Tim Worstall

What advice would you give a teenager who wants a career in science? Select a subject that interests you and make an effort to become an expert in that field. I promise you, if you make the effort, and you become an expert, you will have a wonderful career. It doesn’t apply just to science. [...]

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Is this a sensible idea? The main cost to LED’s is that they all have to have a transformer. LED’s run at low voltages, like 5v, so house current has to be stepped down at every bulb. LED’s in theory should run cool and be cheap, but they are expensive and run hot because of [...]

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An AK-47 provides greater lift than a Saturn V rocket. Proportionately.

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In the comments of an El Reg piece about one of the crazier Biblical literalists who has actually managed to end up on the Science committee of the House of Reresentatives, we get this: I’m honestly staggered people like him end up in positions of power and influence… Hell I’m a religious man, a Christian, [...]

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Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts compiled for The Times. Data centers in the United States account for one-quarter to one-third of that load, the estimates show. And: A few companies say they are using [...]

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Via Don Boudreaux we find this: The strong instinctual drive to have children is a vestige of the need to procreate in order to preserve the human species. What? The drive to procreate is a function of the urge to perpetuate ones’ own genes. It has, quite literally, fuck all to do with the species. [...]

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Here. Pygmy mammoths and all that. The important point to take away though is that island evolution is very different indeed from not island evolution. Which rather makes EO Wilson’s estimations of extinction rates, derived as they are from island evolution, something of a nonsense, eh?

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Humans are still evolving, scientists find Just bizarre. Sure, perhaps the natural selection isn’t running away from lions any more and the sexual selection might be taking place at the point of deciding who to be monogamous with but the idea that neither are still happening seems most odd. Once only has to look at [...]

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Via.

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Measurement error or the real thing?

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I try to claim that I was friends with the genius Richard Feynman. He came to our show a few times and was very complimentary, and I had dinner with him a couple times, and we chatted on the phone several times. I’d call him to get quick tutoring on physics so I could pretend [...]

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Psychology Today tries to explain what was wrong with Kanazawa’s piece pointing out that black/African women are perceived as being less physically attractive than those of other genetic backgrounds. It’s a very politically correct and very bad fail: The point is that there are also group differences, not in attractiveness (as Kanazawa claims), but in [...]

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Opened something of a hornets’ nest here, has our intrepid researcher. Satoshi Kanazawa’s racist nonsense should not be tolerated The psychologist’s latest article asks ‘why black women are less attractive’. What will Psychology Today and the LSE do about it? Well, go have a look at what he actually said (using Google cache). As I [...]

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Potential cures for dozens of debilitating conditions are under threat from a European ruling that claims that making money from embryonic stem cell research is immoral, leading scientists have warned. As one raised as a Papist I can see the logic being deployed. Good cannot come from an evil act. This was used a decade [...]

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Sensible words: The Royal Society said that China was now second only to the US in terms of its share of the world’s scientific research papers written in English. The UK has been pushed into third place, with Germany, Japan, France and Canada following behind. “The scientific world is changing and new players are fast [...]

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Damn science.

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Hmm. Up to a point. Priya Shetty is among those to note that the Vatican is hosting an Aids conference on 28 May, but wonders whether a forthcoming update on bioethics issues in stem cell research and reproductive technology will be as “pragmatic” as its new stance on condom use. But, umm, ethics, bioethics, are [...]

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Via, this. It was a decision point. I had to find out if the bacteria could really affect a healthy person and cause gastritis. I’d been working very hard in the previous 12 months on piglets, but I have to tell you that piglets aren’t piglets for very long. They just about grow before your [...]

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Why does Stephen Hawking think science has overtaken philosophy? Erm, because philosophers are still arguing about “what is truth?” as they have been for some 3,000 years that we know of while scientists have actually been able to find out the odd thing over the same time period? You know, ‘leccie, evolution, gravity, trivial things [...]

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This profile of Elon Musk* has two fun bits in it: He investigated the science behind rocket launching and concluded that there was no real reason why it was so expensive. He believed the space industry was dominated by inefficient government bodies. By starting afresh, and going back to basics, Musk believed getting into space [...]

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