#robert h. planck

[fibula-rasa]

The Bat Whispers (1930) 

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: Roland West

Cinematographers: Robert H. Planck, Ray June

Performers: Richard Tucker, S.E. Jennings, ???

[byneddiedingo]

Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950)

Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, Phil Silvers, Ray Collins, Nita Bieber, Carleton Carpenter, Hans Conried. Screenplay: George Wells, Sy Gomberg. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith. Film editing: Albert Akst. Music: Conrad Salinger; songs by Harry Warren, Mack Gordon, Saul Chaplin, Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler.

Summer Stock seems almost like a warmup for that string of great MGM musicals that followed: An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952), and The Band Wagon (Minnelli, 1953). It doesn't have as good a song score as they do, and its screenplay lacks the wit that Alan Jay Lerner, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green provided for them. It has two great numbers: Judy Garland's "Get Happy" and Gene Kelly's solo in which he does miraculous things with a squeaky floorboard and a sheet of newspaper. But mostly it seems to be remembered as Garland's last film for MGM as she descended into the emotional wilderness of her later years. She was returning to the screen after being fired from Annie Get Your Gun (George Sidney, 1950), but she asked to be let out of her contract with MGM after completing Summer Stock. Aside from Kelly and Garland, there's not much else to recommend about the film. Eddie Bracken plays his usual nebbish with a sinus condition -- a variation on the character he played in Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944), and Phil Silvers does some overstated clowning. The plot is nonsense about a Broadway tryout being staged in the barn on the farm owned by Garland's character, with the usual gags about city slickers trying to feed chickens and milk cows. Garland's character is engaged to Bracken's, and Kelly's is having a fling with Garland's sister, played by Gloria DeHaven. Naturally, by film's end the sisters have switched partners. But the film belongs to Garland and Kelly whenever they're on screen, and a thumb ready for the fast-forward button to those moments gets a good workout.

Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in SUMMER STOCK (1950)

[physicsfan123]

laughing while reading robert millikan’s 1916 “a direct photoelectric determination of planck’s h” he really called einstein an idiot for two pages just to conclude that einstein was, in fact, not an idiot

[sesiondemadrugada]

A Woman's Face (George Cukor, 1941).

[dweemeister]

Lili (1953)

There is something whimsical about certain old Hollywood Studio System movies that makes it unimaginable that such films of that type would ever be greenlighted by studio executives today. One of those films is Charles Walters’ Lili, adapted from Paul Gallico’s 1950 short story “The Man Who Hated People”. Lili is a peculiar film that defies categorization – it is neither a pure drama or comedy, and it also lightly draws upon on elements from fantasy films and musicals. Given a turn towards mature themes in American cinema in the 1960s and 70s and long-standing cultural attitudes towards lighthearted fantasy, Lili might be insufferable to some. For those willing to give it a chance and allowing it to whisk them from anything resembling reality, Leslie Caron’s starring performance – two years following a triumphant screen debut opposite Gene Kelly in An American in Paris – elevates the flimsy material.

Sixteen-year-old Lili Daurier (Caron) is an orphaned country girl wandering post-WWII France, seeking a close friend to her recently-deceased father as she hopes to find employment. That friend has recently died, and his successor harasses Lili. She is rescued by a traveling carnival magician named Marc (Jean-Pierre Aumont). Lili becomes infatuated with Marc, as he secures her a job as a carnival waitress. But instead of waiting tables, Lili – who has never experienced magic tricks before – neglects her duties as she is transfixed with Marc’s dinnertime show. Lili is sacked as a result, with Marc displaying little sympathy for her naïveté. Told to home, Lili instead attempts suicide but not before the carnival’s puppeteer Paul (Mel Ferrer, who voices the puppets but does not control their movements) strikes conversation through his puppets. Lili obviously has never heard of or experienced a puppet show either, as she treats Paul’s cast of puppet characters as if they were real. Their interactions draw a crowd, thanks to Lili’s earnestness and belief that these puppets are her friends. Paul and his partner Jacquot (Kurt Kasznar) offer Lili a job of being part of the show. She accepts, and several of heartfelt conversations between girl and puppets follow.

