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Showing posts from October, 2017

Sorting out fake news

It's actually pretty simple. The problem, of course, is that if "real" news contradicts long held beliefs it is immediately deemed "fake" in the mind of the simpleton - even if it is cross referenced and verified by multiple independent and long established news organizations. In other words, if it's not all over bitefart and FAUX its fake. Here's a useful website. It rates factual accuracy as well as bias. mediabiasfactcheck.com - Media Bias/Fact Check - Search and Learn the Bias of News Media For the really out there, there's RationalWiki. https://www.rationalwiki.org/ Well we have to be vigilant, Sinclair is the conservative Media Group, they have declared war on PolitiFact and factcheck.org - FactCheck.org and they're going to do their best to crush the fact-checking because if you can check the facts, conservative truth will be found to be lies Contributors Linda Tewes Deborah B Icarus Anne Riley J Bone Sou...

Dungeon Cultist Coffee Mug

Dungeon Cultist Mug by Nate McD  (Zazzle) or Nate McD (G+) Because, you know, we make a fuss about advertising our lives on our coffee mugs - let's advertise we love dungeon crawling on the weekends, with friends.  I so need at least one of these in my house. It would  make a good birthday gift for your gamer, too.  Or a Christmas party "white elephant" gift.  Hell, I just think it's adorable :-) "Dungeon Cultist" - it could be like the "secret dress-up" used to identify your fellow cultists.  Only those "in the know," understand the meaning, and it's an advert to others of the club that you're a gamer, and ready to roll :-)

Physics behaves properly, journalists get excited thinking it doesn't

John Baez Wrote Science journalists are acting like all hell has broken loose... because they're more interested in click bait than actual science: Breaking the Rules: Heavy Chemical Elements Alter Theory of Quantum Mechanics Extremely Rare Periodic Element Behaving Like It's from an 'Alternative Universe' (there's no such thing as a "periodic element") A Rare Element From The Edge of The Periodic Table Is Breaking Quantum Mechanics Nope, nope, nope. Chemists did some experiments with a very heavy element. And they discovered that everything works just like standard physics says it should! Starting in 1928, Dirac and others figured out how to combine quantum mechanics and special relativity. When stuff moves really fast, special relativity becomes important. Electrons in light elements don't move very fast. But in heavy elements, they move close to the speed of light... so relativity makes a big difference. This has been tested experimentally many tim...