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What we need to do to stop global warming

Obviously, we need to stop the human enhanced extra greenhouse effect. There are a number of ways to approach this. Let me say right away that taking CO2, the main greenhouse gas of concern long term, out of the atmosphere is NOT one of the ways. Here's why: It takes energy to put Carbon into solid or liquid form. You get energy back when you move the Carbon into a gas form (as CO2). That is something of an oversimplification but long term, large scale, it is correct. Since, for the most part, the greenhouse effect is caused by the the generation of energy for use, which causes the movement…

Police unnecessarily kill a third black man this week, threaten to kill more

Police had cornered a murder suspect. There were negotiations and there was exchange of gunfire. Normally this stand off would have been maintained as long as possible. The way these things end, usually, is that the suspect gives up, the suspect kills themselves, there is what the police would call a "fair" exchange of gunfire* and the suspect is wounded or killed, etc. But the police had a new tool they could use to shorten the time span for such standoffs. They blew the suspect up with a bomb delivered specifically for that purpose. A robot drove over to the suspect, got the bomb near…

Who Won The California, New Jersey and Other Democratic Primaries?

And, how did my model do? There was a lot of talk about California, and a lot of back and forth, but in the end I stuck with my original model to predict the outcome of that race. See the table above for the results, but the bottom line is that I predicted that Clinton would get 57 percent of the votes and Sanders 43 percent. It turns out that Clinton got 57 percent and Sanders got 43 percent. Excuse me for a moment while I bask in the bright light of being-right-ness. Thank you. Now, on to the details. First, a quick, note on the numbers and methods. All my percents (for prediction and…

The Physics of an Inclined Treadmill

A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul. -Jillian Michaels One of the most popular exercises at the gym is the treadmill. And why wouldn't it be? Whether you're running or walking, it's a great way to get your heart rate up, get your body moving, and for many people, a great way to burn calories. But however you use a treadmill, there's one extremely simple thing you can do to dramatically intensify your workout: incline it! If you're an outdoor walker/runner, this is the equivalent of going uphill instead of over level ground. There are many physiological differences in walking…

Snow Day! Powdery, sticky, icy or slushy?

Oh the weather outside is frightful, But the fire is so delightful, And since we've no place to go, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! -Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne Yesterday in the late afternoon (and yes, it's dark by late afternoon here in Portland, OR), I looked out the window and saw a rare sight for this part of the world. That's right, it snowed here! So, what did we do? We went out and played in it, like children, because it's fun. It was a good snow. For me, that means it wasn't too powdery, and didn't fall apart when you tried to make snowballs out of it. (Clearly.) In fact, it…

All the Junk in Our Solar System

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles. --Children everywhere, up until very recently Taking a look at the new ring discovered around Saturn made me realize something. Most of us don't realize how full of crap our Solar System is. I don't mean planets, or moons, or comets or asteroids, although there are certainly plenty to go around. A brief recap of what happened around Saturn first. Saturn has seven glorious, inner rings that we're familiar with, that make it a magnificent sight for skywatchers everywhere. If you look closely at this image, you will see a few white dots in…

Hurricane Nate Updated

Update Thursday AM As expected, Nate emerged as a named storm over night. The storm is now interacting withland in Central America and is therefore having trouble getting organized. And, as expected given the uncertainty this causes, the forecasts are unclear on future intensity. The most recent National Hurricane Center projection has Nate Maxing out as a much weaker storm than yesterday's projection suggested. And, the center of the expected path of the storm has shifted west and is now centered roughly on New Orleans. After leaving Central America, Nate is expected to pass just over the…

The Best Eclipse of the Century is Tomorrow!

