Google's one billion Pi bid

Throughout history nerds have loved the number Pi. They have written poems, songs, and made movies about the number. Pi even has its own day. Google has one-upped every nerd in history by bidding $3.14159 billion for a series of telecommunications patents. Along the way, they also bid $1.902160540 billion (Brun's constant) and $2.614972128 billion (Meissel-Mertens constant). Ultimately they lost the bidding war, but I, for one, welcome our new nerd overlords.

Seriously. This is something I can see Dr. Evil doing in the next (hopefully never to be made) Austin Powers. I bid Pi BILLION dollars!

(Via John Gruber.)

Human Double Slit "Experiment"

It seems that June is the month of the double slit with all of the media attention. Last week IQC participated in the awesome Steel Rail Sessions, sponsoring an art installation modelled on a human scale double-slit experiment. Darin and David White from Makebright are the artists behind this cool project. The installation consists of two "slits" (paths) through which participants can pass. A webcam embedded in each slit takes the person's picture as they walk through, and the picture shows up on a distant projected screen. If two people walk through each slit simultaneously then the pictures "interfere" and are smeared out as they are projected—wavelike behaviour. A neat piece sitting at the intersection of art and science.

Evan, Colin, and myself were on hand to explain the physics behind the original double-slit experiment to the participants on the train. David has posted a great write up about the behind the scenes set up of the project. The Quantum Factory (IQC's blog) also has an interesting overview of the installation and the double slit.

Review of Final Cut Pro X(press)

Apple recently released a new version of their popular movie editing software package Final Cut Pro X. As a former Final Cut Express user (and sometimes Final Cut Pro user), I love Final Cut Pro X. I don't have a tape based work flow. I shoot with a DSLR. I work by myself. I am not an expert or professional—I just love to tell stories. After taking a couple of days to get used to the new layout, I find the changes really let me fly. Everything is so much faster now without having to wait for things to render. With the new version the software mostly stays out of my way, leaving me time to craft a story. It has made making movies fun again. This is a definite step up compared to the (now discontinued) Final Cut Express.

The Final Cut Express Prespective

People using Final Cut Express and iMovie will find a lot here to like. The new interface is much simpler to use. This is a solid foundation on which Apple can build on in the future. Much of the power has been harnessed in a way that allows complex things to be easily accomplished. For the most part I like the magnetic timeline; it makes simple cuts quick to achieve. The new trim tool is also cleverly done. Audio managmenent within the program is also much better. I like that the magnetic timeline can be switched off to restore an older style workflow if needed (just select the P icon for place). The new audio sync is also handy. I used to do all of my audio syncing by hand using a clap or some other sharp noise. It wasn't that difficult to do, but it does take some time. Now it is almost instantaneous.

Working with the AVCHD files from my Panasonic GH1 (hacked) is also much easier. There is no need to transcode the files (although more background rendering seems to be needed). I can still skim and edit the native footage without slowdowns. Even better, while the footage is being imported and I can work directly with the files on my memory card. Adding text also seems much simpler and less cumbersome than with the old Final Cut (notwithstanding Conan's video editor's experience). This is a tool that is so much faster and easier to work with.

There are some frustrating things I have encountered. Some of the transitions and text effects are buggy and don't always render correctly. There are occasional crashes. The documentation is spartan at best. It took me hours to figure out that you cannot use an external time machine volume to store events. Luckily I had another drive around to use as a kind of scratch disk. I am also trying to figure out the best way to edit a much more complicated music video without having the audio constantly fall out of sync. I am not sure the older Final Cut would offer much advantage here though (the nature of the project precludes the use of multicam). I also wish the colour correction tool offered s-curves like those found Aperture. I find the current tool to be imprecise and clunky compared to colour correcting in Aperture or Lightroom, but It is still a vast improvement on what Final Cut Express offered.

The Professional Backlash

This product has been been met with widespread derision from film professionals and experts. Film pros have legitimate reasons to be upset; the new software is missing many critical features essential to a professional environment (these missing features and problems are well documented here, here, here, and in the comment section of David Pogue's follow up review). It should be noted that Apple has promised to add many of these features back in over time. In the meantime, Apple is issuing refunds to unhappy customers (via EOSHD).

