Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
So what did you do today...?
I became an SVN wizard (note that I say wizard and not guru because I am not quite there yet...). I am now able to set up a new SVN repository on a machine and give remote users access to it in 15-30 mins. All it took to get me here was little sleep or food and an obsessive (there's that word again...) need to get it done. Oh, and yesterday I effectively became the team leader for an entire class full of people (including the teacher). It's been a long week.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Obsessive-compulsive
How obsessive-compulsively can one person check their email? It has become apparent to me that the less I can focus on actual work, the more frequently I check my various email accounts and look at the same news headlines over and over; I actually check my email accounts at 3am despite the fact that I know there will not be any new email. That's just sad... Oh! And I check the weather too. Well, that makes it all better doesn't it?
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Good Science vs. Bad
It is sadly easier to find examples of bad science than of good science (in mainstream media that is). Why this is true is not the subject of this post. Instead, I wanted to present to recent news blurbs that show an excellent comparison of good science to bad science. First, the bad science:
A few months ago, a company by the name of Steorn (company website here) announced to the world that they had designed and created what amounts to a perpetual motion machine. For anyone without a twisted love of science, this claim is of such intensity that if it were true it would effectively destroy a large section of what we thought we knew about the Universe; specifically, it would destroy the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Luckily for Steorn, we do not judge scientific claims based on their ability to fit into current scientific dogma. Instead, we allow the claimer to present their evidence and then we judge its soundness. However, to do so requires actual evidence. For evidence, Steorn presented an incredibly flashy website with many statements about how their work had been independently verified by many well-known scientist; unfortunately for us (and conveniently for Steorn), none of these scientists have been willing to come forward and admit it. Apparently, in Steorn-land science works differently and words are admissible as evidence. This is what we call: Bad Science. Some less scrupulous people call it other names such as Snake Oil, Nonsense, Lies, etc. However, we will not stoop to
that level and instead will simply say that we do not believe these claims to be accurate until real proof is presented for inspection. Now for the good science:
Just today, I read a posting about a microwave engineer (not someone who designs food-heaters) who believes he has discovered a way to generate thrust in, what is commonly referred to in SciFi as, a Reactionless Thruster (website here, paper here ). What this amounts to is basically a system that converts electrical energy into a force on a plate that then pushes that plate more than it pushes the thing doing the pushing. Uh oh! This begins to sound like more bad science because it appears that we are trying to violate the Equal and Opposite law; remember that every force on an object creates an equal and opposite force on the thing creating that force. So why isn't this a problem? Special relativity saves the day on this one. Simply put, the system uses relativistic particles to do the pushing and thus the events occur in different frames of reference. Buh? Ok, so I don't get it that well either but, since this is good science, that isn't important. But wait, I haven't actually shown why this is good science, so here it is: This engineer wrote up all of his theory about the idea, built a model, did measurements, and then published this all so that people could evaluate it. You can look at all of his work, theory, test, and examine any of it that you want. If he is wrong, that sucks but at least you can prove he's wrong.
But wait, is the difference between good and bad science really that simple? Yes it really is. If you can see the work and evaluate its merit, it's good science. If you have to take someone else's word for it, it's bad science.
A few months ago, a company by the name of Steorn (company website here) announced to the world that they had designed and created what amounts to a perpetual motion machine. For anyone without a twisted love of science, this claim is of such intensity that if it were true it would effectively destroy a large section of what we thought we knew about the Universe; specifically, it would destroy the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Luckily for Steorn, we do not judge scientific claims based on their ability to fit into current scientific dogma. Instead, we allow the claimer to present their evidence and then we judge its soundness. However, to do so requires actual evidence. For evidence, Steorn presented an incredibly flashy website with many statements about how their work had been independently verified by many well-known scientist; unfortunately for us (and conveniently for Steorn), none of these scientists have been willing to come forward and admit it. Apparently, in Steorn-land science works differently and words are admissible as evidence. This is what we call: Bad Science. Some less scrupulous people call it other names such as Snake Oil, Nonsense, Lies, etc. However, we will not stoop to
that level and instead will simply say that we do not believe these claims to be accurate until real proof is presented for inspection. Now for the good science:
Just today, I read a posting about a microwave engineer (not someone who designs food-heaters) who believes he has discovered a way to generate thrust in, what is commonly referred to in SciFi as, a Reactionless Thruster (website here, paper here ). What this amounts to is basically a system that converts electrical energy into a force on a plate that then pushes that plate more than it pushes the thing doing the pushing. Uh oh! This begins to sound like more bad science because it appears that we are trying to violate the Equal and Opposite law; remember that every force on an object creates an equal and opposite force on the thing creating that force. So why isn't this a problem? Special relativity saves the day on this one. Simply put, the system uses relativistic particles to do the pushing and thus the events occur in different frames of reference. Buh? Ok, so I don't get it that well either but, since this is good science, that isn't important. But wait, I haven't actually shown why this is good science, so here it is: This engineer wrote up all of his theory about the idea, built a model, did measurements, and then published this all so that people could evaluate it. You can look at all of his work, theory, test, and examine any of it that you want. If he is wrong, that sucks but at least you can prove he's wrong.
But wait, is the difference between good and bad science really that simple? Yes it really is. If you can see the work and evaluate its merit, it's good science. If you have to take someone else's word for it, it's bad science.
First post
So this is my first post and so I'll keep it short. I decided to make a blog because frankly, if I wrote this stuff to myself or, worse yet, just mumbled it to myself then I think I'd be committed. I figure this way, I can always make the excuse that I thought someone was reading and that I was therefore not just mumbling in the darkness...
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