Bill Nye: "Saving the world" by destroying science

I got about 3 1/2 minutes into the first episode of Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix and couldn't take any more. The "Science Guy" put some red liquid in a flask over a Bunsen burner and watched as the liquid began to expand due to the heat. He then used that illustration to claim that a slight increase in ocean temperature would cause flooding in places like Miami. Yes, heating up fluid in a glass tube proves the devastating effects of man-made global warming. You can't deny the science!

I'll be honest. When I first heard of this show, I knew it was going to be less about science and more about pushing a political agenda. Here are just a few of the episode descriptions to show you what I mean:

Episode 1: Earth Is a Hot Mess
Bill calls out climate change deniers, breaks down the science of global warming and explains how we can make the planet a cooler place to live.

Nye goes so far as to say "global warming and climate change are way worse" than all the world wars and pandemics we've had. He even has a couple quasi-celebrities in a silly skit to prove his point. He even goes off on a rant about "climate change deniers," and then wraps up the show with a panel of non-scientists who have the solution to this pressing problem. The science is settled, folks, because there's a consensus. And science ain't about questioning the consensus.

Episode 5: The Original Martian Invasion
Bill introduces the theory of panspermia, NASA scientists discuss the Mars 2020 mission, and Wil Wheaton and the panel ponder life on other planets.

The idea that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent God? Hogwash! Life evolving by chance in outer space and traveling to Earth? Totally scientifically plausible! Never mind how life began on far-off worlds, because science apparently doesn't bother with trivial things like that. (Side note: I was really disappointed to see professing Christian and food celebrity Alton Brown take part in this episode.)

Episode 9: The Sexual Spectrum
Sex is complex! Bill explores the ever-evolving science of sexuality with help from a panel of experts and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" star Rachel Bloom.

I don't even know where to begin, but this disgusting, inappropriate, NSFW clip pretty much says it all. Watch at your own risk:


Remember, this is science, and if you question it, you're a small-minded bigot.

Episode 11: Malarkey!
Chemtrails. Crop circles. Palm readers. Bill takes aim at pseudoscience and explains how confirmation bias makes us believe things that aren't true.

Is there a lot of pseudoscience out there? Absolutely. But confirmation bias isn't limited to tinfoil hat-wearing crackpots, as you'll see below.

Episode 13: Earth's People Problem
Bill and his guests talk about tackling overpopulation by empowering women. Comedian Joanna Hausmann interviews couples about male contraception.

Perhaps the most revealing moment in this episode was when Nye let slip "population c..." during a conversation. He caught himself before he finished saying the world "control," but it was clear what he meant. Now, you'd think the myth of overpopulation would have disappeared as quickly as Paul Ehrlich's credibility. In 1968, Erlich wrote a book titled The Population Bomb, in which he predicted a massive, global famine that would kill hundreds of millions of people in the 1970s. Yeah, that didn't happen, but Erlich is running around claiming that even though his timing was off, he's still right. Forget the fact that global poverty is at an all-time low. See, facts don't matter when you have a political ideology to advance, and confirmation bias only exists among those who disagree with you.

If you're looking for real science and an intelligent discussion of issues, steer clear of Bill Nye Saves the World. However, if you enjoy pseudoscience, progressive politics, wisecracks about religion, unfunny jokes, and lame entertainment, then this show might be right up your alley.

"March for Science" actually a march for politics

What's the best way for scientists to show that science isn't about politics? By staging a protest that makes science all about politics, of course:

While billing itself as nonpartisan, the March for Science movement, including rallies and marches in more than 600 communities, clearly sees the Trump administration, which has expressed skepticism about man's role in climate change and has eased regulations on coal and oil production, as a threat to science.

Of particular concern to critics is the Trump administration's budget that calls for sizable cuts in funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

OK, so this isn't so much a march for science as it is a march against policies that undermine science. If that's the case, then perhaps we will see those gathered calling for politicians to quit ignoring scientific evidence when it comes to biological sex and when human life begins. But I won't hold my breath.

Can you find the iPhone in this 350-year-old painting?

Just when you think you've seen everything, you spot an iPhone in a 350-year-old painting.




Hmmm. It's either time travel or...

Super-fast camera can capture the movement of light

Photography is a field that has seen quite a few advancements since the very first camera photo was taken nearly two centuries ago. But nothing is quite as impressive as this high-speed camera developed (no pun intended) at MIT. At 1,000,000,000 (yes, that's one trillion) frames per second, it is so fast that it can actually capture light as it travels. Check it out:

Adorable BB-8 droid from 'The Force Awakens' is now available to own

For $149.99, you can take home the adorable BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's remote-controlled and interacts with your smart phone. "But for all the added bells and whistles," we are told, "the BB-8's primary directive is really just to be a ball of cuteness." And that it is.


