Science vs. Religion

I don't know who said it but someone did: "When science finally makes it up the hill of knowledge, it will find that religion has been sitting there all along."

Of course it could be that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then. But who's the squirrel, and what's the acorn? 

A free for all on Science & Religion

perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects — testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control.

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.

High Tech Jelousy: Enough will just never be enough.

A simple explanation of why people with more money than 99.999% of the rest of earths population still don't have enough.

It seems that a lot of high tech entrepreneurs are learning about the afflictions that venture capitalists have been suffering under for years. Those returns just aren't as big as the other guys.

From the Times: In Web World, Rich Now Envy the Super-Rich

...Envy may be a sin in some books, but it is a powerful driving force in Silicon Valley, where technical achievements are admired but financial payoffs are the ultimate form of recognition. And now that the YouTube purchase has amplified talk of a second dot-com boom, many high-tech entrepreneurs — successful and not so successful — are examining their lives as measured against upstarts who have made it bigger.

Reference points only make matters worse, Mr. de Botton said. He pointed to research that has been done on attractive women who feel ugly when surrounded by images of more beautiful women. “Very often the problem isn’t so much what an individual happens to look like, but the extraordinary comparisons being made,” he said.

So what's behind this mid-life crisis? This study, by academics from Pennsylvania State and Harvard University, finds that richer people tend to be happier than poorer people. But the data revealed that the green-eyed monster jealousy influences how people gauge how happy they are.

"The higher the income of others in one's age group, the lower one's happiness," said Glenn Firebaugh a sociological researcher at Pennsylvania State University, one of the report's co-authors.

The research contains a worrying message for society, as the close observance of others' income, a "keeping up with the Joneses" trend, forces people to continually increase their income, the report said.

"Rather than promoting overall happiness, continued income growth could promote an ongoing consumption race where individuals consume more and more just to maintain a constant level of happiness," said Firebaugh.

According to the research of Brehm in 1985, there are five stages of jealousy: 

The first stage is the suspicion of the threat. In this stage people are insecure and may see signs of disaster where there are none. They tend to feel competitive to those they see as threatening.

In the next stage people begin to assess the threat and they become very protective of their possession. They worry themselves sick wondering what is happening or may happen in their relationships. These feelings of insecurity may lead them to spy on their significant other and/or the perceived rival. They question their partner`s fidelity and their own desirability.

The third stage is called emotional reaction. Here people determine if there is a threat and then react to it. People can react with a wide range of emotions depending on the person and the situation. Their reactions can range from clinging dependency to violent rage at the competitor or their partner. Their reactions may be to criticize themselves, become depressed, or resent their partners.

The next stage is called the coping response. There are two basic responses here. People either do their best to repair the threatened relationship, or they become competitive and look for ways of getting even with their mate and the competitor. Men and women tend to differ in their coping responses. Women are more likely to become depressed and blame themselves, whereas men become more competitive and angry. Research indicates that females are more jealous than males over situations involving the partner spending time on a hobby or with family members, but other situations evoke no sex differences (Hansen, 1985).

The final stage according to Brehm is the outcome stage. People ask themselves how their reactions are effecting their relationship. They determine whether they are helping or harming their threatened relationship with such emotional responses.

According to McIntosh and Tangri (1989), jealous behaviors are divided into two types, direct and indirect. Direct behaviors are more confrontational behaviors such as confronting a partner about a jealousy-evoking event. The indirect type includes behaviors that are less confrontational such as giving a partner the silent treatment.

It would appear that the evidence suggests that jealousy is hardwired into us humans and if we're in certain situations their's little we can do.

Certainly there is much to be said for the benefits of jealousy; it makes you work harder and strive to out compete others. In many business situations this is exactly what you want. But the fact is that it comes at a price. I'm sure if you asked people what they want 'happy' trumps 'rich', although many equate the two. It's obvious that that's not the actual case. 

Perhaps the high tech answer is to trade in the BMW or Ferrari and get a minivan. After all, your kids don't know you're a loser. 

Advertising that entertains.

10 most popular scientific myths.

Live Science has a list of the ten most popular scientific myths.

What you'll learn:

• The 5 second rule doesn't work. (but we already knew that.)
• A headless chicken has lived 18 months without it's head.
• Men don't really think of sex every 7 seconds.

The Perception of Human Beauty: Current beauty standards are superhuman.

I posted a longer article on my Medical Spa MD blog here but I thought this was interesting.

