NASA's EagleWorks retested the EM Drive in a vacuum, and the anomalous thrust is still there.

The EM Drive, which I am still extremely sceptical of, was tested in a hard vacuum a few weeks ago.  One possible model of operation, that it worked against the frameless background noise of virtual electron/positron pairs, agrees with some of the data collected.

I am not prepared to accept a drive without reaction mass, but a test in a hard vacuum is much more interesting than a test in a sealed chamber full of air, when you are heating things with microwaves.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/update-on-emdrive-work-at-nasa.html

Note specifically the Progress Update section on the NASA link which I attempt to summarize:  On April 5, 2015, NASA Eagleworks created a new computer model of the EM Drive’s thrust as a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic flow of electron-positron virtual particles.  They explain why in NASA’s experiments it was necessary to insert a high density polyethylene (HDPE) dielectric into the EM Drive, while the experiments in the UK and China were able to measure thrust without a dielectric insert.  The reasons include China/UK using magnetrons for their testing.  The model makes testable predictions.  One should be cautious about accepting these results, but even if the model is wrong, anomalous thrust remains even when tested in hard vacuum, and until that can be explained, further testing is justified.

It then goes on to talk about possible space-time warping effects, and on that I am much more cynical.

I think warp issues are worth considering, but first let us deal with the anomalous thrust.  Even if that alone works, it will free us of the tyranny of reaction mass based rocketry.  With an EM drive at sub light speeds you can still explore the universe, it just takes a long time.  With rockets you effectively cannot explore much outside the solar system.

For three years they have been conducting experiments to find out if you can measure, with an interferometer, a distortion of spacetime produced by EM drives.  If you can, it means warp drives could work, and a spacecraft traveling at conventional speeds could achieve effective faster than light speed by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it.  The experimental results so far had been inconclusive.

During the first two weeks of April of this year,  NASA Eagleworks believe they may have finally obtained conclusive results.  This time they used essentially an EM Drive, with much higher electric-field intensity, aligned in the axial direction.  The interferometer’s laser light goes through small holes in the EM Drive.  Over 27,000 cycles of data they obtained a power spectrum that revealed a signal frequency of 0.65 Hz with amplitude clearly above system noise.  Four additional tests were successfully conducted that demonstrated repeatability.

The NASA team considered refraction of the air as a cause, but felt it unlikely because the experiment’s visibility threshold is forty times larger than the calculated effect from atmospheric heating of air.

Encouraged by these results, NASA Eagleworks plans to next conduct these interferometer tests in a vacuum.

We don't own the earth, we're just house guests sleeping on the couch.

So I was attending services at First Unitarian in Madison today.  One of the pastors Kelly brought up a quote by Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal Dreams" that could be paraphrased as above.  I really like that metaphor.

The lesson of it all is that we are stewards of the earth, not owners of it.  Just something to think about.

FUS is here:
https://www.fusmadison.org/

The entire quote is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/566597-so-you-make-a-deal-with-the-gods-you-do

“So you make a deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.'…

"'No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to CAUSE them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance…. Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with US…. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.'…

"'Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?'

"'Exactly like that. "Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one."'…

"It's a good idea,' I said. 'Especially since we're still here sleeping on God's couch. We're permanent houseguests.'

"'Yep, we are. Better remember how to put everything back how we found it.'

What is the antonym of schadenfreude?

So today I was wondering, what is the antonym of schadenfreude?

What word means basically, happiness at the happiness of others? It had never occurred to me, that I did not have that word in my vocabulary.  The closest I could find on the interwebs was "mitfreude" or shared happiness. Mudita comes close, sanskrit for joy; especially sympathetic or vicarious joy. Also the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being.

There has to be a English word that refers to the pure joy of seeing someone else succeed, do well, be happy, etc, without any ulterior motive of personal gain.

After posting this, a poly friend suggested a word they had made up within the community for this: compersion.

We really do need to consider why the people we agree and disagree with, came to believe what they did.

In another firum, we were discussing why people reject facts in favor of personal belief in politics. My response was that facts do not move people, because there are too many facts for people to understand. In the end, people find and accept facts that agree with their existing world view, and ignore those that do not. In this case, the fact was that no industry is self-policing, and yet conservatives reject government, at least in part, because they view government regulations as more negative than positive. Note well that this applies to progressives as well, we just have to swap out the details we are talking about.

