Okay, it’s not an experiment that you’d want to go out and actually do on purpose (well maybe you do, but you shouldn’t). But it is fun to watch.
WARNING: Science Content
The branch is burning because the life energy of the branch is being overwhelmed by the electrical energy in the wires. As it tries to get away it begins to compress against the insides of the branch, and with no where else to go it begins to turn from the positive life-given energy that flows from all living things to the evil life-stealing energy that is the cause of all death. As the change occurs, the positive life-giving energy and the evil life-stealing energy begin to battle, causing the branch to burn. The sound that you hear is the dying screams of the gentle wood nymphs that once resided in the tree from which the branch fell. As the battle is won by the life-giving energy you can see the triumphant arc of pure white light being thrown up between the two wires. But alas, though the battle is won, the war is lost. The branch is dead.
Citing several studies in moral psychology, the authors highlight the finding that despite differences in, or even an absence of, religious backgrounds, individuals show no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.
This is obviously false. The fact that you can’t have morality without Jesus proves the morality doesn’t exist without Jesus which proves that this entire study is false.
Maybe you atheists should try using logic for once instead of blindly accepting whatever some scientist says just because he has “evidence”.
I would add another reason for not using it more often. I think it is effective in part because people genuinely believe that they are getting something helpful. If it is widely known that doctors are prescribing placebos then it loses it’s efficacy because people would no longer believe as strongly that it will actually help.
I’ve been working massive amounts of overtime this week, so I haven’t had a lot of time to post. I’m taking the easy way out and posting a quote without a whole lot of commentary. So…um…here goes:
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. – Edward Teller
I really enjoy the show Mythbusters. The science isn’t always as rigorous as I’d like, but the engineering can be really fun to watch.
One show in particular stands out to me because of the audience response. If you go the Mythbusters forums on this topic you’ll see a thread with posts into the thousands. I am, of course, talking about the (in)famous Plane on a Conveyor Belt episode. Here’s Adam Savage describing the problem on the show:
Let me spell it out for you, normally a plane sits on the runway, spins up its engines, moves forwards gets enough air over its wings and takes off. But in this case, the plane is sitting not on the runway, but a huge conveyor belt that is matching the planes forward speed in reverse, and the grand question is can the plane take off? The myth is that it can’t
Just in case you haven’t seen the show I’ll continue below the fold so that I don’t spoil it for you. Read more »
I can’t help but love logarithmic scales. Most graphs and images that we see are drawn using a linear scale. By that I mean that the axes (axises? axis’?) count using the basic numbers so that it goes 1, 2, 3, etc… Logarithmic images, on the other hand, have axes that count using the exponents, usually with a common base number like 10. In this way it counts 101, 102, 103 or more commonly (amongst us non-mathematical types) 10, 100, 1000. In this way, things that are of greatly differing size or values can be compared.
One great example of this is the XKCD comic Height. It uses a logarithmic scale with a base of 2 so that every tic represents twice the height of the previous one. I fell in love with that image when I first saw it. But of course, “real” scientists have done him one better. Below is a (slightly and ineptly edited…by me) image of the logarithmic universe which apparently was posted waaaay back in 2005. It shows pretty much the entire universe. I’ve limited this image here to just the area near the earth. Click on it to see the complete image (warning it’s a big image…remember it’s the entire universe).
If you understand something better than everyone else, than chances are pretty good that you don’t understand it at all.
Physicists are often approached by amateurs that claim to have proven that Newtons Laws of Motion are wrong, or that in fact E ≠ mc2. Heck, I’m no physicist and I’ve been approached by other amateur “scientists” who know me as a science buff with similar claims. In the vast majority of cases the person is simply misunderstanding some key point in the science, and in a large portion of those cases any attempt to correct that misunderstanding simply results in the claim that I and the entire scientific community are the ones misunderstanding it.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible that every other human being on the planet somehow missed this idea of yours that completely changes our understanding of the universe. It’s theoretically possible that no one ever considered the physical results of a person throwing a baseball far from any other gravitational body. It’s theoretically possible that every calculation ever done based on the known scientific laws were only right because every scientist before now was willing to “fudge” the result to make it fit with what they already knew to be true anyway. And yes, it’s theoretically possible that you understand something better after a few hours of study than other people do after a lifetime.
One might be tempted to read more into this than can be legitimately claimed. I certainly am. Whatever you think, it is most definitely an interesting phenomenon.