The current standards for human beauty are not only impossible to reach for the masses, they're impossible for anyone. It appears that we humans are 'hardwired' with what we consider attractive traits. Now technology is allowing us to realize those standards in visual form through digital aids. You can imagine in the not to distant future that computer programs and motion picture digital aids will be able to: Make Tom Cruize taller, take 15 pounds off the female lead, and create hyper exaggerated sexiness. (Perhaps the real life Jessica Rabbit.) But these manifestations of beauty will be confined to the digital and motion picture worlds... At first.

It may be that these hyperbeauty standards will accelerate the move to genetically engineering of human beings. (This is inevitable for many reasons.) With society setting the bar impossibly high, I can imagine that it will increase both the speed and pressure. Gattiaca is not far off.

What makes beauty?

From the study: Who is the most beautiful woman in Germany? An official jury tries to answer this question each year. In January 2002 it chose Miss Berlin to be the most attractive woman (left picture). But is she really the most beautiful one? The results of our study suggest - at least in theory - to be far from the ideal. 

For this reason we cooperated with Pro7 (a German television channel) and managed to get portrait photos of all contestants of the final round of this national beauty contest. In contrast to their live evaluation on the catwalk, the beautiful women could not show a particular sexy way of walking or put on a charming smile but had to comply with our scientific requirements: Frontally photographed face, hair tied to the back, neutral facial expression - and especially: no make-up! 

A selection of the 22 contestants of the final round of the contest
 

Miss North-Rhine/Westphalia	Miss Thuringia	Miss Bavaria
Miss Bremen	Miss South Germany	Miss Baden-Wuerttemberg

Based on our previous research results we computed a new face out of all original faces by using the described morphing software. The resulting “virtual” beauty as well as all other original faces were evaluated with respect to their attractiveness by a representative sample of people in a local shopping center. 

More beautiful than Miss Germany 

The results are clear. The virtual face was rated by far as being most attractive. On a scale reaching from 1 (= very unattractive) to 7 (= very attractive) it obtained the highest score with an average of 6.2 and let Miss Germany lie far behind having an average score of just 2.8. None of the 47 asked test subjects rated the real Miss Germany as being more or at least evenly attractive than the virtual one. The highest score of the real faces obtained Miss Bremen (4.9 points), but also Miss Bremen lies clearly and statistically most significantly behind the computer beauty. 

"Real" and "virtual" Miss Germany in comparison:
 

On the left: the “real” Miss Germany 2002 (= Miss Berlin) and on the right: the “virtual” Miss Germany, which was computed by blending together all contestants of the final round and was rated as being much more attractive. 

Read the entire study here.

Why was Gigi abandoned? A not so simple answer.

Pete adopted a baby boy. Congratulations Pete. I've never met Mrs. Shmula, but congratulations there too.

Adoption is curious. My daughter Madison and I met when she was five. I very clearly remember the first time I saw her. She's thirteen now. Although she's not really adopted, (her other family is in Salt Lake), there is really no difference.  :... when you hold your precious jewel for the first time, no one cares if none of those chromosomes came from you."

When I saw the image Pete posted of his new son I immediately thought of my niece Gigi. The following is from my brother in laws blog, Meet Gigi, the story of a little girl from China who now lives in San Francisco and is very loved. And even though I know the players, It's one of the sweetest and most touching things I've ever read.

Why was Gigi abandoned?

This is a post drafted long ago, and worked over a few times, in an effort to get the tone and details right. Here's our best effort with the delicate subject.

So, why was Gigi abandoned? It's a complicated mix of cultural and political factors that caused Gigi's birth family to "abandon" or, as we've taken to saying, "anonymously place" her with authorities. Gigi was likely given up by parents who loved her, who wanted a child throughout the pregnancy, but who desired--or were pressured to want--a boy. As in other patriarchal cultures, in Chinese tradition boys are favored over girls. In addition to contributing to a family’s livelihood during their parents' working years, particularly for the farming families that fill China's inland, they also play the role of caring for their parents when retired.

Whatever the cause, many Chinese girls end up unwanted--aborted (when a physician can be bribed into illegally disclosing the results of an ultrasound), abandoned, or worse. How many? If you view the Lost Girls documentary referenced below, you’ll learn about the troubling trends in Chinese demographics. The boy-to-girl gap is already noticeable in a typical elementary school classroom, where boys are in a clear majority. Demographers predict it may reach as many as 100 million unmarriageable men by 2040.

