Science Ain't So Bad

EVIL METER

GOOGLE’S NEW INDICATOR

Have you been watching the ins and outs, ups and downs, backs and forths of Google/China?

If you have, you know that Google’s modest experiment in self-censorship’s resulted in a sour magnesium taste for the “Do no harm” guys who don’t like all the ropes ‘n chains ‘n blindfolds that seem to be the cost of doing business in China. So they said – I think the word was..  tryin’ to think here.. I think it was “NO“.

Unless China took the gag off.

And China, always, nimble in these kinds of negotations said “Uh.. Jeez. But we ALWAYS censor.” And stuck to its idiotic guns.

Without an acceptable response from China, Google’s decided to move its operations to Hong Kong where it’ll get itself out of the censoring business and back to the search business. And the map business. And the phone business. And.. well.. like that.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad has no standing here since this is politics. But just in case you want my opinion? I think the huge, powerful, fast growing nation of China will lose and the funny li’l guys with the search engine’ll win.

But it’ll take awhile.

Anyway, now that Google, itself, isn’t censoring (with some temporary exceptions till contracts expire), Google felt it would be useful for its readers to have a visual indicator of how much censoring is being done by the Chinese authorities. So they developed a nice “status page”, called by some, its “Evil Meter”

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 (for Google)

ScienceAintSoBadRating = -1 for China

Science Ain’t So Bad t-shirts and mugs and stuff

DEFINING THE ELECTRON

MY PUBLIC

A long, long time ago, Joel, Doug, and MISTER ScienceAintSoBad were in line for an ice cream cone in Harvard Square.

I can’t remember, exactly, why, but Joel said (not for the first time) that “People are morons.”

Mister (not at that time) ScienceAintSoBad sturdily defended you.

“Not all of them.”

“That’s what YOU think. They don’t know crap!”

“You do?”

Three guys in line for ice cream.. You don’t want the whole transcript. However, it led to a “test” (we were young, remember). We decided to ask people in the line about electrons.

We would be easy graders. The interviewee didn’t have to know a lot. The answer could be “part of an atom”, “a tiny something that’s part of stuff”, “a particle”, “some small shmatta from physics” – just some indication that he.she knew what we were talking about.

So we did the survey. We asked ten customers, one by one. And this is what happened.

Nobody knew the answer.

One person – a high school girl, I think – knew it was “something in science” so she got a passing grade.

Everybody else was stumped. Most of them shrugged their shoulders or looked confused or were afraid that they were on Candid Camera.

Why bring this up?

Not because Joel was right about people being stupid. THEY weren’t making idiots out of themselves in an ice cream shop. But if this shop, which was a few hundred yards from Harvard (gasp!) University was even a little representative of the intelligent beings that inhabit our planet, then they (those intelligent beings) certainly didn’t give a lime sherbert’s damn about physics. Or abstract theories. Or natural philosophy. Or what-have-you.

You’re gonna say you have some issues with my methodology. That is wasn’t scientific.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that the “deeper” more abstract things are a hard sell with the average person. It’s just not what people think about.

WHAT I WRITE. WHAT YOU TOLERATE.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad can tell when you’re interested.

You know that little shmagegge on the upper right of the screen? It counts the visitors.

When we do an article about PRACTICAL things like the effects of salt on your health or a new cancer drug or a new breakthrough in hypnotic suggestion that turns teenagers into sweet, docile, uncomplaining saints, that thing GOES! The individual numbers get blurry and it goes whirr, whirr, whirr.

BUT when we do something really INTERESTING, something of PROFOUND SCIENTIFIC IMPORT such as the continuing effort to understand dark matter or dark energy or research into the true nature of the universe (quantum mechanics or string theory, for example), it stutters, hesitates, shivers, and staggers like it’s developed a case of frozen neuron disease.

This tells me that if I want lots of customers (and, by the way, the readership of Science Ain’t So Bad has been growing and thank you) I should stay away from deep science.

Unfortunately, because of a contract I have with myself, that’s not gonna happen so you can either go away with something new or (more likely) just skip the good stuff.

I hope you’ll, at least, give me a chance on the esoterica. It’ll make you a better person.

And, how can you be sure it won’t come up in a job interview?

You’ll be SO happy to learn that I’m adding book reviews to Science Ain’t So Bad and the first review – not finished yet – is going to be Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe.

Which doesn’t have a THING in it that’ll relieve the symptoms of a cold.

REDLANDS' RASCALLY RESOURCE

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad brings up the same tired old names in science and engineering a lot – Newton, Einstein, Kepler, Planck, Jobs (That’s Steve, not “jobs, jobs, jobs”) and so on.

Today, however, I would like to introduce a fresh face – a rising star in engineering, known as the Redlands Rascal, who, only yesterday sent me.. well, let him speak for himself.

For his highly innovative and truly ingenious solutions to some of society’s most nagging problems:
ScienceAintSoBadRating = BOING! (That’s the weight hitting the bell at the top)

The image is mine
(not a self portrait) .


By the way,
I don’t steal images
from others.
I wouldn’t be able to handle the guilt.

Psychology: Guilt.

Hold onto your wig because this is a real toupee blaster. According to an article in the Spanish Journal of Psychology, men feel less guilt than women.

An article like this illustrates beautifully the power of the scientific approach.

You observe the male species, burdened as it is with feelings of over sensitivity, huddled in corners with arms tightly clasped and murmuring about the possible emotional injuries we may have caused, through a passing slight, to another, and you would, necessarily, conclude that it is the oppositely endowed gender – the x chromosomal female version of us – that is a stranger to feelings of guilt.

But it is the work of scientists to tease out the facts from the seemingly obvious. MISTER ScienceAintSoBad can’t BEGIN to express his awe at this work.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = YGBKM (You Gotta Be Kiddin’ Me!)

A follow up to my recent article on comic books as literature:

Randall Munroe studied physics at Christopher Newport University and has worked for NASA. He also writes a sparse but very funny “webcomic” with sardonic observations on life as lived in the technobulb.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10