Amost as cool as the Millennium Falcon drone.

Blind mother 'sees' her unborn son thanks to 3D-printed ultrasound

Few words are able to describe the feeling an expectant mother has when she is waiting to see her unborn child during an ultrasound for the first time. But what if the mother is blind? A hospital in Brazil was able to find a way around that thanks to 3D printing technology:


On a more sobering note, I ran across this story the same day I found out a Planned Parenthood clinic opened just a mile-and-a-half from my house. That somehow made this video even more touching.

'See-through' trucks could make roads safer

Without x-ray vision, you and I are at a bit of a disadvantage when driving behind a large vehicle. Thanks to Samsung's "see-through" truck, that may no longer be a problem. Check it out:


Now, if they could only make one that plays movies.

Bionic eye lets blind man see his wife for the first time in 10 years

68-year-old Allen Zderad's new bionic eye has allowed him to see his wife for the first time in more than a decade.


Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota implanted the device, which involved inserting 60 electrodes into the retina, allowing images to be transferred directly from the camera to the optic nerve. Not quite the stuff of The Six Million Dollar Man, but it's certainly a huge step forward.

A brief glimpse at how the clock changed the world

When we mechanized time, we also, and completely by accident, mechanized us. And when the clocks got smaller, time could follow us everywhere, a constant reminder of hours, minutes, seconds lost or won. Now we don't eat when we're hungry, we eat when it's time to eat. We don't sleep when we're tired, we sleep when it's time to sleep. We've built an amazing world that runs like clockwork, meaning that these days, so do we.

(via Challies.com)

Check out the piano of the future

Hungarian pianist Gergely Bogányi has designed the piano of the future. The Bogányi is the result of over 10 years of research and 8,000 hours of engineering:

The new soundboard and the reconstructed agraffe system together with the new shaping concept of the cast-iron frame – all create a new quality that affects and provokes a novel perception of sound. The absolute distinction of tones let us reveal more of the inner structure of music – with a more refined tone sensation.

This is a piano rethought, reassessed: reinterpreted from the origins of classical piano. The new action of the piano, produced and delivered by Louis Renner of Germany is founded on years’ long, meticulous scaling and calculating of the Bogányi piano team.

The design minimises the piano into two legs, instead of the traditional three, enabling sound to reach the audience with higher efficiency and more clarity. The curved shape and structure of the leg creates a supporting effect, thereby conducting the sound, from below the piano, towards the audience.

The design also turns the piano into a piece of functional art and design. As spectacular architectural compositions have mastered the style of new performing arts centres and concert halls alike, the new approach to piano design may well enrich the tradition of instrument making.

The Bogányi piano design is a unique answer to a shift in time and style.

Hear the difference for yourself:


And, of course, its sleek, aerodynamic design makes it more wind-resistant. So there's that.

(via io9)

Time travel simulation finally resolves "grandfather paradox"?

Paradoxes are a normal, unavoidable part of time travel fiction. Just go back and watch Back to the Future and try counting them all. Trust me. It'll drive you nuts.

The "grandfather paradox" is perhaps the oldest of time travel conundrums: A man travels back in time and kills his grandfather, creating a paradox. If the man's grandfather is killed, then that would prevent the man's birth...which would prevent the grandfather from being killed...which would mean the man would be born and travel back in time to kill his grandfather...which would prevent the man's birth...

You get the idea. The result is what time travel theorists call a "closed timelike curve."

University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph, drawing on a model proposed by theorist David Deutsch, believes such CTC paradoxes go away when considered in terms of quantum mechanics. (Well, duh.)

The quantum solution goes a like this:

Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it. If the particle flips the switch, the machine emits a particle—the particle—back into the CTC; if the switch isn't flipped, the machine emits nothing. In this scenario there is no a priori deterministic certainty to the particle's emission, only a distribution of probabilities. Deutsch's insight was to postulate self-consistency in the quantum realm, to insist that any particle entering one end of a CTC must emerge at the other end with identical properties. Therefore...

...blah, blah, blah, one-half probability, blah, blah, blah, causative loop, blah, blah, blah, doppelganger, blah, blah, blah, voila! Paradox solved. Or something like that.

