mathematical video for the day/ from Poincare to Whittaker to Ford

For the longest time, Euclidean geometry was considered like the physics of the world.  Everyone knows Einstein's theories of Relativity changed all that; but, before then, there was much non-Euclidean geometries already developed.  Poincare's half-plane models two of those non-Euclidean geometries.  There's connections between Poincare's half-plane model and hyperbolic geometry as well.   Hyperbolic geometry turns out to be the more fundamental perspective in modern mathematics.  This includes trigonometry.  This perspective goes all the way to William Thurston's classification of three dimensional geometry and the Poincare conjecture proved recently.

On the number side, set theory replaced number as the fundamental mathematics in the 1800s.  Mathematically, mankind is still living in the 1800s.  I've seen many mathematicians who, when they say their into the history of mathematics as their hobby, they mean the history of 1800s mathematics.

----------------------------science news for the day

Being able to throw objects might be unique to the line of Bipedal primates that led to Homo Sapiens

Monkey, Apes certainly throw things, but are they comparatively good at it? Maybe not as good as Homo Erectus and maybe Australopithacines. The observation that humans and anatomically maybe Homo Erectus might be uniquely good at throwing objects for hunting is interesting.  But, I noted that throwing objects could have been used to fend off predators as well.

I wonder if Homo Erectus tried to throw objects at the sun and moon?  To try to see if they could reach them!

thought for the day/Elon Musk is today's Werner Von Braun!

So, everybody doesn't want to be a Werner Von Braun, and they don't want to acknowledge facts. So, Werner Von Braun was a rocket enthusiasts who ended up working for the military which then went bad on him(the German military was the German military before the Nazi's took over; then, they took over . . . Werner Von Braun also did not wear a Nazi uniform till six years after in 1939 . . . I hope I've made the facts suggestively clear enough for the unbiased mind to see that Werner was just interested in furthering his rocketry research).  So, if you don't want your society to go bad on you, then you should criticize your society, not what's right and wrong, and fight against wrong. 

So, o.k. lets fight against irrationalist, messianic/end of the world, "we are the chosen ones(god giving the covenant to whomever believes in him . . . inevitably this is someone, some human being telling you what they think this god's covenant is and who this god is) religion. 

I've written a "Gospel of Truth" which is the first post of this blog.  I've shown it to active comparative mythologists(the only people with a critical view of religion); and, they don't say anything; so, I'll call it very good.

---------------------------------------------crazy science/technology for the day,

There's of course been some pretty good nanotech lately,

Here's dna-nanotechnology making artificial photsynthesis possible

colloidal chemistry meets nano polymers to make arbitrary nanostructures , I'd like to show some colloidal chemistry that James Burke shows in his Connections, episode 10,

It's around 7:30 minutes.  I've seen some colloidal chemistry advances before, but the above is pretty exciting.  The advance practically meets all the definitions for nanomanufacturing.

Here's a pretty exciting general science article,

Oldest primate fossil found in China , When Anthropologists tried to find evidence for the evolution of mankind, they went from Africa to Asia and Indonesia right above Australia.  They eventually found Homo Erectus in China, but they found Human evolution goes furthest in Africa.  Recently, because of Ardi, they've come to realize that the line from Homo Sapiens to primates doesn't go through apes or anything else.  Ardi is a radically alien primate.  They've really had to push much further back to find when our line splits from the other primates of today.   They've found it goes back seven million years and in current China!

thought for the day/ The Great Exhibition of 1851

According to some, Great Britain held the first world fair of industry and technology(most technology than science; Charles Darwin apparently attended it).  As the wiki says, it was in response to a famous French exhibition of science and technology. The wiki article links to a list of exhibitions going back to 1756 and all the way to today and tomorrow!

I've heard of many of these futuristic and current latest technology fairs before looking up the history.  George Hale and his first refractor telescope was at a Chicago world's fair in the 1890s.  James Burke mentions one in his Connections episode 7,

 

 

 

I had figured the world's fairs had gone away at some point due to the amount of science and technology conferences getting to be so many so often.  But, as indicated, they've continued with these to some extent.  Turning around, that means the world isn't so concerned about these things as perhaps they once were.

 

 

The world's fairs generally led to the building of great architecture cultureal centers for whomever hosted it.  The British worlds fair building of 1851 burned down in 1936.  For me, I can't help noting maybe not quite a world's fair, but something like it that left Balboa park of San Diego,

 

San Diego's Balboa park . . . Spanish architecture

 

 

Much of the great architecture before the World's fairs were for Kings/Pharohs, religious temples in general.

