Flat Earthers & debating creationists

Here's a link to a nice little historical video about flat-earthers of the 1800s and attempts to rationally, scientifically demonstrate that the Earth was a globe.  Part of this episode involved Alfred Russel Wallace, he of natural selection fame (or not, if you've never heard of him), and an simple, but elegant demonstration of the Earth's curvature.  Using a straight, "flat" canal, Wallace put poles on bridges each measured to a precise height above the water.  Then backing off to the next bridge, he set up a telescope at the same height, leveled it, and observed the poles. Although all were the same height above the water, the top of each successively more distant pole was below the top of the previous pole, as predicted, and the only conclusion that could be reached is that the "flat" canal was on a curved surface.  Of course it's the only conclusion a rational person could reach, and Wallace's demonstration settled nothing and led to Wallace's severe harrassment by his adversary.  The video concludes that there is nothing to be gained by debating or trying to reason or demonstrate science to people dedicated to creationism either.  It's a nice video.
HT to Aron Ra.

The Heartland Institute - helping teachers get climate change "right"!

A nice booklet was mailed to TPP; it's titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science.  As a member of a number of conservation and scientific groups with major outreach functions, the booklet did not seem out of place until a careful look revealed that this was a publication from the Heartland Institute, a bought-and-paid-for science denial factory.  Teachers are urged to read this document and use it's facts and conclusions in their teaching.  The report was conducted by the “Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change” (NIPCC). Both the appearance of the report, it's title, and it's source acronym are intended to look and sound just like the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it's report on climate change Climate Change 2013: The physical science basis. This is a typical Heartland ruse to fool the unwary. Spoiler alert: the NIPCC doesn't find any evidence to suggest human activities have anything to do with climate change. And there's no evidence that smoking harms you or negatively affects your health either.  Yes, it's that Heartland Institute.  And the NIPCC report is replete with sciency citations and references, and authors with impressive sounding titles, foremost this and that.  A few years ago TPP let a graduate seminar dissect one of these type of reports, and they are all done the same way.  Data, facts, and conclusions are taken out of context, or cited selectively, i.e., only counting the ones that support their position, and ignoring those that don't agree with your position. Some of the original reports actually reached diametrically opposite conclusions to what they were cited to support.  The authors, rather than being real academics, were hired guns.  In other words, it was scientifically dishonest, from front to back. It's hard to argue policy; it's easier to pretend the science supporting climate change is uncertain, iffy, or politically motivated and this is the Heartland Institutes stock and trade.  And here's the biggest laugh; the NIPCC report starts by stating it was conducted under no political pressure.  That's actually true because the report was paid for by corporations that think science, real science, might result in policies that they won't like, like cleaning up their CO2 pollution. A recent study found that the majority of all the CO2 of human origins could be traced to just 90 corporations, and if they really were people they might have a conscience or a worry about what they are doing to all of us. And you can bet the money that paid for the NIPCC report came from among those 90. If you want to read more here's a link to the National Center for Science Education and their article on this report.  So maybe TPP will use their report for teaching, but he bets his students will figure out the ruse, again.

E-assist city bicycle

TPP continues to be impressed by the continual innovation being shown by bicycle builders to make bicycling in urban situations accessible to more people.  Here's the aptly named Faraday (look him up if you don't know the name) electrical assisting city bicycle.  The way this works is that pedaling or coasting charges batteries housed in the frame, and when you get to an upgrade the bicycle senses the additional resistance and the motor generates an assist.  It's also built sturdy and with a nice front carry rack.  Well, for some reason images don't want to load into Blogger so you'll have to look at the images via the link. It's also interesting to see that the traditional bicycle chain has been replaced by a drive belt.  And on the whole, the Faraday looks so much like a traditional bicycle that most people would never notice the difference.

Pepper sex? You must be kidding.

TPP just got this image by email, and if this is the way 2014 is going to go, it'll be a long year. 

Flip the bell peppers over to check their gender. The ones with four bumps are female and those with three bumps are male. The female peppers are full of seeds, but sweeter and better for eating raw and the males are better for cooking.

