March 4, 2020
HOW happy is he, as all may see
Who has the good fortune a fool to be,
And what you tell him will always believe!
No ambition can grieve,
No fear can affright him
Which are wont to be seeds
Of pain and annoy.
This doctor of ours,
‘Tis not hard to delight him–
If you tell him ’twill gain him
His heart’s wish and joy,
He’ll believe in good faith that an ass can fly,–
Or that black is white, and the truth a lie,–
All things in the world he may well forget–
Save the one whereon his whole heart is set.
–Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527).
There are people who believe that the Earth is a flat disc, the sky above a sphere of acrylic with stars painted on its inner surface; the sun and moon are, according to these folk, mounted upon some sort of trackway that allows them to move, with the seasons and the days, above a stationary, flat Earth. This would not be surprising if the people who so believe were savages, with no knowledge of astronomy, geography, physics or any other science. But they are not; they are reasonably well-educated, not all unintelligent, citizens of modern, 21st century industrial nations. They believe that the powers-that-be know the truth–that the Earth is truly flat–but for some sinister reason are keeping it from the ‘sheeple,’ who must be kept in the dark (presumably on the underside of the disc), and not allowed to know the truth.
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Psychology, Science, Uncategorized | Tagged: conspiracy theories, flat earth, internet, science, space | 
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Posted by Mark Widdicombe
September 19, 2013
I have been growing portlier over the last few years. I don’t weigh myself, so this happened without my being consciously aware of it, although I did notice twinges in the joints as they protested against having to bear stresses for which they had not been intended.
But it was when I realised that I was having more and more trouble bending down far enough to put my socks on that I decided to do something about it. Coincidentally, I received an email at about the same time extolling a substance called Garcinia cambogia as a ‘miracle’ weight-loss medication. Needless to say, I was quite excited by this potentially easy way to lose weight, but as I read, red flags started popping up.
The first of these was that the stuff had been recommended by Dr Oz. Now, Dr Oz has seemingly impeccable qualifications: graduated from Harvard, then received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Wharton. He is a professor at Columbia University. Yet he has a record of recommending quack remedies on his ridiculous TV show. Do they not teach anything about the scientific method at those prestigious institutions he attended?
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40 Comments | Medicine, Quack Medicine, Science | Tagged: Atkins diet, diet, Dr Oz, Garcinia cambogia, low_carbohydrate diet, weight loss | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
September 4, 2013
The presenter of the morning early breakfast show on Cape Talk radio was commenting about the predictions made by Isaac Asimov on the occasion of the World’s Fair in New York in 1964. Asimov was musing on what the World’s Fair of 2014–fifty years later–would look like. “He really is incredibly accurate!” enthused the host, “It’s uncanny how he could have known then what our world looks like now!”
I hadn’t read Asimov’s predictions, so I looked them up to see for myself just how prescient he really was. Not, it turns out, as much as the breathless radio presenter would have us believe. I enumerated 24 specific predictions made in the article, and found that 10 were accurate within reasonable bounds, 12 were inaccurate, 2 were partially accurate.
Some of the predictions that were right on the money were:–
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2 Comments | Fun, Science | Tagged: future predictions, Isaac Asimov, World's Fair | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
January 30, 2013
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
–Edward Gibbon
A puzzle has recently been brought to my attention. It goes like this: “I have two children. One of them is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?” This puzzle was posed to an audience at the Gathering for Gardner meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, by Gary Foshee. He went on to say, “The first thing you think is ‘What has Tuesday got to do with it?’ Well, it has everything to do with it.”
I disagree. The day the boy was born is utterly irrelevant. Perhaps it would be best to look at the “accepted” solution from New Scientist before I tell you why it’s hogwash. Its main point is:
The main bone of contention was how to properly interpret the question. The way Foshee meant it is, of all the families with one boy and exactly one other child, what proportion of those families have two boys?
To answer the question you need to first look at all the equally likely combinations of two children it is possible to have: BG, GB, BB or GG. The question states that one child is a boy. So we can eliminate the GG, leaving us with just three options: BG, GB and BB. One out of these three scenarios is BB, so the probability of the two boys is 1/3.
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64 Comments | Fun, Science | Tagged: gary foshee, probability, puzzle | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
March 1, 2012
I received an epistle from the South African Labour Guide yesterday. It was on the subject of polygraph testing and began:
Employers are often faced with dishonest or criminal activities such as misappropriation of property or theft in its work environment, without knowing exactly where, how and by whom it was committed. It is crippling the business and the employer is at its wits-end to find the culprits or wants to know: “Can I send all my employees for a polygraph test and if so, what can I do if they fail?”
