Six Sigma

Or, "So long, and thanks for all the fish." Mistaking political realities for physical reality, as discussed in Blowing Smoke , or mistaking media and activist rhetoric for reality, as discussed most recently in Try Again , gives a skewed and dysfunctional view. One symptom of this is an oscillation from overshoot to undershoot as those seeking to differentiate themselves and so get attention - either as votes or product sales - try to grab headlines . Wasn’t it surprising how the ... more

IMO we would do well to do more agrichar trials in more places, sooner rather than later. Australia seems to be on point here . The huge potential of agricultural soils to reduce greenhouse gases and increase production at the same time has been reinforced by new research findings at NSW Department of Primary Industries’ (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute. Trials of agrichar - a product hailed as a saviour of Australia’s carbon-depleted soils and the environme... more

A variant of the infinite monkeys trope The plausibility of different models for the origin of life on earth directly depends on the adopted cosmological scenario. In an infinite universe (multiverse), emergence of highly complex systems by chance is inevitable. Therefore, under this cosmology, an entity as complex as a coupled translation-replication system should be considered a viable breakthrough stage for the onset of biological evolution. So evolution didn’t evolve... more

Remaining coherent for seconds . "How do you control something that can’t interact with anything"" You do it gingerly and indirectly, the Harvard physicists report in Science. They found that nuclear spins associated with single atoms of carbon-13 -- which make up some 1.1 percent of natural diamond -- can be manipulated via a nearby single electron whose own spin can be controlled with optical and microwave radiation. The excitation of an electron by focusing laser light on a n... more