In my very humble opinion, understanding why the folks who do not believe us reject our arguments is a critical task for all of us. They do not get that no industry is self policing for very specific reasons related to how human brains work. It was mentioned that they failed to have a grasp of history. But no human has an actual grasp of history. There is too much information to absorb. So, we pick facts to support a narrative that agrees with the world view we have. For any given situation, you can usually find more than enough anecdotes to support your world view. I call the plural of anecdote, anecdata, because it is not really data, it is a small sample that we select to support the narrative we already believe.

Getting past that, and on to the truth, first requires understanding what is going on. Facts alone will never convince anyone of anything.

Here is a nice TED talk to think about. It talks about marketing, but it applies to politics as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

Questions to ask before giving up.

So about once a quarter I post on various social media that if you need someone to talk to, you should come talk to me.  I cannot really help much, I don't know how, but I care, and sometimes caring is all you can do.  Well a friend on Facebook posted this, and out of concern that it would disappear, I copied it onto my blog.  You need to keep a couple of things in mind before reading:

1)  This is not my work, this belongs to Eponis from Twitter: https://twitter.com/eponis

2) She was kind enough to license it CC4, you should respect that license.  At the risk of getting it wrong, it means you have to give her credit.  But you should read the real license before sharing this:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

3) Thanks to my friend Renee Brown for sharing: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006524507523&fref=nf

4) The original is here, you should probably link to it, not to me:
http://eponis.tumblr.com/post/113798088670/everything-is-awful-and-im-not-okay-questions-to

4) If you need someone to talk to, reach out to the people around you.  If not, reach out to me.

6) It's OK to make mistakes, #5 is missing, but the world kept going on anyway.  Give yourself a break.

Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up

Are you hydrated?  If not, have a glass of water.

Have you eaten in the past three hours?  If not, get some food — something with protein, not just simple carbs.  Perhaps some nuts or hummus?

Have you showered in the past day?  If not, take a shower right now.

If daytime: are you dressed?  If not, put on clean clothes that aren’t pajamas.  Give yourself permission to wear something special, whether it’s a funny t-shirt or a pretty dress.

If nighttime: are you sleepy and fatigued but resisting going to sleep?  Put on pajamas, make yourself cozy in bed with a teddy bear and the sound of falling rain, and close your eyes for fifteen minutes — no electronic screens allowed.  If you’re still awake after that, you can get up again; no pressure.

Have you stretched your legs in the past day?  If not, do so right now.  If you don’t have the spoons for a run or trip to the gym, just walk around the block, then keep walking as long as you please.  If the weather’s crap, drive to a big box store (e.g. Target) and go on a brisk walk through the aisles you normally skip.

Have you said something nice to someone in the past day?  Do so, whether online or in person.  Make it genuine; wait until you see something really wonderful about someone, and tell them about it.

Have you moved your body to music in the past day?  If not, do so — jog for the length of an EDM song at your favorite BPM, or just dance around the room for the length of an upbeat song.

Have you cuddled a living being in the past two days?  If not, do so.  Don’t be afraid to ask for hugs from friends or friends’ pets.  Most of them will enjoy the cuddles too; you’re not imposing on them.

Do you feel ineffective?  Pause right now and get something small completed, whether it’s responding to an e-mail, loading up the dishwasher, or packing your gym bag for your next trip.  Good job!

Do you feel unattractive?  Take a goddamn selfie.  Your friends will remind you how great you look, and you’ll fight society’s restrictions on what beauty can look like.

Do you feel paralyzed by indecision?  Give yourself ten minutes to sit back and figure out a game plan for the day.  If a particular decision or problem is still being a roadblock, simply set it aside for now, and pick something else that seems doable.  Right now, the important part is to break through that stasis, even if it means doing something trivial.

Have you seen a therapist in the past few days?  If not, hang on until your next therapy visit and talk through things then.

Have you been over-exerting yourself lately — physically, emotionally, socially, or intellectually?  That can take a toll that lingers for days. Give yourself a break in that area, whether it’s physical rest, taking time alone, or relaxing with some silly entertainment.

