Category: Science

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A real test of super speaker cables, maybe not

I read in Swift that one of the outrageously expensive sets of speaker wires where going to submit to a real test. There is no rocket science involved in determining if a person can hear a difference between audio products. The ABX Double Blind Comparator System isn’t exactly new technology and when used in a properly controlled test yields excellent results. The problem is that most manufacturers don’t seem to want to do good tests , instead they depend on reviewers and not necessarily applicable technical measurements.

The next week I read about more developments in the process and it was looking like the people making the claim for the big money cable where backing out. However the next section of Swift gave me hope this would go forward. Randi had done something I hadn’t seen before, he changed the wording of his challenge rules to address the complaints of the reviewer, Michael Fremer.

To those readers who are unfamiliar with the JREF challenge here’s a few important points about it. People often make claims for things that have no plausible scientific explanation. The JREF has put up 1 million dollars US as a prize for any person who has made such a claim, has gotten the claim publicly known via the media and can demonstrate the affect to the JREF. The claimant doesn’t have to explain how anything works all they have to do is show that it works. Both the claimant and the JREF have to agree ahead of time on a test that demonstrates the claim. If the claimant passes the agreed upon test the JREF hands over the prize.

For the claims made by this audio reviewer this should be a very simple and straight forward test. The claim is that the reviewer can reliably tell the difference between the ultra-expensive Pear speaker wire and normally priced speaker wire. A simple controlled double blind listening test will be all that is needed to decide the matter. So if the reviewer and manufacturer are truly sincere about their extraordinary claim they will now go ahead and start discussing a simple test.

Sadly this post, BLAKE WITHDRAWS, has just gone up at the JREF. The manufacturer is pulling out before even hammering out a simple test procedure. This says to me that the manufacturer isn’t all that certain of their claim.

Some more reading about audio cables:
The Truth About Cables – AxiomAudio
Interconnect and speaker cable whitepaper
Speaker Cables from Blue Jeans Cable

From Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News:
Un-Sound Advice About Cables
Top Ten Signs an Audio Cable Vendor is Selling You Snake Oil
AudioQuest Responds to Top 10 Snake Oil Article
Thiel Audio Interview on Cables
Cable Distortion and Dielectric Biasing Debunked
Skin Effect Relevance in Speaker Cables
Speaker Cable Face Off 1
Speaker Cable Reviews – Faceoff 2
Speaker Cable Faceoff 3

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Blogroll update

Rob Knop of Galactic Interactions has posted that he is closing down his blog. I will miss his contributions to teaching an astronomy newbie like me about some of the coolest discoveries in the field. I will also miss reading his perspective on other issues that so often made me think more deeply about the issue. Farewell Rob and I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

There is some consolation in knowing that Phil will still be giving me great information on astronomy and that I now have room to add someone else to my RSS reader and Blogroll.

Who should I add? That’s a tough decision, there are more excellent blogs out there than I can possibly keep up with. While my inclination was to add a science blog to replace the science blog that is gone, PZ pointed me to a post today that really struck a cord with me.

The blogger who I’m adding is Greta Christina who I have read other excellent posts by in the past including this excellent post that was part of the recent Skeptics Circle. Another earlier post, Short Memories: AIDS Denialism and Vaccine Resistance, had also impressed me with her thoughtful writing and humor.

The post from Greta that I read today, Atheists and Anger, I found very informative.

I get angry when advice columnists tell their troubled letter-writers to talk to their priest or minister or rabbi… when there is absolutely no legal requirement that a religious leader have any sort of training in counseling or therapy.

And I get angry when religious leaders offer counseling and advice to troubled people — sex advice, relationship advice, advice on depression and stress, etc. — not based on any evidence about what actually does and does not work in people’s brains and lives, but on the basis of what their religious doctrine tells them God wants for us.

This really struck a chord with me because my Dad felt the same way as Greta and taught me to see the truth in this position. As I’ve written previously, my Dad was an American Baptist Minister the sect of Baptists who teach the absolute necessity of complete freedom of religion and equal rights with tolerance for all (ref. Roger Williams, Martin Luther King Jr.). He always taught everyone that mental and physical illness need to be addressed by medical and mental health professionals not religious professionals. In fact he told me that both times he moved on to new churches it was mainly due to church members too often trying to use him as a free substitute for mental health professionals. My Dad felt his proper role was to give advice on issues of faith and anyone who asked for help with non-faith issues he tried as hard as possible to get them to go to an appropriate professional.

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IPCC and Al Gore win the Peace Prize!

As you should have heard by now, the IPCC and Al Gore have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Congratulations to the 1000’s of people working with the IPCC and to Mr. Gore. All of you deserve to be recognized for your hard work on this critical issue.

I like Scientific American’s blog post about this, Nobel committee to climate change deniers: “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.”

Then go see the crazed responses from denialists that Tim has rounded up for our amusement over at Deltoid: Gore Derangement Syndrome.

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More OTA information

Over at the denialism blog there is a post with a nice history of the OTA. There is also a list of links to other blogs who have posted on this subject at the end of the article, thanks for the link Mark. After you’ve made up your mind that we need the OTA back, go sign the petition and if you can, write or call your senators and congressman to ask them to bring back the OTA.

(I’m sure my three readers will all come to this conclusion because they are obviously very intelligent, they read my crap musings).

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This week in EE Times

I read a couple of articles in this weeks EE Times that may be of interest to non-EE’s as well.

