. NASA does a fairly good job of justifying its funding by promoting spinoffs as a result of NASA's research, but in a sense this is giving in to the argument that they should be producing something with quick real-world applications in order to be useful. A more long-term view is better, and that's what that part of the video is about. I've typed out that part (about four minutes long) so here it is:

Let me clarify this notion that science is the path to solving your problems. I think that misrepresents what drives scientists. Do you think when you speak with Brian Greene he's going to say "I am trying to come up with a coherent understanding of the nature of reality so that I can solve people's problems"? Do you think that's what's driving him? Do you think I'm being driven when I look at the early universe or study the rotation of galaxies or the consumption of matter by black holes, do you think I'm being driven by the lessening of the suffering of the people on Earth? Most research on the frontier of science is not driven by that goal. Period.

Now, that being said, most of the greatest applications of science that do improve the human condition comes from just that kind of research. Therein is the intellectual link that needs to be established in an elective democracy where tax-based monies pay for the research on the frontier.

Because people are saying "why are you researching that when you should be finding a cure for my disease?". Okay, and I don't have a problem with that. But did you know that we diagnosed your disease using an MRI? And what is the physical principle behind the magnetic resonance imager? It came from a physicist who's an expert in atomic nuclei wondering how you would detect this...in interstellar space! Do you think that physicist, when he came up with this understanding of -- it's called nuclear magnetic resonance -- do you think he was saying to himself "one day we'll have machines that will diagnose the condition of the human body without cutting it open in advance"? Do you think this is what was going on in his head? Of course not! It came out of this curiosity-driven research. Do you think Einstein, when he wrote down his equations for stimulated emission of atoms, (that) he's saying to himself, "hey, one day this will be the foundation of a laser and we'll have bar coding"? Do you think this is on his -- "one day we'll have LASIK surgery"! No! No!

So, to say that "the purpose of science is to improve life" -- the purpose of science is to understand the natural world. And the natural world has, interestingly enough, built within it, forces and phenomena and materials that a whole other round of clever people -- engineers, in the case of the magnetic resonance imager, these are biomedical engineers basing their patents, their machine principles on physics, discovered by a physicist, an astrophysicist at that. So I take issue with the assumption that science is simply to make life better. Science is to understand the world. And use that -- now you've got a utility belt of understanding. Now you access your tools out of that, and use those, an ever-increasing assortment of power over nature, to use that power in the greater good of our species. You need it all.

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French scientific reader (1894): VIII - IX: Tops, gyroscopes.

VIII. TOUPIE.

TOUT le monde connaît la toupie, elle a charmé les loisirs de notre enfance à tous, et que de fois nous nous sommes complus à la voir dormir, sans chercher à découvrir les causes de son mouvement! On sait que ce jouet consiste en un morceau de bois tourné en forme de poire, qu'on enveloppe d'une corde roulée en spirale. Lorsque, lançant la toupie vers le sol, l'extrémité la plus déliée en bas, on la détache en même temps de la corde, elle se met à tourner, en sens opposé à celui de l'enroulement, sur la pointe dont elle est armée en ce bout.

Ce mouvement est le résultat des deux forces, savoir: celle qui a mis la toupie en mouvement et la pesanteur. Il s'explique, en sachant que les vitesses de rotation se composent, comme les vitesses de translation, par la règle du parallélogramme. Lorsque la toupie est lancée sur un plan horizontal, son axe ne tarde par à se placer perpendiculairement à ce plan, et elle reste en équilibre dans cette position. Cela doit être, car en cherchant la résultante de la pesanteur qui tend à la faire tomber et de la force centrifuge qui agit tangentiellement à sa surface, on voit que cette dernière force triomphe de la pesanteur. Dans cette situation, la toupie semble ne plus bouger, elle dort, mais son mouvement doit forcément s'arrêter, car: 1 - la pointe de fer subit un certain frottement sur le sol; 2 - l'air appose, au mouvement du mobile, une résistance dont on peut se rendre compte, en sachant qu'on a vu une toupie, lancée dans le vide, n'abandonner son mouvement qu'au bout de deux heures.

La vitesse de rotation venant à diminuer, la force centrifuge contre-balance, de moins en moins, l'influence de la pesanteur; l'axe se déplace de plus en plus et décrit un cône autour de la verticale jusqu'au moment où le jouet se penche tout à fait et roule sur le sol.

