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About that disease outbreak in the US #Enterovirus #EV-D68

This is the time of year parents start scanning their facebook feeds and other sources of information for what to expect our children to get sick with, how badly, and when. For a couple of years in a row, a few years ago, we were getting hit with a norovirus, causing diarrhea, vomiting, and a lot of lost daycare or school days. This year we are seeing reports of an outbreak of the scary-sounding "Enterovirus EV-D68." Hundreds of kids are sick enough to get treatment in several states, currently Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky…

Fixing The Super Delegate Problem

Super Delegates exist for good reasons. In order for them to do their job, which hopefully is never, they need to have two characteristics. These are: 1) The capacity for thoughtful and well informed decision making at the convention, in case something untoward has happened to require this. 2) Independence with respect to whom to vote for ... in other words, being unpledged. A big downside of Super Delegates is that they tend to endorse a candidate early in the process. This is their right as Americans and it may be seen by some of them as their duty as politicians or party officials (which…

Super Tuesday: What does it mean for the Democratic Primary?

As you know, I developed a simple model for projecting future primary outcomes in the Democratic party. This model is based on the ethnic mix in each state, among Democratic Party voters. The model attributes a likely voting choice to theoretical primary goers or causers based on previous behavior by ethnicity. Originally I made two models, one using numbers that the Clinton campaign was banking on, and one using numbers that the Sanders campaign was banking on. The results of the Super Tuesday primaries demonstrated that the Sanders-favoring model does not predict primary outcomes.…

Command Line Science

A worthy Kickstarter science related project is afoot. Face it. Most science is done on the command line. When it is not, we call it "science by spreadsheet" or name it by some other epithet. Much of that is done on Linux or Linux like computers, but that actually includes Macs, and if you must, it can be done on Windows. Bioinformatics, climate simulations, basic statistics using the r language, fancy math things using the appropriate python library, making graphs with gnuplot, and even producing nice looking results for dissimnation to our geeky peers using LaTex. Science-related…

Dembski's pompous podcast

Curse you, Orac. He had to pass along a link to a podcast interview with William Dembski. It was extremely aggravating—Dembski is dishonest bloviator of the first water. He blames the loss in Dover on everyone else: it was the Dover school board's fault because they had religious motives (and Dembski doesn't?), the judge was biased, the Thomas More Law Center alienated anybody who was anybody in the ID movement. He tried to claim the the Discovery Institute saw the case was a loser right from the beginning, conveniently glossing over the fact that Dembski himself was actually going to testify…

Letter To President Obama: Investigate Deniers Under RICO

The following is the text of a letter written by a number of scientists asking for a federal investigation of climate science denial under the RICO statute. Letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren September 1, 2015 Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren, As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are…

Aaron Sorkin ate some bad sushi and we are all living in his hallucinogenic nightmare.

Its like this. Only with Trump instead of Josh, and it is real life. Yet, less like real life. Trump, remembering something about watergate, tweets: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/863007411132649473 and the Washington Post reports: Trump suggests there may be ‘tapes’ of his private conversations with former FBI director Trump experiences verbal diarrhea and says, "In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should…

Scratch Programming For Kids, By The Cards

Last October I reviewed Scratch Programming Playground, by Al Sweigart. You will recall that Scratch is a programming language that uses drag and drop elements to construct a program. Individual objecgts, including "sprites" that can move around on the screen, as well as static graphic elements, sounds, etc. get their own code, and this code can be set up to start under various conditions, such as when something touches something, or the user hits a certain key, etc. This allows for the development of very simple but fun programs, and vey complicated ones as well. Scratch is normally…

A Question For Next Debate: How Will the US Catch Up With the Clean Power Plan?

The US is already behind in its agreed to commitment to clean power A study just out in Nature climate Change suggests that the US is already behind in its commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuel as an energy source, and the concomitant release of climate-warming greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The paper, by Jeffery Greenblatt and Max Wei, says: Current intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature change to between 1.5 and 2.0◦C above pre-industrial levels, so the effectiveness of existing INDCs will…

Why is the government slow, inefficient, and stupid?

