Bill Angel

Do you think that these college students care about health care for the poor? (They were students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore)

A wizard cooks up a Halloween surprise...

So we are in agreement , everyone wants peace. There's actually a bit of subtle humor in this image. Imagine Netanyahu looking at the President of Iran while making this gesture. The insulting version of this gesture (with the palm inwards) is often compared to the offensive gesture known as "the finger". George H. W. Bush actually got into trouble in Australia in 1992 by making this gesture.

There was a somewhat humorous incident reported recently in the newspapers. See Drunk tourist falls asleep on airport baggage belt and passes through powerful X-ray machine The second incident reported in the article doesn't sound so humorous, in that a young infant was deliberately sent through an airport's baggage screening x ray machine by its not too bright parents. One does wonder whether either of these people, the child in particular, will suffer lasting effects from the exposure to the radiation.

There is an interesting article and video about a robot riding a bicycle: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/amazing-little-robot-manages-to-ride-bike-unaided-20111025/ Watching the robot ride the bike in the video, one notices that it's his jerky arm movements on the handlebars that keep the bike upright. The robot can't lean to one side or the other to affect the stability of the bike.

Perhaps it is. But what if one of your young children was standing next to you in the airport when you were asked this question? Would that still be your response? If it was, one might expect the child to attract the attention of the interviewer and to supply the valid answer.

It would be interesting if an interviewer together with a video cameraman went to a major airport and asked people waiting to board aircraft that same question. What percentage do you think of those responding would give a valid answer?

I'm fortunate in that I'm presently in a situation were I can set my schedule to suit my own interests and energy level. I don't have to work a set schedule set by some organization. Lately I've been working in the middle of the night on stuff that interests me, and taking naps either in the late afternoon or the early evening. It's a sleep routine much different from when I was younger and worked an office job for the Government, but it's a routine that is currently working out just fine for me.

A group of scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for their work in this area. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008 "A hitherto unexplained broken symmetry of the same kind lies behind the very origin of the cosmos in the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. If equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, they ought to have annihilated each other. But this did not happen, there was a tiny deviation of one extra particle of matter for every 10 billion antimatter particles. It is this broken symmetry that seems to have caused our cosmos to survive. The question of how this exactly happened still remains unanswered. Perhaps the new particle accelerator LHC at CERN in Geneva will unravel some of the mysteries that continue to puzzle us." http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2008/press.html

I thought that the last paragraph of the article was rather insightful: " Meanwhile, Alexander Gurevich, a theorist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, cautions that previous claims of high-temperature superconductivity have come unstuck when scrutinized. The magnetic response could have been generated by impurities that were introduced during the sample treatment, he says" As the researchers concede, they aren't actually observing superconductivity, but magnetic effects consistent with a superconducting state. I've been a skeptic of these types of reports since the days when claims of "cold fusion" were the big topic of conversation.

Concerning the question of why the electron has a quantum property called "spin": Check out the entertaining blog post "Electron Spin for Toddlers": http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/07/26/electron-spin-for-toddlers/

The value of spin for an elementary particle depends only on the type of particle, and cannot be altered in any known way. Also spin is a quantum property, in that it assumes integer or half integer values. It can't gradually decrease from a value of 1 to -1, passing through 0 at the plane of the galaxy.

See: http://www.space.com/17657-alien-planets-methane-meteorites-atmosphere.html

Here is something to ponder: "Meteoroids slamming against the atmospheres of alien worlds could add organic gases that make them look inhabited by life even if they are not, researchers say." So even if the Mars Rover is successful in finding organic molecules, their presence would not necessarily be indicative of past or present (bio)chemical activity on the planet.

"Curiosity Rover Makes Startling Discovery on Mars" The sculpture is the work of MICA Sculpture Professor Sarah Doherty.

QUESTION: Where do Hairy Balls come from? ANSWER: They can be found growing on a 6 foot tall deciduous plant. The scientific name for the plant is Gomphocarpus physocarpus, but its common name is the "Hairy Ball" plant. FYI: Gompho means club, carpus means fruit, physo means bladder, and again carpus means fruit.

Here is some information about the wireless industry I think is of interest: 517210 - Wireless Telecommunications Carriers Industry Description This industry comprises establishments engaged in operating and maintaining switching and transmission facilities to provide communications via the airwaves. Establishments in this industry have spectrum licenses and provide services using that spectrum, such as cellular phone services, paging services, wireless Internet access, and wireless video services. Here are some of the industry's employment figures: 2008 201,901 2009 194,081 2010 172,467 So even though the introduction of new cellphones generates a lot of "buzz" and profits for Apple and others, domestic employment in the cellphone industry is actually declining rather than increasing.

I can see situations where selection pressures have been significant. Native Americans developed their own systems of medicine, government, and religion in isolation from Europeans. When the two cultures met, the European systems prevailed, to the detriment of Native American culture and population. But looking at the issue of genetics, I don't know how much difference there actually is between the European genotype and the Native American genotype.

In a certain sense you could. When collecting information for a database by interviewing people, the subjects could be connected to polygraphs, also known as lie detectors. Polygraphs work as indicators of the emotional state of the subject when he or she is supplying an answer to a question. So some information about emotional state could be gathered in this manner and incorporated into the database.

If the issue of an offensive motion picture can provoke riots in Moslem countries, what might the reaction be in these countries to US participation in military strikes against Iran? It's difficult to predict, as Iran is allied with the repressive regime of Syria, and is certainly not supportive of the revolts that toppled repressive regimes in other Moslem countries.

I also think that it has to do with retail marketing. Shelf space in a supermarket or drug store is a valuable commodity and flat packs make better use of this space than does round bottles whose contents are mostly empty space.

It's certainly a possibility. An interesting work of science fiction that explores this issue is "Eater" by Greg Benford. It explores the possibility of consciousness surviving for billions of years as patterns in magnetic fields.

I think that you have raised a question germane to the field of artificial intelligence. One might take all the material you mentioned and put it into a database. So the question then becomes, if someone queried the database would they get the same answer to a question that they would get if they put the question to you directly? If the aanswer is yes then you and the program are indistinguishable.