Un fait important se dégage de cette expérience, c'est que l'axe de la toupie est resté parallèle à lui-même tout le temps que le mouvement de rotation a été sufissament prononcé, et c'est à la rotation qu'il faut attribuer cette direction constante de l'axe, puisque la toupie se renverse immédiatement dès que ce mouvement cesse. Ce fait est désigné, en mécanique, sous le nom de: conservation du parallélisme des couples ou du parallélisme des axes de rotation. C'est grâce à cette persistance que le cerceau tourne sous le coupe de baguette de l'enfant. Personne n'ignore qu'il est impossible de faire tenir ce jouet dans un plan vertical, s'il est immobile; mais vient-on à le lancer, à lui communiquer un vif mouvement de progression, il roule sur sa circonférence sans tomber. Si l'impulsion s'affaiblit, si la force centrifuge qui agissait tangentiellement au cercle vient à diminuer, le cerceau exécute encore quelquel évolutions, puis s'incline et tombe.

Cette persistance des axes de rotation, qui semble soustraire les corps tournants à l'action de la pesanteur, se produit dans certaines circonstances remarquables, tels sont les cas de ces objets, en équilibre sur l'extrémité d'une baguette, que les équilibristes font tourner, avec vitesse, à la grande admiration des spectateurs; tels sont les cas de la toupie gyroscopique et du vélocipède.



IX. TOUPIE GYROSCOPIQUE.

C'EST un disque métallique très lourd, monté sur un axe et formant une sorte de toupie, qu'on fait reposer, par une de ses extrémités sur le socle S, tandis que l'autre extrémité est tenue à la main. A l'aide d'une ficelle, on donne au

disque un mouvement très rapide de rotation, absolument comme à une toupie ordinaire, puis on l'abandonne à lui-même, en retirant le doigt qui supportait une des extrémités. Or, si dans cette position la masse T était immobile, elle ne manquerait pas de tomber; loin de là, on voit la toupie continuer son mouvement de rotation sur elle-même, en tournant autour du point d'appui; son axe reste incliné en décrivant lentement, autour de la verticale, une surface conique régulière, jusqu'à ce que, le premier mouvement venant à se ralentir et la pesanteur prenant le dessus, il s'incline progressivement et finisse par tomber.

On peut suspendre la toupie d'une autre façon; ainsi l'axe étant placé dans l'anse d'une corde, la toupie reste suspendue dans l'espace (Fig. 7) comme si elle était soustraite à la pesanteur.

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French scientific reader (1894) III - VI: Centrifugal force

No image for these until the last one.

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III. FORCE CENTRIFUGE.

C'EST la force en vertu de laquelle les corps animés d'un mouvement de rotation tendent à s'éloigner du centre de rotation. Pour produire cette force, il suffit de faire tourner rapidement une pierre ou une balle de plomb attachée à l'extrémité d'une corde, dont on tient l'autre extrémité dans la main; on voit alors la corde se tendre et d'autant plus que le mouvement de rotation est plus rapide.

Recherchons la cause de cet effet. Si la pierre était abandonnée à elle-même, il est évident qu'à ce moment elle suivrait l'impulsion dont elle est animée, mais elle ne peut fuir, maintenue que'elle est par la corde. D'un autre côté, puisque la corde se tend, il faut bien qu'à son tour la pierre exerce une certaine traction sur cette corde, absolument comme si elle était soumise à l'action d'une force qui tendraid à l'éloigner du cercle qu'elle décrit. Cette force se nomme, par suite, la force centrifuge.

Si la corde, qui force la pierre à décrice un cercle, vient à se briser, la force centrifuge est subitement anéantie et le mouvement, qui anime alors la pierre, n'est que la continuité de celui qui l'entraînait au moment où elle a cessé de décrire le cercle. On peut démontrer l'existence de cette force centrifuge par un grand nombre d'exemples dont nous citerons les plus intéressants.


