Aftermath: Will the “alternative health movement” learn anything from Jess Ainscough’s death? [Respectful Insolence]

It’s been a rather…interesting…weekend.

Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. “The Wellness Warrior,” a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I’ve been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to avoid an amputation of her left arm at the shoulder, her tumor recurred, after which she chose not to undergo amputation and instead to embrace the quackery known as Gerson therapy, which she did for over two years. By the time she finished her Gerson therapy, she had become a celebrity Down Under, a frequent media fixture advocating “natural” health and a raw vegan lifestyle, fawned over by a credulous press. When her mother developed breast cancer, she, too, used Gerson therapy, resulting in her death. That’s when I first encountered her.



In any event, in December, Ainscough admitted that her health was deteriorating, and on February 26, she died. My post about her death provoked far more of a reaction than I had thought it would. When I wrote about Jess Ainscough’s tragic death, I expected that maybe a few of her fans wouldn’t be happy. What I didn’t expect is that hordes of her fans would infest the comments section and I certainly had no idea that the post would become one of my highest traffic posts of all time, if not the highest (which it well might end up being).

So it’s with a little trepidation that I write this followup. However, I felt the need when I saw an incoming link from a post entitled What The Alternative Health Community Must Learn From Jess Ainscough by Laura Schoenfeld, MPH, RD. After emphasizing in bold letters that this is “not an attack on Jess as a person, her character, her motivations, or her beliefs,” apparently having learned from my post that no matter how polite and civil one tries to be writing about this will provoke nasty reactions, Schoenfeld goes on to say that her post is about something that’s been bothering her, the use of what she refers to as “persuasive marketing to promote diet and lifestyle choices that are purported to cure a person from any disease or health related concern.” (I’m half tempted right here to ask: Is there any other kind of marketing?) In any case, she observes:

There’s a fine line between an attention-grabbing title and a title that makes people feel fear, and sometimes that line depends on the person who is reading the article. It’s a slippery slope that is difficult to maneuver in the world of online marketing. But it’s one where we absolutely must tread carefully.

Unfortunately, as more and more health “experts” enter the world of online health education, these tactics are employed more regularly and misleadingly than ever. Whether that tactic be fear or false hope, there is a lot of health information being promoted online that is not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous for certain peoples’ health. (And sometimes the inaccuracy comes from omission rather than outright falsification.)

I see it all the time in my nutrition practice where people believe that things they’ve learned about online like a super strict, “clean” diet or alternative “therapies” will make all their health problems go away, and it’s not working for them. Sometimes they’re actually worsening their health by faithfully following well-marketed online health gurus’ advice.

The first thing you need to know is that Schoenfeld runs a website called Ancestralize Me. Her business is nutritional counseling, and she appears to believe in a form of “paleo diet” to address various health concerns, including:

• Digestive Disorders


• IBS/IBD


• Fertility and Pregnancy


• Autoimmune Disease


• Thyroid Disorders


• Hormonal Health


• Amenorrhea


• High/Low Blood Pressure


• Adrenal Fatigue


• Blood Sugar Control


• Acne and Skin Conditions


• Weight Issues


• Child and Family Nutrition


• Blenderized Tube Feeds

True, she does say that if you have a chronic health problem that hasn’t been addressed by a physician or naturopath you should do that first. Her mentioning a naturopath, given that naturopathy is a veritable cornucopia of quackery that includes The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy, is not a good sign, nor is her mention of adrenal fatigue, which is not a real diagnosis. Indeed, the public education arm of the Endocrine Society, representing 14,000 endocrinologists said as much. To be fair, Schoenfeld’s woo component seems lower than many nutritionists promoting various “paleo diets” usually demonstrate, but there is at least a little woo there.

Which brings me back to what Schoenfeld thinks the “alternative health community” should learn from the death of Jess Ainscough. At the risk of being too snarky and having another horde come down and attack me, my response to that question would be that the “alternative health community” should learn that there’s no such thing as “alternative” health, medicine, or diet. There are three kinds of medicine: Medicine that’s been shown by science to work, medicine that hasn’t been shown to work, and medicine that’s been shown not to work. The vast majority of “alternative medicine” belongs to the latter two categories. The same is true of diet for health. What Jess Ainscough’s case teaches us is that there really should be no such thing as “alternative medicine” or “alternative health.” There really shouldn’t.

As for marketing, “alternative health” sites live and die by “persuasive marketing.” Testimonials are stock in trade, particularly cancer cure testimonials like, yes, Jess Ainscough’s. I note that she didn’t actually make an attempt to deny that she was claiming that the Gerson therapy had brought her cancer under control until about a year ago, when it was becoming apparent to even her fans that it hadn’t. Yes, she believed it, but that’s what made her so effective. She believed , and she was good at making others believe her too.

So let’s see what lessons Schoenfeld thinks the “alternative health community” should take away. First, there’s this:

The first is, as consumers of health information online, we need to be far more critical about what we’re reading when it comes to health and wellness recommendations, and take everything we read with a grain of salt.

Persuasive marketing techniques can be powerful in communicating a message, and when that message is “do this and you’ll achieve perfect health”, it’s an incredibly dangerous one. I’ve seen multiple patients with eating disorders that developed from following the online advice they read, which caused fear and paranoia around a food as simple as a banana.

OK, this is a good lesson. It’s also highly naive to think that this The problem is, because “alternative health” claims and alternative medicine consist primarily of medicine that has either not been shown to work or shown not to work, credulity is built in. Claims are made, but they are not made for readers to be skeptical of, as they’re almost always supported not with valid scientific evidence but rather with a combination of testimonials, cherry-picked studies, and conspiracy mongering against “big pharma.” The reason is simple. They don’t have any evidence that passes scientific muster to support their claims. Either that, or they vastly exaggerate what diet and various “alternative” treatments can accomplish.

Schoenfeld warns:

Or that maybe conventional treatment like medication or surgery really is your best option, and it shouldn’t be discounted simply because it’s not “natural.” This includes everything from (medically appropriate) statins and thyroid medication, to amputation and corrective surgeries.

This is why working with a licensed medical professional (or two!) is important when trying to make decisions about your health. You shouldn’t be trying to do this alone using advice given from a health blogger with a weekend-long certification course under their belt, or from a PhD who has never worked with a single patient before.

There are hundreds of ancestral-health minded practitioners who can help guide you through the good and the bad advice you’ve been exposed to online, and to get you on a health protocol that is tailored to your unique and individual needs.

This, unfortunately, is the trap of “integrative medicine,” which claims to “integrate” alternative medicine with conventional medicine. Just having a physician involved in these decisions is no guarantee that the advice won’t be dangerous. Look at Stanislaw Burzynski. Look at Rashid Buttar. Look at Mark Geier. Look at Meyer Eisenstein. Look at Jack Wolfson. I could go on and on and on naming doctors who offer dangerous quackery.

Let me repeat that again: Working with a licensed health professional is no guarantee that the advice given will science-based if that health professional is a naturopath, a chiropractor, or another “alternative practitioner” or if that health professional happens to be a practitioner of “integrative” medicine.

Schoenfeld’s next lesson is just as naive:

The second thing we need to learn as health communicators, whether we have our own blog or we are simply sharing information with friends and family, that we need to be forthcoming about our experience with the strategies we are recommending, good or bad.

While there is a lot of pressure on those of us who present ourselves as health experts to look perfect and have perfect health, the reality is that no one has perfect health, and often times the stress of running a business designed to help others with their health can cause it’s own problems for our health.