A special type of performance is required for this film, and Caron’s acting is the appropriate mixture to make this amalgam of fantasy, musical, and drama work. Like numerous actors that might act in front of Big Bird or Kermit, Caron must treat the puppet characters as if they were real (the script demands it, in addition to the magic needed to make Lili work). With no Muppets or Sesame Street in the 1950s to act as a thespian precedent, Caron – as well as the puppeteers – drew from a then-popular television program named Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. From there, Caron and puppeteers Walton and O’Rourke (a famous cabaret puppeteer act) and George Latshaw must be attuned to the other’s nuances in physicality and personality. Never annoying nor cloying, Caron is simply in her element here. A few years prior, Caron was a teenage ballerina in a Paris troupe when she was noticed by an admiring Gene Kelly. With Kelly’s lobbying of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) executives, Caron became an MGM contractee before production on An American in Paris  – Lili would be her fifth film with MGM and her second major starring role. Her appearance as the titular Gigi would be five years away.

The screenplay, written by Helen Deutsch, allows for some rather intimate exchanges of dialogue between Lili and the puppets as the puppets display their sensitivity to her anxieties and sources of joyfulness. This combination of excellent acting and puppetry as well as attentive screenwriting delivers Lili past sugary mediocrity.

For outside of the several puppet show scenes, Lili is overflowing with lackadaisical performances and a romance between Caron and Ferrer’s character that is never fully realized and is, frankly, a tinge unbelievable and creepy if one thinks too hard about it. Outside of Caron’s central performance, the remainder of the supporting cast feels wasted – whether they are playing caricatures (Zsa Zsa Gabor, like in so many of the films she starred in, is a peculiar afterthought) or are just there (Mel Ferrer, despite being billed second, dials in an undemanding, charisma-bereft turn that gets sucked into the mire of the story despite his obvious possessiveness... would his character just fucking smile for once?). When leaving the interactions between Caron and the puppets, Lili becomes a film without sturdy supports, with very little amid the meritorious production design from the team of Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis, and Arthur Krams. The film’s carnival tentpoles are on the verge of snapping at the slightest application of subplot stress.

A lushly-composed score by Polish-American Bronislau Kaper is rooted in the lone original song appearing in Lili. That song is “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” (Kaper wrote the melody, which sounds rather German for a film set in France; Deutsch with the lyrics), which appears in the first encounter between Lili and the puppets. It appears immediately after Lili’s most despairing episode – a song with heartbreaking lyrics becoming a source of immense uplift. “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” will never appear on a list on the most memorable musical moments from that musical factory known as MGM (okay, it was featured in 1976′s That’s Entertainment, Part II and it was a minor commercial hit that did better in continental Europe than America), but Kaper and Deutsch’s song embodies that MGM musical mentality to near-perfection. Sing though your head and heart might be in agony, these films espoused. Smile and put on the show because that’s what movie stars are meant to do.

Those who have seen La La Land (2016) and have seen next to zero MGM musicals may recognize a narrative device employed at Lili’s conclusion. Despite the fact Lili is not a pure musical, the sloppy narrative is concluded with an abstract sequence where Lili’s imagination and most internal thoughts are expressed through dance. This concluding scene is not as technically accomplished as other such sequences, instead appearing perfunctory.

It’s as if Charles Walters – a director with an established track record of solid musicals including Good News (1947), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950) – could not decide on what exactly he wished this film to be. The structure and the parameters for a worthwhile musical, maybe even a fantasy or light romance, is there. But Walters and Deutsch never commit to a direction, and Lili – even providing for Caron’s magnificent acting and the emotional fragility she brings to her character – suffers from that indecision. But that indecision is not enough to prevent me from ever recommending Lili to anyone. Its deficiencies make it fascinating to watch, returning viewers briefly to a time of prolonged innocence, when the world outside one’s doorstep was never anything but enthralling.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating.

