Egyptian Concrete

A piece of news claiming that the Egyptians used a form of concrete to make some of the stones in the Pyramids has been floating around the internet lately. The researchers are saying that the chemistry of some blocks is totally unique, not like natural limestone, but it fits with concrete.

I’m rather doubtful about this. Granted, the Egyptians didn’t leave much of a record about how they built anything, but concrete is supremely useful. If they knew how to make it, and did use it to make blocks, why didn’t they use it for buildings, bridges, and temples? It also seems strange for something like that to be lost. Builders who knew how to use it would almost surely have passed the knowledge down, even between the stable Kingdoms.

Either the claims that Egyptians used concrete are wrong, or they really didn’t know what they had. Or everything else they built out of concrete was lost to history, which is improbable. Until there’s some more confirmation, I’m going to be doubtful about this claim.

The Year There Were Two Thanksgivings

Ever since Abraham Lincoln had declared it a holiday, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the last Thursday in November. In 1939, that meant the holiday would fall on November 30th.

Or so everyone thought. In August, President Roosevelt announced that Thanksgiving would actually be on the 23rd, one week earlier. His rationale for the move was that the economy, still recovering from the Depression, needed a boost from the holiday shopping season (apparently they had black Friday during the Depression), and 24 days just wasn’t enough time.

As would be expected with such a move, many people were angered. Football fans complained that rivalry games were now on the wrong day. Calendars were now wrong (except for one fortunate company who accidentally scheduled Thanksgiving for the 23rd).

Some of the reactions included saying that the President should “have Sunday changed to Wednesday” or “require everyone to take Friday and Saturday off”. As would be expected with such a bizarre move, the satirists had a field day. Some cartoonists suggested FDR would next make a new month called “Franklinary”, or even run for an unprecedented third term (they got the latter right).

When Thanksgiving rolled around, 23 states celebrated it on the 23rd, 23 others on the 30th, and the remaining two celebrated both. In a move reminiscent of brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War, FDR’s own children celebrated on different days.

The next year Congress passed a law saying that Thanksgiving would fall on the fourth Thursday of November, and it was signed on December 20th, 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor. By then there were vastly more important events in the world, and the year of two Thanksgivings quickly faded from memory.

(Via The History Channel Magazine, A Turkey of a Decision by Rick Beyer.)

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Were Not Atheists

Some people claim that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were atheists, and they were very bad people, therefore atheism is bad (or some equally specious conclusion). One of the biggest problems with that is that none of those people were really atheists.

Hitler will be first because he’s the easiest. In Mein Kampf and later in a speech at the Reichstag he said, "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Oh, but he was just using that for rhetorical purposes, he didn’t actually believe it, right? Wrong, he’s also said, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." (Both from here.)

Hitler was also a staunch creationist, "Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again descend on this globe. The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise." Any claims that Hitler was inspired by Evolution are mere propaganda attempts to make Evolution look bad.

Besides all of this, it’s quite easy to make a really strong case that, if not for Christianity and its irrational hatred of the Jews up until the middle of the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. Sam Harris does a wonderful job in Chapter 3 of his book, The End of Faith, and there’s plenty available online, such as here. For some perspective on Nazis, here’s a discussion on books they had banned or burned.

Stalin and Mao are a bit tougher to crack, mainly because there’s no quotations attributable to them either way (at least that I can find, if you know of a reliable source for some, feel free to tell me). But most people seem to assume that because they abolished religion, they must be atheists. In fact, they abolished religion so that they could establish cults of personality, and become gods themselves. They did what they needed to in order to get more power, and religion was a rival power source, which is why they abolished it. Stalin actually reinstated the church after Hitler invaded, because he thought it would help him (from here). Religion simply got in their way, and they eliminated anything and anyone that got in their way.

Even if any of these people were atheists, what would it say about atheists or atheism in general? I’ve never heard an atheist make the claim that because Hitler was a Catholic, Catholicism and Catholics are evil, which is exactly the way people use the Stalin/Hitler/Mao/whoever argument. I would contend that it is far easier to manipulate religion and use it for evil than it is for atheism, mainly because religions are actually organized and unite people with a common belief system, while atheism is unorganized and typically disunited. Religion’s potential for evil is therefore greater, but no more necessary than atheism being evil.

However, put up against each other, religion beats atheism by several orders of magnitude in number of people killed. But that’s another story.

