Since part of the point of starting this blog was to locate and disseminate interesting articles to anybody who may be interested, this posting will be mostly just a list of interesting articles I have read, with maybe a few thoughts about them.
The Gospel of Wealth - David Brooks
I read his book "On Paradise Drive" a few weeks ago, and topics from that book have come up several times in conversation since then. I originally read his book because Ravi Zacharias (see his sermons online) mentioned him during one of his sermons on materialism. The books was very funny in some parts and very revealing in others. Brooks seems to be criticized consistently because he is a bit of a pseudo-scientist. He has a lot of cool ideas but he doesn't have a lot of facts to back them up. Regardless, I enjoy reading what he writes. I think he has a lot of good ideas and I like the way he expresses them. In this article his trademark sarcasm comes across in his discussion of America's obsession with headroom, and he also mentions a book by a mega-church pastor that actually looks like it's worth reading. You can see a short video about the book here.
Intelligent Individuals Don’t Make Groups Smarter - Wired Blog (Brandon Keim)
This article talks about research on the subject of collective mind intelligence. The basic question is "what individual traits allow people to work well together in groups?" Interestingly, the article finds that individual intelligence has little to do with the ability of a group to perform.
As a side note, when I was reading this I was thinking somewhat about my "theory" that the intelligence of a mob is inversely proportional to its size. A group of people can make decisions that no individual in their right mind would ever make. This research that shows that individual intelligence matters very little is a first step toward showing this to be a viable theory...
In Climate Denial, Again - NYT
Climate change is something that I have really tried to keep myself informed on. I don't claim to be an expert, but I have been a part of research on modeling alternative energy systems, I go to many seminars and lectures on engineering approaches to new energy sources, I read many articles and books on the subject, I actually saw Al Gore give his talk on global warming, and I even published a review paper on applications of certain materials to carbon dioxide capture and storage. Even with all this, I have to say that global warming may or may not be a problem. Yeah, I know -- not a very exciting conclusion.
But I'm not alone. I actually am in company with many other scientists I have conversed with, and with somebody named Bjorn Lomberg. Bjorn is an economist who is famous (or perhaps infamous) for his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which discusses a lot of evidence that raises doubt on the legitimacy of the global warming debate. His most important point, however, is that focusing on global warming just does not make economic sense right now. You can see a great video of one of his talks on why global warming should not be our highest priority here.
Having read all this, I get a little frustrated when people use the word "skeptic" like a slur, and hang all other who don't want to do "whatever it takes" to stop global warming on the cross of "denialism."
This is a complex topic. Top scientists at top institutions do not agree on how data is modeled, and and even on whether the earth is heating up or cooling down. For example, Prof. Lindzen at MIT has proposed a theory about feedback systems in climate called the Infrared Iris Effect. Check out the wikipedia article for a taste of just how certain people are about this theory. I worked with another scientist who models the effects of clouds in climate. The uncertainty associated with clouds is so large that a small variation could drown out all other effects in nearly any climate model.
So, if you want to read this article and get a taste for why the discussion never goes anywhere (i.e. misinformed and emotional accusations and labeling) go right ahead. Realize, though, that you probably won't learn anything new about global warming. However, if you are interested in reading about the sometimes extreme tactics used by environmentalists to advance their cause in a rather entertaining form, check out the book State of Fear (granted, it's not scientifically rigorous but it's a good start). Or, if you'd rather watch a video, check out Penn and Teller's take on things. Just remember that anyone who claims to have it all figured out probably has no idea what's going on.
Nuclear fuel report challenges key assumptions - From MIT
Earlier this year I read the book America the Powerless, which is a very pro-nuclear book that discusses all the benefits of nuclear energy, why it fell out of favor, basic fuel cycles, readiation health hazards, etc. This book also discussed how breeder reactors and the thorium cycle could together lead to a supply of nuclear energy that was well beyond even that available from coal (for which we have a multi-hundred year supply). After reading that book and also recently reading a great article in Science about nuclear energy, this was really not a big surprise. Still, I thought it was nice that MIT agrees, because when they say it's o.k. people tend to listen. Hopefully we'll make a shift toward this very clean, safe, environmentally friendly, and inexpensive form of energy soon.
Why Alcohol is Good For You
This is the first of what will probably be many articles from Jonah Lehrer, the author of How we Decide and Proust was a Neuroscientist. Although I haven't read either of his books yet, his articles are similar in style to those from Malcom Gladwell (meaning they're pretty awesome).
This article talks about the upsides and downsides to drinking alcohol. This one goes beyond the traditional arguments about a glass of red wine being good for you and discusses a study that examined how drinking in general effects your life expectancy. It is found that drinking makes you live longer, even when alcoholics are included in the data. Lehrer goes through several reasons why this could be the case in his article, but I want to focus on one in particular -- the idea that people who drink are happier because of the calming effect of the alcohol and it's ability to relieve stress. Stress is very damaging to the body, so I think this is a good point.
So my next thought was whether this could be extended to smoking. Could smoking, in some circumstances, actually be a beneficial activity? Perhaps there is a healthy balance of using smoking to relieve stress but not smoking so much to give yourself a sure shot at emphysema. In this case the adage "all things in moderation" rings especially true.
The articles above were the ones I found most interesting, but the ones below weren't too bad either, so I included themas well.
Rare and Foolish - Paul Krugman
This article discusses China's willingness to use economic power to achieve political ends. The view he takes is that the U.S. government should have done a better job of protecting America's ability to mine rare earth metals. My thought is this: would China's attempts to use economics in politics be effective if American government wasn't so tied to industry, or the industry so tied to government? I sure don't think so.
Tales of the Tea Party - NYT
In this article the author discusses the tea party movement and why it just doesn't seem to go away, and especially why efforts of a largely liberal media to discount the movement are falling flat. Since I identify largely with libertarian ideals, I have tried to educate myself on some of the principles of the tea party. It's good to see that the crazy ones are not messing things up too much for the rest of the tea party members who are actually pretty reasonable and, in my opinion, have some pretty good ideas.
I hope that was informative. Article dumps like this should occur every few weeks, whenever I get tired of research for a day and feel a desire to visit my RSS feeds and learn something new.
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