I'm not anti-government. I'm pro civilization. But I'm also an anarchist, of a sort. I think institutions should be dissolved and reformed regularly. What really happens is that institutions add bits and pieces over time, in response to things that happen, as solutions to interim problems, until finally the bits and pieces take over and nobody can move. Do you know the The Gormenghast trilogy? In this amazing story by Mervyn Peake ... ... a doomed lord, a scheming underling, an ancient royal family plagued by madness and intrigue - these are the denizens of ancient, sprawling, tumbledown…

How to Drive a Mathematician Crazy. (With pies.)

In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them. -Johann von Neumann Sometimes, I have to deal with series: lots of numbers all added together. Some series clearly approach a limit, like the following: 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ... I can visualize this in terms of pies. (What do you want? I'm hungry!) One = one whole pie. So that first number starts me out with one whole pie. When I add the second number in my series, I'm clearly adding half a pie to that, for a total of a pie and a half. When I add the third term, I've now got one-and-three-quarters pies,…

The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 04 -- The Expanding Universe

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential. -Bruce Lee It isn't only our heros that expand and grow; the Universe does that, too! In the first three parts of our series, we talked about inflation, its end, and the hot big bang. But during all of this time, the Universe has been expanding. This is probably the most confusing aspect of cosmology, so tread slowly through this. First off, it is space itself that is expanding. It doesn't make…

The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 03 -- The Big Bang!

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. -Maria Robinson In parts one and two, we covered the very beginning of the Universe as we know it. Specifically, we talked about inflation, which is the process that sets up the Big Bang. Inflation -- to recap -- expands the Universe exponentially fast, driving the matter density to zero and stretching the Universe flat like a balloon getting blown up supremely fast. But inflation ends, and when it does, all of that stored (i.e., potential) energy that was being used to expand the Universe now…

A guide to the butterflies (book review)

A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America is a field guider's field guide. It is the shape and size of a traditional field guide. The designers of this book said "we don't need no stinking margins" so there are no margins. Color bleeds on the page edges allow a quick index to major butterfly categories. There is a two page spread visual index. A no nonsense introduction give you the basics about how to use the book, how to be a butterflyer, and how to not be a jerk about butterflies (like, don't net them and kill them). The front covers even have those flaps that you can use as…

Michael Mann Endorses Rebecca Otto for Governor of Minnesota

State Auditor Rebecca Otto is running for Governor of Minnesota. She will seek the DFL (Democratic Party) Endorsement. There are several other candidates either declared or likely to run, but Otto stands head and shoulders above all the others, especially in three areas: 1) Honesty and integrity in government. Otto has been recognized nationally by the auditors around the country, and this is for good reason. In fact, she's recognized internationally. The Minnesota Auditor's office, under Otto, is one of those places the US State Department sends people from other countries to figure out…

The Anthropic Principle: Good or Evil, Useful or Useless?

Understanding the Universe requires a lot more than just knowing some advanced mathematics, and even more than knowing how to apply that math. It requires a knowledge of natural history, and an understanding of the requirements for allowing that history to happen. In other words, the laws of nature must be such that the Universe can exist as it does. Seems like a very simple, innocuous, and self-evident statement. Yet in this simplicity, we can learn a few important things about the Universe. Reasoning, using this statement, is often referred to as the anthropic principle. There is more…

Building your own Star

There are very few sources of truly clean energy out there. Coal, oil, natural gas, etc. all expel tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, something we know we need to stop doing very soon if we want our planet to be habitable to humans for very much longer. Biofuels, while not as harmful as fossil fuels, still emit tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide, and are not a long-term solution. Modern nuclear power produces low amounts of carbon dioxide, but significant amounts of radioactive waste, which isn't good for anybody! Even hydroelectric power has disastrous environmental…

Avoiding Armageddon!