IV. FRONDE.


CHACUN connaît la fronde, qui sert à lancer les pierres. On sait qu'elle consiste en une lanière de cuir assez large au milieu et se rétrécissant graduellement aux extrémités auxquelles sont attachés deux cordons; on emprisonne une pierre dans la lanière, puis, passant le doigt du milieu dans la boucle formée par un des cordons, on maintient l'autre avec le pouce et l'index. Alors, on imprime à l'appareil un mouvement rapide de rotation autour de la main. Les cordons se tendent, sous l'influence de la force centrifuge, et lorsqu'on juge l'impulsion suffisante, on lâche un des cordons; la pierre abandonne la cirfonférence et s'échappe par la tangente; mais en vertu de la pesanteur, elle ne tarde pas à décrire l'espèce de courbe désignée, par les mathématiciens, sous le nom de parabole et à aller tomber à une certaine distance du point de départ. Toute l'adresse du frondeur consiste à abandonner la pierre à un instant convenable, pour qu'elle puisse gagner le point qu'il s'est proposé d'atteindre.


V. EMPLOI DE L'EAU POUR DÉMONTRER L'EXISTENCE DE LA FORCE CENTRIFUGE.

ON prend un pinceau un peu fort et on le trempe dans l'eau; lorsque le crin a été sufissament imbibé, on retire le pinceau de l'eau et l'on roule le manche entre les deux mains, de manière à produire un mouvement circulaire; on voit alors l'eau abandonner le crin, en produisant une espèce de gerbe à convexité supérieure. Cette expérience s'exécute d'une manière plus élégante en employant le procédé suivant. On suspend, à trois cordons d'égale longueur, un vase hémisphérique, on tord ces cordons, on les maintient dans la position que leur a été communiquée par la torsion et, pendant ce temps-là, on remplit le vase d'eau jusqu'au bord. Si alors on vient à abandonner les cordons, ils se détordent et communiquent au vase un mouvement de rotation, sous l'influence duquel le liquide abandonne le vase, en formant une gerbe qui se précipite vers le sol. Le mouvement que contracte l'eau, dans ces deux expériences, permet d'expliquer les étourdissements que déterminent certains exercices où l'on tourne rapidement, tels que le jeu de bague, l'escarpolette, car alors le sang tend à s'éloigner du centre de rotation.

VI. LA FORCE CENTRIFUGE REND COMPTE DE L'EXPÉRIENCE SUIVANTE.

SUSPENDONS un seau plein d'eau à l'extrémité d'une corde et faisons-le tourner comme une fronde, le vase restera plein, quoiqu'il soit complètement renversé quand il est en haut du cercle. Pour que l'eau soit ainsi soustraite à l'action de la pesanteur, il faut qu'une force au moins égale et de sens contraire intervienne; c'est la force centrifuge.

VII. CHEMIN DE FER AÉRIEN À FORCE CENTRIFUGE.

LE jouet suivant est un exemple curieux des effets de la force centrifuge. C'est un petit chemin de fer (Fig. 5) formé par deux rails parallèles qui forment d'abord une pente assez raide, puis se contournent en un hélice, dont l'axe est horizontal. Un petit chariot dans lequel on peut placer soit un vase plein d'eau, soit une pièce de monnaie, part du point le plus élevé et roule sur la pente, mais il est bientôt obligé de suivre les rails courbés que lui sont offerts,

et alors il les presse de dedans en dehors par l'effet de la force centrifuge. On a donné au point de départ une hauteur suffisante pour que cette force centrifuge puisse équilibrer le poids du chariot qui, en sortant de la spire, remonte sur une deuxième pente où sa vitesse est bientôt détruite.

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French scientific reader (1894) II: Cutting down

Part II is about cuttin' stuff.

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II. CHOC BRUSQUE SUIVANT LA VERTICALE

Un choc très brusque dirigé suivant la verticale produit aussi de curieux effets. Une verge de sapin (Fig. 4), un manche à balai, par exemple, est appuyé par ses deux extrémités sur deux verres à boire par l'intermédiaire de deux aiguilles enfoncées dans le bois, suivant la direction

de l'axe. Ces deux verres sont placés sur deux billots de bois ou sur deux chaises. Si alors on donne un fort coup de sabre, ou un violent coup de bâton sur le milieu de la verge, on la brisera, sans casser ni même renverser les verres qui la supportaient. Ici, la force a été appliquée d'une manière si prompte, si instantanée que du centre de la verge elle n'a pas eu le temps de se communiquer aux verres servant de support.