And:

Again, this is where conventional medicine like drugs or surgery may be helpful when diet and lifestyle are not enough. And it may even mean letting go of the idea that we have complete control over our health and physical wellbeing. Because for as much influence as we have in our health, nobody has complete control over what happens to their bodies.

Jess’s death has brought this issue to a head for me, and I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the problem I’ve been seeing more and more in the online alternative health community. We need to be mindful of the information we consume as well as that which we share with others, and make sure we are not painting a picture of our health advice being more successful than it truly is.

Give up the idea that we have complete control over our health and physical well being? Seriously? That’s the very concept that’s at the heart of alternative medicine, so much so that I’ve called it the central dogma of alternative medicine, and when you start questioning it you will not encounter a friendly reaction in the “alternative health” community.

If the “alternative health community” were to learn from Jess Ainscough’s the two lessons Schoenfeld wants it to learn, to really take those lessons to heart, it wouldn’t be the alternative health community much longer. That’s exactly why it won’t learn anything. Indeed, my prediction is that it will make excuses and turn on her for not having believed enough, done Gerson therapy correctly, or hewed closely enough to her “Wellness Warrior” raw vegan diet.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BwRZ9J

It’s been a rather…interesting…weekend.

Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. “The Wellness Warrior,” a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I’ve been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to avoid an amputation of her left arm at the shoulder, her tumor recurred, after which she chose not to undergo amputation and instead to embrace the quackery known as Gerson therapy, which she did for over two years. By the time she finished her Gerson therapy, she had become a celebrity Down Under, a frequent media fixture advocating “natural” health and a raw vegan lifestyle, fawned over by a credulous press. When her mother developed breast cancer, she, too, used Gerson therapy, resulting in her death. That’s when I first encountered her.



In any event, in December, Ainscough admitted that her health was deteriorating, and on February 26, she died. My post about her death provoked far more of a reaction than I had thought it would. When I wrote about Jess Ainscough’s tragic death, I expected that maybe a few of her fans wouldn’t be happy. What I didn’t expect is that hordes of her fans would infest the comments section and I certainly had no idea that the post would become one of my highest traffic posts of all time, if not the highest (which it well might end up being).

So it’s with a little trepidation that I write this followup. However, I felt the need when I saw an incoming link from a post entitled What The Alternative Health Community Must Learn From Jess Ainscough by Laura Schoenfeld, MPH, RD. After emphasizing in bold letters that this is “not an attack on Jess as a person, her character, her motivations, or her beliefs,” apparently having learned from my post that no matter how polite and civil one tries to be writing about this will provoke nasty reactions, Schoenfeld goes on to say that her post is about something that’s been bothering her, the use of what she refers to as “persuasive marketing to promote diet and lifestyle choices that are purported to cure a person from any disease or health related concern.” (I’m half tempted right here to ask: Is there any other kind of marketing?) In any case, she observes:

There’s a fine line between an attention-grabbing title and a title that makes people feel fear, and sometimes that line depends on the person who is reading the article. It’s a slippery slope that is difficult to maneuver in the world of online marketing. But it’s one where we absolutely must tread carefully.

Unfortunately, as more and more health “experts” enter the world of online health education, these tactics are employed more regularly and misleadingly than ever. Whether that tactic be fear or false hope, there is a lot of health information being promoted online that is not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous for certain peoples’ health. (And sometimes the inaccuracy comes from omission rather than outright falsification.)

I see it all the time in my nutrition practice where people believe that things they’ve learned about online like a super strict, “clean” diet or alternative “therapies” will make all their health problems go away, and it’s not working for them. Sometimes they’re actually worsening their health by faithfully following well-marketed online health gurus’ advice.

The first thing you need to know is that Schoenfeld runs a website called Ancestralize Me. Her business is nutritional counseling, and she appears to believe in a form of “paleo diet” to address various health concerns, including:

• Digestive Disorders


• IBS/IBD


• Fertility and Pregnancy


• Autoimmune Disease


• Thyroid Disorders


• Hormonal Health


• Amenorrhea


• High/Low Blood Pressure


• Adrenal Fatigue


• Blood Sugar Control


• Acne and Skin Conditions


• Weight Issues


• Child and Family Nutrition


• Blenderized Tube Feeds

True, she does say that if you have a chronic health problem that hasn’t been addressed by a physician or naturopath you should do that first. Her mentioning a naturopath, given that naturopathy is a veritable cornucopia of quackery that includes The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy, is not a good sign, nor is her mention of adrenal fatigue, which is not a real diagnosis. Indeed, the public education arm of the Endocrine Society, representing 14,000 endocrinologists said as much. To be fair, Schoenfeld’s woo component seems lower than many nutritionists promoting various “paleo diets” usually demonstrate, but there is at least a little woo there.

Which brings me back to what Schoenfeld thinks the “alternative health community” should learn from the death of Jess Ainscough. At the risk of being too snarky and having another horde come down and attack me, my response to that question would be that the “alternative health community” should learn that there’s no such thing as “alternative” health, medicine, or diet. There are three kinds of medicine: Medicine that’s been shown by science to work, medicine that hasn’t been shown to work, and medicine that’s been shown not to work. The vast majority of “alternative medicine” belongs to the latter two categories. The same is true of diet for health. What Jess Ainscough’s case teaches us is that there really should be no such thing as “alternative medicine” or “alternative health.” There really shouldn’t.

As for marketing, “alternative health” sites live and die by “persuasive marketing.” Testimonials are stock in trade, particularly cancer cure testimonials like, yes, Jess Ainscough’s. I note that she didn’t actually make an attempt to deny that she was claiming that the Gerson therapy had brought her cancer under control until about a year ago, when it was becoming apparent to even her fans that it hadn’t. Yes, she believed it, but that’s what made her so effective. She believed , and she was good at making others believe her too.

So let’s see what lessons Schoenfeld thinks the “alternative health community” should take away. First, there’s this:

The first is, as consumers of health information online, we need to be far more critical about what we’re reading when it comes to health and wellness recommendations, and take everything we read with a grain of salt.

Persuasive marketing techniques can be powerful in communicating a message, and when that message is “do this and you’ll achieve perfect health”, it’s an incredibly dangerous one. I’ve seen multiple patients with eating disorders that developed from following the online advice they read, which caused fear and paranoia around a food as simple as a banana.

OK, this is a good lesson. It’s also highly naive to think that this The problem is, because “alternative health” claims and alternative medicine consist primarily of medicine that has either not been shown to work or shown not to work, credulity is built in. Claims are made, but they are not made for readers to be skeptical of, as they’re almost always supported not with valid scientific evidence but rather with a combination of testimonials, cherry-picked studies, and conspiracy mongering against “big pharma.” The reason is simple. They don’t have any evidence that passes scientific muster to support their claims. Either that, or they vastly exaggerate what diet and various “alternative” treatments can accomplish.

Schoenfeld warns:

Or that maybe conventional treatment like medication or surgery really is your best option, and it shouldn’t be discounted simply because it’s not “natural.” This includes everything from (medically appropriate) statins and thyroid medication, to amputation and corrective surgeries.

This is why working with a licensed medical professional (or two!) is important when trying to make decisions about your health. You shouldn’t be trying to do this alone using advice given from a health blogger with a weekend-long certification course under their belt, or from a PhD who has never worked with a single patient before.

There are hundreds of ancestral-health minded practitioners who can help guide you through the good and the bad advice you’ve been exposed to online, and to get you on a health protocol that is tailored to your unique and individual needs.

