I went to a master painter for years. And the advice that he always gave was something like: to know how it will look you have to put the paint on the canvas.
And that's it. Put paint on the canvas. Then the rest will follow.
Trump tweeted that planes have become too complicated and that the old and simple form is much better.
His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.
As you say, planes and procedures have become very complicated. And I think there are only two options: making planes simple again which make them less efficient or let computers fly the plane and make the interface simple(r).
If you look at the rockets of SpaceX then you can say they are the extreme form of fly by wire and very instable when it comes to aerodynamics. But computers can land them within centimeters when they fall out of space.
So maybe that will be the future. Planes that are very efficient instable flying 'rockets' that are controlled by computers.
> His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.
There really isn't. Automation is part of what has made flying safer over the years. Also, compare the cockpit of an Airbus with e.g. an old B737, the 300 series for instance. The Airbus cockpit is much simpler, in the sense that there are less gauges and knobs for the pilots to be concerned about. Automation has, over all, made things simpler and safer.
It's far from clear-cut that the way automation is happening is advisable, however conservative it might appear to be, and I'm sure you'd agree that there are many confounding variables that make it difficult to say just what is responsible for the trajectory of aircraft safety. There's not much of a control group of advanced modern aircraft which omit automated features.
> This is an indication that user commitment is very low on Facebook.
> As long as users are actively involved there is no need to send emails.
IIRC, Facebook sends those messages only when they've detected an account's usage dropping off. When I was a regular user, I never got them; but when I stopped logging in for days or weeks at at time, they got more intense.
They're a deliberately designed mechanism to keep addicts hooked.
That would match my usage pattern, so I guess you are correct. I'm using Facebook only rarely and am definitely and completely away from it for several days or even weeks between periods of usage.
Yeah not really actually, people don't care everyone is on their phones reads this once and then moves on. Its not the 70s any more, just because people say on social media they are going to do something doesn't mean they are indeed following through... I do sincerely wish you were right, but sadly you are mistaken.
And let's face it, The military is a big part of the American institution - you can disagree and argue against it but that will not change reality. They also have the biggest pocket book, so Google, Amazon, Microsoft will always do business with them. If you disagree - leave Silicon Valley or those companies and join an NGO - I am sure they need technical help these days and cannot afford the talent.
"With a band gap of 4eV, glass can't absorb any photons with less energy than UVB light; namely, it is transparent to UVA, visible light, infared, etc; but the higher energy photons can and are highly likely to be absorbed."
So it seems hard to create glass that doesn't block UVB.
Feynman knew this and claims to be the only person to have watched the Trinity test with naked eyes, rather than through welding goggles:
> In Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, American physicist Richard Feynman speculates that he may have been the only person who watched the Trinity Test relatively directly, using a windshield to exclude ultraviolet light. Everyone else, he claims, was looking through something akin to welding goggles.
Lasers didn't exist yet to force us to study retinal exposure to bright non-UV light and the flash from the bomb didn't last that long, nor were the first few bombs that bright, so he may have been fine... but obviously if you stare at the sun through three inches of glass you're still going to burn your retinas.
He says "I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes (bright light can never hurt your eyes) is ultraviolet light. I got behind a truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can’t go through glass, so that would be safe, and so I could see the damn thing."
What we know from later laser research is that unless you have a comprehensive visual field test, it's often hard to identify that part of your retina has been scorched. Your brain just filters it out as a blind-spot and you don't realize what you're failing to see.
There's every chance that Feynman totally burned a section of his retina and never realized it, and there's every chance that he was fine because the exposure at his distance wasn't that bad, but at the end of the day he was more reckless than insightful in this situation.
Maybe he should have closed one eye, but the first atomic bomb only explodes once. Your body won't last forever no matter how well you care for it (as Feynman well knew, having just watched his wife Arline die slowly of incurable tuberculosis); seeing the first atomic-bomb test with your own eyes seems eminently worth the risk of blindness, or even sacrificing an eye.
I really can't agree. I would not exchange my eyesight for the whole world, literally. Therefore the qudos of having looked at a novel explosion in no way compensates for any risk to my eyes.
Downvoted not because I’m afraid of my own mortality, but because pointing out the obvious fact that nobody can see after they die is neither insightful nor useful. Go tell that to someone who has become blind and let me know how much consolation that provides them.
Even if I knew was going to die tomorrow, I will not exchange my remaining eyesight for qudos. I would prefer to spend my last day looking at my family, the trees, the running water, the flowers. It seems totally uncontroversial to me, I'm really surprised to find someone who disagrees.