 

--------------------------------------------science/technology extra,

 

The latest ability to bring down the costs of dna-nanotechnology using synthetic biology(genetically engineered bacteria) appears to be making noise.

 

 



Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question"

Image Credit: UV: NASA, Swift, S. Immler (Goddard) & M. Siegel (Penn State); Optical: Axel Mellinger (CMU)


Isaac Asimov - The Last Question

Isaac Asimov's "Extraterrestrial Civilizations" and "The Last Question" are probably his two major and most important contributions/writings. His "Extraterrestrial Civilizations" argued for the "rare earth hypothesis" before those guys wrote their "Rare Earth" hypothesis. He points out numerous problems and hence conditions for intelligent life(not just bacterial, or non-technological life) to arise on a planet.  I've seen nothing to suggest otherwise.

  Isaac's "The Last Question" shows that the pressure for a technological species to expand throughout the universe is great. Getting back to Isaac's "Extraterrestrial Civilization", there's a famous Fermi question.  At the time Fermi asked it, the Earth was finally dated by radiocarbon dating; the Big Bang Universe had been suggested at least.  At the time, the age of the universe was anywhere from ten to twenty billion years old.  The Earth and its solar system were determined to be 4.5 billion years old.  Considering that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the Human technological species has grown up just over the last 4 million years ago(it's been pushed to seven million years now; but, that depends on where you want to draw the line; the real question is not just bipedalism, but the use of stones as technology; one could keep the date to 3 to 4 million years), well, that gives anywhere from four billion years to maybe fifteen billion years for a technolical species to expand throughout the galaxy at least.  Fermi asked, "where are they?"

One could generalize this with the latest understanding of the technologies Humanity Is likely to develop this century(is developing right now) - nanomanufacturing and quantum computers.  Nanomanufacturing would give rise to A.I. at least.  Bottom line, those who have explored these issues realize the industrial revolution is like a match stick next to a nuclear bomb. One all these technologies are in hand, space exploration will be easy.  Likewise for any other technological species throughout the cosmos, and as we just saw the timeframes with the history of the Earth as a minimum standard, Extraterrestrial species(compared to us of course) should be zooming all over the galaxy.  But, they are not!

People make all kinds of excuses; space is large.  But then, they argue for an abundance of technological species due to the "law of large numbers"(goes back to one of the Bernoulies).  They just make an excuse for whatever is convenient. As Isaac Asimov demonstrates in his "The Last Question", there's great pressure for a technological species to expand throughout the cosmos.  So, where are they?

---------------------------------------------science/technology news extra for the day!

I've reported some advances that help the speed of dna-nanomanufacturing, the bringing down of the price for every individual dna strand.  I might have noted that advances in bringing down the costs of dna and hence dna-nanomanufacturing will probably happen over all those reported.  Well, it's happened!

enzymatic(and bacterial factory really) production of arbitrary dna strands.

Once again, not going to say there might not be advances beyond this; but, this advance seems to be a very general capability over the previous advances.

I've also seen that the synthetic biology people(engineering bacteria to produce arbitrary medical or fuels and who knows what else) have got contracts to fuel aircraft carriers with biofuels!

The nanomanufacturing news has been a little quiet(except 3d printing!); but, I suspect it has more to do with various groups are probably working to bootstrap from dna-nanomanufacturing to something more robust, and then from there to full Feynman/Drexlerian daimondoid nanomanufacturing.

-------------------------------------------------quote for the day

"Perhaps an ideal that permeates an epoch has certain consequences for the individual experiencing the era, an ideal that in retrospect cannot really be grasped by anyone. Under such conditions, when a human life is seen and lived as a persistent and on-going struggle between constructive and destructive forces - an arena in which the decisive victory of good should triumph - one's very awareness of ones destiny and vocation on earth was etched into one's very strength, autonomy and identity." - Arild Stubhaug

astro picture for the day

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Some of my favorite fiction(sci-fi movie) kind of scientific humanist soundbites,

and,

Note for the day,

As of May 23, 2013, I'm making an astronomical images extra blog.  So, instead of stuffing every new interesting astronomical image without any thought for the day, and that post getting ridiculously long, I'm just going to post them all on this new side blog of astronomical images extras!

http://extraastronomypictures.blogspot.com/

astro picture for the day/ more about cults/gangs/religions

Credit: ESO

thought for the day -

John Romer in his "Byzantium, The Lost Empire: 1. Building the Dream", says the Roman empire didn't just 'fall.'  It just got poor, and Byzantium just got rich." The truth is that the Roman empire as I've shown throughout this blog was destroyed by an inner religious war. I'll just quote Saint John Chrysostom again, ""5. And as for the writings of the Greeks, they are all put out and vanished," This is in Saint John Chrsostom's "Homily 2 on the Gospel of John". As I had pointed out in my "Gospel of Truth", religion makes these contradictory vague tactics; I gave examples of God telling Moses that "I am that I am", and I'm forgetting a New testament example. 