Let's say we're having a nice day here on Earth; the Sun is shining, the clouds are sparse, and everything is just looking like a peach: And then Lucas goes and tells me, Oh my God, Ethan! It's Armageddon! An asteroid is coming straight for us! You've got to stop it! Really? Me? Well, how would I do it? Let's say we've got some reasonably good asteroid tracking going on, and we've got about 2 months before the asteroid is actually going to hit us. We'd like to do something with the situation on the left, to avoid the situation on the right: Well, what we really have to do is change the…

…and then they came for me!

There's a movie coming out on Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution, called Expelled, and it's narrated/hosted by Ben Stein (right), a TV/film personality who is an overall intelligent guy (and used to have the TV show Win Ben Stein's Money), and used to be a Nixon speechwriter. Politically, he's quite conservative (for example, immediately following 9/11 he gave a speech where he called abortion "the worst form of terrorism"), but this movie is apparently one of the worst abuses of science since What the Bleep do We Know?! came out. The movie has an innocuous enough premise: is…

Matzke's Irony Meter

Nick Matzke has a terrific post up at the Panda's Thumb about the DI's complaint that the judge in the Dover trial wasn't qualified to rule on the scientific status of ID. It's quite a silly complaint and Nick gives it the sarcastic attention it deserves. First, he quotes the DI's statement: "Moreover, based upon the extensive expertise he [Judge Jones of the Kitzmiller case] professes to have acquired in the course of a six-week trial, he defined science and determined that the scientific claims of intelligent design were invalid, neither of which are exactly legal questions best decided by…

Another Thought Police Incident

Sadly, we have yet another frightening case of government thought police activity regarding someone giving anti-gay opinions, this time in Great Britain. Lynette Burrows, the British equivalent of what we would (misaptly) call a "family values" lobbyist here, went on a talk show to discuss Britain's new civil partnerships act. She is opposed to gay adoptions and said so on the show: During the programme, she said she did not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. She added that placing boys with two homosexuals for adoption was as obvious a risk as placing a girl with two…

Giberson on ID and the Big Bang

Karl Giberson, editor of Science and Theology News, has an interesting commentary making the same argument I made during the Dover trial when Michael Behe insisted on comparing ID to big bang cosmology. He did it so often, in fact, that one morning when they were set to continue Behe's cross-examination, the Judge asked the attorney how long he expected to continue and the attorney replied that he thought it would be proportional to the number of times the big bang is mentioned. The Judge replied, "So you're going to go all day?" and the attorney replied, "It could be quite a while." As I…

Zywicki Steps In It

I'm a fan of the Volokh Conspiracy, the group legal blog that features some excellent thinkers, but today's edition has an odd juxtaposition. First, Juan Non-Volokh (who recently announced he would not be blogging anonymously much longer, as I recall) posted an endorsement of Charles Krauthammer's column lambasting ID and supporting evolution. The very next post, by Todd Zywicki, said...well, it's said several things so far today. It initially said: Scott Adams now has a blog, known apprpriately enough as Dilbert Blog ... I also see that Mr. Adams has also already had the misfortune to cross…

Chief Justice Scalia?

Came across an interesting article about the possibility of Scalia replacing Rehnquist as Chief Justice if Rehnquist decides to retire. The article is a bit dated, being from November 2002, at a time when many were speculating that the Chief Justice would retire after that term expired in Summer 2003. Obviously that did not happen. It seems highly unlikely that Rehnquist would retire this summer, since it is an election year and he would not know who would pick his replacement. For Supreme Court watchers like me, this is the equivalent of sports fans discussing who their team is going to…

Live Blogging the Olympics

OK, I only have a minute to watch while I'm having lunch. A women's basketball game has just ended. Americans playing Olympic basketball is like kids pulling the legs off grasshoppers. "So, are you ready for your next game, do you have any strategy?" "I don't even know who we're playing. I only need to know who the next team we're playing is." "So, do you know who you're playing next?" "No, I don't even know that." "You'll be playing Canada." "OK, whatever." Hahaha. The American Women's basketball team just beat whomever they were just playing (nobody can remember) by 46 points. In games…

Conflict sells. Use it.