Apple has also discontinued the old, much loved, version of the software that form a critical piece of the workflow for many organizations. This is the move that I think is most worrisome for these organizations; they can no longer go out and buy new copies of the program for updated workstations. There is no supported way forward for their workflows as a stopgap until Final Cut Pro X is feature complete. If Apple cares about the professional market (a big assumption), they could create a lot of good will by selling copies of Final Cut 7 price matched to the current version of Final Cut Pro X (a price drop from $1000 to $300) until Final Cut Pro X is up to speed.

Some of the reaction around Final Cut Pro X has bordered on hysteria though. People complaining about starting a project in an older version of Final Cut Pro and not being able to finish it in the new program are anything but professionals. A professional does not switch editing suites and make drastic changes to their workflow just because a newer, shiner, product comes out. Don't switch horses midstream. This advice is as true today as it was in Lincoln's time.

The Future

Apple's tagline for Final Cut Pro X is "Everything just changed in post". This is certainly true for me. Final Cut Pro X feels more powerful and accessible to me than FCP7 or FC Express ever did to me even though it is missing key high end features. This is a key theme of all of Apple's products—first make the features that are used 90% of the time as simple and intuitive as possible, then add in the extra functionality over time. This drives power users nuts, but makes things infinitely more useable for the rest of us. Too many companies waste their time on the 10% of features that only a small fraction of their potential users care about.

Apple did this with iMovie 08 when they released a stripped down and simplified video editor that replaced the much loved iMovie 06. Power users hated the new version (rightfully so) as many of the features they had come to depend on were stripped away. But iMovie 08 opened up video editing too many more people (including myself). It coincided with the popularization of the Flip class of cameras that made shooting video cheap and simple (my first camera was a Flip Mino HD). iMovie 08 made it simple and fun to cut together footage, add basic effects and text, and produce decent looking video clips to share online. Most new people using iMovie 08 didn't care about tape ingest, multiple track, and the extensive plugin support of iMoive 06. They just wanted to share videos on Youtube. I remember the thrill when my Flip arrived in December 2008. I shot a few clips of Jaime walking through a blizzard to a restaurant to pick up some take out. Within an hour I had finished editing a short montage set to music. Despite its roughness it is still one of my favourite movies. The much steeper learning curve of iMovie 06 would have never let me do this.

I love this quote from Daringfireball's John Gruber about the iPad:

The central conceit of the iPad is that it’s a portable computer that does less — and because it does less, what it does do, it does better, more simply, and more elegantly.

I remember handing my iPad to my parents for the first time. It was the first computer they were not scared of. Within minutes they were surfing the web and watching videos on Youtube. When I came back twenty minutes later and my mom had found Sketchbook Pro and made a little drawing. The iPad doesn't have nearly as many features as their regular computer, but it is so much simpler to use that they end up doing far more with it. Now that my parents have iPhones they use them far more than their computers despite the smaller screens and touch keyboards. This is something most power users don't understand. It isn't about features and checkboxes. It is about usability for the most people.

Just as the flip cameras revolutionized the low end of the video market, DSLRs are changing the high end. Most big budget movies won't be shot exclusively on DSLRs (yet), but many smaller features, commercials, and indie films are. Final Cut Pro X is for these people and what Apple sees the future of film making to be. Skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.

Ron Brinkmann, one of the developers who worked on Apple's now discontinued high end movie software Shake, has this to say about Apple and its support of professionals:

So if you’re really a professional you shouldn’t want to be reliant on software from a company like Apple. Because your heart will be broken. Because they’re not reliant on you. Use Apple’s tools to take you as far as they can – they’re an incredible bargain in terms of price-performance. But once you’re ready to move up to the next level, find yourself a software provider whose life-blood flows only as long as they keep their professional customers happy.

Serentity Caldwell writing for Macworld says this:

When it comes down to it, Final Cut Pro X isn’t about alienating professionals: It’s about finding out just what a “professional” looks like in this day and age. That line has blurred tremendously in the last decade thanks to widely-available—and inexpensive!—personal technology. Filmmakers are putting together features for $11,000. TV crews have gone digital; and that’s not even covering the amount of video created every day on the Web.

