The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

You and I, inhabitants of the Americas, should all speak Chinese (or a derivative of it) instead of a European language. We don't, of course, because it was the Europeans who "discovered" ( for the second time ) this continent in 1492 and sparked a rat race among European States to stake a territory in the "virgin" lands of the "New World". China had all in its favor to beat the Europeans in the early 15th century. They led the world then in technological innovation: cast iron was  first invented  in China; the compass  was invented there ; gun powder was  first concocted there . Not to mention printing; the umbrella, porcelain, the wheelbarrow, hot air balloons, and even seismographs to measure earthquakes. How can you be that advanced and not attempt to conquer other lands to extract their resources? Well, they did. And succeeded.  Decades before  Columbus "discovered" La Hispaniola, the Chinese had reached as far as East Africa. Befo...

Is the  blue-dress/gold-dress frenzy  officially over? Good. It was getting crazy for a moment. The way that photograph made people realize that "reality" is nothing more than a construct concocted in our brains opened the door to the collective realization that what we see is actually just an interpretation that allows us to function in the world. We see colors under different shades a different way (the "white" tile under the table vs. the "black" one to its right) because the brain gets confused between perceiving colors during day and night. The "reality" is that they are exactly the same color once you apply the same light intensity. This differentiation needs to occur in our brain; a  mental shortcut  happening in our left hemisphere (the one that connects the past with the present ) tells us that colors look different under the shadows, and shapes  our perception mechanisms to make better decisions in the environments we live in...

Two days ago I was having a couple of drinks with some friends. Among the many topics over which we blew off steam, someone mentioned an article about clean energy on the NY Times by Robert Bryce stating that Gas is Greener . Since I am someone concerned with the state of the planet (we pay for wind energy , we recycle glass/paper/cans, we even use biodegradable diapers for our toddler) I was intrigued by that statement. I mean, I am open-minded. Al Gore could be all wrong and all the over-priced eco-friendly services and eco-friendly diapers we use could make no difference to improve the world we live in (although to be honest the current heat wave in the US is a nagging reminder that he might not be that crazy after all) or even worse: these so called eco-friendly energy sources could, the NYT article stated, be actually more harmful to the environment than the traditional non-eco-friendly ones. If you have not (or do not intend to) read the above mentio...