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Category Archives: Uncategorized
New Guy in Town
These graphs show the results of evolutionary experiments by Richard Lenski, in which a bacterial species ( e coli) has been evolving under constant conditions for many years: tens of thousands of generations. These bacteria were not perfectly adapted to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
33 Comments
New variants
There’s a new variant of cov-19, the UK strain, that is something like 70% more infectious than previous strains. At this point its lethality seems about the same as earlier strains. Virologists, most of them, did not expect this. I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
37 Comments
Signs, Portents, and Appetizers
Was thinking about various factors that influenced the discovery of America – by which I mean Columbus’s voyage. Not Saint Brendan or Madoc, not the Phoenicians, not the Romans, not the Solutreans. Not Basque fishermen. Not Leif Ericsson or Bjarni … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
110 Comments
Books, 2020
You might also be interested in my booklists from 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The Big Sleep In the Courts of the Crimson Kings Memoirs of an Invisible Man The Mote in God’s Eye The Weirdstone of Brisingamen The Brothers Karamazov Life … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
82 Comments
Doctor Doctor Give Me the News
Credentials don’t make an incorrect argument right, and the lack of them can’t make a correct argument wrong. The track record tells you more – George Green and Srinivasa Ramanujan ( and Freeman Dyson) did what they did. In that … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
95 Comments
Coding Error
James Coleman published an influential study in 1966, “Equality of Educational Opportunity”. It found that variation in school quality (per pupil expenditure, size of school library, and so on) had little influence on educational achievement, while students’ family backgrounds did. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
71 Comments
Everyone makes mistakes
Razib Khan dredged up an article that talked about the role of Japanese intelligence and/or the Black Dragon Society in furthering the developing of black nationalist groups before WWII – one such group eventually developed into the Nation of Islam. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
26 Comments
Learning to Decode
(Stolen from David Kahn’s _The CodeBreakers_. In the presidential election of 1876, Samuel J. Tilden had a quarter-million majority of the popular vote,. but the outcome of the electoral college vote depended on which of the rival returns from … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
17 Comments
Free Parameter
What if this coronavirus were 10 times more deadly? 20 times? What if it hit all ages equally, or was especially lethal to young adults ( like the 1918 flu)? What if it crippled, like polio? Would people in those … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
98 Comments
Too Many Muons
There is a notion that radiation may be limiting qubit lifetime. Even if you use low-radiation materials and shielding, you still have to worry about muons generated by cosmic rays. They are very penetrating – some reach kilometers down into … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
38 Comments