Larry Moran listened to Nisbet's podcast on Point of Inquiry. No surprise—he didn't like it at all. I finally listened to it last night, too, and I have to crown Larry the King of the Curmudgeons, because I disagreed with fundamental pieces of his story, but I'll at least grant Nisbet that there aspects of communication theory scientists would benefit from knowing. So why does he ignore those aspects in his own talks? I want to focus on one thing: conflict. The podcast revealed another unfortunate inconsistency in the framing approach. Science is really, really good at conflict. It's right at…

Skepticism is a cultural phenomenon

Skepticism is a cultural phenomenon. I know that many self-declared skeptics prefer to ... ah ... believe otherwise, or as they would perhaps say, they have deduced from pure principles using sound logic that Skepticism is rational behavior and there is nothing cultural about it. But they are wrong, and that is trivially easy to prove. Sarah Moglia is the event specialist for the Secular Student Alliance1 and has written an interesting piece on "Why [she doesn't call her]self a Skeptic" in which she asserts that there are people who call themselves "Skeptic" who are not, at least…

First close up of DNA ever

When Bill O'Reilly said that you "can't explain tides" I laughed. Why did I laugh? Because if he wasn't such a dumb-ass he could have EASILY named a dozen thing that science claims to "know" that a reasonably good rhetorician could convince the average Tea Bagger that science really can't "know" because it can't really "see" them. The tides have been understood not only by science by by a lot of regular working class potential Republicans (though many are not) who eek out their living on the shores of the briny sea. Bill O'Reilly must have looked like a complete idiot to them. Meanwhile,…

The Great Transition: Triassic Life on Land

Let's see ... The Triassic is about here: (You can also look it up in this PDF file supplied by the USGS. It is situated between two major extinction events, and is especially interesting because it is during this period that modern day ecological systems and major animal groups took a recognizable form. The preceding Permian, if contrasted with modern day, would form a very stark contrast while the Triassic would be at least somewhat more recognizable. But of course the Triassic was in many ways distinct, different, and fascinating. Dinosaurs arose during the Triassic. The Triassic is…

German Semi-Wild Child = Fake? And other matters

L'enfant sauvage, the 1970 movie by Truffaut, depicted a plausible case of a "wild child" ... a person left at very young age in the wild, who then grew up in the absence of human culture. Such wild children are rare, and most of them are not real, or at least, not as wild as originally claimed. A team of psychologists who were interested in the phenomenon and related questions (like, how is language learned?) attended the opening of that movie during the same week that they were informed of the existence of another wild child of sorts, Genie. Genie, later depicted (very indirectly) in the…

Bird Blog Reaches 40% mark!

The famous bird, birding and birder blog, 10,000 birds, has reached the 4,000 post mark. So, if there are 10,000 birds and 4,000 posts ..... But seriously, it's true, it did! Did you know that I blog there once a month? No? Then you have some catching up to do! I appear to have done nine of them so far. Here's a list: class="post"> href='http://10000birds.com/why-robin-red-breast.htm' title='Why is the Robin’s Breast Red?'>Why is the Robin’s Breast Red? By href="http://10000birds.com/author/greg" title="Posts by Greg" rel="author">Greg color="#FBB917">• December 15, 2011…

An Argument Against Building the Keystone XL Pipeline

There are a number of arguments against building the Keystone XL Pipeline, but there is only one that counts. We have to keep the carbon in the ground. Building the pipeline is not that. We've discussed this before. There is now short video ad from Keystone Truth that makes a more specific argument. It isn't really an argument against building it (see above for that) but rather, a more detailed look at what Keystone XL involves, putting a finer edge, perhaps, on why it should be opposed by Americans. The ad, titled "Sucker Punch - Keystone Truth," is designed to inform Americans that they…

How to find a Leprechaun

Nature editor and author Henry Gee has produced his Christmas list in which he describes his three wishes as an editor at a scientific journal; he enumerates the scientific discoveries that sit at the top of his professional "bucket list." Henry Gee. Not a Leprechaun. I started to write a comment on Henry's blog post, here, but it turned into a blog post of my own, here: Henry: As you know, I address in a fictional context in "Search for Sungudogo" (now only 99 cents on Amazon) all three of your wishes, the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe, the discovery of intelligent life…

