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True Lab Stories: The Plastic Lens

(Series explanation here.) The lab I worked in in grad school contained a bunch of miscellaneous objects whose purpose was a little hard to discern. One of the oddest was a big heavy acrylic lens. It was probably an inch thick, and two or three inches in diameter, and had four screw holes around the outside edge. It wasn't a terribly good lens, but it was a lot better than you would've expected from the origin story. (More after the cut.) The experiments we were doing required ultra-high vacuum, despite a fairly high gas load, so we had a variety of big vacuum pumps. One of the pumps we used…

Apocalypse perhaps a little later?

The Economist is read by all the most Important People (what, you say you don't read it? Well...), so what they say about GW matters (even if they sometimes talk twaddle it still matters). What they are currently saying under the byline "Climate change may be happening more slowly than scientists thought. But the world still needs to deal with it" is some scientists are arguing that man-made climate change is not quite so bad a threat as it appeared to be a few years ago... “climate sensitivity”... may not be as high as was previously thought. The most obvious reason is that, despite a…

Misc

I've given up calling it "yet yet more misc" as I've forgotten where I've got to. So, in no particular order: In war you will generally find that the enemy has at any time three courses of action open to him. Of those three, he will invariably choose the fourth via Schneier. Which reminds me of We don't even know how many legs he's got. The Policy Lass is sick of arguing with stupid people. Anyone who has been to WUWT and the comment threads there will empathise. It is all a hopeless morass of nonsense; it cannot be fixed, only risen above. And indeed (as I've tried to tell them) the science…

Winky

The latest crop of links-n-stuff. First up is this superb photo - ht TS's google reader feed. It won second prize but for my money is far and away better than any of the others (higher-res version - thanks BD). Its tagged as a "condensation rainbow" but it isn't, I think (wrong shape). It is probably diffraction not refraction - see [[Iridescent cloud]]. Tom said I saw this elsewhere (can't remember where) and I think the explanation given was that the plane was making a sharp turn and adiabatic expansion resulting low pressure one side of the wing lowered the temperature enough for an ice…

Well write a bloody paper about it, then

So often you get folks who have some brilliant theory, but unaccountably lack the courage to write the thing up and submit it for publication. However, I'm pleased to report that Nicolas Nierenberg is not such a man, and he *has* written a paper: Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate (blog post). Whether (like me) you think it is basically correct or (perhaps, I'm guessing, like Eli you don't) you will, I'm sure, welcome the way this is being played out in scholarly debate. What's it all about? Broadly speaking, this is but a minor…

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (and the head to head)

There is some more Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up - go get it now (ht: Paul). Ha ha, fooled you. This is actually a post about rowing :-). Today was the H2H or Head to Head: 2000m, a brief break (well, 20 mins wating by the bank in the rain, yummy; and lets not mention the brief altercation with the marshall over our spinning :-), then 2000m back. We took 14:22, which is quite passable... I'd be happy to do that on an erg. It was also a very clean row and enjoyable. We got stuffed by various 1st Mays crews (winner: 12:48). But in the rowing and running theme, it is…

The IPCC: dissolve it or not?

A couple of people have asked me this - I think it came up in Ask Stoat (I haven't forgotten, you know, just busy). Anyway, it seems like a great post - bound to be flamebait and get my comment count soaring! You won't be too shocked to learn that I think it should be reformed, not dissolved. But how? [Update: some of this gets quoted in http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/10/ipcc-reform -W] First of all, I think the WG I, II and II should be separated more. The WG I report should be done first. Then WG II and III should have their own timescales - perhaps running about a year or…

Airbourne fraction, again

This was an ask stoat question, and probably a fairly easy one, so I'll have a go. First of all, what is it? AF (ie, Airbo(u)rne Fraction, is the proportion of human emitted CO2 that stays in the atmosphere, the rest being sunk in land or ocean. Now it is important not to confuse the "proportion that stays in the atmosphere" with "the concentration in the atmosphere" otherwise you get silly little skeptics running around thinking that "airbourne fraction is constant" means that CO2 has stopped increasing. Sigh. However, I see that last time I looked at this I was having to slap down the…