This, unfortunately, is the trap of “integrative medicine,” which claims to “integrate” alternative medicine with conventional medicine. Just having a physician involved in these decisions is no guarantee that the advice won’t be dangerous. Look at Stanislaw Burzynski. Look at Rashid Buttar. Look at Mark Geier. Look at Meyer Eisenstein. Look at Jack Wolfson. I could go on and on and on naming doctors who offer dangerous quackery.

Let me repeat that again: Working with a licensed health professional is no guarantee that the advice given will science-based if that health professional is a naturopath, a chiropractor, or another “alternative practitioner” or if that health professional happens to be a practitioner of “integrative” medicine.

Schoenfeld’s next lesson is just as naive:

The second thing we need to learn as health communicators, whether we have our own blog or we are simply sharing information with friends and family, that we need to be forthcoming about our experience with the strategies we are recommending, good or bad.

While there is a lot of pressure on those of us who present ourselves as health experts to look perfect and have perfect health, the reality is that no one has perfect health, and often times the stress of running a business designed to help others with their health can cause it’s own problems for our health.

And:

Again, this is where conventional medicine like drugs or surgery may be helpful when diet and lifestyle are not enough. And it may even mean letting go of the idea that we have complete control over our health and physical wellbeing. Because for as much influence as we have in our health, nobody has complete control over what happens to their bodies.

Jess’s death has brought this issue to a head for me, and I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the problem I’ve been seeing more and more in the online alternative health community. We need to be mindful of the information we consume as well as that which we share with others, and make sure we are not painting a picture of our health advice being more successful than it truly is.

Give up the idea that we have complete control over our health and physical well being? Seriously? That’s the very concept that’s at the heart of alternative medicine, so much so that I’ve called it the central dogma of alternative medicine, and when you start questioning it you will not encounter a friendly reaction in the “alternative health” community.

If the “alternative health community” were to learn from Jess Ainscough’s the two lessons Schoenfeld wants it to learn, to really take those lessons to heart, it wouldn’t be the alternative health community much longer. That’s exactly why it won’t learn anything. Indeed, my prediction is that it will make excuses and turn on her for not having believed enough, done Gerson therapy correctly, or hewed closely enough to her “Wellness Warrior” raw vegan diet.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BwRZ9J

Moon closest to Jupiter on March 2

Tonight – March 2, 2015 – look for the brilliant waxing gibbous moon to pair up with the dazzling planet Jupiter as soon as darkness falls. As the Earth spins eastward beneath the starry heavens tonight, it’ll cause the moon and Jupiter to travel upward and westward, until the brilliant twosome reaches its high point in the sky at late evening. They’ll continue to move westward, to set in the west just before dawn.

The giant planet Jupiter has more than twice the mass of all the other solar system planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and moons combined. Jupiter’s mass is 318 times that of the Earth. Little wonder why Jupiter enjoys the King Planet designation!

Three of Jupiter’s four largest moons are larger and more massive than Earth’s moon. In their outward order from Jupiter, the four major moons of Jupiter are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Europa is a touch smaller and less massive than our own moon.

You can actually view these moons as pinpoints of light with a modest backyard telescope or even good binoculars. Find out the present position of Jupiter’s moons on this handy chart, courtesy of skyandtelescope.com.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

If your sky is dark, you will be able to make out the familiar backwards question mark pattern of Leo near Jupiter. On the other side of Jupiter is M44 – the famous Beehive star cluster. Use binoculars! Photo taken in mid-February 2015 by EarthSky Facebook friend Brodin Alain.

Once the moon drops out of the evening sky in the second week of March 2015, use the brilliant planet Jupiter to locate the faint constellation Cancer the Crab.

Jupiter’s four major moons from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Image credit: NASA

We’ve been asked why Jupiter’s moons move so quickly around Jupiter, although all four of Jupiter’s major moons lie farther away from Jupiter than our moon’s distance from Earth. For instance, Io – Jupiter’s closest moon – has a semi-major axis of 421,800 kilometers in contrast to the semi-major axis of our moon of 384,400 kilometers. Despite Io’s greater distance from its parent planet, Io revolves around Jupiter in 1.769 days. Meanwhile, our moon takes a whopping 27.322 days to orbit Earth.

It’s Jupiter’s great mass that causes Io and Jupiter’s moons to move so quickly around Jupiter. If the Earth were as massive as Jupiter, then our moon’s orbital period would be only 1.53 days. Or if Jupiter were as lightweight as Earth, then Io’s orbital period would be 31.55 days.

Bottom line: Use the waxing gibbous moon to find Jupiter, the king of the planets, on March 2, 2015!

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky Planisphere today.

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1AUG3N7

Tonight – March 2, 2015 – look for the brilliant waxing gibbous moon to pair up with the dazzling planet Jupiter as soon as darkness falls. As the Earth spins eastward beneath the starry heavens tonight, it’ll cause the moon and Jupiter to travel upward and westward, until the brilliant twosome reaches its high point in the sky at late evening. They’ll continue to move westward, to set in the west just before dawn.

The giant planet Jupiter has more than twice the mass of all the other solar system planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and moons combined. Jupiter’s mass is 318 times that of the Earth. Little wonder why Jupiter enjoys the King Planet designation!

Three of Jupiter’s four largest moons are larger and more massive than Earth’s moon. In their outward order from Jupiter, the four major moons of Jupiter are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Europa is a touch smaller and less massive than our own moon.

You can actually view these moons as pinpoints of light with a modest backyard telescope or even good binoculars. Find out the present position of Jupiter’s moons on this handy chart, courtesy of skyandtelescope.com.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

If your sky is dark, you will be able to make out the familiar backwards question mark pattern of Leo near Jupiter. On the other side of Jupiter is M44 – the famous Beehive star cluster. Use binoculars! Photo taken in mid-February 2015 by EarthSky Facebook friend Brodin Alain.

Once the moon drops out of the evening sky in the second week of March 2015, use the brilliant planet Jupiter to locate the faint constellation Cancer the Crab.

Jupiter’s four major moons from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Image credit: NASA

We’ve been asked why Jupiter’s moons move so quickly around Jupiter, although all four of Jupiter’s major moons lie farther away from Jupiter than our moon’s distance from Earth. For instance, Io – Jupiter’s closest moon – has a semi-major axis of 421,800 kilometers in contrast to the semi-major axis of our moon of 384,400 kilometers. Despite Io’s greater distance from its parent planet, Io revolves around Jupiter in 1.769 days. Meanwhile, our moon takes a whopping 27.322 days to orbit Earth.

It’s Jupiter’s great mass that causes Io and Jupiter’s moons to move so quickly around Jupiter. If the Earth were as massive as Jupiter, then our moon’s orbital period would be only 1.53 days. Or if Jupiter were as lightweight as Earth, then Io’s orbital period would be 31.55 days.

Bottom line: Use the waxing gibbous moon to find Jupiter, the king of the planets, on March 2, 2015!

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky Planisphere today.

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1AUG3N7

Sunday Chess Problem [EvolutionBlog]

One of the underappreciated aspects of chess composition is that some problems have a sense of humor. Sure, the real classics show deep and surprising ideas and do so with impressive constructional finesse. But other problems just bring a smile to your face. This week I have two such problems for you. Neither is difficult to solve. In fact, they are both trivial to solve. But both made me smile when I saw them, and that makes them good problems in my book!