Apple doesn't care about the high end entrenched professionals, they care about the rest of us.

UPDATE: Apple has released this FAQ about missing features and a rough timeline for when things will be included. Looks like Multicam support will be in the next major update.

Steel Rail Sessions 2011

I love living in Waterloo. There is a young, vibrant, arts community that is interested in Science, and a constant stream of awesome events. This past weekend I participated in the Steel Rail Sessions, a series of art exhibits and installations located on a train! There were even snakes. Between this and the cardboard fort project it has been an amazing weekend. Here is a video I shot of the event:

The Institute for Quantum Computing sponsored an exhibit on the double slit experiment. I also have a video of this that will be going up shortly. Throughout the evening a group of us talked physics with the train participants.

The train ride was incredible, but what really took the cake was the live jazz band (Dinny and the Allstars) that greeted us as we got back to the station with cotton candy and donuts. The band then led us in a second line to the art gallery for an awesome after party. The Waterloo Record has a good write up on the event as well.

Big shout out to Hilary Abel and the other organizers for pulling this together. I hope to be back next year.

The Cardboard Fort Project

This past weekend Jaime and I (along with our friends Nancy and Nyree) attended the Cardboard Fort Project, an event run by Chat Perdu Productions and sponsored by the Awesome Foundation Toronto. I took along my camera and shot some video which I have edited into a little short below. Unfortunately, my battery died before I could get footage of the final forts (which were awesome). Luckily there are plenty of photos up on Flickr already.

The event was organized by Sherwin. From the Awesome Foundations blog post on the night, Sherwin describes the event as:

> Like a cat, I think my favourite toy was always plain brown cardboard boxes. The holy grail when I was a kid was to get those discarded refrigerator boxes, because they were so big and creamy smooth. You got the feeling that you could make anything out of that. The idea behind this night is to bring back that feeling.

A big shout out to Sherwin, Chat Perdu Productions, and the Awesome Foundation for putting on such a successful (and awesome) event!

Quantum Physics & Harry Potter

Update: Both shows are now sold out! Two free evenings of magic and science!

Magician Dan Trommater and I are teaming up once againfor a pair of fun, fascinating evenings exploring how the magic of Harry Potter mirrors the real magic of the quantum world. Levitation, teleportation and more—discover how these phenomena exist not only in Harry Potter's world, but in the quantum realm that underlies our world too.

Here is a trailer for the talk:

This is a non-profit educational event aimed at anyone who loves the magic of science. Dan and I held a similar event last year in Toronto that was a huge success. This year's show will be even better!

SPACE IS LIMITED Reserve your free ticket here.

Thursday July 14, 6:30pm - 8:30pm Friday July 15, 6:30pm - 8:30pm Princess Twin Cinema, Waterloo, ON

For more information, visit or check out the Facebook event page.

Sponsored by the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo.

Happy Birthday Mr. President

Last week my friend and occasional arch-nemesis, Dr. Robert Prevedel, turned 30. Here is a video montage I took to mark the occasion.

The first thing Robert did to celebrate his new found old age was to participate in a triathlon. Happy birthday and best of luck in the coming year!

Dr. Heel Click I presume

This past Friday was my PhD convocation ceremony at the University of Toronto. It was great to have so many of my family members there! We were called up two-by-two during the ceremony, and I heel clicked as I was being presented. Fortunately my mom caught the moment on video. 

Double-Slit Rap: The Disco of Space and Time

Our double-slit experiment work has now been eulogized in song! The BBC Radio 4 program, Friday Night Comedy recently rapped about our work. What is most amazing is that they got the physics right and managed to sneak in a dig about the Bond movie Quantum of Solace. Skip to 5:30 to where the song begins. [audio 

I would love to see what kind of remixes people can come up with. I bet there are some funny Youtube movies that could be made.

Listen to my Quirks and Quarks interview about the double-slit experiment

My interview on Quirks and Quarks is now available online.  

