Feeling Humble

Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
―     Albert Einstein
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On This Day In:
2020	Mostly Dry, With A Chance Of Late Rain
	And The Same Goes For Blogs / Posts
2019	Not Enough
2018	One Thing We Do Know
2017	Preservation
2016	Going Back
2015	Just For Today
2014	Reaching For Destiny
2013	Still Just Passing Through
2012	Live Or Die
2011	On Secession
2010	A Rocky Weekend

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Broaden The Circle

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.  Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations.  We have broadened the circle of those we love.  We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience.  If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.  Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant.  They will fear the loss of power.  We will hear much about treason and disloyalty.  Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones.  But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	Stay Gentle
2019	Immoral #45
2018	From My Soapbox
2017	The Single Most Effective Thing For Health
2016	A Trumpet Solo
2015	Potential Is A Heavy Burden
2014	Fear Not, Weep Not
2013	Half Way There
2012	Sacrificed Any Lately?
2011	The Value Of One’s Character
2010	Intervals
	On Being Human
	Non-predictive Emergence
	Events
	Bodily Functions
	Standing Thoughts
	Sent Home Is Better Than Fixed

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Maybe “Creation” Wasn’t That Difficult After All

I stress that the universe is made mostly of nothing, that something is the exception.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	#45: Time Is Ticking Away
	#45 Claims COVID-19 Defeated To Open The Economy
2019	Belief Buffet
2018	Change Is Law
2017	A Dog Day Of Summer
2016	Chances Are
2015	Truer Spoken
2014	Not Quite There Yet (Either)
	Many Colors
2013	Distance, n.
	Less Can Be More
2012	Rise Up!
	The Gift
2011	Artful Courage
2010	A Handful of Lessons…

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Very Young Or Very New

Sometimes the shape of the new paradigm is foreshadowed in the structure that extraordinary research has given to the anomaly.  … More often no such structure is consciously seen in advance. Instead, the new paradigm, or a sufficient hint to permit later articulation, emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis.  What the nature of that final stage is — how an individual invents (or finds he has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled — must here remain inscrutable and may be permanently so.  Let us here note only one thing about it.  Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.
—    Thomas S. Kuhn
From his book:  “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“
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On This Day In:
2020	Or To Destroy Democracy
2019	A Defense Of Liberty
2018	And Blog To Word Up To The Universe
	The Irony Of Greed
2017	Or Revisiting A Blog Site
2016	Alas, Too Often The Latter
2015	Either / Or
2014	Memorial Day – 2014
	Perfection
2013	Memorial Day Video
	Equal = Equal
2012	Congrats, Nephew!!
	Doggie Vision Networks
	The Flash: Omnibus
	JLI: vol 1
	Flash: Rebirth
	Burning Images
	What Do You Believe?
2011	Are We Still At War With The Poor?

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They Don’t And They Aren’t

Plagues don’t come for one tribe or another;  they don’t smite a population because it’s gone astray;  they’re neither divine punishment nor a sign of the Rapture.
—    Virginia  Heffernan
From her article:  “Words To Live By“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  May 2020
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On This Day In:
2020	Social Distancing
2019	Touched?
2018	Chillin’ With My Bro
	Inconvenient Adventure
2017	Genuine Tragedies
2016	Why I’m Scared Of November
2015	I Can Tell Too
2014	In Hand
2013	No Fear
2012	Comic Books
	Keeping The Peace
2011	You Still Have To Pay For It

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Re-institute The Wall Between Church And State

Both borderline science and many religions are motivated in part by a serious concern about the nature of the universe and our role in it, and for this reason merit our consideration and regard.  In addition, I think it possible that many religions involve at their cores an attempt to come to grips with profound mysteries of our individual life histories, as described in the last chapter.  But both in borderline science and in organized religion there is much that is specious or dangerous.  While the practitioners of such doctrines often wish there were no criticisms to which they are expected to reply, skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	Early Knowledge
	Seen Any Messages Lately?
2019	I Don’t Think We’ll Be Serving Them Cake
2018	New And Old
2017	Ever
2016	At The Center
2015	True Value In Life
2014	A Potential To Be Concerned
2013	Fine No More
2012	Have You Checked Your Height Lately?
2011	Are You Convinced?

