{"id":5962,"date":"2010-12-29T10:03:47","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T18:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=5962"},"modified":"2010-12-29T10:03:47","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T18:03:47","slug":"hits-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/29\/hits-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Hits of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you folks seen Ed Yong&#8217;s massive multi-part year-end round up at <em><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/\">Not Exactly Rocket Science<\/a><\/em>?  Let&#8217;s just say he&#8217;s currently on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2010\/12\/29\/ners-review-of-the-year-part-9-twists-and-lessons\/\">Part Nine<\/a>, with little sign of slowing down.<\/p>\n<p>Here at <em>Cosmic Variance<\/em> we&#8217;re not nearly as prolific as Ed (there are only seven of us, and one of him), but the idea of a year-end wrap-up is a good one.  I.e., it seems to create content in the slow intra-holiday period, without actually coming up with anything new.  So here are some of my own favorite posts from the last year, with a few guest posts thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We made it four days into the year before discussing science and religion. I started off by arguing that atheists don&#8217;t need to be obnoxious to strongly defend their beliefs, in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/04\/being-polite-and-being-right\/\">Being Polite and Being Right<\/a>.  On the flip side, in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/19\/the-truth-still-matters\/\">The Truth Still Matters<\/a>, I suggested that organizations like the NCSE and NAS should stay away from offering theological advice and arguing that science and religion are compatible. But I tried not to be obnoxious while doing so. <\/li>\n<li>I took some issue with James Cameron&#8217;s <em>Avatar<\/em> in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/05\/black-and-white-and-blue-all-over\/\">Black and White and Blue All Over<\/a>.  Still patting myself on the back for that title, but I think come off as too harsh in the post itself.  This might be because I subsequently saw Cameron on a panel at Caltech about the science of <em>Avatar<\/em>, and he was fantastic.  Anyone who is that committed to and knowledgeable about their material deserves some slack.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/01\/28\/time-travel-in-lost-the-metaphorics-of-predestination\/\">Time Travel in <em>Lost<\/em>: The Metaphorics of Predestination<\/a>.  I loved <em>Lost<\/em>, although I was one of the many who felt let down by the finale.  There&#8217;s still room out there for a time-travel\/alternate-reality story that really grapples with the issues of predestination. <\/li>\n<li>It took us until late February, but finally a pure-science post that I really liked:  <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/02\/22\/energy-is-not-conserved\/\">Energy is Not Conserved<\/a>.  Actually even this turns out to be more about language than about physics, but there&#8217;s some good physics lurking underneath.<\/li>\n<li>In <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/03\/10\/free-energy-and-the-meaning-of-life\/\">Free Energy and the Meaning of Life<\/a> I strayed way outside my expertise, hopefully without screwing things up too badly.  The underlying issues are fascinating but controversial even among experts.<\/li>\n<li>A behind-the-scenes look at the news show with the best science coverage out there, in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/03\/10\/report-from-colbert\/\">Report from Colbert<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Sam Harris and I got into a scuffle about deriving ought from is, leading to three posts:  <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/03\/24\/the-moral-equivalent-of-the-parallel-postulate\/\">The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/03\/29\/sam-harris-responds\/\">Sam Harris Responds<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/05\/03\/you-cant-derive-ought-from-is\/\">You Can&#8217;t Derive Ought From Is<\/a>.  There are a lot of good things in Sam&#8217;s new book, and it&#8217;s a shame that he detracts from the interesting parts of his discussion by leading off with an unnecessary philosophical mistake.<\/li>\n<li>A nostalgic look at my undergraduate research, and some amazing cutting-edge new data, in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/04\/07\/my-favorite-star\/\">My Favorite Star<\/a>. (Interestingly, there is <em>not<\/em> strong evidence for a mid-eclipse brightening in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hposoft.com\/Plots09\/VBand.JPG\">most recent data<\/a>, contrary to what I would have expected.  Evolution within the disk filled the central hole?)<\/li>\n<li>In case you&#8217;ve been wondering, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/04\/28\/the-universe-is-not-a-black-hole\/\">The Universe Is Not a Black Hole<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>A foray into (fairly simple) math in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/05\/17\/non-normalizable-probability-measures-for-fun-and-profit\/\">Non-Normalizable Probability Measures for Fun and Profit<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I recount a trip to the Linda Hall Library in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/05\/28\/a-shrine-to-science-on-the-missouri-river\/\">A Shrine to Science on the Missouri River<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>We know the basic laws of physics governing how the everyday world works.  An extremely impressive accomplishment, but not something that should count as a controversial claim; personally, I think it should be taught in junior-high physics classes.  But it took three posts to lay it all out, not without some redundancy: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/23\/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood\/\">The Laws Underlying the Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood<\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/29\/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood\/\">Seriously, The Laws Underlying the Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood<\/a>; and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/10\/01\/one-last-stab\/\">One Last Stab<\/a>.  Some of the ramifications of this fact for our wider public discourse were discussed in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/06\/16\/reluctance-to-let-go\/\">Reluctance to Let Go<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>As an experiment I made a video to relate that <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/02\/stephen-hawking-settles-the-god-question-once-and-for-all\/\">Stephen Hawking Settles the God Question Once and For All<\/a>.  Response seemed to be largely positive, and I still hope to do more videos (with slightly higher production values), but it does take a bit of work.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/10\/18\/the-fine-structure-constant-is-probably-constant\/\">The Fine Structure Constant is Probably Constant<\/a>. Explaining some of the theoretical prejudices that make physicists more skeptical of some claims than others.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/11\/01\/is-dark-matter-supernatural\/\">Is Dark Matter Supernatural?<\/a>  No, of course not.  But it&#8217;s a good example to keep in mind when discussing what questions science can address.<\/li>\n<li>Picking up the theme of taking on famous movie directors, I had a skeptical take on J.J. Abrams&#8217; TED talk in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/11\/19\/a-mystery-box-full-of-red-matter\/\">A Mystery Box Full of Red Matter<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In our annual <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/11\/25\/thanksgiving-5\/\">Thanksgiving<\/a> post, we offered gratitude for the effectiveness of effective field theory. Kind of an obvious choice, I&#8217;ll admit.<\/li>\n<li>While my intent was to stick just to my own posts, I can&#8217;t resist pointing to two guest posts:  our recent one by Matt Johnson on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/12\/22\/observing-the-multiverse-guest-post\/\">Observing the Multiverse<\/a>, and Eugene Lim&#8217;s summer entry on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/07\/13\/guest-post-eugene-lim-on-calculus-in-haiti\/\">Calculus in Haiti<\/a>.  Thanks to all of our guest bloggers for adding new dimensions (as it were) to our discussions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If I were a braver person, I&#8217;d do a corresponding list of my worst blog posts of the year.  And if my grandmother had wheels, she&#8217;d be a trolley.<\/p>\n<p>Happy New Year, everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you folks seen Ed Yong&#8217;s massive multi-part year-end round up at Not Exactly Rocket Science? Let&#8217;s just say he&#8217;s currently on Part Nine, with little sign of slowing down. Here at Cosmic Variance we&#8217;re not nearly as prolific as Ed (there are only seven of us, and one of him), but the idea of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}