I am pleased with how the interview went.  I was probably interviewed for about 15-20 minutes which the producers did an excellent job condensing down to 10 minutes.  One of the things cut though was the acknowledgement that the work was done at the University of Toronto in Aephraim Steinberg's lab (my PhD advisor).

A big thanks to everyone who helped me prepare for this, and a shout out to Colin Hunter and Kim Luke for helping to arrange the interview.  If you are interested, here is a posting that lists all of the media coverage our paper has received. I also wrote a post about my experience being interviewed on Quirks and Quarks.

Finally, here is a picture of me listening to the interview with my signed postcard from Bob McDonald.

Media coverage over our double-slit experiment

Our double-slit experiment paper that was published this week in Science has generated a lot of media coverage. Here are some links to write ups about our experiment. I will update this with new links as they appear. Let me know in the comments if you come across any other coverage, and I will add the links here. Original Paper

**Radio**

- CBC's Quirks and Quarks Interview I did

**Press Releases**

- Press release from the University of Toronto - Press release from the Institute for Quantum Computing

These press releases have been picked up and are now being recycled on numerous other websites.

**Original articles covering our experiment**

- Science - Nature - CBC News - BBC (we made the front page!) And is the number 2 most shared and number 3 most read article! - Scientific American - Uncertainty Principle: The best overview on a technical level of what we did in our experiment. - Arstechnica - Physicsworld.com - Waterloo Record

**Other**

- The Russian take on the experiment - This is what you get if you run the press release through Google translate and back

**[Update]** We hit Slashdot. **[Update x2]** Our experiment has been memorialized in song! **[Update x3]** Our experiment has been selected as Physics World's breakthrough of the year for 2011!

My interview with Quirks & Quarks

I was recently interviewed by Quirks and Quarks, CBC's popular science radio show, about some of our recentwork looking at the double-slit experiment. The interview should air this Saturday  (June 4th) at noon so be sure to tune in. You can listen online at the CBC Radio website, or tune in later via their archives or podcast. I have always been a big fan of the show so it was a thrill to be given the opportunity to be interviewed by Bob McDonald. I took the bus into Toronto and arrived at the CBC studios downtown. I was then given a visitor pass and escorted up to the Quirks & Quarks offices where I met the producers and the host. I was really impressed by the whole operation; these are people who really care about science and bringing it to a larger audience. Everywhere I looked there was science related memorabilia.

Bob McDonald is a fantastic interviewer. Funny, smart, and charming with the ability to instantly put you at ease. The recording studio is covered with various posters he has acquired. The crown jewels of this poster collection are two from one of the control rooms at the Russian space agency. While Bob was visiting as part of a documentary, he asked where he could get a poster like the one hanging on the wall as a souvenir. One of the people working there plucked the posters off the wall and presented them to him. Very cool and very hospitable. You can see the posters on the wall to the right of me in the photo below.

At the end of the interview I got a signed post card. I was given my choice of postcard, but this one had the best story behind it. A (different) copy of it was taken up into space. Above Bob McDonald's desk is a framed photo of this postcard floating in space above the Earth. This made my inner nerd very happy.

Incredible time lapse of the night sky from the Very Large Telescope array

Popular Science linked to this amazing video. Taken at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), located at the top of a mountain in Chile's Atacama Desert, these are some of the coolest time-lapse pictures I have seen of stars in the night sky. The four telescopes are part of a stellar observatory; they work together to achieve a resolving power much greater than any of the individual telescopes. From the ESO website:

The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world's most advanced optical instrument, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, in groups of two or three, to form a giant 'interferometer', the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels where the light paths must be kept equal to distances less than 1/1000 mm over a hundred metres. With this kind of precision the VLTI can reconstruct images with an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to distinguishing the two headlights of a car at the distance of the Moon.

My favourite part of the video is when one of the telescopes shoots a laser up into the night sky. As an aside, this is where parts of the last James Bond movie, A Quantum of Solace, was filmed.

The ESO has a Youtube channel with a number of excellent videos describing various aspects about how the observatory works.

Here is another time lapse I found filmed entirely with a fisheye lens at the Paranal Observatory also located in Chile.