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The Heart Of Science

We have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works…
As a boy Kepler had been captured by a vision of cosmic splendor, a harmony of the worlds which he sought so tirelessly all his life.  Harmony in this world eluded him.  His three laws of planetary motion represent, we now know, a real harmony of the worlds, but to Kepler they were only incidental to his quest for a cosmic system based on the Perfect Solids, a system which, it turns out, existed only in his mind.  Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.
When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.  That is the heart of science.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	Up Again
2019	Advice From #1 To #45
2018	How Much I Will Miss The Trump Administration
2017	We Need To Continue Experimenting
2016	Consistently
2015	We Must Dissent
2014	Now What?
2013	Judgement
2012	Stuck In My Mind
	Life’s Hope
2011	Just Getting Up
	Directions Please

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Clear Global Standards

The low cost of generic drugs makes them essential to global public health.  But if those bargain drugs are of low quality, they do more harm than good.  For years, politicians, regulators and aid workers have focused on ensuring access to these drugs.  Going forward, they must place equal value on quality, through an exacting program of unannounced inspections, routine testing of drugs already on the market and strict legal enforcement against companies manufacturing subpar medicine.  One model is the airline industry, which through international laws and treaties, has established clear global standards for aviation safety.
Without something similar for safe and effective drugs, the twin forces of subpar medicine and growing drug resistance will be so destructive that developed countries won’t be able to ignore them.  As Elizabeth Pisani, an epidemiologist who has studied drug quality in Indonesia, put it, “The fact is, pathogens know no borders.”
—   Katherine Eban
From her article: “The Worldwide Threat Of Generic Drugs“
Appearing in Time Magazine, dtd: 3 June 2019
The article also appears online at:  https://time.com/5590602/generic-drugs-quality-risk/
[I personally subscribe to the hard copy of Time Magazine.  This quote is being offered without permission or authorization.  I make no claim of ownership or authorship.  I am receiving no compensation from the author or the magazine for posting this quote.  I found the article interesting and am simply offering the quote for your consideration.    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2020	Life’s Mysteries
2019	I Doubt I Ever Will
2018	Who Will Thank (If Not Remember) Me
2017	Reinforced Learning
2016	I Choose To Believe
2015	What They Don’t Teach You At School
2014	Still Trying To Die (5)
2013	Honest Doubt
2012	Choice
2011	Ownership Of Thought

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The False Stereotype

No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature.
—    Thomas S. Kuhn
From his book:  “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“
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On This Day In:
2020	Fate, Agency And Dumb Luck
2019	You Too Can Choose
2018	In Line
2017	Just Get It Right
2016	In Support Of Common Core
2015	Oscillation
2014	Truth Shift
2013	Real Heroes
2012	Controlling The Beast
2011	1,002

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But That’s Certainly Irrational

There can be an infinite number of polygons, but only five regular solids.  Four of the solids were associated with earth, fire, air and water.  The cube for example represented earth.  These four elements, they thought, make up terrestrial matter.  So the fifth solid they mystically associated with the Cosmos.  Perhaps it was the substance of the heavens.  This fifth solid was called the dodecahedron.  Its faces are pentagons, twelve of them.  Knowledge of the dodecahedron was considered too dangerous for the public.  Ordinary people were to be kept ignorant of the dodecahedron.  In love with whole numbers, the Pythagoreans believed that all things could be derived from them.  Certainly all other numbers.
So a crisis in doctrine occurred when they discovered that the square root of two was irrational.  That is: the square root of two could not be represented as the ratio of two whole numbers, no matter how big they were.  “Irrational” originally meant only that.  That you can’t express a number as a ratio.  But for the Pythagoreans it came to mean something else, something threatening, a hint that their world view might not make sense, the other meaning of “irrational”.
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	The Butterflies Are In Trouble
2019	The Deep Center
2018	Oh, Heaven (Too)
2017	Now Pausing Makes Sense
2016	Just Spicy
	Only One Part
2015	Positive Acts Of Creation
2014	One Thing Is Clear
2013	Corrections
	See Greatness
2012	Gemutlichkeit
2011	Back On The Asphalt

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Emergent Novelty

The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around.  He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly.  Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong.
—     Thomas S. Kuhn
From his book: “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“
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On This Day In:
2020	A Steep Price Ahead
	Möbius
2019	Eureka!
2018	Learning About My Humanity
2017	Laugh Or Shake Your Head
2016	The Expected Cure
2015	Of Two Minds
2014	Pride And Remembrance
2013	Repeating Bad Memories
2012	No Sooner
2011	Just Cheesy!
	Are You Illin’?

