Far out talk by Sir Martin Rees

Sir Martin Rees: Earth in its final century?

my response to Massimo Pigliucci's essay "Chess, psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and the nature of pseudoscience"

Essay is here: Chess, psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and the nature of pseudoscience

my response:

I think it's disingenuous to lump sociobiologists in the same boat with Freudian psychologists. Sociobiology is grounded in the natural sciences--in biology, genetics, chemistry and physics. Freudian psychology is not. Just because you are unable to imagine an easy way to gather experimental evidence for a given scientific theory does not disqualify it as a valid hypothesis. I personally cannot imagine experiments that could be used to validate theories of General Relativity, but that doesn't discredit the fundamental scientific nature of the theory. Scientists are still working on devising new experiements to test Relativity half-a-century after this theory was proposed.

You've used this line of argument before. In your essay, "Do you believe in human nature?", you wrote:

"Our genetic makeup certainly poses limits to what we can and cannot do, but how ample those limits are is currently largely beyond the scope of human biology, partly because we cannot do the right experiments that would settle the matter (it is both impractical and unethical to breed human beings and raise them under controlled environmental conditions, which is what we do with other animals and with plants when we wish to study gene-environment interactions)."

But you inability to imagine ethical experiments only reflects on your own limits of imagination, not on the scientific validity of these lines of inquiry. I have more confidence in mankind's collective resourcefulness in devising fruitful experiments than in one philosopher's doubt.

CPR and John Travolta

Need to administer CPR but can't remember the number of chest compressions per minute? Just match the beat of the disco track "Staying Alive"

Administering CPR to the beat of "Staying Alive" and maintaining 100 beats per minute for three or four minutes until help arrives gives this person has a triple chance of surviving.

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Add that to the Rocket fuel, lead, germs, arsenic and pesticides found in this report:
Study Finds Safety of Drinking Water in U.S. Cities at Risk

The Pursuit Of Happiness

Quite insightful look at the happiest place on earth--no, not Disneyland--Denmark. A bit slow at the start, but really hits it's stride in the second half.

Click the picture to play. Morley Safer reports for 60 minutes. Running time: 12 minutes.

CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY

These 14 challenges facing humanity were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston:
-Make solar energy affordable
-Provide energy from fusion
-Develop carbon sequestration
-Manage the nitrogen cycle
-Provide access to clean water
-Reverse engineer the brain
-Prevent nuclear terror
-Secure cyberspace
-Enhance virtual reality
-Improve urban infrastructure
-Advance health informatics
-Engineer better medicines
-Advance personalised learning
-Explore natural frontiers

Now go get to work on that will ya