Quand la vitesse dont un corps est animé est considérable, il peut se faire qu'il entame un corps plus dur que lui. Cela se comprend. Certainement, au moment du choc, la vitesse du corps en mouvement est ralentie, mais les parties choquées reçoivent une impulsion assez grande pour être brusquement portées à des distances telles des molécules voisines que la cohésion n'a pas d'action. On explique ainsi: comment une chandelle de suif, lancée par une arme à feu, peut traverser une planche de sapin: comment on peut entamer une lame de marbre avec un disque de carton tournant rapidement, ou bien encore, couper une lime avec un disque de fer doux animé d'un vif mouvement de rotation.

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French scientific reader, 1894: gliding is fun

Found an interesting book on Archive.org today - a reader for French students that is quite easy to read, but devoted to scientific concepts. The period just before the development of the first airplane is quite interesting (since it was still theory) and that's what the first article is about.

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I. AVIATION.

CONTRAIREMENT aux affirmations d'Helmholtz qui, dans son ouvrage Gesammelte Abhandlungen, dit qu'il est tout à fait impossible à l'homme de voler par ses propres forces, un Allemand, O. Lilienthal, vient, à Steglitz, près de Berlin, de

tenter des essais d'aviation qui ont été couronnés d'un réel succès. Lilienthal s'est basé sur ce fait que les oiseaux de la plus grande taille lorsqu'ils planent ne paraissent développer qu'un minimum de travail tout en progressant rapidement dans les airs et que le vent accomplit pour eux presque tout le travail. Ses premiers essais ont tous tendu à démontrer qu'avec des appareils bien construits, solides mais légers, il était permis à l'homme, sans dépasser ses forcs, de se soutenir dans les airs et aussi de suivre une direction voulue

en inclinant dans un sens ou dans l'autre les ailes, par un simple déplacement du centre de gravité par rapport au centre de résistance. Lilienthal de plaçait pour ses expériences sur un point un peu élevé, prenait un élan de 4 ou 5 mètres pendant lequel le vent gonflait ses ailes, et il se lassait ensuite glisser dans l'air sur une distance dépassant 250 mètres. En levant un bras et portant les jambes à droite ou à gauche, il changeait de direction et pouvait même ralentir son vol. Au lieu de donner à ses ailes la forme de celles des oiseaux, il leur a donné un profil curviligne déterminé par l'expérience. Leur structure est telle que chacune d'elles présente une surface de 15 mètres carrés. Divers essais lui ont démontré qu'il n'était pas prudent de leur donner une étendue ni inférieure ni supérieure à celle qu'il avait choisie. Lilienthal affirme que si les ailes n'atteignent pas un poids trop considérable et une surface trop grande, les essais auxquels il s'est livré n'offrent aucune espèce de danger et qu'en tout cas c'est un exercise fort agréable et très récréatif.

Quelle que doive être la portée de l'expérience si intéressante de M. Lilienthal, il est permis de penser que, si le domaine de l'air n'est pas encore conquis par lui, l'homme peut aspirer à le conquérir. Il est assez piquant de prévoir tout ce que lui rapporterait sa nouvelle conquête; la science la mettrait largement à profit et le sport, que a déjà trouvé récemment une voie féconde dans la vélocipédie, ne manquerait

pas de trouver dans les airs un champ plus fertile encore, que l'industrie ne manquerait pas d'exploiter à son tour. Il en résulterait une évolution marquante dans les progrès de la civilisation moderne.

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Solstice is finally over, astronomer sues university

Now that the solstice is finally over, even though it's still winter we can begin to watch the days grow longer bit by bit. After the solstice this site becomes a point of reference for me as even knowing that tomorrow we'll receive just two more seconds of sunlight than today is somehow comforting. This year it was noteworthy that we had the full moon right at solstice, so the Moon at its brightest at the darkest part of the year. Of course, in terms of total illumination there is no contest:

full moon - 0.27 lux
overcast day - 1000 lux
2 extra seconds of sunlight (even on an overcast day) = 2 hours of extra moonlight

So by the 26th here in Seoul the extra amount of sunlight we receive in a day is greater than any full moon during its entire time in the sky, but the relatively feeble light of the Moon is still quite nice to have at night around now.