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Is Science Cumulative?

Cumulative acquisition of unanticipated novelties proves to be an almost non-existent exception to the rule of scientific development.  The man who takes historic fact seriously must suspect that science does not tend toward the ideal that our image of its cumulativeness has suggested.  Perhaps it is another sort of enterprise.
If, however, resistant facts can carry us that far, then a second look at the ground we have already covered may suggest that cumulative acquisition of novelty is not only rare in fact but improbable in principle.  Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence.
—   Thomas S. Kuhn
From his book:  “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“
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On This Day In:
2020	Where #45 Is Leading The Republican Party
2019	Your Own Blog Posts
	The Man With A Code
2018	Choose Goodness
2017	Developing Translations
2016	Think Like A Hero
2015	Reductionism
2014	Gravitation, n.
2013	Ups And Downs
2012	Nerd Heard – And Good-Bye
	Your Continuum
2011	Career Tips (Part 2)

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Democracy, Pandemic, Economy And Climate Change

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.  It is up to us.
—    Carl Sagan
[An Inauguration and rejoining the Paris Climate Accords are just a start.  —  KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2020	Hoping For #46 In January 2021
2019	Interesting, But Not Fascinating
	But Try To Eat The Low-Hanging First
2018	Me, Too
2017	Apt Enough?
2016	Now Or Ever
	21, Pause, Restart
2015	I Am Shocked, Sir, Shocked…
	Lucy & FSND-2
2014	Less Difficult
2013	The Spirit Of Liberty
2012	The Essential Freedom Of Aloneness
2011	A Problem Of Scale
	Fred Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
2010	Another Book, Another Jog…

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(Hopefully) Good-Bye To The Trump Dark Ages

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
—    Carl Sagan
[Perhaps, having seen the corruption and malevolence of the Trump Administration, the next four years can see the beginning of an American renaissance…  I hope so.  As I prayed four years ago:  “I may not agree with all (or any) of this President’s policies, but I pray he makes America a better place.”  Hopefully #45 was the “just” the darkness before the new day’s dawn.   KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2020	Posting As A Continual Exercise
2019	Border Security – Yes, Border Wall – No
2018	Supporting Survival Values
2017	Inauguration Day 2017 [Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right! — KMAB]
2016	Or A Pot Of Gold After The Storm
2015	One, Two, Three…
2014	Lend Your Hand
2013	Amnesty, n.
2012	Best Resolv’d
	The Clock Is Running
2011	Magic

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Our Fate Is Up To Us

Since this series’ maiden voyage, the impossible has come to pass:  Mighty walls that maintained insuperable ideological differences have come tumbling down; deadly enemies have embraced and begun to work together.  The imperative to cherish the Earth and protect the global environment that sustains all of us has become widely accepted, and we’ve begun, finally, the process of reducing the obscene number of weapons of mass destruction.  Perhaps we have, after all, decided to choose life.  But we still have light years to go to ensure that choice.  Even after the summits and the ceremonies and the treaties, there are still some 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world — and it would require the detonation of only a tiny fraction of them to produce a nuclear winter, the predicted global climatic catastrophe that would result from the smoke and the dust lifted into the atmosphere by burning cities and petroleum facilities.
The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield and by greenhouse warming, and again we’re taking some mitigating steps, but again those steps are too small and too slow.  The discovery that such a thing as nuclear winter was really possible evolved out of the studies of Martian dust storms.  The surface of Mars, fried by ultraviolet light, is also a reminder of why it’s important to keep our ozone layer intact.  The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is a valuable reminder that we must take the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth seriously.
Important lessons about our environment have come from spacecraft missions to the planets.  By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one.  By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds.  It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.
Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question.  Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it’s too late?  Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos?  That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization.  Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil.  It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways:  You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars.  It’s up to you.”
—    Carl Sagan
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On This Day In:
2020	Still Willing
2019	Another Prayer
2018	After Silence
2017	Are You Looking Forward To A Trump Presidency?
2016	Three Errors From Eureka
2015	Limiting Choices
2014	Praise The Lord And Pass The Hypocrisy
	That Sound
2013	Still Waiting For Answers
2012	Informal Leadership
2011	A Little More Progress
2010	Bec’s Gone Again…

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