Saturday, November 17, 2012

Science's evil twin

Hugo, Bart Simpson's evil twin












“Yes, I did.”

“An interesting experience, I figure.”

“You bet.”




“That was the scientific approach?”












“Do you remember how the story ends?”









“No way!”

“But they could.”


“Which reminds me of something....”


“I was sure of that. Let's go!”


  1. Loved the part on ants to discover fire. I believe this makes a strong point towards the need for our beloved scientists to focus on not so violent technologies, instead of playing with dangerous things like nuclear reactions.

    In the energy field for instance, it seems it would be much more appropriate for the well being of humans that we were able to improve the efficiency of energy generation with conventional sources, transmission, distribution and consumption.

    Science got disconnected from society, and it seems that this disconnection is what gets science far from Bart and close to Hugo, in a way that funding leads science paths, not societies needs.

    As a result we have all kinds of violent techs out there, to serve the needs of military, funded by huge defense budgets, while needs of people are funded by scarce finance from international cooperation, foundations and more recently crowd-funding.

    Establishing the link between science and society would trigger a new era of evolution to mankind, a renaissance of human values and development towards a world of justice, peace and well being.

    1. Gustavo is talking about engineering here, not science. Engineering is the application of science to make life easier/more enjoyable/healtier. So engineering is intimately linked with society, as one defines the other (engineering is about serving a specific need or want in society, albeit sometimes latent).

      The problem is that *good* engineering is so reliable that it becomes ingrained in our way of life, and hence is almost invisible to many people. You only notice it when it is absent. For example, where do you think clean water in cities comes from, or where the waste water goes to? What will happen to this water supply if ubiquitous cheap energy disappears?

      As for efficiency in energy generation, combined cycle gas turbines are close to the theoretical limit (about 60% based on the current temperatures). My point here is that most generation and transmission technologies are generally already quite efficient, with only a little scope for improvement. Note that there will always be a delay of about 3 or 4 decades for the most efficient tech to become universal, due to the embedded capital investment (e.g. there are still many low temperature coal plants operating, even though supercritcal plant is far more efficient). Efficiency at the end use side (i.e. consumption) tends to be less efficient, but this is largely due to economic, social and/or psychological factors rather than technological issues.

      In short, science and engineering has made lots of mistakes, but by and large, people (i.e. society) live longer, healthier, happier lives in a technologically advanced society. There's no big conspiracy out there - as Paul Weller sang in the Jam song Going Underground: "the public get what the public want!"

  2. Science is a bunch of egos looking for grants to play in their chosen sand box. There are so many proven methods that just need some tweaking to make them really usable, and cold fusion is NOT one of them. A multi-billion dollar boondoggle going nowhere slowly...

  3. Hi Ugo, Jeremy Grantham writes for Nature:





  4. Really impressive your microscope, the same for the apparatus that Piantelli uses to build thin film on nickel rods inside his cells

    Ugo, you shouldn't underestimate those guys, maybe it won't be cold fusion (strictly speaking) but at the end this will be nothing more than a little detail.

  5. Cold fusion has been replicated in over 200 major laboratories, often at high signal to noise ratios. For example, tritium has been measured at millions of times background. I have a collection of 1,200 peer-reviewed journal papers on cold fusion, copied from the library at Los Alamos, and 2,000 other papers published Los Alamos, China Lake, the NRL, Mitsubishi, the NSF and various other mainstream organizations. This literature proves beyond question that cold fusion is real. You will find the bibliography and hundreds of full-text papers here:

  6. Jed, don't waste your time, this is a lost cause. This kind of people want to drink the "cup of tea" and after the first one, another one.
    Nevertheless they don't understand that when all that will happen, it will be too late for so-called "science" and so-called "scientists".

  7. Ok, now I probably resign to everything...:

    More than 1,000 new coal plants planned worldwide, figures show


    Is the statement "WE ARE FUBAR" exaggeration?



  8. Replies
    1. Well, after all, with a bit of soy sauce and wasabi, raw fish heads are not so bad........

    2. They are extremely healthy when used for a fish broth. But make sure you're on good terms with your neighbours before starting.