That's right, the absolute best eclipse of our lifetimes is going to occur tomorrow! First off, total Solar Eclipses are rare enough, and spectacular when they happen. After all, a total solar eclipse allowed us to first test Einstein's General Relativity! A total Solar Eclipse happens when the Moon passes directly in between the Earth and the Sun, casting a shadow on the Earth. This only happens rarely, for three reasons. First off, the Moon's orbit is not in the same plane as the Earth and the Sun. The Moon's orbit is inclined by about 5 degrees to the plane that the Earth orbits the Sun…

On String Theory from a String Theorist

Bret Underwood, a friend of mine from my time in Madison, WI, saw my post on String Theory, and took issue with my statement that it wasn't testable. I'm still standing behind what I said, but let's address what Bret has to say. I donât understand your argument above for why string theory is untestable. In fact, it seems to me you just outlined the best possible case for string theory! What you said above is that if I have a string theory construction of a phenomenon (say, the Standard Model or Inflation), which uses a set of parameters X, and makes some predictions, then I can find another…

Energy Conservation and an Expanding Universe

So, what's the deal with this one? startswithabang.com reader Scott Stuart asks the following question: I was reading "The First Three Minutes" last night and came across an interesting section about blackbody radiation and energy density. The author states that as the universe expands, the number of photons running around (in the CMB, for example) is unchanged, but their wavelengths get stretched. The energy in a photon is, of course, inversely proportional to its wavelength, so the energy content of a photon decreases as its wavelength increases. That seems to mean that the total energy…

Orson Scott Card on ID

Orson Scott Card has a patently absurd essay on ID and evolution, which PZ Myers has already done an admirable job of fisking. But there's one argument that Card makes in particular that is just infuriating in its outright dishonesty and I want to highlight it again. Here's his argument: 3. Expertism is the "trust us, you poor fools" defense. Essentially, the Darwinists tell the general public that we're too dumb to understand the subtleties of biochemistry, so it's not even worth trying to explain to us why the Designists are wrong. "We're the experts, you're not, so we're right by…

Text of Buttars' Bill

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars has released the full text of his new bill. As expected, it's a train wreck. Throughout the last few months, he has seemed quite confused as to what exactly he wanted to argue against. First he indicated that it was the teaching of evolution itself, which he wanted to balance with "divine design". Then he narrowed it down to opposition to human evolution specifically. Finally, he indicated it was the origin of life he had a problem with. I don't think he knows yet: What I have wanted to do all along is stop opinionated teachers from teaching human evolution as…

Two Takes on Behe's Testimony

Having spent considerable time pointing out the inconsistencies and problems in Michael Behe's testimony in the Dover trial, I was curious to see how he felt about it. And here he is on an ID blog giving his perspective on it: The cross examination was fun too, and showed that the other side really does have only rhetoric and bluster. At one point the lawyer for the other side who was cross examining me ostentatiously piled a bunch of papers on the witness stand that putatively had to do with the evolution of the immune system. But it was obvious from a cursory examination that they were more…

Anti-Evolution Activity Bad for Kansas

The Kansas City Star had an article in Sunday's paper that suggested that the ongoing battles between intelligent design creationism and evolution were damaging the state's ability to attract businesses involved in scientific and technical fields: "They want to bring things like intelligent design into classes and downplay the fact of evolution," said Holt, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in plant genetics at the University of North Carolina. "I find it incredibly troubling." Holt's reluctance to include Kansas on his prospect list may be a worrisome sign for a region hoping to spur…

Reply to Bill Wallo on the 9th Amendment

Bill Wallo has replied to my post on the 9th amendment. In the process, he dubs me "Ed the Culture War Guy". Rusty has previously dubbed me "Ed the Evolutionist". I'm beginning to sound like a comic book character here, but I shall persevere nonetheless. :) My position on the 9th amendment, you may recall, is that it sets the burden of proof on the government to show that where a claim of unenumerated rights is concerned there is a legitimate and compelling state interest in violating the individual's presumption of self-determination. This follows closely Randy Barnett's notion of a "…

The World's Rarest Birds

There are something over 10,000 species of birds (thus the name of the famous blog). Of these, just under 600 are in very very serious trouble, some to the extent that we are not sure if they exist, others are so rare that we know they exist but there are no good photographs of them, others are merely very likely to go extinct. There are patterns to this rarity, having to do with what threatens birds on one hand and what makes certain birds vulnerable on the other, but the range of birds that are threatened, in terms of size, shape, kind of bird, habitat, etc. represents birds pretty…

Climate Change and Civil Disobedience

At 11:30 AM eastern time today, an act of "civil disobedience will take place around at the East Gate of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, just east of the picture-postcard zone." #NoKXL is the hashtag. It is time, apparently. This is a time when more of the money that is out there is in the hands of a very small number of people and corporations, and many of these people and corporations are paying to maintain the status quo, and that status quo involves keeping our economy, or society, our species firmly planted on a track leading to the edge of a very tall cliff. Not the fiscal…

