Archive for March, 2015
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Satire and satirical drawings in 1789 could get you killed
Satirical drawing from 1789. We started off this series (on our IG) of French Revolution postings with a United Nations graphic on current inequality (or an inequality-adjusted Human Development Index.) We wanted to help illustrate why some current theory says it’s important. Historians debate the causes of the revolution, but commentators at the time pointed out inequality. This is one of the social commentators arguing the social inequality aspect, but doing so with a cartoon rather than words. (The 3rd estate is carrying the wealthy 1st and 2nd estates on its back. The 3rd estate were the commoners in the French ancient regime. Amongst other things, they were subject to much heavier taxation than the other two estates.) Then, as now, these cartoons could get you in trouble. This was 18th century drawing was published anonymously. If it annoyed the King too much, the 18th century police would launch an investigation to trace the source.… Read the restAsteroids hit the Earth more often than thought
As show in this map, small space asteroids hit the Earth more often than commonly thought. We’re continuing our recent asteroid theme. According to this map, small asteroids were documented hitting the earth 556 times in the twenty year from 1994 to 32013. Nasa notes that “almost all were harmless.” Ahhh, well, almost all, except for that Chelyabinsk event. (The study of these unlikely but potentially catastrophic “Black Swan” events, like the Carrington Event, is another topic we’ve discussed before (here).) Recall the Chelyabinsk event broke a lot of windows and caused a lot of other damage in rural Siberia (and made for some pretty spectacular video). Good thing Siberia is rural, because the Chelyabinsk event _only_ released 20-30 times more energy than the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. And it wasn’t detected before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. So maybe that early warning system needs some work if we want to continue feeling smug and so much superior to the dinosaurs.… Read the restGaia Hypothesis or Big Data in SciFi continued.
We’ve had fun looking at the impact of science on science and tech. With the recent passing of a very popular science fiction actor, we thought this was a good time to look at big data in science fiction. Originally published on our IG feed, this is part of a series on the data science in science fiction. We’ll start with the Gaia Hypothesis (Wikipedia). As it’s name implies, it’s actually not fiction, but a hypothesis that has not been proven. It might someday be regarded as science fact. (But at the moment close enough to science fiction for government work.) According to the hypothesis, Earth’s biosphere and other processes form a network of feedback loops that keep Earth in a homeostasis. In some interpretations, Earth is almost a conscious or intelligent entity, acting to remove irritants (humans?) that threaten homeostasis. However, the stabilization or intelligent behavior emerges out of the concerted effort of all of Earth’s organisms and geochemical processes, unconsciously working together.… Read the restRecent Posts
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