Obama on science

Stein alerts me to Obama answering the science debate questions, and provides some of his own commentary. T' Intersection reports, but wimps out of any analysis. The answers are here. So, looking only at those bits that interest me: 1. Innovation... What policies will you support to ensure that America remains the world leader in innovation? Obama's answer to this (see below) is reasonable: increase spending on research etc. But this sits very oddly with his restatement of the problem: ...the U.S. annually imports $53 billion more in advanced technology products than we export. China is now…

Timeline: PZ + MG

Call it fate, destiny, synchronicity, or astounding cosmic coincidence, but I have to report a series of highly unlikely events, a whole collection of chance occurrences that, multiplied together, defy reason and point ineluctably to some kind of universal force. These events are spread out over decades, and millions, even billions, of alternatives could have generated a completely different conclusion. The data are overwhelming. 1957     I'm born; precisely 6 months later, Mary Gjerness born in same hospital.     1958     Mary and I reside in same small town, although unaware of each…

That's My Senator!

I was more than a little surprised when Jim Webb defeated incumbent George Allen in the recent Virginia Senate election. I voted for him happily, but didn't rate his chances very high. My confidence in him has only soared in light of recent events. Here's George Will: Wednesday's Washington Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb “tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, “How's your boy?” Webb replied, “I'd…

Still More on Poincare

The August 28 issue of The New Yorker features this magisterial article about the Poincare conjecture. The focus of the article is on the priority dispute between Grigory Perelman on the one hand, and a team of Chinese mathematicians led by Harvard's Shing-Tung Yau on the other. According to the article, Yau believes that the proof posted to the internet by Perelman was deficient in several key respects, and that the first complete proof should be credited to two of his students. Thus far, most of the mathematical community seems to disagree: This, essentially, is what Yau's friends are…

"CERN Invented the Web" Isn't an Argument for Anything

I mentioned in passing in the Forbes post about science funding that I'm thoroughly sick of hearing about how the World Wide Web was invented at CERN. I got into an argument about this a while back on Twitter, too, but had to go do something else and couldn't go into much detail. It's probably worth explaining at greater-than-Twitter length, though, and a little too inside-baseball for Forbes, so I'll write something about it here. At its core, the "CERN invented WWW" argument is a "Basic research pays off in unexpected ways" argument, and in that sense, it's fine. The problem is, it's not…

Everything Would Be Better With Shitloads of Money

Over in Twitter-land, somebody linked to this piece promoting open-access publishing, excerpting this bit: One suggestion: Ban the CV from the grant review process. Rank the projects based on the ideas and ability to carry out the research rather than whether someone has published in Nature, Cell or Science. This could in turn remove the pressure to publish in big journals. I’ve often wondered how much of this could actually be drilled down to sheer laziness on the part of scientists perusing the literature and reviewing grants – “Which journals should I scan for recent papers? Just the big…

Hugo Reading: Not-Novels

As much for my own future reference as anything else, some thoughts on the bits of the Hugo ballot that aren't Best Novel (which I've already talked about). At this point, I've probably read as much of the voter packet as I'm going to (though if I've left out something actually good, I could go back and pick it up...). That doesn't mean I've read everything-- there are quite a few things on there I'm not going to bother with because, you know, life is just too short-- but I've read those that seemed worth a shot. In the short fiction categories, two of the longer nominees were weirdly…

Weekend Diversion: Three Fantastic Fake Film Trailers

"Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?" -Samuel Goldwyn There are few experiences that we can share together -- no matter the great distances in space or time -- like a good movie. Encapsulating a great variety of aspects of the human experience in just a couple of hours, a movie can take us to places we've never been and inside the minds of people we've never known, as Janove Ottesen reminds us in his song, Black And White Movie. This weekend, I'd like to highlight for you three of my favorite fake film…

Weekend Diversion: The Light that's Right for Night

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -Carl Jung During the daytime, light is plentiful and abundant, and the majority of our waking lives are optimized for that. But more and more of us are active late into the dark hours, when -- as Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy) would tell us -- the last of Your Light is Spent. Unfortunately for us, our bodies are accustomed to certain types of light during the day, and expect a different type of night at light. Image credit: TableTop Studio Ltd or LLC. Because there's a…

Weekend Diversion: Fill-in-the-blanks

"It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas." -Paul Cezanne All over the world, hundreds of millions of families are getting together this weekend for a variety of reasons. And a large number of them will have, as part of their nature, a big announcement made. Depending on the announcement and the family, reactions will vary greatly. As you keep this in mind, I'd like you to listen to the French band, Air, and their unheralded electronica masterpiece, Talisman. There are many possible answers to the following question, and there is no right or wrong answer.…

Billions of Stars in the Galaxy!