It then went on, in answering this question, to miss the point entirely: it didn’t even touch on the scientific validity of polygraph testing. To be fair, the Labour Guide is a guide to labour law, and does not use objective truth as its yardstick; but I would still expect it at least to touch upon one of the best defences against polygraph evidence–that it is pseudoscientific nonsense that has been thoroughly discredited, and whose use should be illegal. It might be instructive to look at how it is supposed to work.
The victim is attached to various wires which connect to a machine that measures heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and skin conductivity. The interrogator will then follow one of two techniques: the control question test (CQT) or the relevant/irrelevant test (RIT). In the IRT the inquisitor will ask irrelevant questions (is your name Fred?), interspersed with relevant questions about which the test is really being conducted (did you plant the bomb?). If the lies (or truth) told in response to the irrelevant show the same physiological responses as those for the relevant questions, then the subject passes the test. The CQT is similar, but additional irrelevant questions are posed that will most probably result in a lie (have you ever lied to avoid trouble?). The assumption is that everyone has lied at some stage in the past, and that if the victim replies to this question in the negative he is lying, which will allow the operator to compare the physiological response to this ‘known lie’ with answers to the relevant questions.
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4 Comments | Law, Science | Tagged: lie detector, polygraph | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
February 2, 2012
I’ve just returned home from my holiday at Knysna on the Garden Route. In our bathroom was a notice informing us that the Garden Route was suffering its worst drought in 130 years and to therefore use water sparingly. Whether or not this drought is an effect of climate change I am not qualified to say, but it did lead me to think about our concern for the environment, and what we are being encouraged to do about it.
The messages the public gets seem to fall into two distinct classes, the first of which contains the general exhortations to be conscious of our impact on the environment, minimising our carbon footprints and so on; and the specific, commercial messages as corporations attempt to cash in on the new environmental awareness. It is with this second class of message that I have a problem.
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5 Comments | Scams, Science | Tagged: catamaran, climate change, environment, knysna, knysna 48, knysna yacht company, nedbank | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
November 22, 2011
When I first saw the headline “EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration” I did one of those eye-bulging, cartoonish double takes. Surely I had misread? Or misunderstood? I checked the date: nope, not April the 1st. Surely no one sane could claim that water doesn’t prevent dehydration? After all, that’s the very definition of ‘dehydration’. From Oxford online dictionary
dehydrate
Pronunciation:/diːhʌɪˈdreɪt, diːˈhʌɪdreɪt/
verb
[with object] (often as adjective dehydrated)
cause (a person or their body) to lose a large amount of water:
his body temperature was high and he had become dehydrated
[no object] lose a large amount of water from the body:
the nurses made sure I didn’t dehydrate
remove water from (food) in order to preserve and store it:
dehydrated mashed potatoes
I was not the only one smacked in the gob by the apparent lunacy of the EU. Here’s what MEP Roger Helmer had to say:
This is stupidity writ large. The Euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are worrying about the obvious qualities of water. If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project, then this is it.
Then I thought for a little longer. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Law, Medicine, Science | Tagged: dehydration, EU, nanny state, regulation water | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
September 30, 2011
Here is a media release from the City of Cape Town
MEDIA RELEASE
30 AUGUST 2011
Inshore movement of sharks: Safety for the
summer season
The City of Cape Town would once again like to remind all beach and
ocean users that we are approaching the time of year when we expect to
see a seasonal increase in the presence of white sharks in the in-shore
area.
This seasonal change is not unique to False Bay or recent in its
occurrence. Similar behaviour is recorded in Gansbaai, Mossel Bay and
even California.
Shark sightings recorded by the shark spotters have consistently shown a
seasonal peak during the period from August to March, peaking in mid-
summer. Typically shark sightings start in late August. However, shark
spotters and water users have recorded early sightings in the last two
weeks in Muizenberg, St. James and Clovelly.
White shark research trips over the weekend recorded a significant drop
in shark activity at Seal Island, indicative of the seasonal move of sharks
away from the island to the in-shore areas. The City is therefore
appealing to all beach and ocean users to be aware of these recent
sightings and the expected increase in shark presence in the in-shore
area over the summer months.
I was walking the dog on Muizenberg beach the other day when the sirens sounded and the white flag was raised. (Why white? I would have thought red would be better.) Most of the surfers and bathers left the water, but a few ignored the warning and stayed in the surf. They were fortunate they weren’t eaten.
Great White Shark
Yesterday, a similar thing happened at Fish Hoek on the Clovelly end of the beach. Sirens, flags, but one person, Mr Michael Cohen, chose to ignore them. He wasn’t as lucky as his foolhardy fellows in Muizenberg, and he is now in the Constantiaberg Clinic with his right leg considerably shorter than the left.
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4 Comments | Morality, Science | Tagged: delusions of immortality, fish hoek, muizenberg, shark attack, shark spotters | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Grumpy Old Man 