Mathematics and Mythology share a common property, that of analogy. Back tens of thousands of years ago and even over two to three thousand years ago, mankind took steps to move from vague mythology to precise analogy of mathematics.  Many things can take on many different forms.  For instance, the the ancients from the Greeks to the Judahites new that water, ice were two different forms for the same thing.  Thales tried to understand everything as water.  But, also one form can be expressed as by more than one content.  This is abstraction; this is one of the major properties of mathematics. What mathematics does above and beyond mythology is structural linkages.  Everything has structure.  Kind of like a sentence; a sentence has a verb which links elements/nouns together.  One could keep the nouns/elements the same and vary the verb/relation and get many different forms for the same content(nouns/elements), or one could keep the verb/relation the same and vary the elements; this is abstraction.  In mathematics, we can make relations between abstractions by noting that different abstractions share a common element or a common relation. Numbers can be generated by counting processes; but, what about relations between the numbers?  One could add.  In counting, one maps from one set to another, and if they are the same, then they are in the same abstract concept/number.  Addition is also a mapping; it maps from sets of numbers to another number.  It also generalized and makes numbers more precise than they were from counting.  This is all well and good, but as mathematical science as opposed to mythological science/magic from the pre-real knowledge of the universe from mathematics progressed, the mythologists didn't like the idea of accepting that their old ideas were wrong.  Do I need to bring up Galileo and the creationist debate?  What I've shown throughout this blog is that while yes, mythology and art is a great formative stage of mankind, the mythologists seem to believe in their religions for more than truth.  And, they'll do anything and resort to evasive vague games to avoid having to learn(learning is the human strength that allows humanity to grow and prosper).  The John Romer language technique more or less quoted above is one example of the religious style of thinking.

I should also state that rational intellectuals(as opposed to irrational intellectuals; Christians consider themselves intellectuals) solve their problems by reason, not violence.  Now, the irrationalists might resort to evasive language at first, if that doesn't work, they gang up on you and if they can, they'll go to violent means.  Do I have to point out the fight between the Christians and muslims, the muslims and the Buddists and Hindus with one another?  Much less the fight between mathematics and religion?

Back to these evasive language tactics.  The general structure of these mentalities is kind of deal making.  There's the famous Pascal's wager, "if you don't believe, and god exists, then when you die, you go to hell." The old testament is practically this whole "Pascal's wager" thousands of years earlier and recasting the whole history of the Judahite region in this light. Now for a kind of list of examples.

James Burke makes a few 'white lie' examples of his own!  In episode 2 of his connections, he says, "nobody knows who; fanatical Christians/fanatical Arabs" in respect to who burned down the Library of Alexandria.  The truth is both did at different times; both did so for the reason of anti-science and that both didn't want to question their religion.  In 'tdtus' episode 3, Mr Burke says that those who painted the walls with Christian scenes did so not because they were stupid; they just had different priorities when splashing paint around." Here we see that people fear pointing out the truth, and to let the poor stupid ones who will strangle you for pointing out they're wrong, they find a evasive vague language technique to kind of slip the truth in easier.

In James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed", or 'tdtuc' for short, Episode 2, he relates how the Church around 1300 made a deal with everyone playing around with the Aristotle logic recently discovered in the Arab-Spain translations, they said, "o.k. there's two kinds of truth; real world logical truth, and 'revealed truth' that you can only get from the churches interpretation of scripture."

Those who are socially bound up with old mythologies in one way or another will try to marry rational thought with irrational.  In 'tdtus' episode two again, Mr Burke shows that Chartres cathedral has a door on the west side, which has Capels's seven liberal arts. One of my favorite art pictures, Rafael's "School of Athens" is actually in the Vatican museum!

When people went to Arab-Spain to translate their works and discover Greek mathematical knowledge, they did so by dressing up and acting like an Arab.  The Christian Europeans didn't exactly conquere Andelucia by force. They did so by making deals and getting the Arabs socially bound up.  When the Arabs were too weak to fight, the books and great architecture of Andelucia was free for the taking without force.  How else is this

and  this

all in one piece today? 

The Christians did the same thing with the Vikings.  The Vikings were a pagan retaliation from the European Christians forcing everyone to their religion.  But, they were eventually socially bound up.

