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hi. I'm kim. artist/scientist/timelord. 18. ENFJ.

I'm more afraid of a dead goldfish than I am of spiders. I watch a lot of tv and that's how I communicate with people.

feel free to recommend me something to watch.

“EXCUSE ME, I’M THE CAPTAIN!”
{ WEAR }

droppingthephysics:

A portion of the salt and pepper you see on an analog television actually comes from the radiation left over from the Big Bang. The radiation, known as the cosmic microwave background, permeates all of space and gives the universe an average temperature of 2.7 K (-455 degrees F), just slightly above absolute zero.

The first detection of the microwave background was made in 1964 at AT&T Bell labs where physicists initially thought that an accumulation of bird poop on their 20-foot antenna was the source of the unwanted noise signals. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the accidental discovery which supported the now prevailing Big Bang Theory.

ikenbot:

pastagfirullah:

lucidstrike:

ikenbot:

Albert Einstein, Civil Rights Activist

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.

Image:Einstein with the children of Lincoln University Faculty, May 3, 1946

In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

The reason Einstein’s visit to Lincoln is not better known is that it was virtually ignored by the mainstream press, which regularly covered Einstein’s speeches and activities. (Only the black press gave extensive coverage to the event.) Nor is there mention of the Lincoln visit in any of the major Einstein biographies or archives.

In fact, many significant details are missing from the numerous studies of Einstein’s life and work, most of them having to do with Einstein’s opposition to racism and his relationships with African Americans.

That these omissions need to be recognized and corrected is the contention of Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, authors of “Einstein on Race and Racism” (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Jerome and Taylor spoke April 3 at an event sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. The event also featured remarks by Sylvester James Gates Jr., the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland.

According to Jerome and Taylor, Einstein’s statements at Lincoln were by no means an isolated case. Einstein, who was Jewish, was sensitized to racism by the years of Nazi-inspired threats and harassment he suffered during his tenure at the University of Berlin. Einstein was in the United States when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and, fearful that a return to Germany would place him in mortal danger, he decided to stay, accepting a position at the recently founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He became an American citizen in 1940.

But while Einstein may have been grateful to have found a safe haven, his gratitude did not prevent him from criticizing the ethical shortcomings of his new home.

“Einstein realized that African Americans in Princeton were treated like Jews in Germany,” said Taylor. “The town was strictly segregated. There was no high school that blacks could go to until the 1940s.”

Einstein’s response to the racism and segregation he found in Princeton (Paul Robeson, who was born in Princeton, called it “the northernmost town in the South”) was to cultivate relationships in the town’s African-American community. Jerome and Taylor interviewed members of that community who still remember the white-haired, disheveled figure of Einstein strolling through their streets, stopping to chat with the inhabitants, and handing out candy to local children.

One woman remembered that Einstein paid the college tuition of a young man from the community. Another said that he invited Marian Anderson to stay at his home when the singer was refused a room at the Nassau Inn.

Einstein met Paul Robeson when the famous singer and actor came to perform at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1935. The two found they had much in common. Both were concerned about the rise of fascism, and both gave their support to efforts to defend the democratically elected government of Spain against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. Einstein and Robeson also worked together on the American Crusade to End Lynching, in response to an upsurge in racial murders as black soldiers returned home in the aftermath of World War II.

The 20-year friendship between Einstein and Robeson is another story that has not been told, Jerome said, but that omission may soon be rectified. A movie is in the works about the relationship, with Danny Glover slated to play Robeson and Ben Kingsley as Einstein.

Einstein continued to support progressive causes through the 1950s, when the pressure of anti-Communist witch hunts made it dangerous to do so. Another example of Einstein using his prestige to help a prominent African American occurred in 1951, when the 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was indicted by the federal government for failing to register as a “foreign agent” as a consequence of circulating the pro-Soviet Stockholm Peace Petition. Einstein offered to appear as a character witness for Du Bois, which convinced the judge to drop the case.

Gates, an African-American physicist who has appeared on the PBS show Nova, said that Einstein had been a hero of his since he learned about the theory of relativity as a teenager, but that he was unaware of Einstein’s ideas on civil rights until fairly recently.

Einstein’s approach to problems in physics was to begin by asking very simple, almost childlike questions, such as, “What would the world look like if I could drive along a beam of light?” Gates said.

“He must have developed his ideas about race through a similar process. He was capable of asking the question, ‘What would my life be like if I were black?’”

Gates said that thinking about Einstein’s involvement with civil rights has prompted him to speculate on the value of affirmative action and the goal of diversity it seeks to bring about. There are many instances in which the presence of strength and resilience in a system can be attributed to diversity.