"A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars." -Carl Sagan Perhaps the most striking feature of the night sky under truly dark conditions isn't the canopy of those thousands of points of light, but rather the expanse of the Milky Way, streaking across the entire night sky. Image credit: Richard Payne, retrieved from astro.wisc.edu. With an estimated 200-400 billion stars contained within our island Universe, the Milky Way is just a regular, run-of-the-mill spiral galaxy compared to the rest of what's out there. But it's our home. And, despite the…

Humans being loud under water, Cuttlefish

Last June (and May and July and part of August) we had a lot of precipitation in Minnesota. This caused lake levels to rise modestly. One lake, which is large enough to have meaningful waves, has older settlement along it so lots of cabins, boat houses, and such are right on the shoreline. With the lake level up, waves threatened the material possessions of rich white people, so naturally something had to be done. A No-Wake Rule was put into effect. A No-Wake Rule means the oversized fishing boats and smallish cabin cruisers that normally ply this large exurban lake need to all go at 5 m…

I hope Judith Curry apologizes for this.

I'm not going to talk about Mark Steyn, other than to say that if you know who Rush Limbaugh is, Mark Steyn is a bit to the right and a tad more obnoxious, but not as smart. You can find out more by clicking here, using the Climate Change Science Search Engine. I'm also not going to say much about Judith Curry except that, unlike Steyn, she was a regular scientist who did climate science. Over time the material she has written, both in peer reviewed journals and on her blog, has become increasingly aligned with those who are highly skeptical that global warming is real. She has a theory…

How warm was 2015, how warm will 2016 be?

The year that just finished, 2015, was the warmest year recorded in the instrumental record. The actual data for December is not officially available yet, but my friend and colleague John Abraham keeps track of the global surface temperature daily and has done an amazing job at estimating the final temperature anomaly value that is eventually reported in each of several databases. He has provided a graph using his estimated value, above. There are two major contributing factors, maybe three depending on how you count everything, to 2015 being the warmest year. The main factor is, of course…

Stormy Weather and Climate Change This Week

South Carolina Floods I haven't said much about this partly because there is so much good coverage, but South Carolina's floods, still ongoing, are going to get on the list of worst weather events of 2015. Since these floods are amounting to a one in 1,000 year event, they are actually on the list of worst weather events since Vladimir the Great died, Cnut the Great invaded Enlgand (unrelated event), Eric Haakonsson outlaws berzerkers in Norway, and Olaf Haraldson declared himself King of Norway. And yes, that event was climate change enhanced in at least two ways, maybe three. With global…

When is the best time to give birth?

After, not before, you get to the hospital, I always say. But seriously, Robert Martin, the famous primatologist, has an interesting piece in Psychology Today exploring this question. Go read it. I've got a few thoughts spurred by this research I'll list briefly here. First, it seems that wild primates give birth during their daily down-time, the period of time that they are generally inactive. Dirunal primates do so more at night, nocturnal primates do so more during the day. Various reasons have been proposed. I've not read the primary literature on this, but in my ignorance I wanted to…

The Coolest Star. Literally.

"It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool." -Bill Watterson Well, at least we can all agree on what's not cool. The Sun. Image credit: NASA, from what looks like the Stereo spacecraft. With a surface temperature of around 6,000 Kelvins, the Sun is one of the hottest objects that we're all familiar with. But when it comes to stars, the Sun is merely a "G-type" star. It turns out that there are many types of stars that are -- typically -- more massive, bluer, and hotter than our Sun. In fact, O-stars, the hottest type, can have surface temperatures over 40,000 Kelvin…

Forget Shooting Stars; How About a Shooting Galaxy!

"Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy." -Wislawa Szymborska You all know about shooting stars. Seen from Earth, mostly during meteor showers, these aren't stars at all, but are tiny fragments of rock that hit the Earth's atmosphere, and streak across it, leaving a bright fireball as it burns up. If you're a great (and lucky) astrophotographer, you can nab a picture of one close up as it burns up. But this principle, that a fast-moving object traveling through space will run into whatever matter is in its way, leads us to some amazing…

Ubuntu 17.04 and the future

A Zapus is a kind of jumping mouse. A Zesty Zapus is the new Ubuntu Linux operating system, 17.04. It has just been released and has some important features. But Zesty Zapus is not as interesting at the Artful Aardvark, which I'll discuss briefly below. Support of 32 bit hardware is waning across the Linux world, and in this release the 32 pit PowerPC is not supported. The 64 bit PowerPC still is, but I would not be surprised if that support dropped in the not too distant future. There are various other changes deep under the hood that the average desktop user may not care about, including…

How ants navigate homeward - forward, backward, or sideward

I've got this press release that will be of interest to many: An international team including researchers at the university of Edinburgh and Antoine Wystrach of the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (CNRS/Université Toulouse III—Paul Sabatier) has shown that ants can get their bearings whatever the orientation of their body. Their brains may be smaller than the head of a pin, but ants are excellent navigators that use celestial and terrestrial cues to memorize their paths. To do so, they use several regions of the brain simultaneously, proving once again that the brain of insects is more…

The Alligators of Texas

The American alligator is found only in the US, and is widespread in Texas. It is found at several inland localities, and along the coast. And, it turns out that the preferred locations for many of the important activities in the day to day live of the American alligator overlap a great deal with humans. Louise Hayes, biologist, and photographer Philippe Henry have produced, with TAMU Press, Alligators of Texas, a highly accessible, well written, and richly illustrated monograph on these beasts. If you are into Alligators and their relatives, regardless of where you live, this book may…

Will 2016 see a landslide in the POTUS election?

No. Many many people, well intended, smart people, keep talking about the rout, the landslide, that will happen. They may be basing this on the new trend started by FiveThirtyEight and picked up by the New York Times and others of deriving a probability statement about the race. But when you see something like "87%" for Clinton in such an estimate, that does not mean that Clinton will get 87% of the votes. It means that it is very likely that Clinton will get 270 or more electoral votes. There is, for example, a zero chance that Clinton will get a single electoral electoral from Montana,…

Electoral College Prediction: Trump 241 vs. Clinton 297

I've got a new set of electoral college predictions. I'm using the same method as before, but with these differences: a) I had to use less than ideal polls (c rating, a few that overlapped with days prior to POTUS debate III) on the last run, this time no such polls are used; and b) there are some new polls added in this time. The difference is interesting, and somewhat concerning (compare to this result). For example, in this run, Arizona, Virginia, and New Hampshire go for Trump. Most people think of that as unlikely. Personally, I don't see Virginia doing that. New Hampshire is…

How much stuff is in the Universe?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible." -Albert Einstein The observable Universe is huge. Incredibly, mind-bogglingly huge. When we look out, in any direction, we see galaxies upon galaxies upon galaxies, stretching for billions and billion of light years. This one picture, taken of a region of sky just one-tenth the size of the Moon, contains more than 10,000 unique galaxies. And there are maybe close to a hundred billion galaxies similar to ours in the Universe; each one contains billions and billions of stars and planets, along with huge molecular…

Celebrating Saturnalia

I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome. -Hannibal of Carthage Today is Christmas Day, but did you know that this holiday, in addition to being a solstice celebration, has its origins in the second Punic War? Beginning in 218 B.C., the Romans suffered a number of, well, fairly crushing defeats at the hands of Hannibal of Carthage. You've probably heard the story of Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants (although, according to some sources, only one survived), and invading Italy, making it all the way to the city walls of Rome. Roman morale was…

Is The Friday News Dump A Pernicious Falsehood?

Member of the press are so cute. They evolve so slowly. They are like monotremes or something. It is said again and again that a) government agencies and other entities, especially things like the White House, dump their news late on Fridays because this avoids the normal five-day news cycle and allows hot stories to cool off, and possibly be ignored by Monday and, b) that doesn't really work any more because of social media and cable news, but still c) we will repeat meme one endlessly anyway so that we can look very smart by then repeating memes b) which brings us to d) rinse and repeat.…

What computer mouse is best?