Which brings us back to Gigi: Where does she fit in this complex socio-political situation? What led to her parents’ decision? Here’s what we know: She came from a rural part of southern China and is therefore likely to be among the girls displaced for economic reasons. That she is apparently healthy and had good nutrition readings upon arrival at the orphanage indicates that she was cared for prenatally.

But here is the clincher: Days after being united with Gigi, we received a copy of the solitary trace she will ever have of her birth parents. When found, Gigi had this note attached, indicating her birth day, March 26, 2004, but also on the Chinese lunar calendar, February 6, 2004.

While this is not uncommon with such children anonymously placed with authorities, it indicates that Gigi’s birth parents or mother wanted these two key elements of her otherwise blank identity to be known. In other words, she was loved. And it was hoped by people who surely carry a sense of loss and regret that she would benefit from the life they chose not to provide--or couldn't. Abandoned? No. Anonymously placed.

Happily for the girls yet unborn in China, and those at risk of suffering from the side effects of the one-child policy, things are changing. The government has awoken to the crisis of the gender gap and, among other measures, has launched a public education campaign to shift the perception of girls in Chinese society. Headlong into industrialization, social change in the developing part of China is also well underway, with the attendant realignment of lifestyles, gender roles, and family sizes. So, as much as we will cherish Gigi, we can hope that fewer of China’s girls like her will have to be taken so far from their birthplace to join a loving family to which they're entitled.

You can read the rest of Gigi's story here. 

Why time slows when approaching the Speed of Light. A simple explanation.

I love physics.

I find myself discussing physics often with others who don't quite share my fascination. My father, my wife, and many other have had to sit through diatribes of quantum theory, gravity waves and M-Theory. Now it's your turn. Sorry, I just can't help myself.

Why time slows for someone approaching the Speed of Light.
A simple explanation.

 
I'm sure you've heard that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. (That's not quite true. The expansion of the universe allows for faster than light travel but that's another post.) You're also aware that time slows down the closer you get to the speed of light. You know, the 'One twin goes off to Alpha Centauri at the speed of light and comes back after 80,000 years but he's only aged 3 months' story.

Ever wonder why? Here's the crib notes.

Everything in the universe always travels exactly at Light Speed.

Time dilation: Special relativity declares a law for all motion: the combined speed of any object's motion through space and it's motion though time is always precisely equal to the speed of light.

That's right, everything. You, me, the computer screen you're looking at, your grandma's French toast, Santa Clause... everything.

Everything is traveling through Spacetime: space (the three dimensions we experience and the nine others that m-theory predicts) and time. Adding the total movement through both space and time always equals light speed. Always. Always. Always.

Since you must travel constantly at exactly the speed of light, when you increase your speed through space, you decrease your speed through time.

Your head (and the rest of you) is traveling through spacetime at the speed of light, but all of your head's movement when you're at rest is through time, none of it is traveling through space. Every time your head moves through space; in a car, in a plane, in a spaceship... even nodding up and down, some of it's movement in time is lost since it is now moving through space. Cool huh.

What about light?

Since light waves use all of their motion to travel through space at Light Speed, they have absolutely no motion through Time. Every photon that has ever been produced exists in an ageless state. The universe ages, light does not.

Reading: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Brian Greene

Pay per Post vs. TechCrunch

I got the sweetest little iPod Shuffle yesterday to replace the mini that was 'smash-and-grabbed' from my Landrover 6 months ago. (The new Shuffle is the cutest little thing. You just want to play with it.) Anyway, I downloaded the newest iTunes and podded (is that a word?) up my Shuffle with a backlog of podcasts to listen to while driving. The three I listened to last night included Venture Voice interviews with Guy Kawasaki and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn as well as this one on Pay per Post.

PayPerPost Raises $3 million

Michael Arrington and Rob Hof (Silicon Valley Bureau Chief at Business Week) took a few minutes today to talk to Ted Murphy (founder and CEO of PayPerPost) and Josh Stein (a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson) about the funding and the controversial nature of PayPerPost’s business.

The Podcast Driveby

Michael Arrington has a definate load of redass out for the boys at PayPerPost and performed something akin to at podcast Driveby. He must have said 'unethical' thirty times. At one point he says, "I wouldn't want to draw any comparisons...", and then brings up statutory rape as an example of something that the free market would allow but that's not good for society. (Statutory rape?)

