Good morning!

October 7, 2014 • 5:08 am

Carly Simon (b. 1945) seems to have disappeared from the music scene, but for a while she was very visible. Her reluctance to perform live and her stage fright were famous, but they’re not at all visible in this wonderful rendition of one of her classic songs, “That’s the way I’ve always heard it should be.” It was written by Simon and Jacob Brackman, released in 1971, and performed here that same year in Central Park. You’ll recognize the two men chatting before the songs begins.

The song was quite unusual for its time, for it’s a bittersweet ballad about a woman, daughter of a bad marriage, who’s pondering getting married herself, plagued by thoughts of other bad marriages she’s seen and the faults of her partner. Ultimately she decides to “settle,” something I’ve seen many times among my acquaintances.

It has not escaped my notice that Simon married James Taylor the next year, a marriage that lasted eleven years and produced two children.

As Wikipedia notes about the song, “Elektra staffers were worried the single was too emotionally complex to be released as Simon’s first single.” Good thing they decided to go ahead with it: it’s not only a fantastic song, but it made Simons’s reputation.

 

Nobel Prize for Physics goes to three who invented a light-emitting diode

October 7, 2014 • 3:11 am

This happened about 45 minutes ago, and here’s my CNN bulletin

This year’s Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources,” the awarding committee said.

The committee said the trio’s work is in keeping with the spirit of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the prize, because LED lights have ushered in a new energy- and environmentally-friendly light source.

The Nobel prizes in chemistry, literature and economic sciences will be announced later this week, as will the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Guardian actually had live-blogging of the Prize’s announcement, here. And there’s already a video of the announcement on YouTube, first in Swedish and then in English. I’d never seen the actual announcement of the award. I suppose the winners are called immediately thereafter.

The Guardian also showed a list of the physics prizes divided by field (below), with the note:

The dominance of particle physics owes in large part to the flurry of particle discoveries in the 60s and 70s. Last year’s prize followed experimental confirmation of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider, but the prize went for theoretical work in the 1960s that described how some fundamental particles acquire mass.

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First case of Ebola contracted outside Africa

October 6, 2014 • 12:24 pm

I’m still not worried that Ebolo is going to become a pandemic outside of west Africa, but this bulletin, just in from CNN, is worrisome:

A nurse’s assistant in Spain is the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa in the current outbreak.

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato announced that a test confirmed the assistant has the virus. She had helped treat a Spanish missionary who contracted Ebola in West Africa.

I hope the Spanish have proper containment facilities.

The only science “bot” (and cat) on the list

October 6, 2014 • 12:22 pm

Matthew sent me a copy of his tw**t this morning about Science’s new and expanded list of “science Twi**er stars”:

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When I saw this, I told Matthew that I didn’t know what he meant by “bot.” He replied that my Twi**er feed was a “notification list,” i.e., simply an automated list of the posts made on this website. Well, that’s true, and so perhaps I’m the only scientist on the list who has never composed an original tw**t (I’ve dropped to #67 since they expanded the list to include economists and underrepresented groups who qualified but were missed in the original compilation.)

I’ve just been informed, though, via a tw**t by Kristy Rawson also by Matthew, that Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist, also does what I do—feeding his website and columns directly to Twi**er). And he’s high up there at #4 (see below).

Here are the top five “stars,” but go to Science if you really must see them all:

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I have no plans to tw**t, although perhaps some day I’ll issue just one original tw**t for the hell of it. The way I look at it, you can tw**t or you can write a website, but if you do both you’ll have no time to do anything else. Sam Harris does both, but he doesn’t allow comments on his website, and doing so is time-consuming.

Anyway, I’m proud to be the only science “bot” (if that is indeed the case) and also to be the only scientist whose picture is not of a human. It’s Hili! (I do note, though, that Paul Krugman is a cat-lover, as he and his wife own two moggies, and he sometimes writes about them on his website.)

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What’s next: a list of scientists who have the most Facebook friends?

Vatican waffles on enforcing children’s rights outside of Vatican City

October 6, 2014 • 11:07 am

As far as I can see, Vatican City isn’t a member of the United Nations, but it’s been taken to task by the UN for covering up Church-related cases of sexual abuse. And the Vatican’s response was neither silence, stonewalling, nor even denial, but a ludicrous defense that it has no power to enforce priests’ behavior outside the confines of Vatican City. As the Associated Press reports in a piece picked up by many papers (here it’s USA Today, published Sept. 26):

The Vatican accused a U.N. human rights committee on Friday of sowing confusion and violating its own norms and the church’s religious freedom with a report into the Holy See’s record on child sexual abuse.

The Vatican released its formal response to a February report by the U.N. committee on the rights of the child. The committee monitors implementation of the key U.N. child rights treaty.

After publicly grilling the Holy See in a daylong hearing, the committee concluded that the Vatican maintained a “code of silence” that enabled priests to sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide over decades with impunity.