A little gun math

As you know, I often mention reports from the Ohh Shoot blog, which chronicles the virtually daily instances of someone doing something accidental with a gun and the associated serious wounding or killing of one or more other individuals. These events are not part of the large number of suicides using guns that happen every year, and they are not part of the large number of shootings related to felonies carried out with the aid of a gun and they are not part of the number of times a person shoots a truly armed and dangerous intruder truly intruding the home (as opposed to a grandchild hanging…

Two Space Robots To Crash Into Moon Monday

Ebb and Flow, the Twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Space Ships, which have been employed to provide detailed gravitational mapping of the Moon's geology, have apparently served their purpose and will be reprogrammed in a few hours from now to crash into the moon on Monday. PASADENA, Calif. -- Twin lunar-orbiting NASA spacecraft that have allowed scientists to learn more about the internal structure and composition of the moon are being prepared for their controlled descent and impact on a mountain near the moon's north pole at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) Monday,…

Our Conversations Should Be Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day

I am having a conversation with my friend, Pat. We are talking about the way we talk when we have a chance to spend some time, or the way our emails seem to go. “I tire of being asked what I think about something only to have the conversation derailed at the first ‘bump’ in my logic, at the first self-contradiction,” Pat says, of life in general. My response: “I savor your contradictions. It's my desire to explore them with you and to experience the change that happens when you wrestle with them.” “Yes, I think you get it. How refreshing.” As you can see, Pat and I have a deeply meaningful…

Is Python The New Basic? ("Python For Kids")

My first computer language was PL/1, but soon after I learned, among other languages, Basic, and I really liked Basic and I still do. Basic is linear, and I think in linear constructs when I do any kind of computer program. This is probably, in part, because user interfaces are the last thing I want to deal with. I want a series of numbers to be treated in a certain way, or a set of formulas to generate a database. The most non-linear I tend to get is multidimensional arrays, and that's still linear. Python is potentially, and in practice, very different, and is essentially used as an…

Safety in High School Science Departments

Four students in one of our local junior high schools were involved in an uncontrolled fire and/or explosion a few hours ago. It was in a physical science class. One of the students was burned severely and is in the Hennepin County Hospital burn unit. His injuries are not life threatening by my understanding is that his face is covered with second degree degree burns or worse. The other students are not at present hospitalized. The mishap occurred during the demonstration of an experiment that was intended to be a "reward" for the students performance in class. There are various stories…

Debating Evolution vs. Creationism: Bullet Points

As you know, Bill Nye has agreed to engage in a debate about evolution with Ken Ham at the Kentucky Creation Museum. You may also know that I suggested that this debate was a bad idea, not so much because it is Bill Nye doing it (he’s a great spokesperson for science and science education) but because the whole idea of a debate is questionable for a number of reasons (discussed here). Bill recently made a few comments on the debate on CNN. Here, I’d like to list a handful of the points I’d make if I was doing this debate. It is not necessary or even possible to argue against “creationism…

Cluck cluck cluuuuck!

The Discovery Institute has challenged SMU profs to debate at the "Darwin vs Design" event in Dallas. No takers so far; I'm not surprised, any scientist who participated would be increasing the DI's reputation immensely simply by sharing a meeting room with one of those clowns. But the DI is in the mood for a debate, eh … so how about with Peter Irons, noted constitutional lawyer, Harvard Law School grad, Supreme Court bar member, and author of a forthcoming book, God on Trial(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which includes a chapter on the Dover case? He's going to be in the Seattle area at the end…

Putting Exodus into Words: The sed Bible Translation Project

So, a while ago, Ben Zvanwas talking about doing something with the Bible, which would involve processing the text through some filters and recompiling it. This sort of thing has always interested me: Not recompiling the bible, but rather, textual analysis in general using the basic material stripped of intended meaning by classifying and ordering arbitrarily. What, for example, is the vocabulary of the Rosetta stone, or the Kensington Rune Stone (a probable fake Viking misssive on display in west-central Minnesota). Does the rune stone sample the lexicon of a particular time period or…