How to make a double rainbow

After the past six weeks of exhausting election campaigning and coverage I think Canada deserves a rainbow–a double rainbow to be exact.  Here is a simple experiment I came up with using house-hold items to create your very own double rainbow.  All you need is a bright light source, a clear jar full of water, and a dark room. It can be a tricky at first to see the double rainbow so stick with it. 

Rainbows are usually seen right after a big thunderstorm when the sun is behind you. White light enters the raindrops, bounces around inside, and then is reflected back to the ground. White light is really composed of all the different colours. As the light hits the raindrop, the different colours separate and no longer travel along the same path. Different colours of light leave at different angles.

Inside the raindrops most of the light makes a single bounce and then leaves the raindrops. The light (that is now split into its different colours) forms the primary rainbow that we are used to seeing. Some of the light, however, can continue to bounce around inside the raindrop. This light leaves the raindrop at a different angle forming a second fainter rainbow that appears above the primary rainbow. Because these secondary rainbows are much fainter it is usually only possible to see them when there is a dark background behind them (like black thunder clouds).

Step-by-step instructions

To create a rainbow you need two things: a light source (to act like the sun) and a round glass jar full of water (to act like a water droplet).

1. Set the lamp up on a chair, table, or high place.  Sit on the ground below the chair–you should be quite a bit lower to see the best rainbow.
2. Hold the water-filled glass jar in front of you at an angle of ~45 degrees.  Now start to raise the jar higher.  You should see a reflected spot in the jar that looks like a rainbow.
3. Keep raising the jar and a second spot will appear.  This is the double rainbow.

Let me know how it works out.  Special thanks to Jaime Almond who helped me shoot the video as well as Catharine Holloway, Evan Meyer-Scott, and Robert Prevedel for acting like photons.

The Quantum Hockey Pool

April in Canada is the start of a national tradition–the NHL hockey playoff pool. In most pools each participant forms a fantasy hockey team by picking ("drafting") players at each position from NHL teams who have made the playoffs. Each time a player on your fantasy team scores, blocks a shot, gets an assist, or gets a hit your fantasy team gains points. At the end of the playoffs the fantasy team with the most points wins. At the institute I work at there is a playoff hockey pool for grad students and post-docs; for the first time in my life I have a vested stake in the playoffs! Some people agonize over their decisions making complex spreadsheets tracking the performance and statistics of various players. Others rely on hunches and gut feelings. My decisions this year were made recklessly. I put off entering until the last minute and only had twenty minutes to make my selections. Not having followed the regular season that closely I mostly went for names I recognized. After the first few days I am proud to say that my team, "BuffaloSucks", is sitting in fifth place out of twenty-three teams. Not bad. The problem is that the first place is occupied by a team called "TruQuantum" (pronounced "True Quantum"—us physicists are hip like that).

TruQuantum is a team that was entered by a couple of grad students who chose their players randomly based on the outcomes of quantum events. But why use quantum events to randomly pick a team instead of just flipping a coin? Strictly speaking flipping a coin does not lead to random results. We usually think that when we flip a coin there is a 50% chance it will either come up heads or tails. But what if on the next coin toss we were able to flip the coin in exactly the same way? If we held the coin in the same way, applied the same force too the coin, released it from the same height, had the exact same air currents influencing it, then the coin should land exactly the same way. We could make the coin land heads (or tails) whenever we wanted–the coin toss would no longer be random or fair.

Making random numbers is hard

It turns out that creating truly random numbers is a hard task. Most computers have something called a random number generator built in that can spit out random numbers on demand. The problem is that these random number generators start with an initial set of numbers known as the "seed". As long as the seed is hidden, the sequence of numbers the computer spits out appears to be random. If the seed is discovered, then it is possible to predict every "random" number the computer will suggest.

Random number generators play an important role in many different areas, most notably in security and methods to share secrets (sometimes called cryptography). Games and other computer software also use random number generators extensively. For example, many online poker games use random number generators to "shuffle" a deck of cards and determine who gets dealt what hand. If you were to know what the seed used in the random number generator was, you could predict every card that every player receives. In reality there are a number of other things you have to know besides just the seed to break such a system, but the point is that these random numbers only appear to be random.

