So Here's the Interesting Part...

When I climbed on this soapbox, I had intended to take a lofty, high minded intellectual view. Alas... Last night I was watching the TV Show "Orville" episode 7 "Majority Rule" and it spoke to exactly the ideas I've been thinking about, so I couldn't resist sharing it. Orville, a Seth MacFarlane project, is a humorous take on Star Trek.  Obviously, spoilers ahead... Majority Rule Imagine a society guided by an absolute democracy. The population can vote yes or no on everything. There are no fixed laws. Actually, the only laws guide how votes are organized. At the age of 18, all citizens are issued and required to wear a little gadget on their chest with an up or down button and a running counts of "likes" vs "dislikes".  At some level (500,000 dislikes ?) individuals start to lose rights - like service at a cafe. At a very high level of 10 million dislikes, "criminals by acclimation" are required to undergo lobotomy-like r

truth NOUN [mass noun]            Origin: Old English trīewth, trēowth ‘faithfulness, constancy’ 1 The quality or state of being true. ‘he had to accept the truth of her accusation’ 1.1 (also  the truth ) That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. ‘tell me the truth’ ‘she found out the truth about him’ 1.2 [count noun] A fact or belief that is accepted as true. ‘the emergence of scientific truths’ ‘the fundamental truths about mankind’ It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I extremely critical of the Trump Regime.  However, if I am honest, I think that Donald Trump is a symptom a deeply divided society, not the cause of it.   I have a new soapbox... The fundamental, basic characteristic of this divide is our societies' tenuous relationship with the concept of TRUTH.  I'm not sure yet if this is a cause or symptom, but its deeply involved.  I decided to put some thought in to this and consider what we mean by TRUTH. The definitio

Have you ever heard the expression "Three times in a Blue Moon"? Of course you haven't. Nobody has. Nonetheless, as we move into 2010, I've heard or seen three relatively reputable sources define the Blue Moon of New Years Eve, incorrectly! So what the heck is a blue moon? Clearly I'm not talking about the Marcel's #1 Hit in 1961... Just to cut to the chase. First the facts, The full moon rising on New Years Eve 2009 is called a "Blue Moon". The last time a Blue Moon rose on New Years Eve was 1990. The current, common, correct definition of a "blue moon" is a 2nd Full Moon in a month. The more correct definition is when any of the four seasons contain 4 full moons, the 3rd is called a Blue Moon(on average, seasons contain only 3 full moons.) Obviously there is some history here - that's the really interesting part. Here's the evolution according to Sky and Telescope Magazine. At some point in history, talking about

Mistletoe-a parasite?! The beautiful holiday spirit of romantic kisses-a parasite?! I couldn't believe it when my wife Julie pointed out an ugly tangle in a treetop. I'd assumed it was a crow's nest. Somehow, my mental model (completely based on a total lack of real information), was of a robust, yet beautiful climbing ivy full of European romance and charm. Of course, Julie is right. So I thought I'd like to know more about it and plant parasitism, in general. What we think of as mistletoe from myth and fable, is European Mistletoe or Viscum album . In fact the "Golden Bough" of Greek Myth was probably Viscum. It is a member of the Santalales order and specifically the family Loranthaceae . Originally, all mistletoes were contained in the family Loranthaceae , but they have now been expanded into three additional families in the same order ( Misodendraceae, Eremolepidaceae, Santalaceae ). The largest family of mistletoe, Loranthaceae ¸ contains over 900 spec

Most people know, at least in broad brush strokes, HOW? autumn leaves turn out to be so colorful. I was wondering WHY? and Why so many colors? Just to clear up the HOW? part... At the most general level, when the weather turns colder, deciduous (leafy) trees stop making green pigment and the remaining underlying colors are revealed. More specifically, as the in the late summer, the veins in leafy trees start to constrict and the production of the compound responsible for photosynthesis, chlorophyll, is down regulated through the reduction of a single protein FtsH6. As the chlorophyll synthesis is reduced, the remaining chlorophyll is converted to a colorless set of compounds called NCCs (nonfluorescent chlorophyll catabolites) As the chlorophyll ebbs, three specific pigments are revealed: Carotonids are the yellow and orange colors in leaves. They are present all year long and concentrated in structures called plastids. Note that this is a class of compounds and lots of the yellow co

The other day, I had a "vigorous" discussion with a hard core physical scientist friend of mine about my general assertion that we "create our own reality". He suggested that there was something fundamentally inconsistent about this view and my role as a research scientist. It got me thinking about what I really meant. What about the physical world? I accept (and generally rely upon) the fact that gravity exists independent of me. The chemical structure of a the minerals in the pebble sitting on the ground in front of me is known (not by me, but someone probably knows). A complex process like evolution occurs over times scales that make my lifetime, and therefore my perceptions and experiences, insignficant. All of these observations are "facts" that a large number of people (if not everyone) agree upon. Starting with a minimal set of real things, most people would agree that if something can be measured, its real. (Note that this doesn't imply the rev