Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet and funny — an evolutionary riddle : TED Talks

Philosopher Dan Dennett has some interesting thoughts on what makes things cute, sexy, sweet, and funny.  The book on “What is Funny?” is something to look forward too.  I have never really thought about it this way before, but it is quite simple, “Things are sweet because we like it, not, ‘We like it because it is sweet.’”  Make sense?  Just watch…

20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Time | Cosmology | DISCOVER Magazine

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

One thing happens to us all together, all at the same time.  Every instant of every day we unfold in to the future.  What never existed before becomes empirical, and where we came from no longer exists anywhere but in our minds.  Existence and the state of being of every individual on Earth has this one property in common – Presence: We are all in it together  –  Not just here, but everywhere in the Universe.

1 “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so,” joked Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Scientists aren’t laughing, though. Some speculative new physics theories suggest that time emerges from a more fundamental—and timeless—reality.

4  Green days. The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.

9  Weather also changes the day. During El Niño events, strong winds can slow Earth’s rotation by a fraction of a milli­second every 24 hours.

13  Until the 1800s, every village lived in its own little time zone, with clocks synchronized to the local solar noon.

17  Einstein showed that gravity makes time run more slowly. Thus airplane passengers, flying where Earth’s pull is weaker, age a few extra nano­seconds each flight.

19  Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

20  There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill.

20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Time | Cosmology | DISCOVER Magazine

Does the human race have a 50/50 chance of surviving the 21st century?

I have added a new book to my “hope to read soon” list.  It is titled, “Our Final Century,” by Martin Reese.  (Actually, I will probably read Our Final Hour, also by Martin Reese, instead.)  According to Amazon.com, “Sir Martin Rees FRS is the most eminent cosmologist in Britain, the Astronomer Royal and Professor at Cambridge. He lives in Cambridge.”

What he says in the book is quite distrubing.  Essentially, he puts the human race’s chances of surviving the 21st century at 50/50.

And I have to say, 208 pages in to Thomas Friedman’s ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded,’ a 50% chance of human self-destruction in the 21st century is not implausible.

Here is the Amazon.com editorial review:

“‘It matters that one should understand the provenance of this important and disturbing book. It is not another futurological diatribe saying that the end is nigh, but a lucid, calm, profoundly well-informed work by a distinguished scientist, whose humanity - evidenced by a serious ethical commitment and a quiet sense of humour- balances the dispassionate logic with which he surveys his subject: the multitude of threats facing humanity in the twenty-first century from error and terror in the nuclear, biological and environmental spheres.’ Literary Review”

A full year shown in 40 seconds by photographer Eirik Solheim

With the new year coming up in a couple of days, I thought I would share this video I came across at Gizmodo.com.  It is a full year of seasons in 40 seconds.  Pretty cool!

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Imagine the 10th Dimension - or 11th (I’ll get back to you) - Updated

As some one who is very much interested in the theories of physics, but not the math, per se, I have always been both intrigued and confused by The String Theory.  Not so much the string theory itself, but the idea of the other dimensions beyond the 3D world we live in.  (4D if you count time as a dimension as most physicists do.)

String theory says that everything in the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings that are smaller even than quarks and can fully account for the four known forces of nature existing in our universe.  And in a nutshell, all of the possibilities that exists as a result of those vibrating strings is in and of itself the 10th dimension.

One thing I am trying to find out is why the Brittanica says there are 11 dimensions in String Theory and Columbia Encyclopedia says there are 10.

In the meantime, watch this great video explanation of the10 dimensions, and when I get an answer from Rob Bryanton as to why the discrepancy exists, I will update you.

Update: From Rob Branyon

Hi Karl, this is something I talk about regularly. String theory had multiple versions, which were based upon ten dimensions - nine spatial dimensions plus time. M Theory unites five different versions of string theory by saying there are ten spatial dimensions plus time, for a total of eleven. As I’ve said in entries like “Time is a Direction” “Dr. Mel’s 4D Glasses” and “What Would a Linelander See”, my project insists that time is not a full dimension, it’s just a direction within the spatial dimensions, so there’s no need to count it separately.

That’s my two bits, anyway!

Rob