Sorry, no, I just meant that the maximum human lifespan recorded so far is 12.2 decades, and the vast majority of people reading this will die in even less, 2–5 decades, regardless of what happens with climate change. Given that, it's silly to treat your body as if you could make it last forever.
Yep, he basically says that he knew the only thing that would damage his eyes would be UV-B, so he just went for it. Long time since I read the book but that's what I remember.
I don't get this type of thinking. Unless he thought it would be worse to wear the googles what is to be gained by doing something like wearing goggles (in that situation) just in case you were wrong? Why not reduce the chance of harm as much as you can?
I think this also has to be considered in the context of an ongoing cataclysmic war encompassing the world where whole cities were being destroyed and of course they were developing a weapon to destroy them faster. Today, WWII is that long ago thing that lasted for a few years and then it was over. Soon the veterans and the Holocaust survivors will all be dead. To anyone then, a lot of things probably didn't seem as important. A lot of people reacted to the atomic bomb once it was public as the impending end of the world, too. So the scientists who knew about it first probably had their attitudes affected.
The window didn't block a lot of other high power radiation, and he died from cancer 35 years later, though the connection is not scientifically certain.
So in case anyone just panicked thinking “Wait, so do my car and office windows block cancer producing UV or not??”, this is what I found on cancercouncil.com.au (first google result):
- UVA penetrates deeply into the skin (the dermis) causing genetic damage to cells, photo-ageing (wrinkling, blotchiness etc) and immune-suppression.
- UVB penetrates into the epidermis (top layer of the skin) causing damage to the cells. UVB is responsible for sunburn – a significant risk factor for skin cancer, especially melanoma.
Which contrary to what I knew, links melanoma to sunburn, not DNA damage.
Melanoma is definitely due to DNA damage; somatic mutation is the principal cause of all cancer. In this case the cause is either direct damage or damage by free radical byproducts created by UV. UV causes a kind of mutation in DNA called a pyrimidine dimer, where two adjacent bases mutate at once. By far the most common mutation in melanoma (reponsible for 50% of cases) is a CC to TT mutation at position 600 of the gene BRAF.
The UV damages the DNA. That step is usually required to produce melanoma cancer. The sunburn causes the deeper cells with damaged DNA to multiply in order to replace the damaged cells.
A single quiescent skin cell with precancerous DNA can be cleaned up by the immune system. A precancerous cell that has multiplied itself to cover a patch of sunburn, activating some of the genes for rapid growth, is much harder to clean up.
UVB causes melanoma, that is also a form of cancer. So typical glass would prevent sunburn and melanomas from forming but not the deep genetic and tissue damage that UVA causes. It is not a bad idea to apply SPF moisturizer before going out if you plan to spend anytime with the sun shining on you.
> So in case anyone just panicked thinking “Wait, so do my car and office windows block cancer producing UV or not??”
I just figured automotive glass doesn't block UV (or at least all of it) since window tinting places always advertise UV blocking as a feature of their films. Cynically I know it could be just empty marketing, but it didn't seem like it.
Of course, ordinary light, while still less energetic, penetrates still more deeply into skin, and it, too causes DNA damage. In situ DNA is damaged by light absorbed by less transparent molecules it is near.
Sapphire is an incredibly trivial compound, aluminum oxide.
The problem is, its melting point is huge. To make artificial sapphire you have to melt the stuff at very high temperature and let it drop and collect onto a ceramic base or something. And then you cut, grind and polish it into shape, which is not easy either because it's an extremely hard material.
The challenges to making a large flat plate of AlOx would be huge.
Nikon released a lens in 1984 that offered transmission and correction from UV to IR -- from ultraviolet, through visible light, to infrared (near IR, not heat).
This product was originally announced in 1984 as the Nikon 105mm f/4.5 UV-Micro-Nikkor, and from September 1985 it was marketed as the Nikon UV-Nikkor, then the lens sold then for $2,200.00 USD, then about half the cost of a full sized car.
Mildly amusing related aside from this. Because of this, glass is completely opaque in the UV spectrum. Looking at the world in UV [1] is quite interesting! Such a reminder that how and what we experience of the world is so largely a product of our physiological composition. What is perfectly transparent to us would be a great hiding place from the perspective of something that only saw in UV.
My grandfather, who was an ophthalmologist with a passion for inventing, has shown me schematics for this kind of glass. His idea was that you could put it in places that are sunny but not warm (like a mountain hotel) to allow for indoor sunbathing.
We always make fun of him for this idea as it's one of his strangest. I don't think he ever finished filing the patent.
> So it seems hard to create glass that doesn't block UVB.
