As animals, and especially visual animals at that, we have a particular experience of the light. For us it is illumination, information about our surroundings. For that purpose moonlight or even starlight will do. And for tens of millions of years, that’s all we ever saw. Somehow a few of us made it through the Permian extinction, and into the Triassic, but the ascendancy of the dinosaurs eventually forced us into the darkness of the night. Our world became dim, and our eyes went colorblind. Most mammals today see only two colors, but a few of us have re-evolved a third photoreceptor. Three colors is still inferior to the four or five or six seen by many near-surface fish, birds, reptiles, insects, and other arthropods. The stomatopods are almost biological spectroscopic imaging systems, with 12 color channels in each of their independently movable trinocular eyes. We are lesser than the eyes that never left the light. They stole the colors from us and made us hide within the night. They kept the sun for themselves, not knowing that our small and furtive ways, our burning endothermy and our fur would see us through the aftermath of the KT impact.
Tag: science
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
The Evolution of Cooperation was, somewhat surprisingly, a story about math. Math that actually describes a lot of things in life. It’s the story of The Prisoner’s Dilemma. What makes The Prisoner’s Dilemma interesting, is that the players in the game have conflicting incentives. You can be rewarded either for cooperating, or for defecting. Unlike most things we think of as “games”, it is not zero-sum: both players can win, and both players can lose. Too often it seems like this possibility is forgotten. The dilemma goes like this.
Two suspected accomplices are taken into custody for a crime and separately interrogated. Each is pressured to rat out the other. If neither of them squeals (they cooperate) then both of them get short jail terms. If both of them rat, they both get fairly long terms. If only one of them gives in, and the other remains silent, then the fink gets off, and the honorable thief goes away for a long long time.
Continue reading The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
Shared Links for Mar 11th
- The Missing $1,000,000 Tax Bracket – There's a fair amount of debate over what the "top marginal tax rate" should be, but it's infrequently noted that there's actually vastly more variation in the income threshold at which that rate becomes applicable. In inflation adjusted dollars, it's fluctuated between around $80,000 (Regan) and $80,000,000 (!) during the Depression. Ignoring this while debating the highest income tax rate is kind of absurd. (tagged: usa tax policy )
- True Traffic Tales – Ah, bikes and cars living harmoniously together. (tagged: cartoon bicycle transportation )
- Evangelical Climate Initiative – A Christian take on climate change, given its reality, what is the appropriate response for a conscientious person of faith? From my point of view as an atheist, it's not so important what other peoples' motivations are for taking action, as long as they take action. I'm curious how this has been received by the evangelical movement. (tagged: religion climate science christian green )
- Sailfish Cooperating to Hunt Sardines – I had no idea sailfish were so colorful (and changeable), let alone this cooperative. Glad National Geographic still exists, even if our maps no longer have "Terra Incognita" on them (tagged: fish cooperation nature )
- Communicating the Second Premise: Whether Obama or Bush, Values Drive Science Policy Decisions – A good look at the division between science facts/findings and science policy in the context of stem cell research and Bush's vs. Obama's take on it. Facts alone do not imply any "shoulds". We need values to tell us what's right or wrong. Sometimes those values are so obvious we don't even think about them, and sometimes they're not, especially when new and poorly understood technology is involved. (tagged: science policy obama bush stemcells biology )
Shared Links for Mar 9th
- Tent City Rapidly Growing in Sacramento – Wow, a tent city forming within Sacramento? What proportion of people ended up living in shantytowns and similar impromptu dwellings and communities during the Great Depression I wonder. Ironic and sad, given the absurd oversupply of housing is what in large part triggered this economic mess. (tagged: homeless economy depression sacramento california shanty )
- Wikileaks cracks NATO's Master Narrative for Afghanistan – For the love of god, even the Pentagon can't get its users to pick decent passwords? Classified messaging (propaganda) documents regarding Afghanistan posted on publicly accessible website, encrypted with the super-secret ultra-secure key: 'progress'. (tagged: propaganda transparency war pentagon military security internet )
- Nationalization for Beginners – A nice short readable set of the possible definitions of "Nationalization" in the context of the banking crisis. Opponents usually mean Soviet style State Banks, proponents generally mean FDIC style conservatorship. What we've got now is a horribly opaque mishmash. (tagged: bailout crisis finance fdic economics )
- Rep. John Conyers: A Reply to Larry Lessig – Conyers replies to Lessig's fairly aggressive critique of HR801 in public. Not convincing. (tagged: politics science openaccess hr801 lessig conyers publishing )