Last week I reported on The US Amateur Team East chess tournament. One of the great joys of this tournament is the chess bookstore run by Fred Wilson. Fred has a chess store in New York City, which I heartily recommend you visit if you’re in town and like chess. He had a number of rare books on chess composition on hand at the tournament, and I mostly cleaned him out. Alas, most of them are not in English, but chess is a universal language!

One was a small paperback in German called Chess Curiosities. It was authored by Karl Fabel, a composer who specialized in such things. So, without any further ado, here’s the first problem. It was composed by Fabel and Sontag in 1956. The stipulation calls for Selfmate in Five:

Recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and forces black to give checkmate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. Black, for his part, will do everything in his power to avoid giving mate. It is a complete inversion of normal chess logic!

You have probably already found the solution. White must escort the black pawn down to b2, which he does with some aesthetic knight hops: 1. Nf6 gxf6 2. Ne5 fxe5

3. Nd4 exd4 4. Nc3 dxc3 5. Nb2 cxb2 mate.

Like I said, very simple but undeniably fun!

The theme of clever knight arrangements continues in our next problem. It was composed by P. H. Williams, but the book does not give the year of publication. White is to play and mate in two:

A quick scan reveals that white is prepared to deal with any hop of the black knights. Such a move by black would give the black king a flight square, but it will also unguard a square from which one of the white knights (from a6 or d1) will give mate. The white knight will not only give check, but will also cover the newly opened flight square.

The trouble is that white needs a waiting move. It is plain that he cannot move any of his four knights without messing up the set play, which leaves the king. Any king move will leave him exposed to a check, however, so white must choose carefully.

The only move that works is 1. Ka2!:

Now a typical line is 1. … Nf8 2. Nc7 mate:

The other variations are similar, so I will leave them as an exercise to the reader.

Good stuff! See you next week.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1zw35Gm

One of the underappreciated aspects of chess composition is that some problems have a sense of humor. Sure, the real classics show deep and surprising ideas and do so with impressive constructional finesse. But other problems just bring a smile to your face. This week I have two such problems for you. Neither is difficult to solve. In fact, they are both trivial to solve. But both made me smile when I saw them, and that makes them good problems in my book!

Last week I reported on The US Amateur Team East chess tournament. One of the great joys of this tournament is the chess bookstore run by Fred Wilson. Fred has a chess store in New York City, which I heartily recommend you visit if you’re in town and like chess. He had a number of rare books on chess composition on hand at the tournament, and I mostly cleaned him out. Alas, most of them are not in English, but chess is a universal language!

One was a small paperback in German called Chess Curiosities. It was authored by Karl Fabel, a composer who specialized in such things. So, without any further ado, here’s the first problem. It was composed by Fabel and Sontag in 1956. The stipulation calls for Selfmate in Five:

Recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and forces black to give checkmate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. Black, for his part, will do everything in his power to avoid giving mate. It is a complete inversion of normal chess logic!

You have probably already found the solution. White must escort the black pawn down to b2, which he does with some aesthetic knight hops: 1. Nf6 gxf6 2. Ne5 fxe5

3. Nd4 exd4 4. Nc3 dxc3 5. Nb2 cxb2 mate.

Like I said, very simple but undeniably fun!

The theme of clever knight arrangements continues in our next problem. It was composed by P. H. Williams, but the book does not give the year of publication. White is to play and mate in two:

A quick scan reveals that white is prepared to deal with any hop of the black knights. Such a move by black would give the black king a flight square, but it will also unguard a square from which one of the white knights (from a6 or d1) will give mate. The white knight will not only give check, but will also cover the newly opened flight square.

The trouble is that white needs a waiting move. It is plain that he cannot move any of his four knights without messing up the set play, which leaves the king. Any king move will leave him exposed to a check, however, so white must choose carefully.

The only move that works is 1. Ka2!:

Now a typical line is 1. … Nf8 2. Nc7 mate:

The other variations are similar, so I will leave them as an exercise to the reader.

Good stuff! See you next week.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1zw35Gm

New Research Demonstrates Link Between Greenhouse Gas Pollution and Global Warming [Greg Laden's Blog]

New Research on the Effects of CO2 Pollution

A paper just published in Nature reports on the direct measurement of the effects of human greenhouse gas pollution on the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. This is empirical verification of anthropogenic global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans started polluting the Earth’s atmosphere with copious amounts of long lived greenhouse gases released from entombment as fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has skyrocketed from close to 250 parts per million (ppm) to about 400ppm. In fact, February was the first month since records have been kept to average over 400ppm, though that value has been reached several times over the last year or so. This is the highest concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in a very long time. Direct measurements of air trapped in glacial ice confirms that CO2 has been well below 300ppm for the last 800,000 years. We can’t measure CO2 as easily for periods before this, but it can be estimated, and the best estimates suggest that the last time our planet has had CO2 levels of 400ppm or more is during the very early Pleistocene or, more likely, the Late Pliocene, between roughly 2.5 and 3.5 million years ago.

The transition from higher CO2 levels, and a warmer Earth to a cooler Earth changed the planet’s ecology considerably, giving rise for the the first time to widespread grasslands (much of that now converted to vast farmlands), reduced forests, repeated glaciations and other changes. It is generally accepted that these changes directly or indirectly caused many of the key steps in human evolution. So, millions of years ago, the planet changed to one inhabited by our immediate ancestors and eventually our own species, and our physiology, culture, technology, psychology, and everything else evolved in this new context. Re-heating the Earth to Miocene levels in a very short period of time will have dramatic consequences and will possibly make it impossible for Humans to live as we do now on this planet.

The science behind this is somewhat complicated but the basics can be easily understood. The sun provides heat to the Earth, but if our atmosphere consisted only of non-greenhouse gases, much of that heat would immediately escape and our planet would be very cold. Adding greenhouse gasses to such a hypothetical Earth would cause a heat imbalance that would eventually increase the average temperature of the oceans, the air near the surface (where we live), the upper several meters of the Earth itself. This heat imbalance would also eventually melt persistent ice such as found today in the world’s glaciers, which in turn would cause a dramatic rise in sea level. Around the edges of the Earth’s continents are preserved ancient beaches or shorelines where the Miocene (or earlier) ocean once ended. Between these ancient shorelines and the modern shoreline, in most places, exist a very large percentage of the Earth’s human population and, in some areas, vast regions that are farmed to produce the world’s supply of food.

We know how this works mainly from two different sources of information. First, there is the basic physics, backed up by laboratory experiments, showing that added greenhouse gasses provide the heat imbalance that causes what we call global warming. Second, we have been measuring the surface temperature of the Earth for many decades, and we can see the heating. One of the most important things to know about this is that the current level of heating is not that expected for the current level of CO2. The current concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases should produce much more heating but it takes time, in the order of decades, for the imbalance to even out. In other words, the increase in greenhouse gases caused by human pollution so far is expected to produce continued warming for decades to come. The primary driver, CO2, is not expected to leave the atmosphere for centuries. So, we are currently locked in to a significant rise in heat, and as we continue to add more CO2 to the atmosphere, the total effect will increase.

In between these two basic facts — the physics of greenhouse pollution and the observation of the effects of greenhouse pollution — is the direct observation of what scientists call “radiative forcing.” Radiative forcing is the degree of perturbation of the planet’s heat energy balance caused by these changes in the atmosphere. To measure radiative forcing, one would observe the energy provided to a given location by the sun, and observe the heat leaving the planet, at two different time periods with different concentrations of greenhouse pollution.