About The Fifth Report Of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Eight hundred and thirty or more authors and editors representing eighty five countries wrote this thing. It is about climate change, and reflects pretty much all of the current (except the most most current of course) peer reviewed literature on climate change, with the intention of providing the basis for governmental policy related to this topic. The most important conclusion of this report is that humans have caused the warming of the planet that has been observed over the last several decades. More exactly, human activity has led to both cooling and warming effects, with the net…

Don't be Fukushima and let your core melt down

... Continued ... The above discussion applies only to the muscles mentioned (chest, back, shoulder, various leg muscles) and ignores "The Core." People define the core differently, but it usually consists of the abdominal, obliques (a kind of abdominal) which are together often referred to as "The abs" as in "hey, dude, my abs are ripped"; the lower back (which we pretend to be one big muscle) and perhaps your hip flexors. Maybe your hip flexors are in the "lower body - pull" category. Your choice. Core is important. Just like rotator cuffs (which are technically part of the core as well…

The pattern you follow in the gym depends on the scale. Not that scale.

... Continued ... At the scale of a stint of several days of working out .... A given exercise is normally not repeated for two days in a row (see later discussion for exceptions.) Since some exercises involve two muscle groups, you must plan carefully. For instance, don't do a chest press on one day and triceps the next day, because the chest press also used your triceps. A good way to conceptualize the organization of your routines over several days is like this: Divide your body into two sets of muscles, using one or the other of these two schemes, or some combination thereof: Scheme…

The Biggest Loser Backfires

The Biggest Loser is a TV reality show on which people who really do weigh a lot more than is healthy compete to lose weight. They do this on teams. There are various challenges. There are charismatic trainers. And, of course, because it is a TV reality show, individuals can get tossed off the show either because of poor performance (not losing enough weight) or by getting voted off. An interesting and entirely inappropriate trend has developed on this show. Individuals decide that they should leave the show while others must stay. They accomplish this by gaining, rather than losing,…

Inexperienced religious groups receive AIDS funding--but don't worry, it's not politically motivated

Religious groups getting more AIDS funding, Bush administration earmarked $200 million for less-experienced groups. Aargh. Franklin Graham just got federal AIDS money. His group, Samaritan's purse, has a mission described as "meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ." This is the same Franklin Graham who has said about Islam, The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked…

Plaque--evidence for Design!

Every now and then, I check in over at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) to see what new projects they're up to, as well as to see if they've released a particular genome sequence I'm waiting on. Yesterday I noticed this project: Innovative Metagenomics Strategy Used To Study Oral Microbes Rockville, MD - The mouth is awash in microbes, but scientists so far have merely scratched the surface in identifying and studying the hundreds of bacteria that live in biofilm communities that stick to the teeth and gums. In an innovative new project that could help improve the detection and…

The hopeless inanity of Egnor

Michael Egnor, that neurosurgeon whose tenuous grip on rationality makes him so popular with the creationists, thinks he has a gotcha moment with some notorious atheist. That rude godless fellow, who is me, said this, which is accurate: …greater science literacy, which is going to lead to the erosion of religion, and then we'll get this nice positive feedback mechanism going where as religion slowly fades away we'll get more and more science to replace it and that will displace more and more religion which will allow more and more science in and we'll eventually get to the point where…

I always aim to misbehave

Some of you know that the producers of Expelled had a conference call this afternoon…a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email. I listened to it for a while, and yeah, it was the usual run-around. However, I dialed in a few minutes early, and got to listen to a tiresome five minutes of Leslie and Paul chatting away, during which time they mentioned the secret code (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!) for the two way calls. I know. Sloppy, unprofessional, and stupid, but that's the way they work. So … I redialed. (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!)…

Second Week Of 2016 Excavations At Birgittas Udde

We spent Thursday afternoon backfilling. As I write this, only trench G remains open, and the guys there expect to finish soon. Here's some highlights of what we've learned during our second week at Birgittas udde. Trench A in the outer moat demonstrated that the moat had a wide flat bottom, was not very deep and contains no lake sediments. Probably always a dry moat, providing material for the bank behind it. No Medieval finds. Trench C: section through the deep inner moat. Trench C in the inner moat demonstrated that this moat too had a wide flat bottom, but it was deeper and is full of…

