May 1, 2024　　# On "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence"

In Episode 12 of Carl Sagan's PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, there was a famous sentence: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I quoted it in my recent video regarding UFOs. But when cross-checking, I noticed with surprise that the companion book of the series, Cosmos, doesn't have this sentence. This is the second time I encountered such kind of omission in books of this type (the first being in a Lawrence Krauss book), somewhat disappointing as a book lover.

As a reference, below are the television and book versions in comparison. Although the book version is not without its own merit, but what was omitted was by far the best sentence, the gem of the paragraph:

[Television Version] What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we'd like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what supported by hard evidence, rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Book Version] The critical issue is the quality of the purported evidence, rigorously and skeptically scrutinized ‒ not what sounds plausible, not the unsubstantiated testimony of one or two self-professed eyewitnesses.

May 9, 2024　　# On Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem

Mathematics is best known for its certainty and strictness, both of which are unmatched in any other areas of human reasoning. It is therefore a big surprise to not only ordinary minds but most mathematicians that it can be proved that many, in fact most, mathematical systems have statements that can neither be proved nor disproved, and that one can't even prove what seems to be the prerequisite of the strictness, namely the consistency of those systems. These are called Gödel's incompleteness theorems in case you are curious.

What about the mathematical systems that are immune from those theorems? Will they stand out as the most interesting systems? Not at all! According to logician Hao Wang (in his book Reflections on Kurt Gödel), those systems are immune "only because so little can be expressed in it that its deductive power catches up with its expressive power.". Theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson (in his book Quantum Computing since Democritus) puts it in a different but equally discouraging way: "the only mathematical theories pompous enough to prove their own consistency are the ones that don’t have any consistency to brag about!".

May 20, 2024　　# On Media Compression

For more than a month now (since April 9 to be precise), I have expanded my online existence to what I call "the final frontier": YouTube (in the sense that it's a platform for the only type of content I had never posted: audio/video). Foreseeing an increased need for video clips, I purchased what some claimed to be the world's smallest action camera.

One thing I noticed after a few test shots is that the video files the camera generated are much larger than the downloaded or computer-generated files of the same type, similar quality and length. I dug into it a little bit, and the reason became obvious: media compression is computationally heavy, and the processing power it requires to do so in real time far exceeds what a camera could offer, let a lone the "world's smallest" camera. It therefore comes as no surprise that the video camera dumps data into much less compressed, therefore much bigger, video files.

May 24, 2024　　# What Little I Remember

In the past month, I saw a book twice at Strand that I would have purchased if I hadn't remembered I already had it. But this morning, when I decided to verify its existence, I, to my dismay, had trouble locating it on my bookshelves. The book I'm talking about is, ironically, nuclear physicist Otto Frisch's autobiography with a title that directly reflects the situation I found myself in: What Little I Remember. Eventually, of course, what little I remember did not fail me, and I found the book. :-)

May 29, 2024　　# On Barnes & Noble

Yet another Barnes & Noble, the one on Warren Street not far from my workplace, is no more. Although I visited it very sporadically and became aware of the closure several months after it happened, it's still very regrettable, especially at a time when each bookstore represents a significant portion of the total. With this closure, New York, a city with a population exceeding 8 million, now only has 4 Barnes & Nobles left.

June 5, 2024　　# On Apps/Data Transfer between Phones

After an exceptionally long companionship with my current phone (thanks to its exceptionally good battery which, unlike those that usually degrade in 2 years to conspiratorially force phone replacement, shows no sign of degradation after 4+ years), I finally decided to get a new phone (for the sake of a better camera). One thing that impressed me a lot is that with a simple wire connection, all apps, along with data and configurations, can be transferred to the new phone, a feature I always hoped PCs would have, but never saw ‒ not even close. I suppose I should have been impressed much earlier if it were not for my dearest daughter, who has long been a bigger tech fan than I am, always kindly taking the burden of migration off my shoulders. This is the first time I did the migration myself. :-)

