Science Made Cool

Spider Predation + Talented Animators = Awesome

From the animation company Polynoid, a five minute film of a spider catching a meal. Hyperrealistic art, except when it's illustrating silk formation -- then it shades into abstract shapes, which might seem a little weird, but it's not like you can see down there at the molecular level.

 

Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.

 (h/t Eric Mead)

Deus Ex Machina

Here's something interesting. It's a rewritten press release about a BBC documentary, so I can't vouch for the science, but the story is that the brains of die-hard Apple users respond to the sight of Apple products in much the same way that devout believers react to religious imagery.

I don't doubt this for a moment. Over the years it has become increasingly obvious to me that humans have some kind of hard-wired "belief center" in our brains. What it evolved for, I can't guess. In most traditional societies it is satisfied by religious faith.

But in the post-religious society of the wealthiest countries, faith has faded. And instead . . . well, people seem desperate to fill that void with something else. They latch onto New Age quackery, messianic politicians promising hope, all-encompassing conspiracy theories, political movements, and -- apparently -- consumer brands. Rather than deplore this "cult of Apple" I'd like to applaud it. Quasi-religious devotion to a product line is the least harmless alternative I can think of.

One Face World

The planet Gliese 581d is back in the news. It's a planet 20 light-years away, orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. What makes it interesting is that Gliese 581d circles its parent star just at the outer edge of what's called the "Goldilocks zone" -- the belt in which the planet would be warm enough to have liquid water and a climate in which life might arise.

A Rude Awakening

George Monbiot is a British writer who discourses frequently on environmental and political topics. He's an activist, firmly on the Left. And lately he seems to have run out of patience with people who normally agree with him.

It began with this piece in the Guardian, in which Monbiot announces his discovery that the anti-nuclear movement has been less than accurate in its depiction of the risks from radiation. Apparently Monbiot was having a discussion with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the grande dame of the British anti-nuclear movement, and discovered that her cited sources either didn't say what she claimed, or the sources themselves were just the work of other activists rather than scientists.

This apparently put Monbiot's blood up, and in a more recent Guardian piece he comes out swinging. He points out that if Greens get their way and we abandon nuclear power, it will be replaced by coal and shale oil. And apparently Mr. Monbiot is fed up with the magical thinking displayed by activists who believe we can all live like Tolkein elves using only solar and wind energy.

Now I'm not trying to bash Mr. Monbiot (though if we were stuck in a room together for a few hours it might come to that). Quite the reverse: I hope more people have the same intellectual honesty he's been displaying. Whatever your political beliefs, it's simply not helpful to approach the world from a position based on wishful thinking and fantasy. Most of the 20th century's most bloodthirsty regimes were based ultimately on wishful thinking -- from the "and then a miracle happens" model of Marxist Utopia to the Wagnerian fantasyland of the Nazis.

On a more "tactical" note, sticking to real science makes it harder for your opponents to pick holes in your arguments, discrediting the whole cause because of a few overhyped claims.

So good luck to Mr. Monbiot, and let's hope "activists" of all stripes will follow his example and stick to the facts when making a case for what they believe in. (Comments are welcome, but if this turns into a lot of Tu Quoque finger-pointing I'm going to close them down.)