Cervical cancer vaccine and politics as ususal

As mentioned in the comments to this post, there is a brewing controversy over upcoming guidelines outlining who should receive the "cervical cancer vaccine," a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV). Briefly, the HPV vaccine is a highly effective (100% in a 2-year clinical trial) vaccine which is targeted against two specific serotypes of the human papilloma virus: HPV 16 and HPV 18. Together, these types cause about 70% of cervical cancers in the United States. Previously, Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group, has said this about the HPV…

Squid and bacteria don't need The Man

The Institute for Creation Research has just published a fairly typical article for them: it's the usual laundry list of amazing biological structures that cry out "Jaaayzuusss!" to the faithful. In this case, they pick on squid. You see, squid have wonderfully complex specializations to control pigment granules in their skins; these are so lovely and so intricate that — and this is the major leap of ignorance they demand of their readers — they couldn't possibly have arisen by natural mechanisms, and must have been specially placed there by a loving god. As an extra special bonus, some squid…

Do You Really Need an Electron Microscope for That?

As previously mentioned, I'm watching a little bit of Fringe in order to be able to talk sensibly about it later this week. I watch the Season 1 finale last night, and its treatment of parallel universes is about what I'd expect for tv, but being the obsessive dork I am, I got distracted from the big picture by a silly side issue. There's a running joke for the first bit of the episodes about Walter trying to find various pieces of scientific equipment, only to find that Peter has appropriated them for some sort of personal project. One of these items is an electron microscope (presumably an…

Throwing Something Into Orbit

There's a lot of stuff in the news lately about asteroids, what with the Dawn mission orbiting Vesta, and the talk of a manned asteroid mission as a possible future step for NASA. Prompted by this, I'm going to dip into the territory usually occupied by Matt and Rhett, and ask a somewhat silly question: What size asteroid would you be able to throw a baseball into orbit, a la Bugs Bunny? (Sadly, probably for copyright reasons, I couldn't quickly find a YouTube video of the cartoon where Bugs throws a baseball all the way around the world. But you can probably picture it, even if you're too…

Quantum Man by Lawrence Krauss

While I've got a few more review copies backlogged around here, the next book review post is one that I actually paid for myself, Lawrence Krauss's Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, part of Norton's Great Discoveries series of scientific biographies. I'm a fan of the series-- past entries reviewed here include Richard Reeves's biography of Rutherford, Rebecca Goldstein's biography of Goedel, and David Foster Wallace on Cantor's work on infinity (which is less of a biography than the others). I'm not a huge reader of biographies, but I've liked all the books from this series that…

Links for 2012-05-28

In which we post a new collection of random links in an effort to see if the RSS feeds actually work now but aren't showing anything because I haven't posted anything. Craig Sager's Suits and Sideline Sartorial Disasters - Grantland You've been blown off your couch and knocked from your barstool with disbelief — even though you know it's coming. The structure of an "NBA on TNT" broadcast never really changes, so you always know! Still: Cue the beer spit take and the salsa sliding off the nacho you can't remember to put into your gaping mouth. Because you can never bring yourself to believe…

It is backed like a weasel

Carlos Frenk, Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University says some sane-but-not-surprising things about peer review. In other respects, the venue this appears in - IAI, the Institute of Art and Ideas - appears to have been taken over by septics, see for example Climate Change: a Rhetoric of Risk, Are climate change sceptics unfairly ignored by mainstream media? where they take Benny Peiser seriously. Musings on Quantitative Palaeoecology is Richard Telford's blog, which I've only just found. He takes the piss out of Monkers which is always a difficult sport…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 36

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 35 Table of Contents Chapter 37 Chapter 36 Neurolin, March 17, 2056 Edie was changing. I didn't know how, but she was no longer the shy retiring mouse of a woman she had been. A week later I happened across a clue. As a matter of course, we segregate our garbage into compostable, recyclable, paper and junk. I was throwing some paper away, when I noticed a flattened medication box. I picked it up. It was labelled Neurolin. "Clarify, deepen and solidify your thoughts," it said. I knew there were cognitive enhancers on the market, but I had…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 21

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 20 Table of Contents Chapter 22 Chapter 21 At a sidewalk cafe, November 19, 2055 In North America, privacy is a thing of the past. How often we hear that! Wherever you go, newseyes operated by various government agencies or private corporations flit about recording every sight and sound to be analyzed by computer. Electronic communication is routinely monitored. Stationary cameras are everywhere. Microbugs make the detection of surveillance almost impossible. Newseyes put it in your face. When someone is watching over your shoulder, you feel…

The End of Tom Delay?

