While working out, my brother and I were chatting about goals for 2025. These aren’t New Year’s resolutions that are vague and optimistic, but actionable tasks that are specific, measurable and recorded. It’s the difference between “start working out” and “go to the gym twice per week”
Nature: Best Science Images of 2024
Take a minute to check out those images, they are quite splendid. Well, a couple weren’t great, but the rest are amazing.
Sparky and I are relaxing with coffee, and he wanted me to post this photo of an ermine chimneying up a crack. Sparky told me that if he didn’t have to be my spirit animal, he’d quite like to be a dog weasel.
It was a bit harsh to remind him that I got him a weazel ball, and he is afraid of it. A weazel ball is a little scary looking. He doesn’t like how the weazel ball lurches around when it’s turned on.
Sparky was getting defensive. He shouldn’t start the day in a grumpy mood, so I reassured him. I said that when I met him at the orphanage, I thought he was a dog weasel. That was two years and 5 pounds ago, but he is still pretty weaselly.
That perked him up, and he thought we should try the weazel ball again. This year, Sparky has gained experience with RC cars, so buzzing, lurching motion may not be as unsettling.
The 20th Century was the Century of Physics. In 1905, Einstein published his “Special Theory of Relativity”, and up to about World War 2, modern physics was established. Very little of modern physics corresponds with what we experience in daily life, but it’s been experimentally verified and is used in current technology.
Physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, and others debated the new theories, and tried to make some sense of the universe.
Science Alert: Owning a cat could make you a schizophrenic
Having a cat as a pet could potentially double a person’s risk of schizophrenia-related disorders, according to a recent study.
Full disclosure: I am biased against cats. I am convinced that having a cat isn’t nearly as good as having Sparky. Except for barn cats. If I had a real barn, I’d have barn cats.
Even with my bias, if a person wants a cat, don’t worry about this study. The risk of schizophrenia is seven in a thousand. A fourteen in a thousand chance is very low, and other risk factors are more pertinent.
Habitually smoking a mess of pot increases the risk about as much.
February 6th, 2018, Elon Musk demonstrated that launching objects into orbit had become a mundane commercial activity. To make it interesting, the object he put in orbit was a Tesla Roadster that has since traveled over a million miles and made four laps around the sun. Where is the Roadster now?
Oh, I’m not missing anything. Sparky and I talk all the time. For example, the photo above, Sparky is saying, “Are we going for a walk, or what? We aren’t going to prom, just put some pants on and let’s go.”
At this point, it would be easier to list the Covid statements that were true and backed by scientific evidence.
City Journal: Unscientific American
My fourth year teaching at Normandy, I was the department chair. My department was concerned that students didn’t know the scientific method. I taught all Physics and Honors Physics, so figured my kids certainly knew how science worked. Sure, they could list some steps, but they couldn’t really think scientifically.
Around the same time, John Stossel, at ABC News, had done a special on pseudoscience, called, The Power of Belief. It seems a little quaint now, but it was an engaging look at unscientific beliefs that were popular in the culture. Magic crystals, past lives, faith healing, past lives, that sort of thing.
Being naturally lethargic, marijuana isn’t for me. Being naturally libertarian, I don’t care what other people do so long as it doesn’t ruin things for everyone else.
The “marijuana is good for everything and has no downsides” angle that shows up most in media sounds too much like propaganda. The Reefer Madness side isn’t convincing either.
A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.
Marijuana is everywhere. People should be a little more concerned.
For starters, she says, the “addiction potential of marijuana is as high or higher than some other drug,” especially for young people. About 30% of those who use cannabis have some degree of a use disorder. By comparison, only 13.5% of drinkers are estimated to be dependent on alcohol. Sure, alcohol can also cause harm if consumed in excess. But Ms. Madras sees several other distinctions.
Professor Madras sounds scientific, impartial and alarmed. I don’t know if she is correct, but more actual scientific research and informed policy would be prudent.
Instead of bankrolling ballot initiatives to legalize pot, she says, George Soros and other wealthy donors who “catalyzed this whole movement” should be funding rigorous research:
George Soros seems evil and only funds chaos in order to undermine civilization, so this is troubling. Maybe I’m wrong.
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