Quantum random number generator

Quantum mechanics offers a solution to the problem of generating random numbers as randomness is an essential part of quantum mechanics. Imagine the situation I described earlier where a coin is tossed. If we were able to exactly duplicate every aspect of the coin toss we could always make the coin lands heads up. With a quantum coin the situation is different. Even if a quantum coin is flipped in exactly the same way every time the results will be random; there is no way to know what the outcome will be. One way to perform a quantum coin toss is to use light. Here the coin is really a photon–a single particle of light–that is sent to a special piece of glass that acts like a mirror and reflects the photon 50% of the time or acts like a window and lets the photon pass straight through 50% of the time. If the photon is reflected, this corresponds to getting "heads". If the photon passes straight through this corresponds to getting "tails". There is no way to predict what the photon will do; the results are completely random. This is the setup used by the members of team TruQuantum to pick their players randomly.

As the hockey playoffs continue I will be eagerly following how well team TruQuantum performs. It is both the most interesting and nerdy team in the entire field, and that is saying something considering all of the participants in the pool are quantum physicists.

Save the internet in Canada

In Canada there has been a public outrage over the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decision to impose caps on the amount of data Canadians can download. The government has vowed to overturn this decision, and the head of the CRTC, Konrad Von Fickenstein, was dragged before parliament. Based on this exchange two things became apparent:

1. The CRTC is still intent on implementing some form of cap system on the internet use of Candians.
2. The CRTC and many members of parliament do not understand how the internet works.

The CRTC based their decision almost entirely on data provided by Bell instead of seeking third party, independent, information.  Konrad also extensively quoted internet usage statistics from 2009.  These are meaningless now; two years ago Netflix did not offer streaming movies and most people were not yet on Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube.

The fight is not over.  We must continue to put pressure on our MPs to flatly reject the CRTC desire to impose caps and limits on our internet service.

How does the cap work?

The CRTC says this "usage based billing" is designed so that people pay for what they use: those who download more should pay more. On the surface this seems fair.

But dig a little deeper and you will find this decision will have devastating consequences for the internet in Canada. The major internet service providers (ISP) like Bell and Rogers offer overpriced and non competitive packages. Canadians already pay far more on average for their internet access that most other developed countries.

There are smaller, excellent, ISPs though who offer much better rates and plans. These independent ISPs often use the physical phone lines that run into your home to deliver the internet. Bell must grant these third party ISPs access to these lines at cost over what is known as "the last mile".

Rather than compete with these ISPs, Bell has won the right from the CRTC to impose individual caps on the amount of data customers of these independent ISPs can download each month. What is worse, if anyone goes over these caps they must pay huge overage fees. These fees go directly to Bell.

What is the real issue?

The real issue here isn't how much extra Canadian's download, but rather television. Bell has a very lucrative television business that is threatened by the presence of the internet. Services like Netflix offer Canadians the opportunity to affordably watch what we want when we want to. In the coming years, the internet will take over television as our primary source of media consumption. By imposing caps, Bell makes it prohibitively expensive to use the internet for entertainment. It is no coincidence that Bell is currently attempting to take over CTV, one of Canada's largest television networks and the same CRTC appears to be letting them.

How much will I have to pay?

How much extra can Bell charge? Previously, for under $40 you could download about 200GB or more / month with a third party ISP. Under the CRTC plan you would be limited to 25GB/month and every GB over this would be billed at $1.90. This is over 100 times what it actually costs per gigabyte. Now, the same plan would cost you over $360/ month plus tax.

To put this in perspective, it would be far cheaper to buy an external hard drive, fill it with data, and send it by Canada Post. For about $110 plus tax you can buy this HDD from Future shop and send it to Afghanistan. In other words, Canada Post is a far more affordable ISP than Bell.

What can I do?

The CRTC has been ordered to revise their UBB decision, but based on the comments of the CRTC head, Konrad von Finckenstein, in the house of commons, it is clear they are still intent on some form of UBB. Any form of UBB is a tax on Canadians. Instead of a regular tax that goes to pay for public services like health care, education, roads, fire, or police services, the proceeds of this tax go straight to Bell.