Tom Delay was right up front in the battle over Terri Schiavo, and having lost that battle he is now out to punish those impudent judges who dared not to agree with his position. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," he said. Delay has long been at the forefront of the right's war on the judiciary, as the Dallas Morning News points out: In 1996, Mr. DeLay argued for using impeachment to police and steer the federal bench. The next year, he said "judges need to be intimidated" to ensure that they uphold the Constitution. In mid-2003, he created…

Alabama Student Senate Does the Right Thing

At the same time that wannabe satrap Gerald Allen has been conspiring to kill free thought with his bill to ban all books and plays that mention homosexuality, the University of Alabama Faculty Senate has passed a resolution calling on restrictions on "hate speech" at that university. This is as good an opportunity as any to point out that threats to free speech do not come exclusively from the right; the left is equally zealous, in many cases, to punish those who speak ill of protected minorities. Nat Hentoff wrote of this phenomenon brilliantly in his book Free Speech for Me, But Not for…

The great parasite and liar in the sky

There is a little girl dying of cancer in Seattle (there are, of course, little girls dying of cancer everywhere). There's a positive aspect to the story, of a community pulling together and providing support for her family, but there is also a poisonous taint to it all—most of the support isn't actually for a suffering young girl, but for a communal fantasy. For four years, the 11-year-old has been a patient and a symbol, suffering with grace and galvanizing a community into action. The support is immense and mesmerizing, hundreds unifying to help this family with seven children. Hundreds…

The Pistons-Pacers Brawl

Okay, since I'm a basketball fan, I gotta weigh in on this. I'm sure by now everyone has seen the footage of what happened after the Pistons/Pacers game on Friday night, as Pacers players went up into the stands after fans who were pelting them with beers and bottles and chairs. The NBA has just announced the punishments for the players involved: Ron Artest suspended for the entire year, Stephen Jackson for 30 games, Jermaine O'Neal for 25 games, Ben Wallace for 6 games, and Anthony Johnson for 5 games. Elden Campbell, Derrick Coleman, Chauncey Billups and Reggie Miller have been suspended…

Crazy Poker Game

We had the craziest poker game last night. We play a $1/$2 pot limit hold em game. Not really a big money game, and usually the pots get bigger toward the end of the night as people loosen up, try to push people around with a big stack, or try to recoup their losses. Well last night was insane from the first hand and got more insane as the night went on. 3 of our regular players are in Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but we had two of our occasional players show up and one new guy who was just about the worst poker player I've ever seen. Anyway, just listen to how things got started...…

Rowe on Loving, Lawrence, and Originalism

Jon Rowe has an excellent post about originalism and the application of general principles in constitutional law. As he points out, one of the major problems for conservative originalists is that they often get stuck having to defend the heinous results that their version of originalism would lead to if applied consistently. This is because the same arguments that they typically use against rulings that push out the limits of individual rights today were also used against rulings that no one considers controversial today and that they do not wish to defend. For example, the arguments against…

The Ten Commandments and the Constitution - Again

Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice is asking the Supreme Court to overrule an appeals court decision in Ohio that removed postings of the Ten Commandments from 4 schools in that state. In a WorldNutDaily article about the appeal, the following quote appears: "It is an undisputable fact that the Ten Commandments played a significant role in the development of our legal system in this country," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ, in a statement. Since it has come up yet again, I'm going to reprint a post that I made in December on this subject, examining the ten…

Gay Marriage Helps Straight Marriage?

