Interesting Links for 14-3-2011

[andrewducker]

• New O2 age verification blocks Brook charity.
  (tags: o2 censorship children web)
• Bring me stuff that's dead, please - why the best work happens after a technology is dead.
  (tags: technology funny creativity)
• Creative Commons license upheld in court.
  (tags: Law copyright creativecommons)
• Lib Dems vote against NHS reforms. Coalition now signalling a change of plans
  (tags: libdem government nhs uk)
• Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation (that explains that there was, and is, no danger).
  (tags: japan nuclear science earthquake fukushima)
• This is pretty much my (and Julie's) relationship with the internet
  (tags: internet funny comic addiction)
• Terrifying first-person video footage of the Japanese tsunami
  (tags: japan tsunami video)
• Blog in the Telegraph excoriates the Historians Against AV for not knowing their history...
  (tags: av voting uk)
• Japan Earthquake: before and after. Amazing and disturbing.
  (tags: japan photography earthquake tsunami)
• People believe all sorts of unbelievably stupid things (20% in lightsabres, 40% in hoverboards).
  (tags: science people stupidity uk)

Comments

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

"5. Nearly one fifth (18%) of adults have the incorrect view that they can see gravity."

Well you can...sorta... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens

Alright, maybe that's not what he meant :D

[andrewducker]

Tricky one, actually. I mean, you can see the effects of gravity on objects. But we can't usually directly see anything that doesn't either create or perturb photons.

So, yeah.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I guess technically all we see are photons and what we actually see are the wavelengths not absorbed by the object reflecting the photons, so all we see are the effects of objects on photons.

In the same respect gravitational lensing is the effect of objects on photons (via curved spacetime).

So it's the same.

Technically.

But that's a bit of a cop out, as that's not what most people think of as seeing :)

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Technically we can't see photons either. If we could, we'd be blind cos all that "empty" air is full of the damn things and they'd blot out everything else.

[andrewducker]

We can see them - but only when they're so close that they're actually inside the eye :-p

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

If "seeing" is the brain interpreting the impact of photons on the rods and cones in the eye then we can't see anything until the photon has been absorbed, so we only see once the photon no longer exists. We "see" the information the photons transmitted but not the photons themselves :p :)

[andrewducker]

I do know that :-p

And yes, at that kind of level concepts like "sight", "hearing" and indeed "heat" cease to actually make much sense.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

An awesome thing to see would be a simulation of what it would look like if you could see all the photons...I wonder how you'd make it viewable, maybe various levels of transparency depending on the number of photons of any colour from each direction.

Either way, all we can see are the effects of objects on photons on our eyes. A bit third hand if you ask me.

[khoth.livejournal.com]

I wonder what people did actually mean. Is there something these people are seeing that they think is gravity? (Or are they maybe saying they can see the effects of gravity?)

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I've a feeling those 20% were a mix of technical science people talking about the effects and hippies.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I would not be surprised at all if memory erasing technology exists. We know what parts of the brain memory is stored in and memory erasure would have huge military applications. If we haven't figured out how to do it yet, I'm sure we will eventually.

And, there are some scientists who do think that it is possible to travel at faster than the speed of light using string theory and dark matter to create a bubble that would ride through the 10th spacial dimension. Granted, we aren't even close to developing the technology we'd need to do that yet, but that doesn't mean we eventually won't (particularly as Earth starts running out of resources and we eventually need to go someplace else.)

[simont]

The trick isn't erasing memory, it's avoiding damaging anything else at the same time. If you just want to deal with the problem that somebody knows an important secret they can't be trusted with, spy thrillers have known the answer to that for decades!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

But I bet eventually we'll figure out how to do that - and you can't convince me governments aren't trying to figure out how to do that.

It would simply be too useful.

[andrewducker]

Well, _eventually_ we'll have a thorough understanding of how the brain works, at which point it will be entirely feasible. At the moment even knowing where the memories are requires opening up your skull. Easier to just shoot people who know inconvenient things.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Right. But my point being if a pollster asked me if I thought memory erasure was "possible" I'd say "yes" - not meaning that I'm sure we can do it now, just meaning that I believe it's possible and will happen eventually.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, the bits of your brain used for any given function are constantly in flux. The bit of your brain mapped to the tips of your fingers changes constantly and will change massively if you suddenly take up touch typing or playing the piano.

There's also evidence that your brain constantly destroys old memories as you use them and recreates them elsewhere, moving the bit of memory around constantly.

On the other hand, with a brain scanner and the right knowledge you might be able to point to where the memory was and where it had just been moved and zap a point inside the brain without opening the skull. Almost certainly. Probably within the next few decades I'd guess.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I still find it mildly flabbergasting -- not to say just a bit naff -- that nuclear reactors are basically a steam turbine with a fancy way of heating the water...

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's basically still magnets and coils :->

I think pretty much the only thing that doesn't work that way is solar power. And even then the most efficient methods of solar power are concentrating heating on something to create steam and drive a turbine.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's just a really powerful tea kettle when you get down to basics. Alas, there is not yet a better way of turning the energy released by fissioning heavy elements into electricity. (This also applies to geothermal and solar-thermal plants, as well as the ye aulde coal-fired plants.) Hydroelectric is even more primitive that way (think "water wheel") as are wind turbines (hand me my lance, Sancho) when you get down to it.

-- Steve will also note that most speculative designs for hydrogen fusion plants also resolve down to ultrasophisticated versions of James Watt's doohicky, too.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this:

https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/brayton-cycle-turbines/ - turbines based on supercritical CO2.

[andrewducker]

That's pretty damned awesome.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I thought you might like it :)

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

O2 age verification is an astounding pain in the ass.

HotSpot Shield does away with it
http://hotspotshield.com/

[andrewducker]

Is it that hard to register to turn it off?

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

i have no idea. Nor do I have any intention of finding out.

while I understand that O2 may have an obligation to censor potential harmful bits of interweb, I object to them throwing a paid gateway in my face.

even if the refund would actually put me in profit.

Besides, Hotspot Shield also lets me watch Colbert.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

important note - I installed HSS specifically to watch Colbert / Daily show, not because of O2.

it just so happens it works around that as well.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

No.

I phoned up today. I got a lowly call-centre girl, which somewhat took the wind out of my righteous indignation since she wasn't to blame. She read from her script about "protecting under-eighteens" with some trepidation. I said things like "I'm over 18 and I want the internet that I paid for, all of it, uncensored". I didn't have to use a credit card. It is unblocked on the same day.

[andrewducker]

Good. I'm glad that they're at least doing that.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. Although I'm suddenly filled with paranoia that setting something like that up would be an excellent way of scarfing the data people want secret :)

(And presumably if the filter were run by anyone who cared, they could block any sucg site if it became popular enough but presumably they don't andf won't)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The Fukishima explanation was really good.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

People believe all sorts of unbelievably stupid things

I prefer to think that many of these people were simply joking - it's truly terrifying if they aren't. Such people voting would go a long way towards explaining some people's voting choices and quite honestly calls the wisdom of democracy into question (at least for me).

Lib Dems vote against NHS reforms. Coalition now signalling a change of plans

You folks really dodged a bullet on that.

[andrewducker]

The reforms wouldn't have produced a US style system, thankfully. Politicians suggesting that wouldn't stand a chance of election over here.