It is time for the CRTC to get out of bed with Bell and start working for the needs of Canadians. Go to openmedia.ca/meter for more information on how to prevent the CRTC from imposing wrecking the internet in Canada. You can also vote with your wallets: stop giving money to Bell for your internet and instead consider a smaller, more affordable, ISP. Not only will it be cheaper, but you will get better customer service and support.

Love Sucks (Literally)

Recently a 44 year old woman in New Zealand suffered a stroke and partial paralysis from a hickey gone wrong.  A hickey, or love bite, is a bruise that forms due to excessive "sucking" of the skin.  Hickeys have reached near epidemic proportions amongst teenagers; the youth of today do not wear scarves and turtle necks to be stylish, but rather to hide their love bruises. Normally these "bites" are harmless, but in this particular case a blood clot formed in an artery near the suckage area.  This clot then travelled to the lady's heart where it triggered the stroke.  Doctors are treating her with anti-coagulants and hopefully she will make a full recovery.

Horoscope

My earlier post on astrology reminded me of Philip Appleman's book of poems Karma, Dharma, Pudding & Pie. One of my favourite poems is entitled "Horoscope". Here is a short excerpt from that poem for your enjoyment.

Back in college I had a girl friend, Sue, who'd never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and couldn't have cared less that E=mc squared: and if you asked her who Darwin was, Sue'd say he's a theory, not a fact.

But there was this one Indisputably Scientific Thing Sue saw so clearly: that the sun, due to Electro-Magnetic Vibrations, Dominates the Personality--give or take some minor manipulations from the Moon, Which, as everyone knows, rules the emotions; Mars and Venus, which govern speech and love; et cetera, et cetera.

No use objecting that she was dishing out a lot of pre- historic goulash cooked up by the Chaldeans (and if they're so smart, where are they now?)-- Sue wouldn't listen. I should have dated that other girl, the down-to earth geology major, and gone somewhere and hammered. But Sue always seemed so happy. We were "Getting Along So Well," she said, because our Signs were Compatible-- the stars and planets had got us matched up right, like a cosmic computer date.

I highly recommend picking up this slim, but pricey, book. It is full of wit, humour and wonderful illustrations.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch…

... you must first invent the universe. This may be the best opening to a documentary ever.

​Here is a recipe for Carl Sagan's famous apple pie (by Neven Mrgan).

Carl Sagan was more than just an astrophysicist. He was a poet. He had a way of making what is distant tangible; of conveying the joy of discovery and the sense of mystery and wonderment that make "doing" science so satisfying.

It is estimated that his 1980 series "Cosmos" has been seen by over one billion people. Below is one of my favourite clips from the series: "Pale Blue Dot".

John Gruber recently linked to an inspiring movie created by Michael Marantz of another "Pale Blue Dot" excerpt:

​Update: For the voyeurs out there, here is a picture of Carl Sagan's house in Ithaca, NY (via Caitlin Wellman).

Did Your Horoscope Predict This?

The New York Times posted a great article this morning on astrology (via Jasper Palfree).  This has got me thinking again about the (im)possibility of astrology. Below are some of my thoughts on the stars, fate, gravity, Neptune, and my cat. Over the centuries the Earth has been precessing or wobbling as it orbits the sun.  This wobbling has changed the Earth's orientation with respect to the stars, causing a gradual realignment of the Zodiac signs.

> According to the report, Capricorn, which astrologers say begins its monthlong term in December, actually starts on Jan. 20, based on the actual position of the stars. Aquarius, meanwhile, would be bumped to February. And so on.

This has led to quite the outcry on Twitter amongst astrology followers:

>“My zodiac sign changed,” wrote one upset Twitter user on Friday morning. “Does that mean that I’m not anymore who I used to be?!?”

That comment highlights the main reason I have a serious problem with astrology. Everyday millions of people look to the stars and planets for guidance. These people trust astrologers to make critical life decision, throwing away reason, common sense, and their money. I am certain that many - perhaps most - astrologers are true believers and are sincere in their practice. I respect others beliefs and their right to have them, but my respect ends when those beliefs are used to inflict harm on others.