The first is about a pending war of the serial interfaces, USB 3.0 guns for Firewire. The print edition also contains a drawing of the new cable core for USB 3.0. The new cable has six additional conductors to accommodate the new two channel physical layer. I didn’t see any indication of what the new connectors will look like but, since they are leaving the existing four USB 2.0 conductors intact, it should be possible to make backwards compatible connectors. IEEE-1394 (Firewire) is also in the process of speeding up the transfer rates to about the same as USB 3.0. Firewire has an advantage in that its cable and connector system does not need to be changed to get the higher rate. Since USB 3.0 has 3 parallel serial channels maybe they should rename it UPSB, on second thought that sounds like a discount delivery service. 🙂

The other article is about how measurement and analysis methods from Electronics help predict global warming.

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Some good mainstream Rachel Carson and DDT coverage

On this weeks Bill Moyers Journal they had nice coverage of the Rachael Carson and DDT topic, you can watch and/or read the transcript online. They also have a good article on their blog “E.O. Wilson on Rachel Carson” more show information here.

In the blogosphere, Tim and Bug Girl both pointed out a good new post by Aaron Swartz at FAIR , “Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer?“. Also, I’ve been pointed to more good posts on this topic by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, see DDT and Rachel Carson .

Of course there is always tons of great info this topic via Tim of Deltoid here and Bug Girl here, here and, here.

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Happy Birthday Michael Faraday

michael-faraday

On this day, September 22, 1791 in South London, England, Michael Faraday was born. Faraday’s work in chemistry, electricity, and magnetism were instrumental in advancing science in the 19th century. Sadly, because of the prejudice of the society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman and did not receive as much honor and respect in his early years as he deserved. In the 20th century we have made up for this a bit by awarding him an honor only a very few receive, the SI unit of capacitance is named the farad to honor his work.

There is a lot of good information about him on the web so rather than repeat it here I’ll send you to the references cited below and end this post with one of my favorite Faraday quotes. In his laboratory notebook dated March 19, 1849 at the end of many paragraphs of deep thoughts he writes:

ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency. (from “The Life and Letters of Faraday” By Bence Jones Vol. II page 253)

Faraday’s rock solid belief that only through meticulous repeatable experiments could the truth of nature be divined is as essential in the 21st century as it was in the 19th. So, lets all celebrate the life of this self educated, lower class, son of a blacksmith who laid the foundations for much of our present technological society.

Wikipedia Biography

Books
Biography
The Life and Letters of Faraday By Bence Jones Vol. I
The Life and Letters of Faraday By Bence Jones Vol. II

Written by Michael Faraday:
from Project Gutenberg
Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1
The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday

Google Book Search 12 volumes

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Expertise is real and it matters

The title of this post is a quote from PZ Myers at his blog Pharyngula from a few months ago.

I’m reminded of the time a creationist tried to invite me to a creationist geology talk – that would have been a waste of effort. Expertise is real and it matters, and I have none in geology at all – but I do have a Ph.D. I’m sure my glazed-eyed bafflement at what any geologist would have recognized as truly stupid mistakes would have been taken as an affirmation, and that’s exactly what they want, to confuse their audiences and declare victory. They win when we’re all as ignorant as they are.

It’s worth repeating, expertise is real and it matters, if you have a plumbing question whose answer would you consider to be the best, an electricians or a plumbers? I hope you’d choose the plumber since there may be health and safety consequences from a wrong answer. Within any particular field of expertise there are also specialty subfields and the same rule applies. Sticking with the plumbing example, if the plumbing question is about a special hazardous waste pipe in a factory you don’t want to just call a residential plumber or even a commercial plumber. In this case you need to talk with an industrial/commercial plumber licensed for hazardous waste pipes because it could be extremely dangerous if the wrong specialty materials and techniques are used.

On a recent Infidel guy show (part of “The Triad of Reason” podcasts) was a 2002 interview with Massimo Pigliucci . It’s a good interview and in the middle they talk about the importance of expertise. Massimo says:

Just because you’re a scientist that doesn’t mean you get everything right, especially if it’s not you’re field.

He continues to explain why you shouldn’t ask him to comment on quantum mechanics or even the evolution of sex because they are not fields of study in which he is expert.

I stumbled upon a blog post soon after reading PZ’s post and thought it was a good example. The excellent musician and AFAIK all around nice guy David Byrne has a blog, and back in April he posted about the bee problem that was all over the news. The following quote from David’s blog was often stated in the media and other places including Bill Maher on his HBO series Real Time.

According to Einstein we’ve got a little over 4 years. Here’s a quote from him:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. …..

David Byrne and the others using this quotation show there lack of expertise in science history, the life and words of Albert Einstein in particular. No one has yet found any actual reference for this alleged Einstein quote and when asked, an Einstein Biographer says he’s never encountered it. Even if the quote turns out to be real, the bigger problem is Einstein’s lack of expertise. Albert Einstein was an expert theoretical physicist, one of the greatest to ever live, but he was not an expert biologist. If you want the best information on bees and the colony collapse problem the type of expert you want is an entomologist, the insect biology experts.

Determining who is a real expert in a field of study is not always easy, the denialism blog has a nice article that should help in sorting the real experts from the fake experts.

When it comes to evolutionary biology there seems to be an abundance of fake experts, you can find a whole bunch of them listed at the Center for Science and Culture. Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars wrote about one of the worst of this bunch in his post, Dembski Offers Money Again.

It’s quite common for Dembski to question the credentials of critics rather than engage their arguments; … But what’s funny about this is that it’s coming from a guy with absolutely no training in biology telling virtually every biologist in the world that they’re wrong.

For some more reading on this topic check out the article “Amateur experts”

http://infophilia.blogspot.com/2007/07/amateur-experts.html