This has been done only a few times, using a range of different technologies. In 2001 scientists reported satellite-observed changes in greenhouse pollution forcing between 1970 and 1997, providing “… direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.” This study was replicated and extended in 2013. In 2004 researchers published a paper that reported measurements at eight meteorological stations in Europe, at various elevations and locations. They measured energy flux that they could attribute to a combination of increased vapor (a greenhouse gas naturally present but enhanced by added CO2) and CO2 over eight years. “… after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm−2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.” The science of directly measuring the “smoking gun” of greenhouse gas pollution is further discussed here: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

The current study, Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010 by D. R. Feldman, W. D. Collins, P. J. Gero, M. S. Torn, E. J. Mlawer and T. R. Shippert, takes a different approach than the earlier studies and in some ways is a more direct measurement. They used very precise spectroscopic instrumentation located at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one in Alaska, to measure what was happening with the Sun’s energy. They also measured variables that influence the behavior of the energy, such as ambient temperature, water vapor, and clouds. After factoring out everything but the CO2, they were able to accurately measure the effects of radiative forcing. The study was carried out from 2000 to 2010, during which time the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rose 22ppm. From the paper, these “…results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.”

So, what’s new? In a way, nothing. This is one of those scientific findings that could easily result in a “well, duh” response. We already knew the basic physics, and we already observed the global warming that results from human greenhouse gas pollution. However, it is important and appropriate to directly measure and describe processes that underly such an important phenomenon. Daniel Feldman, lead author, told me, “CO2 concentrations have been measured at several surface stations for decades, including the prominent Keeling curve. The actual radiative forcing (like in IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 8), which is distinct from surface temperature, is based, for the most part, on calculations which are informed by laboratory measurements and quantum mechanics. In 2001, John Harries et al published a paper in Nature in which they inferred the greenhouse effect at the TOA based on differencing two satellite instrument data records, but our study is the first to see the effect at the surface from observations.”

The two very far apart sites were chosen to allow comparison of two very different areas of the Earth. I wondered if the CO2 concentrations were different in the two areas (they should be the same, but worth asking just in case!) and if the basic nature of the forcing was similar. Feldman told me that the CO2 levels were not different, and that “we were not able to see a significant difference in the forcing per unit CO2 at the two sites.”

The researchers produced a video showing their results:

Caption from the press release: How carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have changed (blue line) and their warming effect (‘forcing’) on the climate over the same time period (orange line), for the southern Great Plains site (first graph shown) and the northern Alaska site (second). The seasonal fluctuations are caused by the rise and fall in plant photosynthesis in summer and winter, respectively. Source: Feldman et al. ( 2015)

Why Is Greenhouse Gas Pollution Important?

Global warming means more extreme weather. Many meteorologist who watch the weather every day see this even if not all admit it. In some cases, greenhouse gas pollution changes the weather in a way that causes even more change in the weather. Changing weather systems means more lightning, increased high precipitation events in certain regions like the US Northeast, including more frequent large snow storms. Even though concern about this differs with how close one lives to the sea, sea levels are rising and will continue to do so.

Many kinds of storms are more frequent or will become more frequent. We are seeing an increased number of spectacular global warming worsened disasters like Typhoon Haiyan and Frankenstorm Sandy. Some recent tropical cyclones have been so bad that we are talking about adding a new category to the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Heatwaves, obviously, and drought, are expected to be more common and more severe.

There are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected.

Human caused global warming is real and the amount that humans have heated up the surface of the Earth is dramatic and getting worse, even though corporations, ideological think tanks, and individuals deny the science. Denial of climate science takes many forms and is carried out for many reasons. There are those who appear to be paid by “Big Fossil” to lie to congress, or to publish highly questionable science without disclosing their sources. Another strategy is to mischaracterize the importance of climate change presumably to divert interest and concern away from it. This and other forms of denialism have the effect of slowing down how quickly we address potentially catastrophic carbon pollution.

But the tide is turning on the public and political understanding of scientifically proven greenhouse gas pollution. In 2014 and early 2015, major media outlets openly discussed the use of terms like ‘skeptic’ and ‘denier’ and increasingly made climate change stories front page news. Anti science activists can no longer attack and libel scientists without there being consequences. ‘Skeptics’ who had questioned the reality of global warming from within science carried out research to disprove it and found that they were unable to do so. For the first time ever, the President of the United States is actively calling out anti science denialism. Even Big Fossil or its representatives increasingly admit that human caused global warming is a critically important issue that must be dealt with.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1AKPtfi

New Research on the Effects of CO2 Pollution

A paper just published in Nature reports on the direct measurement of the effects of human greenhouse gas pollution on the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. This is empirical verification of anthropogenic global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans started polluting the Earth’s atmosphere with copious amounts of long lived greenhouse gases released from entombment as fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has skyrocketed from close to 250 parts per million (ppm) to about 400ppm. In fact, February was the first month since records have been kept to average over 400ppm, though that value has been reached several times over the last year or so. This is the highest concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in a very long time. Direct measurements of air trapped in glacial ice confirms that CO2 has been well below 300ppm for the last 800,000 years. We can’t measure CO2 as easily for periods before this, but it can be estimated, and the best estimates suggest that the last time our planet has had CO2 levels of 400ppm or more is during the very early Pleistocene or, more likely, the Late Pliocene, between roughly 2.5 and 3.5 million years ago.

The transition from higher CO2 levels, and a warmer Earth to a cooler Earth changed the planet’s ecology considerably, giving rise for the the first time to widespread grasslands (much of that now converted to vast farmlands), reduced forests, repeated glaciations and other changes. It is generally accepted that these changes directly or indirectly caused many of the key steps in human evolution. So, millions of years ago, the planet changed to one inhabited by our immediate ancestors and eventually our own species, and our physiology, culture, technology, psychology, and everything else evolved in this new context. Re-heating the Earth to Miocene levels in a very short period of time will have dramatic consequences and will possibly make it impossible for Humans to live as we do now on this planet.

The science behind this is somewhat complicated but the basics can be easily understood. The sun provides heat to the Earth, but if our atmosphere consisted only of non-greenhouse gases, much of that heat would immediately escape and our planet would be very cold. Adding greenhouse gasses to such a hypothetical Earth would cause a heat imbalance that would eventually increase the average temperature of the oceans, the air near the surface (where we live), the upper several meters of the Earth itself. This heat imbalance would also eventually melt persistent ice such as found today in the world’s glaciers, which in turn would cause a dramatic rise in sea level. Around the edges of the Earth’s continents are preserved ancient beaches or shorelines where the Miocene (or earlier) ocean once ended. Between these ancient shorelines and the modern shoreline, in most places, exist a very large percentage of the Earth’s human population and, in some areas, vast regions that are farmed to produce the world’s supply of food.

We know how this works mainly from two different sources of information. First, there is the basic physics, backed up by laboratory experiments, showing that added greenhouse gasses provide the heat imbalance that causes what we call global warming. Second, we have been measuring the surface temperature of the Earth for many decades, and we can see the heating. One of the most important things to know about this is that the current level of heating is not that expected for the current level of CO2. The current concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases should produce much more heating but it takes time, in the order of decades, for the imbalance to even out. In other words, the increase in greenhouse gases caused by human pollution so far is expected to produce continued warming for decades to come. The primary driver, CO2, is not expected to leave the atmosphere for centuries. So, we are currently locked in to a significant rise in heat, and as we continue to add more CO2 to the atmosphere, the total effect will increase.