Have you changed any of your medications in the past couple of weeks, including skipped doses or a change in generic prescription brand?  That may be screwing with your head.  Give things a few days, then talk to your doctor if it doesn’t settle down.

Have you waited a week?  Sometimes our perception of life is skewed, and we can’t even tell that we’re not thinking clearly, and there’s no obvious external cause.  It happens.  Keep yourself going for a full week, whatever it takes, and see if you still feel the same way then.

You’ve made it this far, and you will make it through.  You are stronger than you think.

Let us consider some of the excellent female candidates when the next UN Secretary General is appointed

http://www.womansg.org/

We are approaching the end of the current term of the UN secretary general.  Let us consider some of the excellent female candidates for the position!

Every past SG has been a male.

Who wants a 24 hour work week? If workers wages rose as fast as worker productivity, we would have one.

http://www.businessinsider.com/growing-productivity-stagnating-compensation-2011-3

If you gave the gains in worker productivity since 1950 to the workers, and not just the bosses, we could make the same living we have today on between 24 and 32 hours a week.

Basically worker pay has stagnated since Reagan, but worker productivity is 180% of what it was.

Thus as it ever was. All too often the papers talk of record punitive actions for guilty elites, but the sentences do not hold up on appeal.

  I want to talk about one trend, seen in two places, that has to end.  The idea is that someone does something really bad, and enough people get upset that something has to happen.  So something dramatic is done that makes the papers, people feel good about it, and then it gets quietly undone on appeal.

  Take for example Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney, who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame matter.  Basically President Bush was accused of outing an American secret agent as political revenge against her husband.  Scooter took the fall.  Bush commuted his sentence without pardoning him, because a felony conviction meant not being able to practice law was punishment enough:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18cheney.html

Yeah for justice!

Fast forward a few years, and he gets pardoned:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/scooter-libbys-triumphant-return-to-politics.html

His punishment was effectively 3 years off work with pay.

Or take the example of the Exxon Valdez, worst oil spill in forever.  The drunk captain gets huge fines that make all the papers:

Here you see the EPA saying Exxon will pay "One Billion Dollars" with a tone that almost sounds like Austin Powers:  http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/exxon-pay-record-one-billion-dollars-criminal-fines-and-civil-damages-connection-alaskan

Then the SCOTUS cuts it, and cuts it again, and as of 2011 Exxon is on the hook for about $400 million.

http://www.faegrebd.com/2881

So the thing is, we need some sort of calendar system to remind us to get outraged about past items we think were settled because outrage fatigue for the current crap is no enough.

Sigh.

As an aside, BP appears to have had a role in breaking the law, making the spill far worse than it would have been.  You remember good old BP, the folks who brought you the deepwater horizon?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/25_years_after_exxon_valdez_the_hidden_culprit_was_bp_20140323

I feel for them, I really do.  I remember when their chief executive Tony Hayward issued an apology for the Deepwater Horizon.  He had to take time out from sailing to get some updates, and had this to say: "We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."

Truth and Reconciliation, why we should not pardon someone who has not confessed or been convicted.

  I've posted in other places about how pardoning Richard Nixon without making him confess allowed him and Henry Kissinger to regain influence in American politics decades later.  The other day, I was reading a post on Stonekettle Station, a blog by Jim Wright, which brought up the subject.  Before I get into my thoughts, just let me say, I regularly read Stonekettle Station, Jim Wright is a smart fellow, and his words are worth considering. I would encourage everyone who cares about American politics to read that post, and consider tossing him a few dollars, I do.  The post that got me thinking about this is located here:
http://www.stonekettle.com/2015/03/the-second-coming-of-richard-millhouse.html

  So here's my take on this.  President Lyndon Johnson's papers were unsealed recently after 40 years along with tapes from the Whitehouse phone system and so on. It shows that Richard Nixon, who was running for president, arranged for Henry Kissinger, President Johnson's advisor in the "Paris Peace Talks", to tell the S Vietnamese to pull out of the talks.  Presumably because it would allow Nixon to win, and Nixon would give them the war they wanted.  When they pulled out of the peace talks, Nixon won, and gave them their war, and an additional 20,000 Americans died while the war continued.
  Just think about that for a while, and let it sink in.  20,000 Americans died, so Nixon could become the next Republican president.