 

OK, there's the message that accompanied this image.  What a crock!  Fundamentally peppers, like most members of the nightshade family have 2 carpels (modified leaves) composing their pistil; those shown have 3 and 4 carpels because we've selected for bigger peppers so there are more units composing the fruits.  They can even have 5 sometimes.  Most of your smaller peppers have the standard two carpels.  The 4-lobed fruit will have one more placental ridge bearing seeds, but on average for the variety, in every other way they will be the same.  This is where a sample size of two, combined with someone who doesn't know any botany, led to a completely ridiculous assertion.  Fruits are part of the asexual phase of the plant life cycle so there are no sexes among fruit, and while the fruit are what develops from the floral "gynoecium", from the "ovary", there are no sexes here either, just popular, traditional, and very wrong names for flower parts.  Plant sex actually occurs at a different level, although people commonly refer to flower sex.  Pollen grains are dwarf males and way down inside the pistil, inside the "ovules" (actually megasporangia), the megaspore will develop into a very dwarf female.  So fruit sex is just pure bull.  No idea of the source, and it really doesn't matter.  A lot of crap floats around on the web, and at least this is harmless bogus information.  Surprised they could count that high. 

 

How's your weather? Or, don't move that snow drift; it may be my car.

Well, today was another day of terrible weather here in Switzerland.  It was sunny, about 10 C, and we toured a botanical garden to see what spring flowers might be open (bear paw hellebores, hardy cyclamens, snowdrops, forsythia, Iris japonica).  You do understand that TPP is being sympathetic about the severe winter weather gripping the eastern half of the USA (Yes, the Great White North has this weather too, but then this weather is their number one export!).  Why here in Zurich the weather is so severe that only cafes with outside tables on their south side were full of people.  However, the Phactors expect payback.  If all goes well, and that's asking a lot for international air travel these days, especially when the itinerary includes a flight change in Heathrow, we shall be back to Chi-town tomorrow afternoon, and somewhere out in remote parking lot WX, near location pole QQV489, sits a not very large snow drift, and inside is our white Subaru. So if anyone is around those parking coordinates, stop by and help us dig it out! There's some cheese in it for you.

A very Swiss day

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the accompanying image could possibly exist in Lincolnland.  Yes, there's a big lake, a great lake in fact, but it isn't this cute, nor is the city next to it in any way, shape, or form cute.  Ah, Luzern (Lucerne, if your prefer) is definitely cute, and old, hugging the shore of it's picturesque lake with all kinds of neat architecture and covered bridges and the like, and then there's the back drop of the snow-covered Alps.  Although it is a ways off, the most prominent peak to the left looks like the Eiger. This is of course what us great plains people travel for: mountains, lakes, and beaches (and for TPP - rainforest), just they don't all come altogether, but anytime you get two out of four, well, that's special.  So this was just great, in fact it was just so damned inspiring the Phactors bought a bunch of Swiss alpine cheeses in addition to the ones eaten for a

lunch and washed down with Swiss wine and beer. Luzern is about 1400 feet above sea level and some of those peaks are 12000 or more feet tall so no wonder they look so big. No trips are planned for way up in the mountains, and climbing to the city wall was quite strenuous enough for any intrepid flat-land hiker who needed some sustenance. This was as good as a day of tourist travel can get and the F1 who had to leave for home on Saturday is still stuck in a motel near the Dallas airport.  How lucky is that?  Some people just know how to travel; some don't.

Coffee & wine bars - too cultured for the USA?

Zurich is littered with coffee and wine bars.  Most of them are pretty small, quite intimate, with little tables and a couple of lithe young women in tight black jeans and white blouses waiting tables.  When your feet get tired of the coble stones, or going through one of the best collections of European art, you find an inviting looking place, and sit for a spell while sipping a coffee, wine, or beer.  You don't pay when you are served.  The wait staff doesn't bug you about paying or ordering more until you are more or less ready, and sometimes not even then.  Of course, anything this civilized

is quite rare in the USA where somehow such an activity is still considered a sinful waste of time, especially on a Sunday. Yesterday was rainy, and today, a Sunday, was mostly sunny and everyone was out walking because most retail places, other than afore mentioned social bars, were closed. How nice. People came and went; groups, old couples (the Phactors were not out of place), young couples, people with strollers, guys with mostly shaved heads and tattoos, fashionable ladies, a real cross section of the humanity strolling by.  Now why are such places not more common in the USA?  Primarily, it's because such places only exist where urban centers are vibrant and where a significant part of the population walks from place to place. Cities and towns in the USA have to develop active, people places for places like this to be successful. The closest things in smaller cities are campus town areas adjacent to university campuses. Now don't get TPP started on the mass transit system in a place like Zurich. 