Physics aside, why would you want to do that in the first place? UVB is the chief cause of skin reddening and sunburn and plays a key role in the development of skin cancer and a contributory role in tanning and photoaging. [1]
Just for that little benefit of triggering Vitamin D synthesis is not worth the increased risk of skin cancer IMO. And the author lays out the alternative there too: "Those concerned about low vitamin D levels can get more of the vitamin through foods. "
There is an alternative view that regular sun exposure is beneficial, and that many of the health benefits linked to vitamin D are actually just using vitamin D as a proxy for sun exposure. If this is the case, it's plausible that allowing for more UVB exposure indoors would be a net benefit.
I don't doubt that sun exposure is a contributing factor to skin cancer, but it just does not make sense that skin cancer rates have shot up over the past 100 years, while at the same time people spend less and less time outside.
IMO, there's probably some other causal factor(s), and reducing sunlight exposure is not the solution.
Sunlight exposure is important for health, not just for Vitamin D (which others have pointed out, may just be a proxy for some other factor of sun exposure). It's important for regulating circadian rhythm, as well as preventing myopia in childhood.
If you take a dive on PubMed, you'll see that indeed, sunlight exposure appears to be inversely correlated with all-cause mortality.
Why? It is not known, but even when controlling for physical exercise, Vitamin D status, and other factors, the correlation still holds. Some authors suggest other chemicals produced by sunlight, not only Vitamin F, might be involved.
> Physics aside, why would you want to do that in the first place?
I worked on a product that had a UV sensor. It needed to be protected.
Sourcing glass that didn't block UVB, that could be used in a mass market product, at cost, integrated into a manufacturing line, was a bit of a challenge. The mechanical engineering team eventually got a hold of some. For awhile, there were weekly status updates of "got another manufacturing sample, spec sheet wasn't quite honest, it blocks some UVB."
The answer to all such questions is - something related to energy levels of electrons in that material. If there's a resonance somewhere, photons at that energy get absorbed.
You can coat it - sunglasses are, for example. The coating can be invisible to the naked eye too, I think.
This is one of those situations where I think government intervention is needed. I bet the long-term benefits of coating glass like this are very real - both for society and individually (especially in professions that involve a lot of driving time). However, the short-term economic incentives work against it - there is probably a strong first-move disadvantage. Also, what is the economic benefit to a landlord to have UV-proofed glass for their tenants?
But if government were to implement a policy of requiring glass in cars and buildings to be coated like that? That levels the playing field. I doubt it is going to happen any time soon though.
But of we were ever going to to do that, I know for a fact that are also coatings with reflective layers (invisible to us) that tell birds that the glass is there, which would also save a lot of wildlife.
Ah, right. I somehow thought GP suggested near the end that it seems to be hard to fabricate glass that blocks UVA, and answered the question of how to deal with that.
Ah yes, the classic "I just assert that governments can only intervene with wrong solutions, without in any way engaging with the topic at hand and actually arguing why it is a wrong solution."
"the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three decades"
Ok, but what if it is now back at the 'norm' and there were just too many insects all those times?
Do we know what the norm is?
I must agree that the quick loss of so many insects does not sound normal. But we also know that insects can swarm very quickly and become a pest in good conditions.
With climate change we have a lot of data from even thousands of years ago, so we have some feeling about the 'norm'.
Does a norm for the total mass of flying insects exist?
Over what time scale? Over the history of the planet, the norm is probably close to zero as they only evolved 400 million years ago.
I don't think we particularly care about that, though. What we care about is what the death of insects means in terms of the ability of plants to continue to propagate since we like need to eat them to survive.
I agree, what we should do is apply even greater amounts of pesticides to certain countries while letting others try to fight ecological collapse. then in a hundred years we can see who is right and who is dead.
The idea that we need more data is lazy, shortsighted, and used as a primary argument to justify doing nothing.
The neighbor's house is on fire, Sparks are falling on your roof because of a breeze and you are holding of fighting the fire because the wind might change and we might be able to do nothing except high five each other about how smart we were.
In life, you never know enough to make the perfect decision. You have act on the existing data, not wait until the choice you should have made becomes clear.
This is what I am currently doing...plus, since everyone loves a "deal", I charge a slightly higher hourly rate then give away "one hour FREE" because we all know that FREE is the most powerful word in marketing.
Basically, I figure out what I would be happy with for 5 hours for work and then give them 4 hours plus one FREE hour for that amount.
This has the added benefit of nudging my hourly rate higher, since I always have a hard time raising my rates.
And that's it. Put paint on the canvas. Then the rest will follow.