You can see the UN’s report on the “Holy See” here. Besides the child abuse problem, the committee criticized the Vatican’s position on abortion, homosexuality, and women’s rights. The Vatican’s response? (my emphasis):

In its response, the Vatican complained that the committee “dismissed or ignored” the measures it had taken to combat abuse.

At the same time though, the Holy See insisted that it is only responsible for implementing the treaty in Vatican City, a tiny city state in the center of Rome.

Suggestions by the committee that it was responsible for implementing it in Catholic institutions around the world violates the concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of states and “offers a controversial new approach to ‘jurisdiction’ which clearly contradicts the general understanding of this concept in international law,” the Vatican said.

The “profundity of confusion” sown by the committee over jurisdiction “has led to a grave misunderstanding of the Holy See’s legal obligations under the convention,” the Vatican said.

That’s about as weaselly as you can get.  The Church falls back on “legal obligations,” yet neglects the moral obligations that should certainly fall to an institution that sees itself as a beacon of moral leadership.  And of course the Church can take action to prevent child abuse, for every priest is ultimately responsible to Rome.

As for changes in abortion, forget it:

[The Vatican] accused the committee of having made “fundamentally flawed” interpretations of the church’s legal system and of making a “completely unacceptable” recommendation that the Holy See change its law on abortion. The committee had urged the Vatican to identify circumstances when abortion services could be permitted, such as to save the life of a pregnant young girl.

One would think that, given all the trouble in Ireland and elsewhere about women in medical distress being refused abortions by Catholic hospitals, the Church might rethink its policy. But of course its policy comes from God, and is therefore unchangeable. Abortion is murder, even if it’s needed to save the life of the mother or if a fetus results from rape or incest. Is there any Christian organization more odious than Catholicism?

Thanks, Pope Francis.

 

Two industrious spiders, one with math skills

October 6, 2014 • 9:42 am

Today we have two overachieving arachnids.

First, from the Torygraph’s picture gallery for today:

The incredible spider’s web which appeared in front of Russell Harding s garage door. A pensioner could not believe his eyes when he stepped outside his front door and almost walked into this spider’s web – which spanned six foot. Russell Harding, 74, was shocked when he spotted the huge web as he went to carry out some early morning work in his garage. The web, which spread the gap between his car’s wing mirror and his shed and had an inch and a half spider sat in the middle.

From Matthew: The spider is a European Garden Spider, and is obviously substantially closer to the camera than the garage door (if not, the spider would be truly immense…) In fact, we could probably work out how far away the spider and the garage food are with a bit of trigonometry. If we assume that the spider is 3 cm long (max) and the panels on the garage door are 12 cm high, what is the distance between the camera and the spider and the spider and the door?

 

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Picture: Russell Harding/SWNS

Also from Matthew:

Another great web, also apparently by a European garden spider, was tw**eted by @MikeWil, from imgur user Reverseloop. This spider found an amazing solution to a major problem. It wanted to slid its web across the top of a garage, but the angle of the roof was so shallow that it couldn’t anchor the web. So in a fit of industrious genius, it found a rock, and dropped that down on a thread, to hold the bottom of the web. As Mike said ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

View up to the roof – you can just see the web at the top

View post on imgur.com

And here’s a close-up showing the webbing connecting the thread to the pebble:

View post on imgur.com

You can see more on Reverseloop’s imgur page.

h/t: Roo

Reader’s book

October 6, 2014 • 8:46 am

Today Reader Don Bredes published a new book, which falls in the category”Young adult fantasy” (a fast-growing genre!). You can find it on either Amazon or the publisher’s website, Green Writers Press.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

Set in a much-diminished America called the Christian Protectorates, a poor country ravaged by coastal flooding, drought, and catastrophic social upheaval, the novel features 15-year-old Polly Lightfoot, a maiden witch of deep heritage and tender ability in the craft.  When her identity is exposed, Polly is forced to flee New Florida, where she has taken refuge from a military purge of the country’s infidels, pagans, and followers of false creeds.  With the help of her steadfast familiar, a raven named Balthazar, and her brave teenage companion, Leon, Polly undertakes a harrowing journey from the troubled south to the wild north to rejoin her people in Vermont and save her ancient craft from obliteration.

Polly and the One and Only World presents a frighteningly vivid depiction of our stricken land in the stifling grip of fundamentalists and suffering the grim consequences of climate calamity.  Yet the story’s dire vision will inspire readers of every age to appreciate their own freedom and their capacity, today, to work for positive social and political change.

Given that it deals with the evils of fundamentalism, there’s a WARNING from the publisher:

We are aware that in some communities the book’s controversial themes will encounter threats of banning—which does not deter us in the least from publishing it.  This is a novel that will move youthful minds and stir valuable and timely discussion wherever it finds readers.  Watch for it—OCTOBER 6TH PUB DATE.

And, as Don wrote me, “This is a book that, in the end, stands to inspire younger readers (and older ones, too) to resist theocratic oppression in this country and to support policies that protect the world that has nurtured all of us for thousands of years.”

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It might make a nice Christmas present for heathen teens.