It seems that  TechCrunchThinking feels that it's PayPerPost's duty to require that bloggers post that they are being paid to write about a topic and that failure to do so undermines the very fabric of credibility that the bloggosphere has been built upon. He, Michael Arrington, would never allow so crass and slimy a business to become affiliated with his brand and actually pulled a $40 add buy on TechCrunch so that his hands would remain clean. Poor Rob Hof of Business Week was so upset that he could only occasionally interject a 'unethical' comment of his own. (Arrington interjects that Hof is unable to find any humor at all in the situation.)

While the podcast is entertaining since Arrington is doing his best to get his guests to admit that they're willing to slime the bloggosphere and trade in their Dudley Dooright hats for Snidly Wiplash moustaches if the price is right, Michael Arrington is not a great interviewer. The PayPerPost duo actually came across as sympathetic since it was obvious that  Arrington had a pot of boiling oil ready and was just waiting for an opportunity to use it. At various points he interrupts with comments like, ' you say what you're going to and then I'll tell you the real answer." That's an interview in the style of Morton Downey Jr., not a blogger who has 'a social contract with his readers'.

Arrington just can't get past this idea of paid placement. He thinks he has a real A-Ha moment when PayPerPost says that this is a way for small companies to get a 'boost' in name recognition. Arrington trumps that with, 'if the company was worth anything they wouldn't have to pay to get written about'.

Business? What's a business?

This more than anything shows just how insular and elitist the A-list bloggosphere is. Arrington thinks that all the CEO's of all the companies in America should get to know the A-list bloggers and the bloggers will decide if they're worth writing about.

Arringtons world does not contain real red-blooded businesses. It contains room for geeks, aps and ASP's. The very thought of a small regional business reaching out to the bloggosphere in an attempt to gain recognition or be seen by a certain demographic goes completely over Arringtons head. The PayPerPost duo brings up shoe retailers and single locations, Arrington acts like these types of businesses don't exist.

Mainstream media sells editorial

PayPerPost is doing exactly what tradition media does. My business Surface Medical spends money on traditional media. I'll highlight some local examples that I'm intimately familiar with.

Salt Lake Magazine offers paid 'advertorials' in runs with specific topics. For example: Salt Lake Magazine will run a 'health issue' in Jan/Feb. They then go and find health care advertisers and pitch them with inclusion in an advertorial section. The section is purposely designed to appear as though it's editorial. Only it isn't editorial. It's paid advertising. The attraction to the advertiser is that it looks like editorial. I've also been pitched and gone with a service provided by a local paper in which they have an auction, sell my inventory, and keep the money in trade for advertising dollars. 

Selling editorial is frowned on by the editors and love by the ad sales guys and the advertisers. 

The PayPerPost model for business.

Most businesses are not run by geeks or bloggers. Most businesses are local. Most businesses are small.

PayPerPost will be a marketplace whose success or failure will be determined by how effective their advertisers are. The market will determine the benefits and opportunity costs of using paid editorial. Some bloggers who don't disclose that their content has been paid for will be outed and flamed. (Probably by those do-gooders from Wikipedia.)

I'm getting gentrified in my old age.

Yesterday I was with the masses of bloggers descrying the PayPerPost sellouts. Today my view has moderated. PayPerPost is sticking with their mantra of 'markets are efficient and we believe in the American way'. Good for them.

Disclaimer: This post has not been paid for. 

5 Second Rule: File this under 'good to know'.

Wikipedia is just chock full of usefull tidbits.

For those of you who have been know to invoke the 5 second rule there comes this sage advice from Wikipedia:

The five-second rule is rarely applied to other people's food, although many instances have been documented.
If a food falls in feces, the five-second rule is never used.

The five-second rule was also featured in an episode of the Discovery Channel series MythBusters. The results they got from their tests confirmed Clarke’s findings: time was not a factor when food is exposed to bacteria; even two seconds' exposure is more than enough time to contaminate it.

Google Earth & the 4th Dimension

Google Earth adds time to the mix.

With the advent of Google Earth, the surface of the Earth became accessible. By adding the element of time, Google Earth has just expanded this popular app to include all of world history. I would guess that with the API opened, there will be any number of mashups from environmental groups showing the shrinking rainforests to the transfer of wealth throughout history. I can see that a real time imaging of the hole in the ozone layer could be effective.

 

It should make some of Paul Allens mashup history ideas even more viable. I can see that geneology sites might be able to show your families history of movement. 