[byneddiedingo]

Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950) Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, Phil Silvers, Ray Collins, Nita Bieber, Carleton Carpenter, Hans Conried. Screenplay: George Wells, Sy Gomberg. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith. Film editing: Albert Akst. Music: Conrad Salinger; songs by Harry Warren, Mack Gordon, Saul Chaplin, Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler. Summer Stock seems almost like a warmup for that string of great MGM musicals that followed: An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952), and The Band Wagon (Minnelli, 1953). It doesn't have as good a song score as they do, and its screenplay lacks the wit that Alan Jay Lerner, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green provided for them. It has two great numbers: Judy Garland's "Get Happy" and Gene Kelly's solo in which he does miraculous things with a squeaky floorboard and a sheet of newspaper. But mostly it seems to be remembered as Garland's last film for MGM as she descended into the emotional wilderness of her later years. She was returning to the screen after being fired from Annie Get Your Gun (George Sidney, 1950), but she asked to be let out of her contract with MGM after completing Summer Stock. Aside from Kelly and Garland, there's not much else to recommend about the film. Eddie Bracken plays his usual nebbish with a sinus condition -- a variation on the character he played in Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944), and Phil Silvers does some overstated clowning. The plot is nonsense about a Broadway tryout being staged in the barn on the farm owned by Garland's character, with the usual gags about city slickers trying to feed chickens and milk cows. Garland's character is engaged to Bracken's, and Kelly's is having a fling with Garland's sister, played by Gloria DeHaven. Naturally, by film's end the sisters have switched partners. But the film belongs to Garland and Kelly whenever they're on screen, and a thumb ready for the fast-forward button to those moments gets a good workout.

[archaeologicalnews]

Ancient human species made ‘last stand’ 100,000 years ago on Indonesian island

When seafaring modern humans ventured onto the island of Java some 40,000 years ago, they found a rainforest-covered land teeming with life—but they weren’t the first humans to call the island home. Their distant ancestor, Homo erectus, had traveled to Java when it was connected to the mainland via land bridges and lived there for approximately 1.5 million years. These people made their last stand on the island about 100,000 years ago, long after they had gone extinct elsewhere in the world, according a new study assigning reliable dates to previously found H. erectus fossils. The finding suggests a trace of H. erectus DNA could live on in modern Southeast Asian populations, thanks to complex intermingling among the diverse humans who have lived in the region.

The newly dated fossils also bookend the existence of a remarkably long-lived human species, says Patrick Roberts, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who wasn’t involved with the study. “With this date, the duration of Homo erectus occupation in Southeast Asia is nearly three times as long as our [own] species has been on the planet,” he says. “There is no doubt it was successful.” Read more.

[fibula-rasa]

The Bat Whispers (1930) 

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: Roland West

Cinematographers: Robert H. Planck, Ray June

Performers: S.E. Jennings, Una Merkel, Spencer Charters, Chester Morris, Grayce Hampton, Charles Dow Clark, Maude Eburne, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ben Bard

[urantiaportal]