In between these two basic facts — the physics of greenhouse pollution and the observation of the effects of greenhouse pollution — is the direct observation of what scientists call “radiative forcing.” Radiative forcing is the degree of perturbation of the planet’s heat energy balance caused by these changes in the atmosphere. To measure radiative forcing, one would observe the energy provided to a given location by the sun, and observe the heat leaving the planet, at two different time periods with different concentrations of greenhouse pollution.

This has been done only a few times, using a range of different technologies. In 2001 scientists reported satellite-observed changes in greenhouse pollution forcing between 1970 and 1997, providing “… direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.” This study was replicated and extended in 2013. In 2004 researchers published a paper that reported measurements at eight meteorological stations in Europe, at various elevations and locations. They measured energy flux that they could attribute to a combination of increased vapor (a greenhouse gas naturally present but enhanced by added CO2) and CO2 over eight years. “… after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm−2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.” The science of directly measuring the “smoking gun” of greenhouse gas pollution is further discussed here: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

The current study, Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010 by D. R. Feldman, W. D. Collins, P. J. Gero, M. S. Torn, E. J. Mlawer and T. R. Shippert, takes a different approach than the earlier studies and in some ways is a more direct measurement. They used very precise spectroscopic instrumentation located at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one in Alaska, to measure what was happening with the Sun’s energy. They also measured variables that influence the behavior of the energy, such as ambient temperature, water vapor, and clouds. After factoring out everything but the CO2, they were able to accurately measure the effects of radiative forcing. The study was carried out from 2000 to 2010, during which time the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rose 22ppm. From the paper, these “…results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.”

So, what’s new? In a way, nothing. This is one of those scientific findings that could easily result in a “well, duh” response. We already knew the basic physics, and we already observed the global warming that results from human greenhouse gas pollution. However, it is important and appropriate to directly measure and describe processes that underly such an important phenomenon. Daniel Feldman, lead author, told me, “CO2 concentrations have been measured at several surface stations for decades, including the prominent Keeling curve. The actual radiative forcing (like in IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 8), which is distinct from surface temperature, is based, for the most part, on calculations which are informed by laboratory measurements and quantum mechanics. In 2001, John Harries et al published a paper in Nature in which they inferred the greenhouse effect at the TOA based on differencing two satellite instrument data records, but our study is the first to see the effect at the surface from observations.”

The two very far apart sites were chosen to allow comparison of two very different areas of the Earth. I wondered if the CO2 concentrations were different in the two areas (they should be the same, but worth asking just in case!) and if the basic nature of the forcing was similar. Feldman told me that the CO2 levels were not different, and that “we were not able to see a significant difference in the forcing per unit CO2 at the two sites.”

The researchers produced a video showing their results:

Caption from the press release: How carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have changed (blue line) and their warming effect (‘forcing’) on the climate over the same time period (orange line), for the southern Great Plains site (first graph shown) and the northern Alaska site (second). The seasonal fluctuations are caused by the rise and fall in plant photosynthesis in summer and winter, respectively. Source: Feldman et al. ( 2015)

Why Is Greenhouse Gas Pollution Important?

Global warming means more extreme weather. Many meteorologist who watch the weather every day see this even if not all admit it. In some cases, greenhouse gas pollution changes the weather in a way that causes even more change in the weather. Changing weather systems means more lightning, increased high precipitation events in certain regions like the US Northeast, including more frequent large snow storms. Even though concern about this differs with how close one lives to the sea, sea levels are rising and will continue to do so.

Many kinds of storms are more frequent or will become more frequent. We are seeing an increased number of spectacular global warming worsened disasters like Typhoon Haiyan and Frankenstorm Sandy. Some recent tropical cyclones have been so bad that we are talking about adding a new category to the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Heatwaves, obviously, and drought, are expected to be more common and more severe.

There are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected.

Human caused global warming is real and the amount that humans have heated up the surface of the Earth is dramatic and getting worse, even though corporations, ideological think tanks, and individuals deny the science. Denial of climate science takes many forms and is carried out for many reasons. There are those who appear to be paid by “Big Fossil” to lie to congress, or to publish highly questionable science without disclosing their sources. Another strategy is to mischaracterize the importance of climate change presumably to divert interest and concern away from it. This and other forms of denialism have the effect of slowing down how quickly we address potentially catastrophic carbon pollution.

But the tide is turning on the public and political understanding of scientifically proven greenhouse gas pollution. In 2014 and early 2015, major media outlets openly discussed the use of terms like ‘skeptic’ and ‘denier’ and increasingly made climate change stories front page news. Anti science activists can no longer attack and libel scientists without there being consequences. ‘Skeptics’ who had questioned the reality of global warming from within science carried out research to disprove it and found that they were unable to do so. For the first time ever, the President of the United States is actively calling out anti science denialism. Even Big Fossil or its representatives increasingly admit that human caused global warming is a critically important issue that must be dealt with.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1AKPtfi

Ownership of the Means of Adjudication [Uncertain Principles]

Back on Thursday when I was waiting to be annoyed by a speech, one of the ways I passed time was reading stuff on my phone, which included This Grantland piece about Charles Barkley and “advanced stats”. In it, Bryan Curtis makes the argument that while Barkley’s recent comments disparaging statistical tools seem at first like just the same old innumeracy, it’s really a question of ownership.

But Barkley was firing a shot in a second war. Let’s call it Moneyball II. This clash doesn’t pit a blogger versus a newspaperman in a debate over the value of PER. It pits media versus athletes in a battle over who gets to tell the story of basketball. “I viewed Charles Barkley’s comments as being completely about media criticism, not about how a team is run,” said Craig Calcaterra, who blogs at HardballTalk. “If Barkley were still playing and a coach came to him and said, ‘Here’s something we discovered in our analytics department,’ I’m sure he’d be receptive to it. But he doesn’t want to hear someone in the media second-guessing his authority about basketball.”

This general theme is echoed through a lot of the sillier pseudo-controversies surrounding sports these days. Curtis briefly mentions Kevin Durant turning hostile, but doesn’t specifically mention Marshawn Lynch (probably because he’s framing the story in terms of the NBA, not the NFL). Lynch is probably the best example, though, because that lets you see that both sides can be really petty– Curtis wrote about Lynch in the run-up to the Super Bowl, when he was getting blasted for refusing to talk to the media, and hits most of the high points. Lynch gets flack because reporters feel he’s violating the unspoken agreement inherent in sports media: athletes smile and answer dumb questions, and reporters provide free advertising for the teams and the league.

But in another sense, this is just the same argument about ownership, seen from the other side. Ex-players like Barkley are trying to preserve their historical privilege as “expert” commentators based on having played the game, while statisticians are pushing the primacy of data. NFL reporters are demanding their traditional right to shape the narrative around the game, while Lynch and a handful of others refuse to play along. In both cases, the people whose traditional prerogatives are being threatened are getting bent out of shape over it.

I mention this in the context of Thursday’s annoying speech, because the idea of a conflict over who gets to tell the story resonated in an odd way with a lot of my reactions to that speech. In particular, the contrast between the very traditional “high culture” stuff held up in the speech (and, for that matter, the fact that we always get classical music performances at these things) and the joking mention of particularly inane Kanye West lyrics seemed like a really stark example of drawing an arbitrary line between culture with enduring value, and culture that elites should point at and laugh.

It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, because there are plenty of folks in the collection of disciplines dubbed “the humanities” who take pop culture as their area of study, and mine that for some useful insight. I wonder, though, if a lot of the anxiety about a “crisis in the humanities” isn’t really this same kind of anxiety about who gets to tell the story. Or, rather, who gets to decide what stories are worth telling.