In the future it might be possible to use your DNA fingerprint to map your gene pool to exact locations over time. Very cool.

The Business Networking Lunch: Eating for entrepreneures.

'Never eat alone' as a startup.

I can't remember where I first heard the above statement, 'never eat alone', but it's a truism for entrepreneurs that has legs.

Last week I had a number of lunches with people I'd like to get to know better. Nothing particular in mind and no presupposition other than to know someone better. Last week I had lunch with Jordy (jordyblog) and Pete (shmula). I knew neither of them well. Now I would count them both as friends.

I had no ulterior motive. No pressing need. No 'reason' other than I would like to know these individuals better.

Opportunities come from relationships. Everything's an old boys network, even if there are no boys and they're not old.  You will never know who is in a position to help you or your business.

Corporate Alliance has some excellent thoughts on this. They refer to it as 'relationship arrogance', which I thinks an accurate description. CA posits that you will never be able to distinguish who is truly relevant to you and in disregarding anyone, you circumcise your network. Ouch. (They don't actually use that term.) Corporate Alliance is not a perfect solution for entrepreneurs, but they do have a number of good philosophies and mechanisms for creating relationships.

Some of my very good friends have come from just going to lunch. 

If you haven't been to Fight Club...

You're not prepared for a real entrepreneur.

 
Ryan Money of HireVue shows why he has such a heavy reputation. Ryan reports  that he's never lost a fight and watching the video you can see why. Ryan has promised for some time to post his fight story but I've yet to see it. Thanks to HireVues COO Mark Newman for sending this video of Ryan trying out HireVue in Beta. Good to see the moves Ryan.

Warning: This is not your fathers video interview. Do not attempt these moves without professional supervision.

Props to Smooth Harold 

Barenakedapp.com: DropSend is selling itself on it's own blog.

DropSend posts it's own sell.

 
I've actually been using dropsend for most of a year not knowing they were just a tiny web app out of a basement. It'll be interesting to see who might buy them.

Dropsend is one of the apps that allow you to send huge (up to 1 gig) files through your email. It's worked for me.

Why Barenaked App?

Barenaked App is the online diary of the building of our second web app, Amigo.

Well, we’re not Porsche, or Microsoft but we figured that size shouldn’t matter when it comes to letting everyone in on the hows and whys of product creation. And so Barenaked App was born - a place to document the planning, design, coding and marketing of our second web app.

So how bare will we get? The answer is, down to the pants (or underpants if you’re not English). We will be revealing all of our costings, the reasons behind our decisions, why we chose to work with the people we did and of course the embarrassing mistakes we made along the way.

Here's a shot of their growing income:

 

The discussion in the comments is particularly interesting. If anyone needs a new company you'd better jump on the train.

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

Among the most interesting posts I've ever read.

Michael C. LaBarbera, professor in Organismal Biology & Anatomy & Geophysical Sciences at the College of the University of Chicago, has written an unbelievably interesting piece about the science behind horror movies like King Kong, The Incredible Shrinking Women, Them, and Fantastic Voyage. An incredibly interesting read.

In The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), the hero is exposed to radioactive toxic waste and finds himself growing smaller and smaller. He is lost to family and friends while fending off the household cat and must make his own way in a world grown monstrously large. He forages food from crumbs and drinks from puddles of condensation. In one famous scene, he defends himself against a house spider by using an abandoned sewing needle, which he has to struggle to lift.

Stop the projector! Time for a little analysis...

And on King Kong... 

... Back to King Kong. Based on some measurements from stills from the original movie, at the beginning of the movie Kong is about 22 feet tall, but by the time he climbs the Empire State Building, he appears to be 50 percent bigger, presumably because he was allowed bananas ad libitum. At 22 feet tall, Kong is about four to five times the size of your garden-variety lowland gorilla. A fivefold increase in height implies a 25-fold increase in bone cross-sectional area and a 125-fold increase in body mass; the stress on the bones thus should be about five times greater than the stress on a normal gorilla's bones. But, remember, according to Andy Biewener's data, a safety factor of five is extreme for mammals; Kong's excessive body size should have exhausted the safety factor. True, Kong stands a bit straighter than the average gorilla so he may gain a bit of the safety factor back, but it's clear that he's pushing the envelope. Is that why he has such a short fuse and is always roaring and bashing things? Not only does he continually run the risk of breaking his legs, but undoubtedly his feet hurt.

Indexed Graphs a cruel, cruel world for YouTube.

From Indexed