Ever wonder why sunglasses manufacturers polarize the lenses? Polarization makes things looks better: skies more blue and clouds more white. Also, reflections are greatly reduced on shiny dark surfaces.

I took these photos today at Bay View Beach in Saco, Maine. Both of them are straight out of my iPhone 3GS’s camera without post processing. The one on the right was taken through polarized sunglasses.

Without and with polarization

I keep a circular polarization filter on my two most used camera lenses. With them I can dial in the amount of polarization I need for the look I’m trying to achieve. The difference can be dramatic, depending on the conditions.

photography · polarization · Science

Today while at the beach with Kirsten I looked up and saw the most amazing meteorological phenomenon: iridescent clouds. I had never seen them before. It looked like a rainbow, but without rain and no bow.

Cloud iridescence is an unusual diffraction phenomenon.

Iridescent cloud

This photo was taken with my iPhone 3GS through polarized sunglasses. The foreground was lightened in post.

cloud · iridescence · meteorology · phenomenon · Science · weather

If you don’t believe in human evolution because you think there isn’t any evidence, you’re mistaken. You’re willfully ignorant. There are mountains of evidence and many books on the subject. All you have to do is look.

Now look.

Evidence of human evolution

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Human Origins Initiative

evolution · Science · smithsonian

Be careful if you ever find yourself on Mars’ moon Deimos. One misstep and you could wind up in outer space.

XKCD: Gravity Wells

XKCD: Gravity Wells

(View really big.)

cosmos · gravity · Science · space

Wow! Just one more reason to like President Obama.

Obama to Back New Heavy Rocket, Bigger NASA Budget, Cancel Ares 1
Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo, December 22, 2009

Reporting on a White House and NASA meeting last Wednesday, sources say that the President has decided to give NASA an additional $1 billion in 2011. The extra funding will serve to create a new, simpler heavy lift rocket, as well as to increase the fleet of satellites controlling Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere.

Rocket size comparison

No tags

This map is so beautiful it nearly brings tears to my eyes. I discovered it in Richard Dawkins’ book, “The Greatest Show On Earth” (page 330).

The Hillis Plot

We’re cousins of chimpanzees. We’re also related to dolphins, kangaroos, slugs and pond scum. So what?

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is brilliant beyond words. What’s truly amazing is that the concept took so long for us to figure out.

The Hillis Plot

Excerpt from the book:

Detailed DNA comparisons will fill in all the gaps in our knowledge about the actual evolutionary relatedness of every epecies to every other: we shall know, with complete certainty, the entire family tree of all living creatures. Goodness knows how we’ll plot it; it won’t fit on any practical-sized sheet of paper.

The largest-scale attempt in that direction so far has been made by a group associated with David Hillis, brother of Danny Hillis who pioneered one of the first supercomputers. The Hillis plot makes the tree diagram more compact by wrapping it around in a circle. You can’t see the gap, where the two ends almost meet, but it lies between the ‘bacteria’ and the ‘archaea’. … The Hillis circular plot is the same, except that it has three thousand species. Their names appear around the outside edge of the circle above, far too small to read — though Homo sapiens is helpfully marked ‘You are here’. You can get an idea of how sparse a sampling of the tree even this huge plot is when I tell you that the closest relatives of humans that it can fit in the circle are rats and mice. The mammals had to be stripped down drastically, in order to fit in all the other branches of the tree to the same depth. Just imagine trying to plot a similar tree with ten million species in stead of the three thousand included here. And ten million is not the most extravagant estimate of the number of surviving species.

darwin · evolution · family tree · hillis plot · richard dawkins

I love words. I do. I use the dictionary many times each day to verify definitions, check spellings and discover new words. Before switching to Answers.com I used Dictionary.com. I may have found something still better: Wordnik.com.

I discovered Wordnik at TedTalks a few weeks ago. Lexicographer and Wordnik founder, Erin McKean, gave a fascinating talk.

Wordnik is much more than an online dictionary: it’s a wiki, aggregator, and word search engine all in one. You can see related words, read examples of the word used in context, listen to pronunciations, discover new words serendipitously, peruse Flickr photos related to the word, study the etymology, look at usage statistics, and see current tweets that use the word. You can also get dictionary definitions, as expected.

Wordnik is in early beta development. There is a lot of potential for it to be a powerful lexicographic tool! I still revert to Answers.com when I can’t find what I’m looking for at Wordnik, but I’m sure those occurrences will become less frequent as Wordnik improves.

Wordnik tweets, too. :) (@wordnik)

(more…)

dictionary · english · erin mckean · language · lexicography · lexicon · online · TED · tedtalks · word

Perfectly Happy
Drake Bennett, Boston Globe, May 10, 2009

I am passionate about happiness. I find myself reading all I can on the subject. I think most people spent too much energy and resources trying to attain happiness in ways that are often counterproductive. Most people are terrible at relationships, take too few risks and work to stay within predefined social constructs to their detriment.

Science can help focus our energies on those things that are more likely to appreciably increase happiness. It seems a bit counterintuitive–especially to those of us who struggle financially–that winning the lottery doesn’t make people happy. The research also illuminates one reason long-term relationships often fail: the initial happiness surge of new love eventually wanes.

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don’t see any long-term increase in happiness. By contrast, annoyances like noise or chronic pain bring down our happiness more than you’d think, and having friends or an extra hour of sleep every night can raise it dramatically.

(more…)

boston globe · happiness · lottery · poverty · research · Science · wealth

Helen Fisher tells us why we love + cheat
Ted Talks, February 2006

And I’ve also come to think that it’s one of three, basically different brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive: the craving for sexual gratification. W.H. Auden called it an “intolerable neural itch,” and indeed, that’s what it is. It keeps bothering you a little bit, like being hungry. The second of these three brain systems is romantic love: that elation, obsession of early love. And the third brain system is attachment: that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner. (more…)

anti-depressant · cheat · drive · evolution · love · lust · marriage · psychology · sex · TED · ted talks

Hellhole
Atul Gawande, The New Yorker, March 30, 2009

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

I have long argued that incarceration should not be used to punish criminals. The goals should be rehabilitation and separation. Prison officials should have a mandate to treat inmates with respect and provide them with a decent quality of life. Solitary confinement should never be used to punish inmates or to keep them safe. It is a cruel practice that has no place in an industrialized, first-world, enlightened society. (more…)

incarceration · isolation · prison · social · solitary confinement · the new yorker · torture