The US Was Not Founded As a Christian Nation

For some reason the view has become prevalent (or at least, I have encountered it frequently) that the United States was founded upon the Christian religion. The people who espouse this hypothesis use it a rationalization for their desire to transform our secular government into a theocracy. When I had the patience and time (and lack of sense) to participate in online discussions about politics, I heard this argument quite a bit.

The thing is that it’s absolutely and demonstrably false. The First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, does a decent job, and hundreds of years of precedent have quite clearly said that it prohibits the establishment of any state religion. But that’s never enough for the people I’ve encountered.

But I wonder if these people have read a Treaty with Tripoli drafted under Washington and ratified by the Senate under Adams in 1797. It reads, in part, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” [emphasis added]

Any treaty ratified by the Senate is US law. It is in US law that the US is not a Christian nation. It’s really that simple. So if you ever hear anyone say that this country was founded as a Christian nation, make sure to tell them that it wasn’t.

6 Commonly Believed Things That Are Wrong

1. Centrifugal force

There is a lot of confusion about this one. Some people think that the centrifugal force is what causes water to stay in a bucket when you spin it around or pushes you against the door when you take a sharp turn in your car. That’s completely wrong, but not helped by its name, which means “center fleeing”. Some people also call centrifugal force a fake force. This is also wrong. So what’s going on?

When something moves in an circle, it is accelerating. This acceleration is called centripetal, which roughly means “pointing toward the center”. Because acceleration is a vector, it needs a direction, and centripetal acceleration is always pointing toward the center of the circle, hence its name. Thanks to Newton, we know that F = ma, so when a mass accelerates there’s a force. But that force is not what pushes you out, because it’s actually pointed toward the center of the circle. So what’s going on?

Well, Newton also explained this one. What pushes you out is Inertia. Because your body resists changes in its direction, when it undergoes centripetal acceleration it wants to keep going in a direction tangent to the circle. That’s what pushes you against the door and keeps the water in the bucket.

So what about the “fake force” part? Well, in a normal reference frame, the centrifugal force doesn’t exist. But in a rotating frame, it most certainly does. So while we might not need it most of the time, examining forces from a rotating frame requires it. It’s not fake at all.

2. The sky is blue because of the ocean or space.

I cannot confidently say that this is a common belief everywhere, and I sincerely hope it isn’t, but when I was in high school a large number of people did believe it, and no one knew what really makes the sky blue. I won’t even go into why it’s idiotic to think this, because it’s so obvious, but the real cause is interesting and not very well known so I will elaborate on it.

The cause is known as Raleigh scattering. What happens is that the blue wavelengths of the light from the sun are absorbed and then radiated by the gasses in the atmosphere, while the rest of the spectrum remains unaffected. This radiation happens in all directions, meaning that the entire sky looks pretty much the same shade of blue. This is also why the sun looks yellow instead of white, enough of the blue end of the spectrum is removed for it to appear yellow.

It also affects sunset, causing more of the shorter wavelengths to be filtered out as the sun’s light has to pass through more of the atmosphere to reach you.

3. Extra Dimensions

Most people seem to think that extra dimensions are some kind of world parallel to ours, or at the very least have a very muddled understanding of what extra dimensions entail.

Extra dimensions simply entail more coordinates to specify a location in space. For example, in one dimension, only one coordinate is needed to specify an exact location, x. Two dimensions needs two, x and y, and three needs three, x, y, and z. For everyone but String Theorists, we live in a world of four dimension, x, y, z, and t. That’s all that it means when someone says time is the fourth dimension, you need to give a time of an event along with its location in space to locate it exactly.

Anything above four dimensions requires the extras to be “curled up”, which means that they’re very small, so small that the only things that can move inside them are the most fundamental particles of the universe. In string theory, they take the form of Calabi-Yau manifolds, which are extremely complicated mathematical shapes. They occur at every point in space, and to completely specify a location you’d need to also give the extra 6 or 7 (depending on the theory) dimensions.

4. Nuclear power plants can explode like a bomb

I know some extremely intelligent people who believe this, and it’s rubbish. Nuclear power plants don’t have anywhere close to the fissile material needed for the runaway reaction like a bomb. Modern power plants can’t even meltdown like Chernobyl did. It’s actually a great irony of history that the same day that Chernobyl’s reactors overheated the same test was done here in the US, and the reactor passed with flying colors. Safeguards in place today make overheating virtually impossible. The pollution from coal plants is far more dangerous than nuclear power ever will be, but people seem so irrationally afraid of nuclear power that it doesn’t matter that it’s the safest and cleanest means of generating energy (at least once we have a good waste disposal plan, and there are many in the works).