On the move again - the Alps

Flat landers like ourselves always try to head for either beaches or mountains, things that just don't exist in Lincolnland.  So today's travels were great, mostly.  Starting from Munich, our route took us by train to Innsbruck, Austria through Liechtenstein to Zurich, Switzerland, and that means a route through and over a portion of the Alps.  At any given moment today more relief was visible than exists in the whole state of Lincolnland, which by the way is over three times bigger than Switzerland.  How nice!  And of course the mountains were nicely covered with snow, and snowboarders had noticed and kept trying to swack people in the head with their ungainly luggage to call attention to themselves.  If the train had actually had as many 1st class seats as tickets they had sold, then they would not have had to close the dining car to handle the excess.  TPP would recommend comping us some drinks too because you didn't offer a refund.  Fortunately that was only for the Munich to Innsbruck leg and after that travel was via a real train.  Someday perhaps the Phactors will do the Glacier express across the Alps, but not this time. Which brings up another thing. Is your bloody dog, no matter how well behaved, enjoying a train trip?  Did you buy them a ticket?  What is this deal with everyone and their dogs? OK, that was a bit cranky, but your dog may not join us at our table, sorry.  Elsewhere the F1 was having travel woes due to the nasty winter weather in North America that caused a flight from Madrid to Chicago to disappear, fortunately that happened before bordering (saw that movie once).  Now this really complicates the rest of the travel.  It will be a few more days before the Phactors head home, so will all you North American readers please get out there and shovel?  Also, warm up a welcome home for us. The predicted low temps could bring some sad garden news come spring because -19F is rock bottom for zone 5 and anything not quite that hardy will be damaged or killed.  Sure hope that Magnolia virginiana is really, really hardy. 

Strangest thing you can see in Ulm

Many things you expect to see in small southern German cities: cathedrals (check), the rathaus (check), city squares (check), clocks and sundials on the sides of buildings (check), quaint old architecture (check), cobblestones (check), but then you come around a corner and into a small courtyard and there is the weirdest thing you ever could imagine seeing.  Yes, TPP will let you guess all day, and bet that you won't guess even if you knew it was about a famous person who was born in Ulm.  As it turns out

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, and Ulm is quite proud of that even though it is not certain if Albert ever visited his birth place as an adult or felt much attachment to the city.  Now there are lots of ways to honor people, and Ulm does have a street named after Einstein, but this sculpture does make you wonder a bit about what kind of honor this represents?  Einstein made one famous rude gesture, sticking his tongue out at a photographer, and that moment was captured in this sculpture showing his head emerging from a snail shell.  The meaning of this piece of art is perplexing and obscure (any interpretations out there?), and while interesting, it's not all that likable or attractive, yet vaguely compelling.  But definitely not what you were expecting to find! 

New Year's fireworks spectacular

One of the reasons to travel is that you learn new things.  And so far the most surprising thing TPP has learned is that at midnight on New Years, you basic steady, rational German becomes a pyrotechnical maniac!  Yes, everyone rushed outside and after a toast, and maybe a kiss or two, the world erupted into a massive public display of fireworks that puts USA's 4th of July to shame.  It was truly something to behold as the sulfurous smoke began to take on dimensions more like Ulm's famous fog.  Who knew?  Surely such a display will keep the dragon from eating the sun, or something?  These were not professional displays; this was not a town's or neighborhood's display, this was everybody, and based upon size and number of the skyrockets, some very heavy ordinance was available to every Tom, Dick, and Franz.  The street in this nice residential area became totally littered with the debris of dozens of diverse fireworks and choked with smoke. Now should you be a bit drowsy and tired, nothing like fireworks to reawaken you, and judging by the next reaction, setting off pyrotechnical mayhem is hungry work.  BOOM!  Happy New Year everyone from Germany!