Astronomer sues university: what's this about? The story is found here and here, and involves a court case brought up by an astronomer Martin Gaskell who alleges that the University of Kentucky was just about on the verge of hiring him (one member quoted him as being "breathtakingly above the other applicants") until members of the university after a bit of searching found out that he was a Christian and might be "potentially evangelical" based on some lectures he had previously given, and he was eventually turned down for the position. The case is due to go to court in February and so we will see then whether the university actually was about to hire him and then refused to do so mostly on unfounded fears that he would bring religion into the science classroom, or whether they had good reason to fear this / he wasn't actually about to be hired by them in the first place.

I have to admit that I'm also a bit fascinated by the resurgence of conflict theory and the ever more public debate between the evangelical religious and the evangelical anti-religious (in the sense that one can't not sneak a look at a car crash as one drives by), but if it turns out that we're beginning to enter a stage where the next Georges Lemaître may be denied the ability to conduct the research we so desperately need to become a true spacefaring race due to unfounded fears about his ability to do proper research, then things may have become a bit worrisome. I wouldn't have wanted to see the steady state theory be given precedence either for any longer than necessary simply because its greatest proponent at the time was non-religious.

In the meantime it seems that Prof. Gaskell has taken a job in Chile, pretty much the best place in the world to conduct astronomy, so no problem there.

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Ah, so looks like the NASA conference on Thursday is going to be interesting after all

A few days ago NASA announced that they would be holding a press conference with implications for extraterrestrial life. NASA press conferences (including that last one about the black hole) have a tendency to underperform once they end up taking place, and so I assumed that this would be an announcement along the lines of "we found molecule X on Titan, life on Earth produces that molecule a lot so hey, you never know". Interesting, but nothing conclusive.

It turns out though that the press conference is going to be about a type of life on Earth that gets its energy from arsenic. What makes that interesting is that no life gets its energy from arsenic, not as far as we knew until now that is. In other words, this life had to have emerged separately from the life we know, which gets its energy from phosphorous. And that means that life wouldn't need to exist on planets that have conditions similar to ours either.

So that should be the theme of the press conference. Very interesting. How one would interact with an arsenic-based lifeform is another issue.

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Ted.com translation stats for September 2010

It's been about six weeks since the last update, and Bulgarian continues to do a phenomenal job. In fact, it's just one translation away from a total of 700 talks (!), and just 10 translations away from Spanish, which has the most. For a language of just 9-10 million or so one would think that there must be some sort of funding behind this in order to carry out such a sustained effort. Bulgarian is not showing any signs of slowing down as one tends to see on sites like Wikipedia, where small languages sometimes have a burst in the number of articles due to using bots, or simple short-term enthusiasm.

Anyway, here are the current stats.

Compared to six weeks ago the change is:

Arabic: 492 --> 557 (+65)
Bulgarian: 622 --> 699 (+77)
Chinese : 547 --> 665 (+118)
Croatian: off list --> 119
Czech: 81 --> 122 (+41)
Dutch: 210 --> 286 (+76)
French: 439 --> 538 (+99)
German: 304 --> 341 (+37)
Greek: 174 --> 204 (+30)
Hebrew: 356 --> 410 (+54)
Hungarian: 228 --> 261 (+33)
Indonesian: 87 --> off list
Italian: 435 --> 532 (+97)
Japanese: 320 --> 357 (+37)
Korean: 430 --> 498 (+68)
Persian: 133 --> 138 (+5)
Polish: 347 --> 410 (+63)
Portuguese: 655 --> 694 (+39)
Romanian: 368 --> 411 (+43)
Russian: 302 --> 350 (+48)
Serbian: 89 --> 119 (+30)
Spanish: 686 --> 710 (+24)
Turkish: 393 --> 451 (+58)
Vietnamese: 111 --> 161 (+50)

So Italian and French have sped up, German is a bit slow this time around and Persian has really dropped. Serbian and Croatian suspiciously have the same number. Let's check one video with a translation in Serbian and Croatian to see how they differ:

Serbian:

Ovdje sam prošle godine govorio o tome kako sam preplivao Sjeverni pol. Iako sam plivao prije tri godine, sjećam se kao da je bilo jučer. Sjećam se kako sam stajao na rubu leda, neposredno pred skok u vodu, i u sebi razmišljao kako još nikad nisam vidio mjesto na Zemlji koje je toliko zastrašujuće. Voda je sasvim crna. Voda ima minus 1,7 stupnja Celzijusa, ili 29 stupnjeva Fahrenheita.