The crusades were often about sending off the local competition to some far away land.  While the patriotic crusaders were fighting in some distant land, those who stayed in Europe took control of their local lands.

In episode 4 of 'tdtus', Mr Burke notes how when people tried to collect inheritance after the black death, it was in the legal interest to make it all as long and tedious as possible.  The church took advantage of the effort to get to heaven by making people pay for 'indulgences.'  This is what paid for the Vatican as we see it today!

When Copernicus wrote his book, some monk wrote in the introduction that one should not fear this theory of Copernicus's; understand that this is just some theory.

Christopher Columbus figured out how to deal with people that refuse to think about new ideas and experiment and explore.  When someone turns you down(playing vagueness games; refusing to learn), go to someone else.  Just when Columbus was about to go to the French, the Spanish changed their minds!  This would be episode three of his "The Day the Universe Changed."

I won't link to any more gangland videos; i'll just mention that those videos show that all gangs follow the same pattern of dictatorship and follow our 'ten commandments' or else.  Cults equal gangs, and religion is just one big cult/gang.

astro picture for the day/ australia's first 4 billion years video series

-Billion-Pixel Panorama From Curiosity Rover Brings Mars to Your Computer Screen

 

Image: Andrew Bodrov

 

I couldn't get the image onto the blog; so, I can only direct you to the website of a hugh picture of Mars.   I've changed picture for this post because of my pointing out the great new video series of Australia.  I can't help noticing that Australia like Mars is red!

quote for the day

"5. And as for the writings of the Greeks, they are all put out and vanished, but this man's shine brighter day by day. For from the time that he (was) and the other fishermen, since then the (doctrines) of Pythagoras and of Plato, which seemed before to prevail, have ceased to be spoken of, and most men do not know them even by name." - Saint John Chrysostom  link, Saint John Chrysostom anti-science quote finally found! Will I have to re-edit my "Gospel of Truth" again?  No, not really, this and much else of the same time period of Saint John Chrysostom comes after all that I show in that wright-up. Like I said at the end of my "Gospel of Truth", there's plenty more to say!


Life is interesting because much of the universe appears to be non-life.  Intelligent life is interesting because it seems to be able to understand this universe - both the life and non-life portions. Or at least, intelligent life can learn something.  It can engineer both the life and non-life for its own purposes. Intelligent life on this planet seems to have only made a real understanding of the universe in its main outlines just the last century. So, it makes sense to fight irrationality; this is what this blog does.

Few people today seem to try and see this whole scientific view.  The scarcity of good science videos is evidence enough for that.  Let's see, there's Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man", Carl Sagan's "Cosmos", James Burke's "Connections", and "The Day the Universe Changed", the "Mechanical Universe", i'd add John Romer's "Testament" for a scientific understanding of the Bible(there's also been Silverman and Israel Finkelstein's "The Bible Unearthed" made into a video which I have), and maybe a few other things like "The Minotaur's Island" by Bettany Hughes. But, for the most part, those are it.  I showed the Planet Earth; the original Planet Earth before the recent more great photography(and it is good photography) kindof hid it from public view.  I mean this Planet Earth, The real, original Planet Earth video series . I should link link Bettany Hughes Minotaur Island as well since it doesn't seem to me that I had shown this video. Bettany Hughes "The Minotaur's Island" . There's been some stuff on life on Earth that perhaps I havn't viewed.  There's a famous Attenborogh who appears to have made a "Life" video.  I havn't checked it out.  But, I have recently found a new pretty good science video on life in general.  This one is shown through the history of Australia.  It shows that Australia can show the history of life throughout Earth's history.

Only two of the four episodes are up on youtube right now.  I'll link to the second here, Nova Life Explodes Australia's First Four Billion Years

I was a little bit disappointed by the third episode about dinosaurs; as it turns out, finding Dinosaur fossils in Australia was kindof hard as said in the episode.  So, they're still working out that history of Australia.  With that consideration, the third episode isn't so bad. This video series doesn't address self-organization from chemical reactions to life or Gaia theory and symbiosis which is even better established.  So that is also a little disappointing for this video series.  Still, for the most part, this is a pretty good science video about what we know scientifically about the history of life on Earth.

There's been biologists who have tried to infer what philosophy of science and you could say scientific humanism in Richard Dawkins; but, I havn't gotten around to reading his famous "The Selfish gene."  I'm tempted to more and more I suppose.

 

------------------------------------crazy science/technology for the day

 

I suppose I don't have any new dna-nanotech for today, but maybe more appropriately is this,

 

coelacanth-genome-surfaces-unexpected-insights