I did some research on mice, and I thought I'd pass it on. First, though, let me suggest that you get some of this stuff. Use it to paint a symbol on each of your wireless mice that matches a symbol on each of your mice dongles. It will help keep you sane. You'll still find yourself constantly in possession of mice and dongles that do not match, but at least they will have these pretty little symbols you drew all over them. There is some interesting and exciting stuff going on with mice. Best but most expensive small mouse for general mobile use The Logitech MX Anywhere 2 Wireless Mobile…

Trump to Cops: You should do more to physically harm American citizens

And the cops cheered. Trump gave a talk to a gathering of police out on Long Island, earlier today. It went horribly. There are cops that are going to take Trump’s lead, take what he said seriously, and because of that, they are going to harm or kill Americans and end their own careers, destroying their own families and parts of their communities along the way. The President of the United States egged the police on to disdain their civilian bosses, and they cheered him. The President of the United States told the police that they should not avoid harming suspects, and they clapped. The…

The feeble Ken Ham show

I knew the internet would come through with just the right clip and the relevant extracted words, so I wouldn't have to sit through the wretched miasma of the whole O'Reilly Factor to see Krauss vs. Ham, and here it is. Jason has a transcript, if you'd prefer to read text rather than watch some guys talk. Krauss did OK: he was assertive, like you have to be on these shows, and he got in one or two strong sentences (ahh, for a television show that permitted people to express whole paragraphs of ideas…but I dream). I'm not a big fan of Krauss's strategy of conceding too much credibility to…

Ethics Question: A Man's Rights

There is a long history of oppression of women on many fronts in our society. Socially, politically, economically, and legally, among others. There are a number of very good bloggers here who often address gender issues, and I'm not typically one of them. But two things happened to me yesterday that brings up a gender issue that nobody speaks about: a man's rights in an unplanned pregnancy. I reconnected with an old friend on facebook who had knocked up his (much younger) girlfriend a few years ago, and didn't want a kid. She wanted to keep it, putting him in a catch-22. Either he could…

Q & A: On String Theory

Over the past few months, I have been asked a number of questions about String Theory and the Universe, including from readers Benhead and Mastery Mistery. But now Jamie, whom I'm going to marry later this year, has been asking me about it, and so it's time to write something about the scientific topic of String Theory. (Send in your questions now, because I'll answer them all this week if there's enough interest.) Let's start with this pair of questions: String theory has been around for over 20 years, and so far, there is not one shred of experimental or observational evidence in support of…

Anti-Gay Lies

Alain's Newsletter is, much like the Worldnutdaily, home to a variety of religious right loonies. But this essay by someone named Jean Valjean Vandruff may take the cake. It's a virtual cesspool of ignorance capped off by one giant whopper of a lie: Is homosexuality an inborn behavior? A few years ago, Dr. Simon LeVay, a homosexual, made a discovery - that a brain cell cluster (neuron group INAH3) is smaller in homosexuals than in heterosexuals. He stated, "This small brain cluster 'causes' homosexuality; therefore, it is natural." This is made up out of thin air, a blatant lie. Not only did…

Teachers Refusing "Safe Space" Signs

I don't know how many of my readers have been in a public high school lately, but one of the things I've noticed in the schools I've been in is the presence of "safe space" signs around the school. They began in response to incidents that happen routinely in schools where a student who is gay, or even thought to be gay, is harrassed and bullied and often assaulted. The signs often have a rainbow motif to them and pink triangles and they say something like this: This is a safe space to be who you are. This sign affirms that support and resources are available for you in this school. Along…

Interesting Essays on the Senate's Confirmation Role

Todd Zywicki has an interesting post reacting to this article by Alan Dershowitz, in which Dershowitz suggests some changes in the Senate confirmation process for Supreme Court nominees. Dershowitz argues that the Senate judiciary committee lacks the expertise to ask good questions to judicial nominees (he is certainly correct there) and that they ought to do what many other committees do and hire attorneys with constitutional expertise to do the questioning. He also argues that this would cut down on Senate posturing and preening for the cameras. The only way to remedy these problems is to…