Croatian:

Kada sam bio ovde prošle godine, pričao sam vam o tome kako sam preplivao Severni pol. Iako je to bilo pre tri godine, pamtim kao da je bilo juče. Sećam se stajanja na ivici leda, samo što nisam zaronio u vodu, i razmišljanja kako nikada nisam video mesto na Zemlji koje je tako zastrašujuće. Voda je potpuno crna. Temperatura je bila minus 1.7 stepen Celzijusa, ili 29 stepeni Farenhajta.

Hmm.

By the way, one wonders why there aren't any Maltese speakers out there who know Arabic and Italian and couldn't just use those as an easy way to speed up a translation. Referencing those two languages should provide the necessary terminology most of the time, and it wouldn't take much looking up in a dictionary at all to find just the right word.

And now ordered by number of talks:

Spanish: 686 --> 710 (+24)

Bulgarian: 622 --> 699 (+77)

Portuguese: 655 --> 694 (+39)

Chinese : 547 --> 665 (+118)
Arabic: 492 --> 557 (+65)

French: 439 --> 538 (+99)

Italian: 435 --> 532 (+97)

Korean: 430 --> 498 (+68)

Turkish: 393 --> 451 (+58)

Romanian: 368 --> 411 (+43)

Polish: 347 --> 410 (+63)

Hebrew: 356 --> 410 (+54)

Japanese: 320 --> 357 (+37)

Russian: 302 --> 350 (+48)

German: 304 --> 341 (+37)

Dutch: 210 --> 286 (+76)

Hungarian: 228 --> 261 (+33)

Greek: 174 --> 204 (+30)

Vietnamese: 111 --> 161 (+50)

Persian: 133 --> 138 (+5)

Czech: 81 --> 122 (+41)
Croatian: off list --> 119

Serbian: 89 --> 119 (+30)
Indonesian: 87 --> off list

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Isaac Asimov talks in 1988 about the Internet and Nate Silver (con subtitulos en español)

Take a look at this short clip from an interesting interview from 1988 with Isaac Asimov on the future of education. It also happens to have Spanish subtitles, which I typed out and pasted below in case anyone wants to compare the two. The translation is off in a few places and the Spanish itself seems to have been a bit lazily typed up (porqué for por qué is one example), so if anyone sees other areas that need correcting that I missed then leave a comment below and I'll do so.

As for Nate Silver - he's the owner of fivethirtyeight.com. Started out with baseball, went on to other things.



Once we have outlets, computer outlets in every home
Una vez que tengamos sistemas - de computadoras - en cada hogar

each of them hooked up to enormous libraries
cada una de ellas "colgadas" a enormes bibliotecas

where anyone can ask any question
donde cualquiera pueda realizar cualquier pregunta

and be given answers; be given reference material
y que se le den respuestas; y que se le brinde material de referencia

be something you're interesting in knowing
que sea algo en lo que tú estás interesado en saber

from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else
más allá de cuán tonto le pueda sonar a otro

that's what you're interested in.
eso es lo que a tí te interesa.

and you ask...
y preguntas...

and you can find out, and you can follow it up,
y puedes averiguar...

and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction,
y lo puedes hacer en tu propia casa, a tu velocidad, en tu dirección,

at your own time.
a tu propio tiempo.

Then everyone will enjoy learning.
En ese entonces, todo el mundo disfrutará el aprender.

Nowadas, what people call learning
Hoy en día lo que el mundo llama aprendizaje

is forced on you
se da a la fuerza

and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed, in class.
y todos están forzados a aprender lo mismo el mismo día, a la misma velocidad, en clase.

And everyone is different.
Y todos somos diferentes.

For some it goes too fast, for some it goes too slow, for some in the wrong direction.
Para algunos va muy rápido, para otros va muy lento, para otros va en una dirección errónea.

But give them a chance, in addition to school.
Pero démosle una chance, como complemento de la escuela.

I don't say we abolish school, but in addition to school
Yo no hablo de abolir la escuela, pero sí como complemento de ella

To follow up their own bent from the start.
Para seguir su propia veta desde el principio.