And, of course, there’s an even more direct parallel with the ever-popular topic of Scientists vs. Journalists. That conflict is very directly and obviously about who gets to tell the story of science, with scientists in the Charles Barkley role of claiming special expertise in deciding what’s worth talking about. You don’t find a lot of Marshawn Lynches in this one, but there are more than a few Kevin Durants ready to declare publicly that writers “don’t know shit” about their topics.

So, anyway, that’s your Information Supercollider moment for the week, in which the odd mix of stuff I read via social media bounces around making weird connections. Not sure how well this holds up, but it’s a thing I’ve been toying with, and might as well be a blog post…

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1DpzRer

Back on Thursday when I was waiting to be annoyed by a speech, one of the ways I passed time was reading stuff on my phone, which included This Grantland piece about Charles Barkley and “advanced stats”. In it, Bryan Curtis makes the argument that while Barkley’s recent comments disparaging statistical tools seem at first like just the same old innumeracy, it’s really a question of ownership.

But Barkley was firing a shot in a second war. Let’s call it Moneyball II. This clash doesn’t pit a blogger versus a newspaperman in a debate over the value of PER. It pits media versus athletes in a battle over who gets to tell the story of basketball. “I viewed Charles Barkley’s comments as being completely about media criticism, not about how a team is run,” said Craig Calcaterra, who blogs at HardballTalk. “If Barkley were still playing and a coach came to him and said, ‘Here’s something we discovered in our analytics department,’ I’m sure he’d be receptive to it. But he doesn’t want to hear someone in the media second-guessing his authority about basketball.”

This general theme is echoed through a lot of the sillier pseudo-controversies surrounding sports these days. Curtis briefly mentions Kevin Durant turning hostile, but doesn’t specifically mention Marshawn Lynch (probably because he’s framing the story in terms of the NBA, not the NFL). Lynch is probably the best example, though, because that lets you see that both sides can be really petty– Curtis wrote about Lynch in the run-up to the Super Bowl, when he was getting blasted for refusing to talk to the media, and hits most of the high points. Lynch gets flack because reporters feel he’s violating the unspoken agreement inherent in sports media: athletes smile and answer dumb questions, and reporters provide free advertising for the teams and the league.

But in another sense, this is just the same argument about ownership, seen from the other side. Ex-players like Barkley are trying to preserve their historical privilege as “expert” commentators based on having played the game, while statisticians are pushing the primacy of data. NFL reporters are demanding their traditional right to shape the narrative around the game, while Lynch and a handful of others refuse to play along. In both cases, the people whose traditional prerogatives are being threatened are getting bent out of shape over it.

I mention this in the context of Thursday’s annoying speech, because the idea of a conflict over who gets to tell the story resonated in an odd way with a lot of my reactions to that speech. In particular, the contrast between the very traditional “high culture” stuff held up in the speech (and, for that matter, the fact that we always get classical music performances at these things) and the joking mention of particularly inane Kanye West lyrics seemed like a really stark example of drawing an arbitrary line between culture with enduring value, and culture that elites should point at and laugh.

It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, because there are plenty of folks in the collection of disciplines dubbed “the humanities” who take pop culture as their area of study, and mine that for some useful insight. I wonder, though, if a lot of the anxiety about a “crisis in the humanities” isn’t really this same kind of anxiety about who gets to tell the story. Or, rather, who gets to decide what stories are worth telling.

And, of course, there’s an even more direct parallel with the ever-popular topic of Scientists vs. Journalists. That conflict is very directly and obviously about who gets to tell the story of science, with scientists in the Charles Barkley role of claiming special expertise in deciding what’s worth talking about. You don’t find a lot of Marshawn Lynches in this one, but there are more than a few Kevin Durants ready to declare publicly that writers “don’t know shit” about their topics.

So, anyway, that’s your Information Supercollider moment for the week, in which the odd mix of stuff I read via social media bounces around making weird connections. Not sure how well this holds up, but it’s a thing I’ve been toying with, and might as well be a blog post…

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1DpzRer

What’s the birthstone for March?

March has two birthstones – aquamarine and bloodstone.

Aquamarine

Aquamarines vary in color from deep blue to blue-green of different intensities, caused by traces of iron in the beryl crystal. Naturally occurring deep blue stones are the most prized because they are rare and expensive. However, yellow beryl stones can be heated to change them to blue aquamarines.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The aquamarine – also called the “poor man’s diamond” – is a form of the mineral beryl that also includes other gemstones such as the emerald, morganite, and heliodor. Beryl consists of four elements: beryllium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. Beryl occurs as free six-sided crystals in rock veins unaffected by shock and weathering that otherwise destroy gem deposits. It is a relatively hard gem, ranking after the diamond, sapphire, ruby, alexandrite, and topaz.

The best commercial source of aquamarines is Brazil. High quality stones are also found in Colombia, the Ural Mountains of Russia, the island of Malagasy, and India. In the United States, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina are the best sources.

The name aquamarine was derived by the Romans, “aqua,” meaning water, and “mare,” meaning sea, because it looked like sea water. Aquamarines were believed to have originated from the jewel caskets of sirens, washed ashore from the depths of the sea. They were considered sacred to Neptune, Roman god of the sea. This association with the sea made it the sailors’ gem, promising prosperous and safe voyages, as well as protection against perils and monsters of the sea. Its first documented use was by the Greeks between 480-300 BC. They wore aquamarine amulets engraved with Poseidon (the Greek god of the sea) on a chariot.

Beginning in the Roman period, the aquamarine was believed to possess medicinal and healing powers, curing ailments of the stomach, liver, jaws, and throat. During the Middle Ages, it was believed to be an effective antidote against poison. Aquamarines were thought to be the source of power for soothsayers, who called it the “magic mirror,” and used it for telling fortunes and answering questions about the future. It is said that Emperor Nero used it as an eyeglass 2,000 years ago. Much later, aquamarines were used as glasses in Germany to correct shortsightedness. In fact, the German name for eyeglasses today is “brille,” derived from the mineral beryl.

Bloodstone

The second birthstone for March is the bloodstone. Bloodstone – also known as heliotrope – is a form of the abundant mineral quartz. This particular form of quartz, known as cryptocrystalline quartz, exists as a mass of tiny quartz crystals formed together in large lumps that show no external crystal form, yet each of the component crystals that make up the mass is a genuine crystal. This quartz variety is also called chalcedony. Green chalcedony spotted with flecks of red is known as bloodstone. Bloodstone is found embedded in rocks, or as pebbles in riverbeds. The best sources of this stone are India, Brazil, and Australia.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The bloodstone is a favored material for carving religious subjects, particularly the Crucifixion. One particularly famous carving was done by the Italian Matteo del Nassaro around 1525. In “The Descent from the Cross,” the carving was carefully crafted so that spots of red on the bloodstone represented the wounds of Christ and His drops of blood. According to legend, bloodstone was believed to have formed during the crucifixion of Christ. A Roman soldier-guard thrust his spear into Christ’s side and drops of blood fell on some pieces of dark green jasper lying at the foot of the cross, and the bloodstone was created.

Babylonians used this stone to make seals and amulets, and it was also a favorite with Roman gladiators. In the Middle Ages, bloodstone was believed to hold healing powers, particularly for stopping nosebleeds. Powdered and mixed with honey and white of egg, it was believed to cure tumors and stop all types of hemorrhage. Ancient alchemists used it to treat blood disorders, including blood poisoning and the flow of blood from a wound. Bloodstone was also believed to draw out the venom of snakes.