June 15, 2024　　# A Bookstore Visit

Visited "The Next Chapter", a neighboring bookstore in which a big sale is going on. According to the well-written advertisements (which themselves are often a pleasant read), one can "bring a bag, stuff as many books from our clearance section into it as you can and it will cost only $20". The advertisements even read into the minds of those who might consider taking advantage of the vague term "bag" by saying "bring huge bags if you want, suitcases are OK too". Of course, with a room already overstuffed with books and have discarded far more books than purchased in recent years, my appetite is very moderate: only to pick up a few Agatha Christie novels from a leather hardcover collection whose existence I became aware of last week. But to my dismay and surprise, I arrived only to see the very Agatha Christie collection I'm heading for diminishing in front of my eyes, taken by what seems to be a family of three (a couple with a boy). What an improbable encounter, considering how brief a duration the process of moving the collection into "huge bags" or "suitecases" takes!

June 21, 2024　　# Why Northern Places are Hot in the Summer

Heat waves are torturing the US these days, with 100°F appearing in places as far north as Maine. In case you are wondering why northern and southern places rarely reach comparable coldness in the winter but almost inevitably reach comparable hotness in the summer, here is the reason: The temperature in a place is, as can be expected, largely determined by the heat it receives from the sunlight and is influenced by two major factors: the inclination of the sunlight and the duration of the day. Among the two, the sunlight at northern places has a larger inclination, therefore bringing less heat per unit area on the ground, regardless of the season. But the duration of the day is season-dependent and much more so in northern places. As a result, in the summer, the duration of the day is much longer in northern places, and therefore can easily support hotness comparable to southern places by compensating for the deficit of heat due to the larger inclination. (In the winter, however, the duration of daylight in northern places is much shorter, therefore only strengthening the deficit of heat as well as the coldness.)

July 10, 2024　　# Solar Energy in California

An interesting piece of news: solar energy has been developed so well in California that it exceeded the demand as well as the capability of transmitting it away, at least for certain areas and during the summer mid-day hours when sunshine is brightest but the temperature is not highest yet (thus power generation eclipses demand). Unlike coal-fired, hydroelectric, or nuclear power plants for which one has a certain or full degree of control to match power generation with demand, one has little control over the sun. Ultimately, however, I suppose it all boils down to the fact that storing electricity is not cheap ‒ at least when it comes to large quantities.

July 12, 2024　　# On Japanese Movie Godzilla Minus One

Watched Japanese movie Godzilla Minus One. As typical in this type of movie, gravity was defied by the mere existence of so monstrous a beast that is capable of standing on land (let alone the nimbleness it demonstrated), and biology was defied by the wound that was regenerated as quickly as an assembly line manufactures products. What is perhaps unique to this movie is the method the scientist came up with to defeat Godzilla, which even in this type of movie would normally make at least some theoretical sense, defies physics. But other than that, which might not be a big deal for a movie not even marked as Sci-Fi, it is a generally fine movie, and I particularly liked the nice mingling between the epic theme and the vivid individual lives that are so microscopic in comparison. BTW, "the method the scientist came up with to defeat Godzilla", in case anyone is curious, is to sink Godzilla by surrounding it with Freon bubbles ‒ a method that, should it be feasible, would have been weaponized a long time ago.

July 19, 2024　　# A Worldwide IT Outage

This morning, a worldwide IT outage knocked out numerous Windows systems across airlines, supermarkets, financial institutions, news agencies, and even hospitals and 911, sending a huge crowd of people off their normal lives. All this was caused by a software update from a cybersecurity vendor: CrowdStrike (what a name). It is not a big surprise, though, that a cybersecurity vendor whose existence is to prevent trouble in cyberspace turned out to be the root cause of the very trouble it is supposed to prevent, because in order for software to battle "enemies" in cyberspace, it needs to gain the same level of control that its "enemies" would attempt to gain. Thus, once out of order, it is capable of inflicting damage no less than its "enemies".