Dale Carpenter cites an op-ed piece (subscription only, unfortunately) at the Wall Street Journal written by William Eskridge and Darren Spedale that shows that, contrary to the hysterical claims of the anti-gay crowd, traditional marriage got stronger after gay marriage was legalized in several countries. Carpenter sums up their findings: Seventeen years after recognizing same-sex relationships in Scandinavia there are higher marriage rates for heterosexuals, lower divorce rates, lower rates for out-of-wedlock births, lower STD rates, more stable and durable gay relationships, more monogamy…

Framing Science in Canada

For the third year running, the after-dinner speaker at DAMOP was a politician-- a Canadian one, this time, former MP Preston Manning (who also has his own official web site). I was a little surprised to see him described as a "right-wing populist" because he sounded very reasonable, but on reflection, this is Canada, and a right-wing populist Canadian probably maps to a moderate Democrat in the US. His talk was on "the importance of scientists being able to communicate with politicians and the public, and how we can do a better job at such communications." In other words, as Nathan Lundblad…

Sing, Sing a Song

Over at his AOL gig, John Scalzi points to a list purporting to be the Top Ten All Time Pop Singalong Songs. Here's the list: 1) Baha Men - Who Let the Dogs Out 2) Beatles - Hey Jude 3) Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive 4) Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You 5) Tommy James and the Shondells - Mony Mony 6) Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - I Love Rock and Roll 7) Don McLean - American Pie 8) Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody 9) Santana Featuring Rob Thomas - Smooth 10) Village People - YMCA Words fail me. Almost. Words like "madness" and "sadly deluded" and "totally on crack, maybe cut with something…

Confounded by High School Physics

Physics Web has a story about new discoveries in excitonic systems with the eye-catching headline BEC's confound at higher temepratures. The main idea is that two exotic systems have been found in which quasi-particles undergo Bose-Einstein Condensation at realtively high temperatures-- 19 Kelvin for a system of "polaritons," and room temperature for a system of "magnons." If you're wondering why those sound like Star Trek particles-of-the-week rather than real particles that you might've heard of before, it's because they're quasi-particles involving several real particles coupled together…

The Unsinkable Standard Model

The big physics news of the week last week came while I was in transit on Wednesday: The MiniBooNE (the odd capitalization is because it's sort of an acronym) neutrino experiment released their first results on the neutrino oscillation studies they've been doing, and found, well, nothing new. In contrast to a previous experiment that hinted at the possible existence of a fourth type of neutrinos, the MiniBooNE results were entirely consistent with having only the three previously known types. There's a news article here, and one of the MiniBooNE experimenters did a excellent guest post…

Let's Hear it for the Little Guy 5

The site was silent yesterday because Kate and I drove down to The City to surprise my grandmother and father (her birthday was yesterday, his is Tuesday), and see a Broadway show (about which more later, maybe). That means a slight delay in the accolades for some little guys, but fortunately only one automatic bid was handed out Friday: Holy Cross: The Crusdaders of the College of the Holy Cross (a name that sounds like it ought to describe something other than a basketball team) beat Bucknell Friday to win John Feinstein's favorite conference. It's the first time in three years that they've…

Fire Bad Teachers or the Terrorists Win

Kate's in Rochester to argue a couple of cases, and the Queen of Niskayuna is being Difficult this morning, so I don't have as much time as I'd like for this. As a result, it may come out a little more inflammatory than I intend, but then, that's half the fun of blogging. Or something. Anyway, the minor kerfuffle over firing teachers has produced the usual spate of off-hand comments about the obvious evil of teacher's unions. For some reason, this seems to be widely accepted as fact by just about everybody-- despite evidence that unionized districts perform better. Score another victory for…

ACC Update

Maryland beat Florida State last night, and moved over 0.500 in the ACC for the first time. This is also their 21st win on the season, and Jeremy Gold has gone round the bend: MD could rise as high as #2 seen in the NCAAs should they finish 10-6 in the ACC and win the ACC Tournament. Granted that is extremely unlikely. What is more likely, is a 9-7 conference record and a run to the semis of the ACC Tournament (if the draw works in our favor). If that is the case, we are 25-9 and I think that warrants #5 seed in the NCAAs. From that position, I think we make the Sweet 16 and depending on the…

Science Investment and The Horizon Problem (Updated)

Apparently, it's "economics of higher education" day here at Uncertain Principles. This time out, we have Steve Hsu on Larry Summers. (Update: I should also link to this post by Brad DeLong discussing the same article, with good stuff in the comments. And while I'm bashing free-market advocates, here's Jonah on the worst assumption in economics, and Dave on funding research with prizes.) Steve quotes Summers saying: In today's economy an outstanding graduate of a leading business school earns a substantially higher salary than a potential Nobel prize winner graduating with a PhD in biology.…