- Talk on China and the Global Internet at Harvard – Rebecca MacKinnon gave a talk on the future of China within the context of the global Internet. Haven't watched it yet, but downloaded to my iTunes, and her blog is good. Ethan Zuckerman blogged it. Interesting to see how different cultures evolve their relationship with the machines independently (and how it mediates our interactions with each other) (tagged: china internet technology transparency censorship harvard )
Shared Links for Mar 6th
- If You Want to Know Bike Laws, Don’t Ask the California Highway Patrol – A great rundown of traffic laws as they apply to bicycles in California… and how unfortunately uninformed the police are. (tagged: bicycle transportation police law california )
- R3project: Sustainability in Barcelona – A blog recounting the story of remodeling (and living in) a previously abandoned 18th century apartment in Barcelona's old town, as sustainably (and cheaply) as possible. Available in English or Spanish! (tagged: green sustainability design architecture urban barcelona buildings )
- The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds – 4.6 billion years of Earth history, boiled down into 60 seconds, showing the spectacularly non-linear nature of evolution. (tagged: non-linear video science evolution biology earth darwin history )
- EFF Surveillance Self-Defense Project – A tutorial from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on what you can do to protect yourself against snooping, government and otherwise. Now if only these things would become standard, default practice, around which all of our applications and workflows are designed. (tagged: politics technology privacy surveillance security law )
- Human flesh search engines – A phenomenon of internet vigilantes, kind of like paramilitary morality cops, in China. We've been doing this kind of thing to spammers and other "internet criminals" for a while now. Strange to see it leak out into the real world. A potentially interesting propaganda tool. Mob justice on command? (tagged: internet technology china vigilante politics )
Shared Links for Mar 2nd
- Long Beach’s State Senator Lowenthal Takes on Parking Requirements – Wow, how awesome would this be? Massive state wide overhaul of our insane parking requirements? Will be interesting to see the vote… (tagged: parking transportation policy california )
- Report on HR 801, Fair Copyright in Research Works Act | MAPLight.org – MAPLight takes a look at campaign financing in the context of HR 801 (that Conyers bill) which would prohibit the federal government from requiring open access to publications arising from publicly funded scientific research (along the lines of what is currently required for the NIH). Bill sponsors on the house judiciary committee got, on average, about twice what non-sponsors got. My rep, Adam Schiff got $6,000, which is more than the average contribution to sponsors. (tagged: politics transparency openaccess science )
- Welcome to the Future – An essay by Bruce Schneier, on the immediacy of panopticon style surveillance. All the technology is in place, it just needs to stitched together at the edges. In typical human style, we're going to bumble headlong into the mess, it seems. I'm not as sure as he is that it's ultimately bad for us though – when we lived in tribes and villages, privacy was rare. This transparency will, I think, only be a disaster if we can't watch those in power just as well. (tagged: technology privacy transparency surveillance )
- Livable Streets Education – Curricula and lesson plans for teaching Livable Streets topics in K-8 classrooms. Currently being used in NY, but available online for anyone, anywhere. (tagged: transportation green education open )
- A Brighter Shade of Green – A good essay on what it means to be "bright green", politically and philosophically. (tagged: green sustainability environment philosophy politics )
Shared Links for Feb 28th
- Short Term Investing – A gleeful satire of what really, truly ails Wall Street, and capitalism in general: grotesquely short term thinking. (tagged: investing finance money bailout satire )
- MBARI finds fish with a transparent head – This thing is beyond weird. If we're still discovering things like this on Earth, how can we hope to even imagine what extraterrestrial organisms would be like? (tagged: fish biology science video weird alien ocean evolution )
- The Kessler Syndrome – Another example of unsustainable behavior, without forethought on our parts? The recent collision of two satellites is causing some to wonder if we might be getting close to the threshold at which the debris from such collisions begets more collisions, and more debris, in a runaway process rendering low earth orbit useless for satellites. (tagged: space sustainability non-linear kessler imapcts )
- Zeitgeist – The Movie – Have not seen these movies. Some of what the summaries say is interesting, but other parts sound utterly bogus. Curious from a memetic point of view if nothing else… (tagged: movie film zeitgeist economics religion politics money war )
- Boston Dynamics (DARPA) BIGDOG Robot – BigDog is a DARPA funded quadripedal robot capable of climbing over a pile of cinderblocks, walking on slippery ice, scaling dunes and snow covered hillsides, taking a big shove from the side, and jumping over a designated obstacle. When do we get to send one of these guys to Mars? (tagged: robot youtube darpa mars military video research technology )
