Category: Science!

Not Trusted

Science!

Like we didn’t know this before:

The former head of the MI6 who was in charge during the UK’s invasion of Iraq has claimed scientists’ warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence can necessarily be trusted because of incorrect claims they made about Covid-19.

Sir Richard Dearlove said that as ‘brilliant’ scientists had gone ‘off piste’ during the pandemic, he was sceptical of experts telling him AI will destroy humanity.

Uh huh.

But to take this to its Schrodingian feline conclusion:

I don’t believe what spooks tell me either.

See how that works?

Give ‘Em An Inch

Science!

…and they’ll take 1.6 kilometers.  Or not.

Longtime Readers will all know the hatred I have for the putrid metric system, whereby commonsense units of measure (inches, yards or feet) got turned into incomprehensible gibberish by (of course) the French, who shouldn’t be entrusted with anything other than perhaps wine- or cheesemaking, let alone a new universal system of measurement.

Here’s a lovely old article which goes into more depth on the topic.

And a miss is not as good as a thousand meters.

Wait A Minute

Science!

So we have this breathless headline:

MIT scientists filed two patents on a new, 2D material that’s stronger than steel

Ummm… I always thought that two dimensions (length and width) mean that in mathematical and scientific terms the figure has no thickness — no matter how thin, the third dimension must exist for the figure to have substance — otherwise, it’s just a drawing.

And the explanation in the article doesn’t help:

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” said Strano, in the MIT blog post. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

It doesn’t matter if the third dimension (of the “thin film”) is only a trillionth of a micron thick, or the thickness of a molecule, it’s still >0.

Is this some kind of new math, or did somebody send out a memo redefining the dimensions?

I’m relying on a Reader Of Greater Brain than I to explain this to me.

Oh Noes

Food & Drink, Nannies, Science!

More from the world of dietary science:

Regular meat-eaters are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions than those who shun or ration animal products, a study from the University of Oxford has found.
The research found a meat-lover who eats 70 grams of meat — processed or unprocessed — more than a peer is at 15 per cent higher risk of heart disease, 30 per cent more likely to get diabetes and almost a third (31 per cent) more likely to develop pneumonia in the future.

I did the work so you don’t have to:  70 grams is about 2.5 oz…

Whatever.  According to this lot, I should have died about 15 years ago, given that my daily breakfast contains inter alia  a large piece of boerewors.

And yet, here we are.

Risky Bidness

Disaster, Health, Science!

Apparently, some “experts” (standard warning applies) over in Britishland (same warning) have come up with a list of activities that carry a risk of catching Chinkvirus cooties, ranked according to risk level:

All FYI — as much of what is listed is pretty much commonsense.  I do wonder, though, how “protest march”, “rioting” and “looting” (some overlap) did not make the list.