Prior to the war, science was pretty quiet. Ernest Lawrence, with his cyclotrons, invented glamorous megabuck physics in the 1930s. Then the boffins got involved in the war, and got credit for ending it with the bomb. After that, science became big business. Teller built Livermore to make the h-bomb. The National Labs slurped billions. Engineering, which used to be sort of vocational education, got an inferiority complex (and wanted in on the bucks) so got much more academic and theoretical.
Physics has its Standard Model, which works, so there's not so much opportunity there. The money flow has shifted to medicine, psychology, and climate studies, where the fuzziness opens up a huge land of opportunity.
It has destroyed
Douglas Adams was brilliant. I need to read the Guide again.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I get Physics Today, It's nice. Kinda on the level of the (old) Scientific american. I assume Feynman was feeding on a steady diet of Physical Review... which might make Physics Today look like a Sunday Supplement. (And I have no idea what Physics Today was like in the 60's)
I have some old PTs from back then. It was generally better, more like its contemporary SciAm. The funding agencies all went Hollywood about
30 years ago, and science followed.
The OSA's house rag, "Optics & Photonics News" used to be pretty good too.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
od indication of scientific competence, and hard to fake.
ht to come into it, but measuring it is more difficult, and people who are good at doing research, and communicating what they have found out, tend to be good at communicating basic ideas to students. There is a tendency to l et good people concentrate on research and load the teaching onto the less stellar performers, though that's betraying what universities are set up to do.
of teaching competence.
se.
That's the sign of a department going down the tubes. The Melbourne Univers ity Chemistry Department where I did my Ph.D. had a very high opinion of it self, and only hired it's own graduates for the next thirty years - not the best of them either. The department eventually woke up and hired an Americ an professor - who didn't last.
His replacement was Australian, but from New South Wales. He'd done a post- doc at the same place I did, and we ended up publishing a paper together, d escribing a simple circuit I'd put together for them as a hobby project, wh ich he - correctly - believed to be publishable.
The next new professor was from Tasmania, from the same town where I'd grow n up, and we'd gone through primary school together - I usually managed to better than he did (but not by much).
Reading old papers is such a pleasure, (everyday I sound (to myself) more and more like a grumpy old man. It's scary in a way.) plenty of time, in depth, and if there was something they didn't understand, they would tell you such.
Everything seems diluted now, but then again I live on the trailing edge of technology. (I've got a photographer (downstairs*) making ~0.5 ND filters in the NIR from B&W film. Well hopefully, he shot a roll of film the other day, I get to test them... and burn holes, Hmm... I could make two different densities.)
It was possible for scientists to do show business, but they were never the main attraction. People like Twain and Houdini were the rock stars then ( Twain and Houdini were really 20th century phenomena, so people like them rather than them ).
The 19th Century was obsessed with the supernatural - first Victoria after the death of Albert, then the entire US with the death of hundreds of thousands of mothers' sons.
the result they were looking for, but didn't look hard enough for confound s - other effects that could have given them the same result.
c
re.
-
e claims to know he seems to have got from the denialist song-sheet.
Don't let that blind you to the fact that he has sold out.
Actually, it has become economic. The fossil carbon extraction industry see s a real threat to their cash flow, and have bought both politicians and re tired scientists. Most of the money gets paid to right-wing think tanks, or iginally set up by the tobacco industry to spread doubt about the damaging effects of smoking on health. They've subsequently been exploited by other special-interest groups.
formatting link
mbition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteou s cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can ge t ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are availab le from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research."
nt, > lively debate.
There is dissent - mostly aimed at getting famous by knocking over the prev ailing orthodoxy. The denialist lobby cherry-picks the occasional sceptical paper, and keeps on publicising it long after the literature has identifie d its defects.
ree
formatting link
Not 99% but 97% of the top 300 climate scientists - 95% of the 1000-odd ac tually looked at.
Of the ten skeptics in the top 300, three were probably Richard Lindzen, Ro y Spenser and John Christy. None of them has been "squashed" in the name of political unity.
Richard Lindzen is a skeptic because he's a contrarian by temperament. He d id come up with a plausible and testable anti-anthropogenic global warming hypothesis - or at least and idea that would predict that cloud cover would increase to limit temperature rise, Sadly. it was tested, and wasn't right .
Spenser and Christy are born-again Christians. This doesn't stop them from doing good work, but there's at least one occasion when they took some prod ding to do the work that made their data less useful to the denialist lobby . They still got serious jobs and have kept them for many years.