July 26, 2024　　# A Quick Note on Evolution of Science Fiction

A quick note on the evolution of science fiction. In the early days, most science fiction stories were in types later called "adventure science fiction" or "gadget science fiction". Those are the stories that, for instance, unfold on a mountain on Mars instead of Earth, or use an antigravity device instead of a plane. Except for the novelty that purely lies in the "adventure" or "gadget", such story was basically old wine in a new bottle. Eventually, however, science fiction began to explore the social consequences of such "adventure" or "gadget". Thus launched the so-called "social science fiction". The transition, though not marked by a clear-cut date, was encouraged and boosted by a pivotal person: John Campbell, whose vision and editorship in Astounding Science Fiction, a leading science fiction magazine, in the late 1930s was also the beginning of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction".

August 4, 2024　　# Two "UFOs"

American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once said he would require more than a photograph for any claim regarding "aliens from out space", since "Photoshop probably has a UFO button today". It is very true that producing a UFO-infested photo is pretty easy, sometimes compulsively so. For instance, below is a photo I took yesterday afternoon, trying to capture the dark sky shortly after a thunderstorm, but it ended up containing two "UFOs"...... hope you, gentle readers, know where they come from. :-)

August 19, 2024　　# Why Is Rainy Day Driving Dangerous

A well-known safety tip for driving is to reduce speed on a rainy day, and I always thought it was due to the reduced visibility and the increased slipperiness of a wet road. But yesterday I encountered a factor that, though very occasional, is perhaps capable of posing a much more direct threat to driving safety:

I was driving along the Northern State Parkway under moderately heavy rain, and I saw in the opposite direction a few police cars flashing around a car that had collided with the median barrier. I continued driving and was wondering about what might have caused the accident. Quickly enough, and not through a Eureka moment but a narrowly missed replay of the accident, I think I got the answer: my car hit an elongated puddle on the left side. The water is perhaps no more than an inch or so deep and barely noticeable under the rain, but it nevertheless generated a noticeable dampening on the left wheels, and my car immediately started a collision trajectory towards the median barrier. Luckily, I reacted fast ‒ and I dare say skillfully ‒ enough to slow down and steer away (both must be done quickly but not too abruptly in order not to destabilize the movement) from the collision, and I was fortunate enough that there was no car near me, so the unavoidable zigzagging didn't introduce new risk.

This encounter, more than any theoretical lessons or pondering, will guarantee a slowdown of my car on rainy days in the future. :-)

August 26, 2024　　# On Media-Assisted Foolishness

On January 11, 1984, CBS Evening News enthusiastically promoted a perpetual motion machine claimed by Joseph Newman, whom CBS described as "a brilliant self-educated inventor". Shortly afterward, Newman, now transformed into a celebrity thanks to CBS, shouted to the audience at a gathering while standing beside a Sterling sports car and waving a tiny battery over his head: "Do you all believe this car was running on the current of a single transistor battery?" The crowd roared its approval.

Robert Park, a physics professor, pointed out in his thought-provoking book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud that media-assisted pseudoscience stories, which pave the road from foolishness to fraud, were rarely held to the same standards as stories on other topics. CBS didn't seem to think it was necessary to send a reporter who knew about the conservation of energy to cover a story on a perpetual motion machine. As a comparison, "try to imagine a reporter being sent to cover a football game who doesn’t know that the tackle is an ineligible receiver."

August 28, 2024　　# On My Nickname

One of the trivial things that I very much enjoy is sipping a cup of tea at Barnes & Noble and flipping through a book, either from the shelf or on my own Kindle, which I always carry to battle idleness. Barnes & Noble often asks for customer's name when taking a café order, and to avoid the headache of spelling that my uncommon real name almost always requires, I often use a nickname: "Steve".

It is a somewhat random choice, but not entirely so, since "Steve" is short for "Steven" and "Stephen", and therefore carries some of the names that can very easily pop up in my mind (in fact, I have written at least one article related to each of them): Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Jobs. :-)

August 29, 2024　　# On Fake Predictions and Forerunners

Before every major earthquake, there were numerous "predictions" (mostly by cranks and hits unavoidably occur due to sheer number). Many scientific ideas can be, and actually have been, traced back to some primitive statements that bear linguistic similarities (superficial and mostly vague). Links of such types, though popular among self-boasting individuals, social groups, and even countries, are nevertheless deceiving, as noted in an expression attributed to American philosopher A. N. Whitehead: “Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.”