Tag: science

The World · You

The Sun is green, but we see what we think we see.

patmcgLeave a comment

When we look at the sun, we see yellow or maybe white. But the thing is, we’re not actually looking at the sun, which is technically green.

Apparently we see tis green star as white because our eyes and brains are simply overwhelmed. To me, this misperception is an extreme example of this idea:

👉 The way you perceive something says as much about you as it does about the thing you’re observing.

I think this idea applies to people too. Whether you think someone is a jerk or super cool, it may say as much about your own experiences, aspirations, and assumptions as it does about that person.

On the one hand, this phenomenon can help you make lasting friendships and fall in love, while on the other hand it can feed dumb-ass biases like racism, sexism, and all the others.

This idea kind of reminds me of a Jesse Jackson joke from an old Saturday Night Live skit.

I do not deny the allegation, I deny the allegator.

Jessie Jackson on SNL

When I start to suspect my perceptions may be playing a trick on me, I try to back up, gather more information, and make sure it’s not me. Because sometimes it is. ☀️

Quotes

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

patmcg1 Comment

You gotta love this guy. He’s a real Einstein.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Albert Einstein

All the greatest scientists had wild imaginations. Otherwise you’re just a nerd in a lab coat.

Interesting things like time travel, black holes, and atomic energy can’t be solved by simply using what we know. You have to expand your mind.

And if you want to be extra smart about it, develop some theories and test them against reality (aka science). That’s such a powerful combination. 🤩

Quotes · The World

“Consider yourself blessed if you have a passion for anything.”

patmcgLeave a comment

At the end of an article about a decades-long archaeology effort in Southern California, the protagonist says this:

Consider yourself blessed if you have a passion for anything. Passion is a way of organizing your life; otherwise you go off in 20 different directions, and in the end, you wonder what you have.

Fred E. Budinger (LA Times | Apple News)

This dude knows what he’s talking about.

Fred E. Budinger has been pushing to prove, from the evidence in the ground in the Mojave Desert, that humans were in North American 200,000 years ago (not 11,000 years ago as previously thought) despite decades of misfortune, hostility, and even vandalism.

Good luck to you, Fred (pictured right, below). ✌️ Your passion is inspiring.

The World

I Hate Quantum Mechanics 🤦🏻‍♂️

patmcg1 Comment

I love science. I love philosophy. I love math. But I hate quantum mechanics.

Sorry, it just makes absolutely zero sense and hurts my brain. 🤯 It’s obviously all made up just to annoy us. 😉

It started with a Schrödinger’s cat joke on Reddit, which was perfect because the joke itself was intentionally as annoying as quantum mechanics itself.

Schrödinger’s cat jokes never get old.
Well, they do, but, they don’t.

Doesn’t make sense, right? Not funny? Annoying AF? Totally agreed.

But I had to know what this joke really meant, so then I went down the rabbit hole of what Schrödinger’s cat was all about. The good news is that the Schrödinger’s cat puzzle was actually tying to point out how silly at last one interpretation of quantum mechanics is. 👍

This trail of sorrow leads to obviously incorrect 😉 theories like quantum superposition, which says that something can be in two different states at the same time. (Thus the annoying joke. ☝️) And the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that nothing is ever in one specific place or traveling at any known speed. Tell that to your local traffic cop, amiright?

Science, I love you. Physics, I love you. Quantum mechanics… ehhh… okay, I love you too. But I will never truly understand you. 🧐

The World

Know Thy Enemy: Inside the Coronavirus Genome

patmcgLeave a comment

Here’s an amazing detailed look at coronavirus genome. This article breaks the genetic code down into components such as Protein Scissors, Bubble Maker, and Copy Assistants.

This reads a lot like a software design document, with its factories, helpers, validators, and garbage collectors. 😬

The creepiest thing is the very end, where the genome trails off in a series of a’s, like the padding at the end of a Base64 string. 🧐

The coronavirus genome ends with a snippet of RNA that stops the cell’s protein-making machinery. It then trails away as a repeating sequence of aaaaaaaaaaaaa…