December Pieces Of My Mind #2

Wearing my early-90s Tolkien Society outfit for tonight's Viking yule feast with the students. Been so long since I wore it that I'd forgotten where I'd put it. It was neatly stacked in the back corner of my closet's top shelf. I'm slow on the uptake. It took me long to realise that the subway gets me through town faster than does the airport bus. It took me even longer to realise that this is somehow true in both directions. Prepping students' yuletide Viking feast is exactly like at a Tolkien Society event c. 1990! No more teaching this year. Only one lecture left in January, then a spring…

XMRV: The rats are trying to climb out of the sewer

I have known about this for a while, and have been debating whether or not I should say anything. I really dont want to give the disgraces responsible for the XMRV-->CFS fiasco, Judy Mikovits, Frank Ruscetti, and Sandra Ruscetti, any more attention. What turned my opinion was something T.R. Gregory said yesterday: I don't *believe* in science or have *faith* in science. Rather, I *trust* scientific reasoning and the conclusions that come from evaluating evidence scientifically. The difference is that belief and faith don't need to be backed up. Trust, on the other hand, is earned. Of…

The Pill for HIV: I told you this was a bad idea.

I really hate blogging on non-published information, but for the second time in as many weeks, we have had interesting information come out of CROI.  This bit of news isnt as exciting. It pretty much confirms my annoyed Debbie Downer stance on using antiretrovirals in non-infected individuals as a means to prevent HIV infection (thats not entirely accurate-- my position is more 'concerned', 'baffled', 'distressed' about the obvious route of an increase in drug-resistant transmittable HIV). This is a BIG OL Debbie Downer post. VOICE, or Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic,…

GMO CTLs vs HIV

This is just another excuse to poke fun at the stupidity of Creationists-- Creationists try to lecture us all the time about how 'perfect' our immune system is. How wonderful and precise and intelligently designed it is obviously points towards the existence of a creator god (aka the Christian god). Well, if our immune system is the best their god can do, then we should all be worshiping HIV-1, because its 'smarter'. Its been outwitting our immune systems for well over a century, and outwitting some of the best thinkers of our time and the best technology we have to offer for three decades…

MMTV and Breast Cancer

Sorry, Hitch. Religion doesnt poison *everything*. Thanks to the bumbling efforts of 'respected' scientists like Judy Mikoivts, we now know that its not religion, but mouse DNA, that poisons everything. Relatively new readers of ERV are well aware of the fact that all efforts to connect XMRV to any human pathogen have ended up being the result of contamination. Though patient samples from the WPI were contaminated with plasmid in a rather convenient (strategic?) manner, others attempting to find the virus have universally determined that their 'positive' results are actually the result of…

Test Taking Takes Practice

A blog run by the Washington Post featured a post on Monday about an adult taking and failing a standardized test, who was later revealed as school board member Rick Roach: Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years. He was first elected to the board in 1998 and has been reelected three times. A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology. He has trained over 18,000 educators in classroom management…

The Advent Calendar of Physics: Newton and Einstein

We kicked off the countdown to Newton's birthday with his second law of motion, which is almost but not quite everything you need to understand and predict the motion of objects. The missing piece is today's equation: This is the full and correct definition of momentum, good for any speed all the way up to the speed of light. Newton's second law tells us how the momentum changes in response to a force, but in order to use that to predict the future, you need to know what momentum is, and that's where this equation comes in. (Wouldn't it make more sense to do this first, and the second law…

Links for 2011-08-24

To my ultra-rich readers (in the unlikely event I have any) | slacktivist "Those seem to be the options. You can either risk losing a big pile of money for the slim chance of a decent return or you can give up on the idea of a decent return just to avoid losing a big pile of money. But what if I told you there was another option? What if I told you that right now you have a chance to make your money go farther and do more than it ever could have done just four years ago before the world's economy ground to a halt? And what if I told you that this option was even safer than bonds -- that if…