Well, I love the vision...
Bueno, me encanta esa visión...

but what about the...
pero qué pasa con...

what about the argument that machines, computers, dehumanize learning?
¿qué pasa con el argumento de que las máquinas, las computadoras, "deshumanizan" el aprendizaje?

Well, as a matter of fact the situation is just the reverse.
Bueno, es que de hecho, la situación es la opuesta.

It seems to me that it's through this machine that for the first time
A mí me parece que a través de estas máquinas, por primera vez,

we'll be able to have a one to one relationship
tendremos la posibilidad de disponer de una relación de uno a uno

between information source and information consumer.
entre la fuente de información y el consumidor de esa información.

What do you mean?
¿Qué quiere decir?

Well, in the old days, you used to have tutors for children
Bueno, en los viejos tiempos, habían tutores para los niños

A person who could afford it could hire a pedagog,
Una persona que pudiera afrontarlo, podía contratar a un consejero,

a tutor,
un tutor,

and he would teach the children and if he knew his job,
y él le enseñaría a ese niño el conocimiento de su trabajo,

he could adapt his teaching to the taste and abilities of the students, you see.
podía adaptar su enseñanza al gusto y las habilidades de los niños, usted verá.

But how many people could afford to hire a pedagog?
Pero ¿cuántas personas podrían afrontar o contratar un profesor?

Most children went uneducated,
La mayoría de los niños eran analfabetos,

then we reached the point where it was absolutely necessary to educate everybody.
luego llegamos a un punto en el que fue absolutamente necesario educar a todos.

The only way we could do it
La única manera que había para hacer esto

is to have one teacher for a great many students,
era utilizando un sólo profesor para una gran cantidad de estudiantes,

and in order to organize the situation properly,
y para poder organizar la situación propiciamente,

we gave them a curriculum to teach from
les dimos un plan de estudios del cual enseñar

So...how many teachers are good at this too?
Entonces...¿cuántos profesores son buenos haciendo eso?

Like in everything else, the number of teachers is far greater than the number of good teachers.
Es como que, en todo lo demás, el número de profesores malos es considerablemente superior a la cantidad de buenos profesores.

So...we either have a one to one relationship to the very few
Entonces...tenemos una relación de uno a uno para los menos

or a one to many relationship for the many.
y una relación de uno a muchos para la mayoría.

Now, there's a possibility of a one to one relationship for the many.
Ahora, tenemos la posibilidad de una relación de uno a uno para la mayoría.

Everyone can have a teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species.
Todos pueden tener un profesor en la forma de acceso al vasto conocimiento de la especie Humana.

Through the libraries that are connected to the computer -
A través de las bibliotecas que están conectadas a la computadora -

That's right.
Exactamente.

...on my desk, in my home?
¿...en mi escritorio, en mi casa?

Right.
Correcto.

I can sit there and call up...well, what if I want to learn only about baseball?
Me puedo sentar ahí y "llamar" ... bueno... qué pasa si yo sólo quiero aprender sobre béisbol?

Well, that's all right! You learn all you want about baseball,
Bueno, ¡eso está bien! Aprende todo lo que quieres acerca del béisbol,

because the more you learn about baseball,
porque cuanto más aprendes sobre béisbol,

the more you might grow interested in mathematics 
más te verás interesado en las matemáticas

to try to figure out what they mean by those earned run averages and the batting averages and so on,
para intentar averiguar qué quieren decir con esos promedios de corridas y promedios de bateos,

you might then become more interested in math than baseball, if you follow your own bent,
y tal vez entonces te interesarás más en las matemáticas que en el béisbol, si sigues tu propia veta,

and you're not told!
y ¡nadie to le impone!

On the other hand, someone who is interested in mathematics,
En la otra mano, alguien que sí está interesado en las matemáticas,

may suddenly find himself very enticed by the problem
puede de pronto encontrarse muy entusiasmado por enfrentarse al problema

of how you throw a curve ball.
de cómo tirar una bola curva.

And he may find himself engaged in sports physics, so to speak.
Y puede encontrarse a si mismo enganchado en la física de los deportes, por decir algo.

Well, why not?
¿Por qué no?