Find out about the birthstones for the other months of the year.

January birthstone

February birthstone

March birthstone

April birthstone

May birthstone

June birthstone

July birthstone

August birthstone

September birthstone

October birthstone

November birthstone

December birthstone

Image Credit: Ra’ike

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/SdpVoI

March has two birthstones – aquamarine and bloodstone.

Aquamarine

Aquamarines vary in color from deep blue to blue-green of different intensities, caused by traces of iron in the beryl crystal. Naturally occurring deep blue stones are the most prized because they are rare and expensive. However, yellow beryl stones can be heated to change them to blue aquamarines.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The aquamarine – also called the “poor man’s diamond” – is a form of the mineral beryl that also includes other gemstones such as the emerald, morganite, and heliodor. Beryl consists of four elements: beryllium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. Beryl occurs as free six-sided crystals in rock veins unaffected by shock and weathering that otherwise destroy gem deposits. It is a relatively hard gem, ranking after the diamond, sapphire, ruby, alexandrite, and topaz.

The best commercial source of aquamarines is Brazil. High quality stones are also found in Colombia, the Ural Mountains of Russia, the island of Malagasy, and India. In the United States, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina are the best sources.

The name aquamarine was derived by the Romans, “aqua,” meaning water, and “mare,” meaning sea, because it looked like sea water. Aquamarines were believed to have originated from the jewel caskets of sirens, washed ashore from the depths of the sea. They were considered sacred to Neptune, Roman god of the sea. This association with the sea made it the sailors’ gem, promising prosperous and safe voyages, as well as protection against perils and monsters of the sea. Its first documented use was by the Greeks between 480-300 BC. They wore aquamarine amulets engraved with Poseidon (the Greek god of the sea) on a chariot.

Beginning in the Roman period, the aquamarine was believed to possess medicinal and healing powers, curing ailments of the stomach, liver, jaws, and throat. During the Middle Ages, it was believed to be an effective antidote against poison. Aquamarines were thought to be the source of power for soothsayers, who called it the “magic mirror,” and used it for telling fortunes and answering questions about the future. It is said that Emperor Nero used it as an eyeglass 2,000 years ago. Much later, aquamarines were used as glasses in Germany to correct shortsightedness. In fact, the German name for eyeglasses today is “brille,” derived from the mineral beryl.

Bloodstone

The second birthstone for March is the bloodstone. Bloodstone – also known as heliotrope – is a form of the abundant mineral quartz. This particular form of quartz, known as cryptocrystalline quartz, exists as a mass of tiny quartz crystals formed together in large lumps that show no external crystal form, yet each of the component crystals that make up the mass is a genuine crystal. This quartz variety is also called chalcedony. Green chalcedony spotted with flecks of red is known as bloodstone. Bloodstone is found embedded in rocks, or as pebbles in riverbeds. The best sources of this stone are India, Brazil, and Australia.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The bloodstone is a favored material for carving religious subjects, particularly the Crucifixion. One particularly famous carving was done by the Italian Matteo del Nassaro around 1525. In “The Descent from the Cross,” the carving was carefully crafted so that spots of red on the bloodstone represented the wounds of Christ and His drops of blood. According to legend, bloodstone was believed to have formed during the crucifixion of Christ. A Roman soldier-guard thrust his spear into Christ’s side and drops of blood fell on some pieces of dark green jasper lying at the foot of the cross, and the bloodstone was created.

Babylonians used this stone to make seals and amulets, and it was also a favorite with Roman gladiators. In the Middle Ages, bloodstone was believed to hold healing powers, particularly for stopping nosebleeds. Powdered and mixed with honey and white of egg, it was believed to cure tumors and stop all types of hemorrhage. Ancient alchemists used it to treat blood disorders, including blood poisoning and the flow of blood from a wound. Bloodstone was also believed to draw out the venom of snakes.

Find out about the birthstones for the other months of the year.

January birthstone

February birthstone

March birthstone

April birthstone

May birthstone

June birthstone

July birthstone

August birthstone

September birthstone

October birthstone

November birthstone

December birthstone

Image Credit: Ra’ike

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Moon nears Jupiter on March 1

Tonight – March 1, 2015 – the bright waxing gibbous moon is journeying along a stellar pathway, as it nears the bright planet Jupiter in our sky. Tonight’s moon is between bright stars in our evening sky. The stars are the brightest ones in the constellation Gemini – Castor and Pollux – and the star Procyon, the brightest light of the constellation of Canis Minor the Lesser Dog. The moon swings south of the Gemini stars, and north of Procyon.

So watch – at the same time each evening – and note the moon’s change of position relative to the backdrop stars. The green line on the chart above depicts the ecliptic – pathway of the moon and planets. Jupiter and the moon helps you to envision the whereabouts of this great celestial passageway. The Gemini stars shine to the north of the ecliptic and the star Procyon to the south of it.

No matter where you live, however, you can use Jupiter, the Gemini stars and Procyon to imagine the ecliptic – the pathway of the sun, moon and planets – with the mind’s-eye. The sun, moon and planets always pass south of the Gemini stars and north of Procyon. The sun, as a matter of fact, passes through the constellation Gemini the Twins every year from about May 13 to June 21.

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The brilliant star Procyon is found directly south of the Gemini stars, Castor and Pollux. The blue line passing through Gemini represents the ecliptic. Constellation image: International Astronomical Union

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky Planisphere today.

Bottom line: On the night of March 1, 2015, the bright waxing gibbous moon is traveling in front of the constellation Gemini, to the south of the constellation’s brightest stars, Castor and Pollux. You’ll also spot the star Procyon, brightest star in Canis Major the Lesser Dog, nearby. The moon is moving toward Jupiter and will be closest to Jupiter on the night of March 2, 2015.

Gemini? Here’s your constellation

What is the Zodiac?

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Tonight – March 1, 2015 – the bright waxing gibbous moon is journeying along a stellar pathway, as it nears the bright planet Jupiter in our sky. Tonight’s moon is between bright stars in our evening sky. The stars are the brightest ones in the constellation Gemini – Castor and Pollux – and the star Procyon, the brightest light of the constellation of Canis Minor the Lesser Dog. The moon swings south of the Gemini stars, and north of Procyon.

So watch – at the same time each evening – and note the moon’s change of position relative to the backdrop stars. The green line on the chart above depicts the ecliptic – pathway of the moon and planets. Jupiter and the moon helps you to envision the whereabouts of this great celestial passageway. The Gemini stars shine to the north of the ecliptic and the star Procyon to the south of it.

No matter where you live, however, you can use Jupiter, the Gemini stars and Procyon to imagine the ecliptic – the pathway of the sun, moon and planets – with the mind’s-eye. The sun, moon and planets always pass south of the Gemini stars and north of Procyon. The sun, as a matter of fact, passes through the constellation Gemini the Twins every year from about May 13 to June 21.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

The brilliant star Procyon is found directly south of the Gemini stars, Castor and Pollux. The blue line passing through Gemini represents the ecliptic. Constellation image: International Astronomical Union

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky Planisphere today.

Bottom line: On the night of March 1, 2015, the bright waxing gibbous moon is traveling in front of the constellation Gemini, to the south of the constellation’s brightest stars, Castor and Pollux. You’ll also spot the star Procyon, brightest star in Canis Major the Lesser Dog, nearby. The moon is moving toward Jupiter and will be closest to Jupiter on the night of March 2, 2015.

Gemini? Here’s your constellation

What is the Zodiac?

Donate: Your support means the world to us

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1vK5amM