I believe the 97% reflects the fact that science is pretty sound. You'd get the same kind of numbers for the Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory and the Atomic hypothesis - around 1900 Ernst Mach still didn't believe that atoms were anything more than a useful modelling tool.
5% of the population is "subclinically neurotic" which is to say nuts, so m ore than 95% acceptance of any idea implies that the population being teste d has had some of the nuts filtered out.
Douglas Adams always wanted to make a film version of the Guide - he was interested in exploring and adapting different media (the differences between the book, radio series and TV series were entirely intentional by him). Unfortunately, the company that he sold the film rights to did not really understand the Guide, or Douglas Adams, or the humour involved - it turned out that they just wanted to make another Hollywood space-action explosion battle movie. Douglas Adams argued with them for years, and tried hard to get the rights transferred to someone who could do a decent job of it - failing that, all he could do was veto each variation of muck-up that the film company suggested.
Then Douglas Adams died suddenly, and the film company started shooting before he was in his grave.
But if you like Douglas Adam's writings, read "Last Chance to See". He once said that if he were to be remembered for only one book, that would be his choice.
ot the result they were looking for, but didn't look hard enough for confou nds - other effects that could have given them the same result.
tic
here.
se-
he claims to know he seems to have got from the denialist song-sheet.
Sorry Bill, until I see reason not to, I take everyone at their word.
ees a real threat to their cash flow, and have bought both politicians and retired scientists. Most of the money gets paid to right-wing think tanks, originally set up by the tobacco industry to spread doubt about the damagin g effects of smoking on health. They've subsequently been exploited by othe r special-interest groups.
ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righte ous cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are avail able from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and fo r climate-related research."
ment, > lively debate.
evailing orthodoxy. The denialist lobby cherry-picks the occasional sceptic al paper, and keeps on publicising it long after the literature has identif ied its defects.
agree
al
actually looked at.
Roy Spenser and John Christy. None of them has been "squashed" in the name of political unity.
did come up with a plausible and testable anti-anthropogenic global warmin g hypothesis - or at least and idea that would predict that cloud cover wou ld increase to limit temperature rise, Sadly. it was tested, and wasn't rig ht.
m doing good work, but there's at least one occasion when they took some pr odding to do the work that made their data less useful to the denialist lob by. They still got serious jobs and have kept them for many years.
et the same kind of numbers for the Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory and t he Atomic hypothesis - around 1900 Ernst Mach still didn't believe that ato ms were anything more than a useful modelling tool.
more than 95% acceptance of any idea implies that the population being tes ted has had some of the nuts filtered out.
I find the "certainty" on each side of the political debate absurd. Climate science is nothing like Quantum, atomic theory or relativity.
George H.
of course I find the "certainty" of all politicians absurd.
Psychiatry is definitely one of the most difficult ones. About the only thing anyone can agree on is that mental illness exists - what it is exactly, how to diagnose it, and how best to treat it is all up for endless debate. And theres a ton of money riding on every theory and opinion.
The "chemical imbalance" hypothesis of mental illness is definitely one of the best (worst?) examples of junk science. Just because you give a patient a dopamine inhibiting drug and their psychosis decreases in no way can be straightforwardly construed to imply that an overabundance of dopamine "caused" the illness, or that depression is "caused" by a lack of serotonin. It's like saying heroin withdrawal is caused by lack of heroin and the appropriate treatment is a continual infusion of heroin. I mean yeah, I guess that's okay as far as it goes...
One of the more interesting "fringe" theories of mental illness is that it's more like a computer virus. That it's a bad piece of code in the cyberspace of the mind, and that in some way it's a replicator that feeds of the life force of it's host, and attempts to propagate itself through a population via the destructive behaviors it engenders in its host. That mental illness is a "meme."
And psychiatric medications work sort of like anti-virals.
Fringe, but definitely interesting to think about.
Medicine and engineering are both pragmatic: you don't have to understand it to make it work. All sorts of useful drug treatments were discovered accidentally.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
Yeah, that's also true as far as it goes. But knowing the "why" of things often really helps a lot in making useful things.
Analogy: you can get pretty far in electronics without knowing the specifics of the Ebers-Moll BJT model. Just assume that every silicon BJT with some reasonable current flowing from collector has a be voltage of ~0.6. You can build plenty of fine circuits just on that assumption - not much math required at all either. Don't really need to know the why of it.
But would anyone have just stumbled upon the band gap voltage reference accidentally, without any conception of an appropriate model that explained how things "really" worked at a deeper level? I'm guessing probably not, at least not with any reasonable amount of effort.
And if you did, then ipso facto the model would become apparent. But good luck with that.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.