  You might remember that when Nixon later became president he resigned over a burglary at the Watergate Hotel to steal some information from the Democrats.  Everyone thought it was election information, but it appears to have been an attempt by Nixon to learn what President Johnson knew about Nixon's role in sabotaging the peace talks.  You see, for Nixon to arrange for someone to sabotage matters of state would be treason, a capital offense.

  That sounds kind of like 47 Senators who sent a letter to Iran,   When S. Vietnam pulled out, the US stayed in Vietnam for another 7 years, killing 20,000 people. I've covered this half a dozen times, the modern Republican party (since 1948 or so) are largely self-concerned pricks, who would sabotage their mother for a vote. And these bastards in congress, these 47 Moronin, are doing it again.
But I am digressing from my main point. 

  I think Nixon resigned not over concerns about getting caught instigating a break-in, he resigned over fears they had proof he committed treason, for which he could have been tried, and if convicted put to death. But it never happened, he was pardoned without being forced to divulge his crimes. And that process, pardoning something for which the person never confessed, or for which they were never convicted, is a poison in American politics.

  I propose, that if you want to get pardoned, you need to be pardoned for specific actions.  This means you have to either confess the thing you are being pardoned for, so they are fully disclosed and people can understand the crime, or you have to go to court, be convicted, and get a pardon for the thing you were convicted of.  I got the idea from the South African "Truth and Reconciliation Commission"  In South Africa it really would have to try everyone, so they had them write up their crimes, and they forgave what was documented.  If you later did more bad stuff, well, trials for everyone!

  This modern notion of letting people go free because it would be too disruptive to prosecute them is poison, and has to end.

Epigenetics, how our genes can been turned off or on in response to a changing environment.

In followup to my earlier post, here is a nice discussion on the basics of epigenetics.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genes/

Squid can tweak how their genes express proteins on the fly.

The title kind of sucked, but the concept is really cool, I had no idea it happened in nature:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212114327.htm

TLDR: Squid can edit their RNA on the fly, which controls which proteins get made.  This effectively allows for one set of genes to make a bunch more proteins that would otherwise be possible.

Let us review.

So long ago when we first learned about evolution and genetics, Darwin wrote a paper about evolution through the inheritance of traits.  The basic idea was that genes passed down from mom and dad determined if an organism was a good fit for its environment.  If it was a good fit, it had lots of kids, bad fits failed to reproduce.  Over time random mixing of genes (via sex) and the occasional mutation, would result in newer organisms, some of which were more fit.  DNA is a chemical in the cells of the body.  It stores all the information about how to make you, and how to keep you operating.  It works by splitting in half life a zipper, making some RNA, and the RNA chemicals make proteins, which are the building blocks of you!  (I am grossly over simplifying)

But we know so much more now.

 - We discovered genes swapped back and forth between X chromosomes, adding even more mixing than simply sperm mixing with egg.

 - We discovered the viruses that can make us sick by forcing us to replicate their genetic code, can also splice themselves into our DNA.

 - We discovered the entire field of epigenetics, the idea that chemicals called methyl groups would wrap around the genome and prevent it from expressing RNA.  Using the epigenome an organism can silence certain genes and prevent them from coding proteins.  For example, if a virus inserted its code into our genes, we could silence those genes and bring redundant backups into use.

So the latest in this article, is that squid can edit their RNA on the fly.  I had no idea this happened. The title stinks, but the idea is genes have DNA that encodes RNA that encodes protein, and sometimes the RNA is changed in a specific way, so the proteins get made a little funny. But in squid, around 60% of the protein is sometimes made funny, and it makes us wonder why. This cannot be on accident, but how does it work and how the organism benefit from it.

Good stuff.

Focused ultrasound works on mice with alzheimer's disease.

Great news!

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzheimer-s-treatment-fully-restores-memory-function

  In summary, alzheimers is thought to be caused by plaques building up in the brain, and a protein goop that makes it hard for nutrients and other essential things to move around to where they are needed.  This focused ultrasound treatment opens up the blood-brain barrier for a few hours, letting in microglial cells that remove waste and do cleanup.  In mice, the procedure was non-invasive and returned memory to 75% of recipients.