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For the first time in four decades, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dry
For the first time in ~40 years (? – see below) New Mexico’s Rio Grande has “broken” – is no longer flowing – in what we call “the Albuquerque reach”…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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What happens when a reservoir goes dry
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2022, the level in Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the United States formed by the Hoover Dam, reached yet another all-time low of 175 feet or 53 meters below full, a level that hasn’t been seen since the la
783
What I learned trying to classify abortion access across the rich world
Rich countries are not monolithic. However, outside the US and a few microstates, they vary in a limited range.
784
We could have universal Covid vaccines soon
Bureaucratic and logistical roadblocks, not the science, stand in our way
785
Training my sense of CO2 ppm
Posted on Thursday 14 Jul 2022. 1,157 words, 9 links. By Matt Webb.
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Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
As I noted in Part I, the general idea of using heat and steam for mechanical work had a long and continuous history back to ancient times. But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a…
787
Helion Needs You
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator. ...
788
A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results
Dr. John Taylor treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results, perhaps causing the death of both composers. Did it impact the course of Western music?
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Thoughts on the potato diet
Nine observations about what happens when you eat only potatoes
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Why is there no semantic ontology of sentiment in academic citations?
About a million years ago, I was discussing the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) ontology with its early proponents. It allowed you to define a machine-readable semantic relationship like "Alice is married to Bill" and "Bill is Carol's child" and "Carol works for David". That sort of thing. At the time, all the FOAF…
792
I should have loved biology
In biology class, biology wasn't presented as a quest for the secrets of life. The textbooks wrung out the questing.
793
Einstein-Bohr debate settled once and for all
In Steven Pinker’s guest post from last week, there’s one bit to which I never replied. Steve wrote: After all, in many areas Einstein was no Einstein. You [Scott] above all could speak…
794
Seriously bright light vs. winter blahs
Most SAD light therapy lamps are not bright enough. How to get brighter light than any you can buy!
795
High-intensity exercise, some new news
Several months I noticed something interesting (to me!) about my heart rate, and I thought about blogging about it…but I didn’t feel like it would be interesting (to you!) so I’ve been hesitant. But then the NYT published something that is kinda related and I thought OK, what the hell, maybe it’s time for an update…
796
How the US Air Force Ditched the Average and Saved Lives
The average is a myth. Understand the pitfalls of the average and how it can conceal useful information. How the US Air Force threw out the average and saved lives. Use distributions to better understand your data.
797
US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward orbital record
That Earth-circling U.S. military X-37B robotic space drone is closing in on a new long-duration record.
798
USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets
Since 2014, the US Dept. of Agriculture has a record of "burying" the science
799
Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
800
Potato diet community trial
In French, the word for potato is pomme de terre. This literally translates to apple of the earth. By this logic, potatoes are the lowest-hanging fruit of all. More seriously: We keep getting more …
801
802
Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier
The Wirecutter’s review of the IKEA air purifier is a mishmash of scientific errors, shoddy testing, and self-contradictory logic.
803
Why does science news suck so much?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
804
Consciousness is not computation
Spend enough time in the tech world and you will sooner or later find that itis a common article of faith that comput...
805
Alien intelligence and the concept of technology
Learn how alien intelligence connects to human intelligence through science and technology using the Principle of Computational Equivalence, the ruliad, rulial space, tiny spacecraft and the Wolfram Language.
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How far behind a plane is its noise?
If you’re ever near a relatively low flying airplane, you may have noticed that it sounds like it’s in a different spot in the sky than where it actually is. You can hear the loud engines, and your ears tell you it should be in one place, but your eyes tell you it’s clearly well ahead of its noise. It’s a funny visual…
808
The Philosophy of Linear Algebra (2021)
Whenever a student wonders why linear algebra, matrices, and vectors are important, the response from teachers usually sounds like this:
809
Generating true random numbers from bananas
It was a dreary afternoon in Milan last year when, procrastinating on studying, I was struck by a flash of genius. “What would happen if I made a banana-powered random number generator?“. I immediately went to tell my roommate, who was also an electronic engineer.He looked me in the face and burst out laughing. At ……
810
You need to know what right-half-plane zeros are
Why some systems -- as a consequence of their intrinsic dynamics -- require a control action that first pushes them the wrong way and makes things worse before it gets better.