5. Microwave ovens (or other electronics) can cause cancer

No, they can’t, at least without some serious malfunction. They don’t release as much dangerous radiation as a slab of granite. The number one source of radiation encountered by most people (unless you get an X-ray) is the ground. Even if you were to microwave yourself, the radiation wouldn’t give you cancer because it’s on the low-frequency end of the spectrum, meaning it doesn’t have the energy to knock DNA apart, unlike UV, X, or gamma rays. Microwaves do heat up water nicely though.

6. Medieval people thought the world was flat

No, they didn’t. This was made up more or less out of thin air by Washington Irving in his horrid biography of Christopher Columbus. I haven’t the faintest idea why this has become so widespread, since there is ample evidence going against it, but unfortunately it’s still taught.

Problems With Documentaries

I watch the History Channel frequently. There are a lot of good documentaries on it, and you can really learn a lot from just a few. However, I’m consistently disappointed by the documentaries that investigate more radical claims.

A recent one on the Bible Code comes to mind. There codes have been thoroughly debunked (this is a collection of such debunkings). The people who still think that Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Bible produce prophecies are deluding themselves and ignoring all of the evidence. But somehow, a program about the Bible Code gives them most of the time. Skeptics get a soundbyte, and proponents get the rest of the show. This makes it sound like these claims have a foot to stand on, when they really don’t.

Continue reading...The same is true of every sensational topic, including a recent show on “The Exodus”. The Biblical exodus didn’t happen, “from the period within which the Exodus should have happened -- the 16th-13th centuries BCE, in the broadest definition -- there is no evidence whatsoever of an exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt.” But the program brought up crazy ideas, like Israelites going to Minoan Greece and being buried there, along with stories of the parting of the Red Sea on graves and golden images of the Ark of the Covenant. It was essentially a crazy interpretation that relied on nothing but one guy’s opinion. How can you make such outrageous claims with essentially no evidence backing it up? It’s irresponsible.

Whether the topic is UFOs, the Lock Ness Monster, other “monsters”, the Holy Grail, the Exodus, the Bible Code, or any other controversial topic, skeptics get less time, and people could walk away from the show believing a position that is countered by all the evidence. We live in a country where the majority of people believe that evolution, a scientific fact, is wrong, where horoscopes based on nothing are published in newspapers and widely read, and where people believe the ludicrous over the evidence. I would hope that popularizers of Science and History should get their facts right rather than be sensationalist and contribute even more to this problem. They have a responsibility to the public, and they air documentaries such as these, they fail in that responsibility.

George Washington: a True Leader

Everyone in the United States knows about George Washington. They know the myths, the legends, and even some of the facts. He was a founding father, he was our general during the Revolutionary War, he was our first President.

But many people feel, like I used to, that he was second-rate, mostly hype, the truth obscured by the romanticized mythology surrounding him. A general who lost most of his battles and whose best maneuver was retreat. But is this the truth?

The fact is that he was an amazing leader. The best example of his leadership happened in March of 1783. Cornwallis had been defeated at Yorktown a year and half earlier, but a treaty had not yet been negotiated. Even though the fighting was over, the army could not go home, hostilities could resume any day. And the Continental Congress had promised money and supplies that had not materialized (imagine that, Congress falling short of promises to the military).

His officers had gathered to contemplate mutiny. Some wanted to march on Philadelphia and take over. The United States had not yet been formed, and it was on the verge self-destruction. Washington walked into the room, and before giving a speech he had prepared, lifted a pair of glasses to his eyes. His men, who had been with him for years, had never seen him wear them before. He noted their surprise, and said, “I have nearly gone blind in service to my country.”

Upon hearing this his men began weep. Officers who had survived years of open warfare were weeping. They remembered all they had been through, and why they had gone through it. There was no mutiny. With one sentence Washington had quelled it.

This was Washington’s brilliance. He was a fantastic leader. Whenever something needed to be done, whether it was getting supplies during the harsh winter at Valley forge, bringing the army back from the brink of mutiny (which he did several times), or maintaining discipline in his incredibly undisciplined troops, he did it. He may have lost more battles than he won, but he knew that to win the war he just had to keep his army together long enough for the British to lose their resolve. He knew it, he did it, and no one else could have. That is why he is one of the greatest leaders in our history.