Volokh Catches Cramer on ACLU Again

Eugene Volokh has caught Clayton Cramer yet again on the subject of the ACLU. This time at least he didn't make outright false accusations against them, he just asked a leading question with a negative implication that a few minutes research could have answered for him. In discussing a rather ridiculous case where an Oxford student was taken in for questioning for calling a policeman's horse "gay" - yet another example of how out of control British law is in regard to anything that smacks of homophobia - Cramer ends with this question: You wonder on which side the ACLU would have been if a…

Isiah Thomas Threatens the Sports Guy

Okay, my first sports post at the new place and this one is really funny. Isiah Thomas has actually threatened The Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, on a radio show. Well, now I have a new career highlight: During a New York radio interview Monday, Isiah Thomas threatened to make trouble for me. Talking to Stephen A. Smith he said, "I'm gonna tell ya...if I see this guy Bill Simmons, oh, it's gonna be a problem with me and him...". I thought it was ironic he threatened me on Martin Luther King Jr. Day - I'm sure MLK would have been proud. Given that this was the same guy who sucker-punched his best…

DaveScot's Reading Comprehension Problems

There's something particularly amusing when ignorant jerks get their dander up and decide to attack someone else. Our old pal DaveScot has taken a brave leap in the dark, accusing me of being a "hypocrite extraordinaire", and landed, predictably, with a resounding thud. Says our intrepid correspondent: Ed Brayton posts this seemingly virtuous opinion that anonymous ID proponents should not have their real names exposed. Yet among my first experiences with Ed Brayton was him exposing my real name in a public comment on Panda's Thumb. Ed lifted my real name from a private email I sent to him. I…

Luskin's Breathtaking "Scientific Discoveries"

Casey Luskin has been writing a series of posts on the DI blog that alleges to contain "International Scientific Discoveries Since Kitzmiller Which Support ID." You can see Part 3 here, and you're gonna love it. In the entire series, there is not a single research article that actually supports ID; all Luskin does is cite scientific papers that show disputes over some particular hypothesis within the evolutionary model as proof that evolution must be wrong and hence ID must be right. This is standard issue creationist behavior. But part three takes vacuousness to an entirely new level. There…

The God Who Wasn't There

Joe Carter has a review up of a new documentary called The God Who Wasn't There, by Brian Flemming, which takes the rather audacious position that there was no man called Jesus at all, that the Jesus of the bible is entirely fictitious and invented out of whole cloth. I've not seen this movie yet, but a was contacted by a publicist for the film who asked me if I would like to receive a review copy of it. I replied: "While I wouldn't mind having a review copy, I can tell you that you're fighting an uphill battle with me. I think it's unlikely in the extreme that Jesus never existed. I think it…

Why I Admire Jason Kuznicki

My partner-in-blogging, Jason Kuznicki, has posted yet another reminder of why I think his voice is such a vital one. In a long and brilliant essay he takes on many subjects related to gay rights and equality. In the process, he hits on the situation in Canada with Stephen Boissoin, an anti-gay minister who is up on human rights charges. Jason, as always, stands on principle: Look, I'm as gay as they get. And I'm even an atheist. Yet all the same, I have to feel sympathy for the guy. Something terribly wrong is being done to him-even while, yes, he really is saying something that I find…

Hug a high school teacher today!

My morning was spent at the local high school today, talking to the biology classes about the evidence for evolution. This wasn't in response to any specific worries—in fact, talking to the instructor, it's clear that they're doing a decent job of covering the basic concepts here already—but that my daughter is in the class, and she thought it would be fun to have her Dad join in the conversation. I will say that it was very obliging of the Chronicle of Higher Ed to publish this today: In a packed IMAX theater in St. Louis last month, a middle-school teacher took the stage and lectured some…

The Ocean is the Dog. Atmospheric Temperature is the Tail.

Let me 'splain. If you want to know exactly where your dog is, you could put at GPS sensor in the middle of it's body, perhaps near the pancreas. It would give you an average position for your dog, and would be most accurate most of the time. If you put the GPS sensor on the tip of the dog's tail, and used that to estimate where your dog is, you would be nearly wrong much of the time, even if over the long term this would be a good estimate for where your dog has been. More importantly, if you wanted to measure the movement of your dog, the GPS sensor in the middle of the dog's body would…