Shared Links for Feb 23rd
- Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers – I just don't buy the lament of the newspapermen. If the papers were subsidizing the collection of "real" news with ads, how sure are we that people ever wanted news? Why exactly should we believe that there ever was some public interest at heart in journalism? I'd say it's just as likely that the fragmentation of digital media, and the trend toward tabloid fluff, is an indication that nobody (or at least, not enough people) really cared about the "serious" news in the first place. Disaggregated, opinionated, (truly) non-profit journalism will certainly be different than the muckrakers, or Big Media, but it's unclear to me that it will be worse in any way for government transparency, or democratic interchange. (tagged: technology media government transparency democracy )
- The Crisis of Credit Visualized – Another great popularly accessible explanation of how we got into this mess, this time in cartoon form. Too bad there weren't any regulators in the story! (tagged: economy crisis financial animation mortgage subprime )
- Bank insolvency: tips & tricks – Never, ever, feed a zombie bank. The great thing (or, one great thing) about blogs is that you can talk about serious and technical issues, using analogies to zombies. Try that in the Economist, or the WSJ. (tagged: economics finance stimulus bailout fed banks zombie )
- Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe, and Carl Sagan – Musings from Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's partner) on how we might apply the wonder of the cosmos, as revealed by science, toward the creation of naturalist spiritual communities. (tagged: science religion sagan atheism naturalism cosmos spirituality )
- There's no reason for non-recourse – Options are valuable. That's why we have markets for them. The trillion dollars worth of non-recourse loans (cf pawnbroker) which the Fed is apparently about to offer up to the finance industry, will, because they are non-recourse, lead to a misvaluation of the assets being bought, even if they're being bought by private entities, because the penalty for non-repayment is simply forfeiting the asset (which might very well end up being worthless). The Fed is acting like a pawn shop, but a dumb one: what pawn shop in its right mind would let you exchange your cubic zirconia for half the value of a diamond? (tagged: finance economics crisis bailout fed geithner bernanke )
Shared Links for Feb 12th
- Astronaut's Video Satirizes NASA Bureaucracy – I'm impressed that NASA actually let this satire out, and forced a bunch of managers to watch it… not sure if they're actually capable of fixing themselves though. We can hope. (tagged: nasa bureaucracy youtube satire astronaut npr )
- Sexting Teens May Face Child Porn Charges – Can it really be kiddie porn if you took the photo yourself, and you're a (horny) minor? Seriously. This country is totally nuts. Maybe we should ban mirrors in teen bedrooms too. (tagged: sex technology porn sexting texting sms mms phone )
- H.R. 801 That Conyers bill again! – A roundup of responses to John Conyers' H.R. 801: "The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act", which would (despite it's ridiculous name) prevent the public from accessing the fruits of the research which they funded in the first place. We should be expanding NIH style open access requirements, not rolling them back (tagged: hr801 conyers PLoS open access copyright publishing science policy )
- Congress is trying to restrict public access to publicly funded research – Under pressure from publishers, Congress is considering outlawing open access requirements like the ones that NIH imposes on its grantees, meaning that the fruits of publicly funded research will not be publicly available. We should be expanding open access requirements across all public research funding agencies, not rolling back what little we've got. Write your rep! (tagged: copyright PLoS publishing open access NIH PubMed HR801 research science policy )
- Reports of Vélib’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated – How can one really ensure that public-private "partnerships" like the Velib program don't end up being subject to this kind of PR BS? Or alternatively, how can one ensure that such a program is efficiently and effectively administered purely by the public sector? (tagged: bicycle velib transportation pr cycling paris )
Francis Collins has no evidence for God
I can’t say that I’m surprised, but what Francis Collins presented in his talk last night at Caltech as constituting evidence for God’s existence was utterly unconvincing. However, what he said and the questions which followed were vastly better framed, less offensive, and in some important respects much closer to the truth than the talk that Richard Dawkins gave at Caltech in 2006 when he was touring for his book The God Delusion (which was ultimately so unpleasant and ill conceived that even I, an atheist who basically agrees with Dawkins’ criticisms of religion, am unable to recommend it). You can watch or listen to an earlier version of Collins’ talk on the Veritas Forum website. It’s in support of his own book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.