Many Nobel prize winners believe in some sort of intelligent underpinning reality; they are mostly theists or deists:  • ALBERT EINSTEIN [1875-1955]: Nobel Laureate in Physics (he believed in a God like Spinoza did, but a God whose design echoed throughout the universe): “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”  • MAX PLANCK [1858-1947]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter - the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view.” [1958] • WERNER HEISENBERG [1901-1976]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” • ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER [1887-1971]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: ¨In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game - but they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce. …The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations. This is perhaps the most exciting thing in the game.” [1954]  • ROBERT MILLIKAN [1868-1953]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “It pains me as much as it did Kelvin ‘to hear crudely atheistic views expressed by men who have never known the deeper side of existence.’ Let me, then, henceforth use the word God to describe that which is behind the mystery of existence and that which gives meaning to it. I think you will not misunderstand me, then, when I say that I have never known a thinking man who did not believe in God.” [1925] • CHARLES TOWNES [1915-2015]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.” [2002] • ARTHUR SCHAWLOW [1921-1999]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Religion is founded on faith. It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. For me that means Protestant Christianity, to which I was introduced as a child and which has withstood the tests of a lifetime." • WILLIAM PHILLIPS [b.1948]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Many scientists are also people with quite conventional religious faith. I, a physicist, am one example. I believe in God as both creator and friend. That is, I believe that God is personal and interacts with us.” [2002] • SIR WILLIAM H. BRAGG [1862-1942]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “Christ’s rule and example showed God as our Father and us as His children, a society in which love governs all. Then if we seek a rule of conduct we should think of what we should like children to be like and what we should wish them to do. We like them to be hardworking, eager, cheerful, sympathetic.” • GUGLIELMO MARCONI [1874-1937]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer [Creatore e Reggitore Eterno]; the more I feel that the so-called ‘science’ I am occupied with is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.” • ARTHUR COMPTON [1892-1962]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence. An orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - ‘In the beginning God.’ [Genesis 1, 1].” [1936] • ARNO PENZIAS [b.1933]: Nobel Laureate in Physics: “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”  • ALEXIS CARREL [1873-1944]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “We are loved by an immaterial and all-powerful Being. This Being is accessible to our prayers. We must love Him above all creatures. And we ourselves must also love one another.” • SIR JOHN ECCLES [1903-1997]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “We come to exist through a divine act. That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues. Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation. It is the religious view. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.” [1984] • JOSEPH MURRAY [1919-2012]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don’t see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I’ve never seen a conflict.” [1996] • SIR ERNST CHAIN [1906-1976]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “I would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation. …I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. God cannot be explained away by such naïve thoughts.” • GEORGE WALD [1906-1997]: Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology: “It has occurred to me lately - I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities - that both questions [consciousness and cosmology] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create.” [1984] • SIR DEREK BARTON [1918-1998]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: God is Truth. “There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists.” • CHRISTIAN ANFINSEN [1916-1995]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: “I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.” • WALTER KOHN [1923-2016]: Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: “I am very much of a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writings of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery.” [2001]

[judyfashion]

Summer Stock (1950) // Dir. Charles Walters

Cinematography: Robert H. Planck

[sesiondemadrugada]

Little Women (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949).

[reseau-actu]

Climatologue, ancien professeur au MIT, membre de l’Académie américaine des sciences, Richard Lindzen est l’un des meilleurs connaisseurs du réchauffement global. Il dénonce un formidable aveuglement collectif qui risque de coûter très cher à la science. Entretien.

Quels sont les points de science climatique qui font véritablement consensus ? 1. Il fait maintenant environ 1 °C de plus qu’à la fin du petit âge glaciaire. 2. Le CO2 est un gaz à effet de serre. 3. L’augmentation du CO2 devrait entraîner un certain réchauffement. 4. Le CO2 augmente. 5. Les activités humaines contribuent à l’augmentation du CO2. 6. Le climat a changé tout au long de l’histoire de la Terre.

Le point 5 est le seul qui fasse l’objet d’un certain désaccord. Eu égard à ces différents éléments, il n’y a aucune justification scientifique à l’alarmisme.

En particulier, pourquoi n’y a-t-il rien à craindre de l’affirmation : “La majeure partie du réchauffement des cinquante dernières années est due à l’homme” ? Cette affirmation n’est pas alarmante parce que, premièrement, il s’agit de petits changements. Un quart de degré Celsius représenterait environ 51 % du réchauffement récent. Compte tenu de l’incertitude dans les données et l’analyse qui en est faite, il s’agit d’un résultat que l’on peut à peine distinguer de zéro. Cette incertitude est attestée par les ajustements couramment appliqués au suivi des températures, qui sont d’un ordre de grandeur similaire. Deuxièmement, le réchauffement récent n’est pas du tout sans précédent ; la période de réchauffement presque identique entre 1919 et 1940 ne pourrait pas être attribuée à l’homme. Troisièmement, le réchauffement observé est tout à fait compatible avec une faible sensibilité du climat. L’alarmisme serait de mise pour, au minimum, une sensibilité élevée.

Pouvez-vous expliquer cette notion clé de “sensibilité du climat” ? Par sensibilité, nous entendons le réchauffement attendu pour chaque doublement des émissions de CO2. Une sensibilité élevée est généralement considérée comme 3 °C ou plus. On parle de sensibilité à l’équilibre, qui est le réchauffement atteint une fois que le système atteint l’équilibre. En considérant des intervalles de temps spécifiques, il faut utiliser des modèles temporels pour déterminer la sensibilité transitoire. Si nous devions supposer que “tous” les réchauffements des cinquante dernières années étaient dus à l’ajout de gaz à effet de serre, nous pourrions conclure que la sensibilité à l’équilibre serait d’environ 1 °C.

