Monthly Archives: March 2017

I have decided to argue with the flat earth society

For better or worse I have decided to argue with the flat earth society today. I almost hate to rehash the arguments against something so silly. But I want to use these arguments against the flat earth society as an example to make a different point.

Point #1against the flat Earth: the size of the conspiracy would have to be vast. Every NASA engineer, every phone engineer, every astronomer: they would all have to be involved in hiding the truth of the flat Earth if such a thing existed.

Point #2 against the flat Earth: If you go to the equator, you can see stars appear to rotate around both poles. It’s hard to resolve that without having a North and a South Pole. If the earth is flat, there can only be one pole right in the center.

Point #3 against the flat Earth: Someone in Texas sees the sun rising while someone in Korea sees it setting. A little triangulation would put the sun right beneath the surface of the Earth in Africa. That seems… problematic.

Having established these points, I want to back up.

Engaging the flat earth society by drawing their attention to these problems will be entirely ineffective. In fact, it might backfire. If I pointed these facts out to someone who held flat earth beliefs, they would almost certainly decide that I was part of the conspiracy. As such, nothing I said could possibly be trusted.

I think that the problem is that I am claiming authority. I claim to know the truth and I claim that they are wrong. I seem to be a part of the Establishment. I seem to be trying to force them to believe something. If they resent my position of “power,” they will tend to be hostile to my claims.

I suggest the following hypothesis. Educators will be more effective in dispelling false beliefs by pointing out a different form of authority with students from a young age. I suggest that the only real authorities are observation and reason. Maybe this can reduce that resentment-of-authority phenomenon.

Starting work at 4am is a mixed bag

Step 1: Wake up at 3AM

You remember your youth? Going to bed at 3AM after having a lot of fun? Maybe playing video games or drinking at a bar? It felt a little rebellious and irresponsible to be up that late (it’s almost early #LOL). Maybe if you had a late class or a flexible work schedule, you did these shenanigans on a weekday! Those were fun times. This is the exact opposite of that. Try to go to sleep at 7, but fail. Go to sleep at 9 instead and wake up barely able to function.

Step 2: Protein

Cereal over the age of thirty is a bad idea. Even bran cereal. That’s just sugar, and sugar wants to take up squatter’s residence on your belly. It’s harder to evict than your derelict former roommate, Martin, who ate your eggs, but doesn’t feel bad about it because they are not free range and factory farm cruelty excuses theft, apparently. Cook an egg for breakfast because you are a grownup.

Step 3: Coffee

Using a clean coffee maker, brew up 8 to 10 cups of Walmart’s Great Value Medium Roast. It’s a great value! There are no calories in a cup of black coffee but there are 100 milligrams of caffeine (It is by will alone I set my mind in motion). Drink a cup (or three!) to get you started and put the rest in an insulated container to nurse over the rest of the morning. Coffee kept hot on a hot plate will taste like death in less than an hour.

Step 4: Go to work

To start the day, read a nice think piece about your work. There’s no need to jump right in to the real work of the day. You’re in at 4AM. If you read for an hour to get your head on straight, you’re still ahead of the game. For God’s sake, don’t read the news. Not even as a joke. Block that on your own computer if you have to, like NetNanny for adults. Yes, there is an app for that.

Step 5: Panic at 6AM

Holy crap, have you  been at work for 2 hours? What have you accomplished? It’s the equivalent of 11 AM for anyone on a non-insane schedule. Have you written anything? A blog post, at least? Part of a paper? Code? What’s the point of getting up before dawn? You could have “slept in” until 6AM. That’s a statement that is absurd on its face. Maybe you should meditate or something.

Do you prefer your morning routine parodies in video form? Here you go:

 

Averages and niche markets in cancer and chickens

Averages can be misleading. In cancer, it’s the outliers that matter. The average virulence of the cancer cells is less important that the few cells that are really bad.

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Here’s an example of averages being misleading in terms of evolutionary success. If hens have very particular tastes, the rooster who appeals on average may not have as much success as the rooster who appeals to a niche. The high average is a generalist strategy. It’s OK for all the hens. That strategy can lose out to the specialists. If there are enough specialists, or if hens only make eggs with really attractive roosters, the generalist will not do as well.

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So, bottom line, it’s dangerous to rely too much on averages. It’s true in business, too. A product that appeals to everyone can get out-competed by all of the niche products in a crowded market. There are a lot of flavors of pasta sauce. The sum of Ragu’s different flavors out-sell the classic Prego by a fair margin.

On not reading the news; also coffee

David Wong’s books are hilarious  (for example, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It). He is an editor at Cracked.com which I also read for humor value. But I also read David Wong because he changes my perspective. Every year he posts a funny but pointed article on social worth that I wish I had read when I was 17. And in 2016, he explained the election in a way that made me “get it” a little.

He recently did it again with an article on non-stop outrage. I don’t watch the news, but I do watch creative stuff on youtube. I’m even trying to put a little back by making my own videos. One of the reasons I want to be a part of that creative community is precisely as an alternative to outrage driven memes.

Let me use some videos to illustrate. The media circus is like Dueling Carls (video reference). GGP Grey can explain why (seriously, watch this video). If you tune in, all you hear is the screaming panic. But that’s not “what the world is like these days.” The world like like lots of things. It is just as true that people are making $1 microscopes and $.50 centrifuges as it is that people are being cruel to one another.

So anyway, let’s make coffee and tune out the rage for a while.

More thoughts on open source Beer Raman

Erossel has a DIY raman project I think is very nicely put together. I’m very impressed. There’s another DIY Raman project out there but it doesn’t seem as active. The idea is to focus a laser on a sample and collect the light that comes out. It’s a lot like fluorescence, but the mechanism is different.

I am trying to choose the laser for a new system. The commercial Renishaw instrument in my lab has a 785 nm laser. That means the detector has to operate between 790 nm and 1100 nm. Most inexpensive detectors can’t do that very well. Cheaper off-the-shelf spectrometers can be used to detect the Raman signal from a 532 nm laser.

I suspect that fluorescence interference will be a problem for 532 nm Raman of beer. Certainly, 470 nm gives a significant (visible) beer fluorescence. From this paper, Fluorescence Spectroscopy for Characterization and Differentiation of Beers, it seems like 532 nm might not be too bad relative to 475 nm but I’d be willing to bet that 633 is considerably better. At this point I’m hoping that 633 is a good compromise. Plus, 633 nm lasers are cheap.