As much as I like to nitpick time travel fiction, there is a point at which it becomes over-analyzed. Trying to tie up every paradox in a neat, little bow would make shows like Doctor Who virtually unwatchable.

So, I think I'll stick with a little bit of mystery, thank you.

Google unveils its self-driving car

From the official Google blog:

We're planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we'd like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we'll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely.

If you'd like to follow updates about the project and share your thoughts, please join us on our new Google+ page. We're looking forward to learning more about what passengers want in a vehicle where their number one job is to kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

While I think this is a brilliant concept, coupled with amazing technology, I don't believe I'll be relinquising control of the steering wheel anytime soon.

Low-res but fascinating video of Earth and moon captured by Juno spacecraft

From the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube page:

When NASA's Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 8,800 mph (about 7.3 kilometer per second), which set it on course for a July 4, 2016, rendezvous with Jupiter.

One of Juno's sensors, a special kind of camera optimized to track faint stars, also had a unique view of the Earth-moon system. The result was an intriguing, low-resolution glimpse of what our world would look like to a visitor from afar.

The cameras that took the images for the movie are located near the pointed tip of one of the spacecraft's three solar-array arms. They are part of Juno's Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG) and are normally used to determine the orientation of the magnetic sensors. These cameras look away from the sunlit side of the solar array, so as the spacecraft approached, the system's four cameras pointed toward Earth. Earth and the moon came into view when Juno was about 600,000 miles (966,000 kilometers) away -- about three times the Earth-moon separation.

During the flyby, timing was everything. Juno was traveling about twice as fast as a typical satellite, and the spacecraft itself was spinning at 2 rpm. To assemble a movie that wouldn't make viewers dizzy, the star tracker had to capture a frame each time the camera was facing Earth at exactly the right instant. The frames were sent to Earth, where they were processed into video format.

The music accompaniment is an original score by Vangelis.

Satellite image of erupting Russian volcano

Click here for high-res image. (Photo: NASA / Earth Observatory / Robert Simmon)

Yes, there are active volcanoes in Russia. NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captures 16,000-ft. Klyuchevskaya Sopka in the act.

(via Yahoo, Slate)

The upside to air pollution? The government can't spy on you.

(Photo: China Foto Press)

Who knew smog had a silver lining? The South China Morning Post reports that the thick, blinding smog shrouding Beijing is rendering surveillance cameras virtually useless, and scientists are being called in to shed some light on the subject. One possible solution being tossed around is to use radar to help keep "sensitive areas" more secure.

Meanwhile, the Chinese people may enjoy a somewhat brief respite from Big Brother's prying eye.

String theory explained to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody

Singing scientist Timothy Blais explains string theory, a capella-style, to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody." And it actually makes much more sense than the original song.

Global cooling? Arctic ice cap grows 60% in one year

Just six years ago, the BBC reported scientists' dire prediction that the Arctic summers could be ice-free by 2013:

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.

Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times.

Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.

"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

"Yikes! It's 2013 now! What about all those poor polar bears?!"

Don't worry. The bears will be just fine. Mail Online reported on Saturday that the Arctic ice cap has actually grown larger. In fact, it is nearly one million square miles bigger than it was this time last year. That's a 60% increase in 365 days. Looks like some scientists will be frantically scrambling for more grant money in the coming months.

(Image: Mail Online)

To those who have been paying attention, this comes as no surprise. Global temperatures have remained steady for the last decade-and-a-half. Even the climate scaremongers at The New York Times can't ignore the obvious. Is it any wonder why the term "global warming" has since been replaced with the more ambiguous "climate change"?

So cheer up. Waterworld is still the stuff of science fiction, and Greenland won't be turning green again anytime soon. Perhaps it's time for these Chicken Little climatologists to simply chill out.

Government finally admits what everyone already knew: Area 51 exists

George Washington University has obtained recently declassified government documents for its National Security Archive that, for the first time, acknowledge the existence of the infamous Area 51. The documents describe the creation of the top-secret site and the government's spy plane program. No, there isn't any mention of aliens.

The Atlantic Wire has the story.

When the meaninglessness of a purely naturalistic worldview gets you down, just remember: you've got thumbs!

Handy smart phone app records all audio all the time, just like the NSA

There is a new smart phone app called Heard that automatically records everything within range of the phone's microphone. It stores the audio in memory for five minutes and then erases it unless the user chooses to save it. Think of it as carrying around your own National Security Agency in your pocket.


I suggest using it while wearing a t-shirt that says, "This conversation may be recorded." That will give any government employee you interact with fair warning.