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The brother of Page F30 has a blog too

My older brother informed me the other day that he now has a blog, and since our interests coincide to a certain extent readers here may be interested in reading it / corresponding with him too. Where our interests most align is in linguistics, music and history/religion, and in his case linguistics usually means Sanskrit, as well as French as he is fairly proficient at French (though never gives any specifics on that) and will be moving to Montreal in the fall; music is usually ambient and electronic music and it's thanks to him that I know about bands such as FSOL (Future Sound of London), and history/religion in his case usually means anything from T/Daoism to Buddhism, Hinduism and many others. Where we don't coincide is chemistry in particular, simply because he majored in the subject and I have never really gotten into it. See this post of his for an example of this.

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Sometimes agreeing on a common 'language' isn't that hard

From the Wellsboro Gazette, Thursday 19 December 1935:

Weather Men to Speak Language of Their Own

Washington -- An international language for the weather made up of signs and figures instead of words so as so avoid the confusion of varied national languages, is to become uniform for the worlds weather men, W.R. Gregg, chief of the United States weather bureau, asserted.

Returning from Warsaw he reported that the International Meteorological organization at its eighth meeting there with representatives of 42 countries present, adopted a program for unification of codes, symbols and units in the exchange of weather reports.

The maps on which daily weather forecasts are based will look alike the world over. A black dot will mean light rain or drizzle, a star will mean light snow, and a plain circle will mean clear cloudless skies on every whether map whether the observers receiving(?) data for speak English, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or any other language.

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Spoken articles on the Turkish Wikipedia

While we're on the subject, Wikipedia in Turkish has a few spoken articles as well. You can see them all here, but those that might be particularly interesting for Page F30 readers are:

• Tanrı'nın Şehri - City of God or De Civitate Dei, the book by Augustine.
• Kayıp Cennet - Paradise Lost, by Milton.
• Tanrı - God. Just like Persian has its own word for God separate from Allah (khodâ, خدا) so does Turkish that goes back to their common roots with Mongolia. See Tengriism in English for more on that.
• Arthur C. Clarke. A man who needs no introduction..
  
• Stargate Universe. I actually know nothing about Stargate but others certainly do.
• El-Kanun fi't-Tıb or Canon Medicinae, the medieval book of medicine originally written by a Persian in Arabic and later translated into Latin and other languages.
• Haçkar or Khachkar, the Armenian cross you can see there on the right.
  

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12 June 2010: one more country has switched to the metric system...

and the country is...


...



...



...



Sierra Leone!

The news is a bit surprising though as pro-metric advocates (of which I am one) often cite the US, Liberia and Myanmar as being the only countries to not officially use the metric system so I had assumed that Sierra Leone had officially adopted it. Sierra Leone has a population slightly over 6 million and is right here:


View Larger Map

Here's an article from a week ago on the bill as well.

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Why is there so little coverage of the last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis?

That's what this article on SpaceRef asks, comparing the coverage given to Atlantis with other news stories of the day.

My suspicion is that it's a combination of a few simple factors: 1) It's not the last Shuttle flight yet, and the Space Shuttles all look pretty much the same to the untrained eye, and 2) the story is a bit sad and complex at the same time. Sad because the Shuttle program is soon to come to an end, and complex because it takes a while to explain what the new plan for NASA is. That requires bringing up SpaceX, the entire space industry, cost to launch a kg or lb of payload to LEO, etc.

More news coverage requires a simpler narrative. If we're lucky SpaceX will launch the Falcon 9 successfully (scheduled for today, actually) and then the narrative during the next two Shuttle flights will become simpler: the Shuttles are almost done, but SpaceX and other companies are probably going to be able to fill the gap. If the Falcon 9 fails, then...expect a lot of consternation and hand wringing.

That might not be a bad thing in the long term, actually - the space race with the Soviet Union was pretty much all consternation and hand wringing too, and NASA's budget compared to the entire federal budget was about five times what it is now.

Chance of success for the Falcon 9 launch: no idea of course, but I would guess high as the Falcon 1 failures had a bit to do with so-called "go fever", the urge to get a successful launch off as quickly as possible. With the two successes under their belt they've probably been able to get rid of that and are proceeding in a more professional and orderly fashion.

By the way, Daily Kos has a good science writeup today including most of the stories worth mentioning from this week.

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