“In the natural world, for example, when a population is under the influence of a stressful environment, diversity ensures its survival,” Gates said.

On a cultural level, the global influence of American popular music might be attributed to the fact that it is an amalgam of musical traditions from Europe and Africa.

These examples have led him to conclude that “diversity actually matters, independent of the moral argument.” Gates said he believes “there is a science of diversity out there waiting for scholars to discover it.”

I knew Einstein was pretty politically active, but I didn’t know he said things like, “a disease of white people.” Einstein was fly as hell.

Too many scientists know nothing of the world, no conception of the dynamics of society. Einstein puts them to shame in ore ways than one.

This is awesome!!!

I agree with this added commentary.

a-short-history-of-nothing:

thejivinghands:

It’s actually true

FOR SCIENCE 

jtotheizzoe:

Looking for a “trump card” to use in the name of reason and science? Here’s one.

This is part of a whole deck of “reason” cards from Crispian Jago and Neil Davies. NdT would definitely be the ace of spades in any deck, although apparently even HE has a weakness.

In other news, I have a new life goal: Get someone to draw caricature of me in the name of science.

(via The Reason Stick)

neurosciencestuff:

Brain Games are Bogus

A decade ago, a young Swedish researcher named Torkel Klingberg made a spectacular discovery. He gave a group of children computer games designed to boost their memory, and, after weeks of play, the kids showed improvements not only in memory but in overall intellectual ability. Spending hours memorizing strings of digits and patterns of circles on a four-by-four grid had made the children smarter. The finding countered decades of psychological research that suggested training in one area (e.g., recalling numbers) could not bring benefits in other, unrelated areas (e.g., reasoning). The Klingberg experiment also hinted that intelligence, which psychologists considered essentially fixed, might be more mutable: that it was less like eye color and more like a muscle.

It seemed like a breakthrough, offering new approaches to education and help for people with A.D.H.D., traumatic brain injuries, and other ailments. In the years since, other, similar experiments yielded positive results, and Klingberg helped found a company, Cogmed, to commercialize the software globally. (Pearson, the British publishing juggernaut, purchased it in 2010.) Brain training has become a multi-million-dollar business, with companies like Lumosity, Jungle Memory, and CogniFit offering their own versions of neuroscience-you-can-use, and providing ambitious parents with new assignments for overworked but otherwise healthy children. The brain-training concept has made Klingberg a star, and he now enjoys a seat on an assembly that helps select the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The field has become a staple of popular writing. Last year, the New York Times Magazine published a glowing profile of the young guns of brain training called “CAN YOU MAKE YOURSELF SMARTER?”

The answer, however, now appears to be a pretty firm no—at least, not through brain training. A pair of scientists in Europe recently gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) to settle this controversial issue. The conclusion: the games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence. Playing the games makes you better at the games, in other words, but not at anything anyone might care about in real life.

Read more

tetsuroishigaki:

tetsuroishigaki:

According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. This means that all atoms are recycled over time. Which in turn means that our own atoms are ancient as well. One’s skin could have carbon in it from a meteorite or from a trilobite thousands of years old, and your blood could contain hydrogen from earth’s original atmosphere.

27 Science fictions that became science facts in 2012. 

thescienceofreality:

1. Quadriplegic uses her mind to control her robotic arm.
2. DARPA robot can traverse an obstacle course.
3. Genetically modified silk is stronger than steel.
4. DNA was photographed for the first time.
5. Invisibility cloak technology took a huge leap forward.
6. Spray-on skin.
7. James Cameron reached the deepest known point in the ocean.
8. Stem cells could extend human life by over 100 years.
9. 3-D printer creates full-size house in one session.
10. Self-driving cars are legal in Nevada, Florida, and California.
11. Voyager I leaves the solar system.
12. Custom Jaw transplant created with 3-D printer.
13. Rogue planet[s] floating through space.
14. Chimera monkey’s created from multiple embryos.
15. Artificial leaves generate electricity. 
16. Google goggles bring the internet everywhere.
17. Higgs-Boson Particle discovery.
18. Flexible, inexpensive solar panels challenge fossil fuel.
19. Diamond planet discovered.
20. Eye implants give sight to the blind.
21. Wales barcodes DNA of every flowering plant species in the country.
22. First unmanned commercial space flight docks with the ISS.
23. Ultra-flexible “willow” glass will allow for curved electronic devices.
24. NASA begins using robotic exoskeletons.
25. Human brain is hacked.
26. First planet with four suns discovered.
27. Microsoft patented the “Holodeck”.

 

Learn more about each of these scientific break-throughs and discoveries here.