Astrologers are in damage control mode right now, pointing out that they have known about the Earth's tilt and account for it. One of the astrologers quoted in the NY Times article is Robert Brezsny. Brezsny claims: > “Astrology is a poetic language of the soul, not a scientific method,” he said, likening it to “a Neruda poem, Kandinsky paintings or a Nick Cave song.”

>“None of those things are rational or scientific,” he added.

Whenever the methods of astrologers are tested, they fall back on the standard defence that what they are doing is beyond the realm of science, and that scientist fail to understand the true methods behind astrology. The problem is that astrologers seem to be woefully ignorant of physics. Here is an excerpt from Brezsny's website:

> To reiterate: Western astrologers don't work with stars or constellations. Their focus is our solar system. They study the patterns of the planets and the moon as they pass through 12 zones defined by the relationship between the Earth and sun. Those zones have the same names as constellations because of a historical quirk, but they are unrelated to the constellations.

Is there any scientific basis for astrology?

No. This is the one area I agree with Brezsny. If the alignment of the planets and constellations can influence our personalities and fortunes, then there must be some force behind this influence. The only force we know of in nature that can have a significant influence on such cosmic scales is gravity.

All objects with mass exert a gravitational force on each other. We are attracted to the Earth, the Earth to the Sun, Mars to the Earth, my cat to me and so on. It does not matter what the object is made of, gravity acts in the same way. A kilogram of feathers and a kilogram of gold both exert the gravitational force.

Now take Neptune, one of the planets commonly used in astrological predictions. A quick calculation shows that the gravitational force that Neptune exerts on me is much smaller than the gravitational force I experience from my cat when she sits on my lap. At the moment of my birth, the doctors and nurses around exerted a far greater gravitational force on me than Neptune. But the mechanism behind astrology does not account for these and other important contributions.

Clearly it is not gravity that is responsible for astrology. There must be some other force at play that does not depend on the distance and has a sharp influence on human psychological development at the exact moment a child leave its mother's womb. Such a force is certainly outside of the realm of science.

Is astrology testable?

Perhaps astrology is really driven by some mechanism that goes beyond science. Even if we don't understand the underlying mechanism there must be some test we can do. The reason one goes to an astrologer is to seek advice and predictions. This advice is testable--we should be able to measure the accuracy of these predictions over time.

A famous experiment took place in 1985 with the resulting study published in the journal Nature. The investigators worked with 30 expert astrologers to devise a test to see how well the astrologers could predict ones personality from their natal/birth chart. Each astrologer was given a natal chart along with three personality assessments: one assessment belonged to the person whose natal chart the astrologer possessed while the other two were from other individuals. The astrologers tried to match the natal chart to the correct profile. The astrologers succeeded one in three times at making the correct match--the same result as if they had randomly guessed. My cat could have done as good of a job matching the personality profiles as these expert astrologers. An excellent summary of the results can be found here.

Astrologers may argue that the test was biased or was unfair in someway. Even if this was so (I doubt it), there must exist a way to test the accuracy and validity of astrological predictions in a statistically significant way.

Can astrologers help people

Maybe. It is usually easier to see the problems in others as compared to problems we face in our own life. Talking to someone else can help us gain clarity and a new perspective on things. The benefit an astrologer brings is similar to that of a coach. But I bet in the majority of cases one would be better off seeking the advice of a professionally trained counsellor, advisor or mentor.

If astrology was real I would expect the help and advice given by an astrologer to be far superior to that of the average advisor. The astrologer, after all, should have extra insight into one's life path that a regular counsellor does not have access to. If I was a financial advisor with some knowledge, however imperfect, of the movement of financial markets, I would be able to make far more money than the regular investor. It is for this reason that insider trading is illegal. When it comes to advising people, there is no firm evidence that an astrologer possess the equivalent of insider knowledge of their future or life directions.

Save your money. Don't give it to someone who claims they can help you improve your life based on which house Neptune occupied at the moment of your birth.

For some more great info on debunking astrology, check out these videos by James Randi on Youtube here and here