Peu de scientifiques adhèrent à l’idée que la planète est en danger alors que, parmi les catastrophistes, c’est la norme…

Comment les modèles avec une sensibilité plus élevée parviennent-ils à reproduire les cinquante dernières années ? Ils le font en soustrayant de l’effet de serre des aérosols essentiellement inconnus, qu’ils incluent ensuite comme étant dus aux émissions humaines. Cependant, dans un article récent du Max Planck Institut, Stevens constate que les aérosols sont limités et incapables de compenser les sensibilités plus élevées. Si l’homme ne représente que 51 % du réchauffement, alors un réchauffement même modeste devient peu plausible. Il convient de noter que le réchauffement d’environ 1 °C depuis le XIXe siècle s’est accompagné d’une amélioration de tous les indices du bien-être humain, y compris la qualité de l’environnement !

Est-il vrai que même les partisans du réchauffement climatique ne sont pas d’accord avec les affirmations extrêmes ? Les scientifiques qui conviennent qu’il faut se soucier du changement climatique reconnaissent que le catastrophisme est sans fondement. Mike Hulme, fondateur du Tyndall Centre de l’Université d’East Anglia (très en pointe sur le réchauffement climatique), a par exemple dit que « déclarer que le changement climatique sera catastrophique cache une cascade d’hypothèses à charge qui ne sont pas issues de la science empirique ou théorique ». Ou encore Gavin Schmidt, le successeur de Jim (James) Hansen à la tête du Goddard Institute of Space Studies de la NASA, dont le site Web (realclimate.org) est très partisan de la thèse du réchauffement climatique, qui a écrit que « les déclarations générales sur les extrêmes sont presque absentes de la littérature scientifique mais semblent abonder dans les principaux médias (…) . La perception populaire veut que le réchauffement climatique signifie que tous les extrêmes doivent augmenter sans cesse, alors que quelques secondes de réflexion suffisent pour réaliser que cela n’a aucun sens ».

Je rappelle que la théorie météorologique élémentaire nous dit que les événements extrêmes dépendent en grande partie de la différence de température entre les tropiques et les pôles — qui, dans un monde plus chaud, devrait diminuer ! Peu de scientifiques adhèrent à l’idée que la planète est en danger alors que, parmi les catastrophistes, c’est la norme…

Vous déplorez le manque de culture scientifique dans nos sociétés modernes ; est-ce si important ? Ce n’est pas seulement l’absence de culture scientifique qui pose un problème, c’est aussi l’absence de toute notion d’ordre de grandeur. Ainsi, beaucoup de gens s’inquiètent de savoir si la température augmente ou diminue, mais ils ne se soucient pas de savoir dans quelle mesure. Ils deviennent alors vulnérables à l’idée bizarre que tout réchauffement, aussi petit soitil, est un funeste présage. Ils ne comprennent pas non plus qu’en science, un événement n’a valeur de preuve que s’il a été prédit de façon univoque. Ils considèrent au contraire que tout événement constitue une preuve, même s’il n’a pas été prédit de façon univoque ou même si son contraire avait été prédit.

À partir de quand le discours sur le changement climatique est-il devenu si “dramatique”, et pourquoi ? Dans les années 1970, la communauté scientifique désignait régulièrement des périodes climatiques chaudes comme “optima climatiques”. Le fait que le CO2 était essentiel pour les plantes et constituait en réalité un engrais était aussi tout à fait compris. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que les premiers mouvements écologistes aient choisi de promouvoir la crainte d’un refroidissement climatique qui, comme on pouvait s’y attendre, était attribué aux émissions industrielles, en particulier les sulfates. Cependant, à la fin des années 1970, lorsqu’on s’est rendu compte que la désulfuration était possible, que le CO2 était le vrai produit irréductible des émissions industrielles, que ses émissions étaient susceptibles de contribuer au réchauffement plutôt qu’au refroidissement, et enfin qu’il existait un processus hypothétique par lequel ce réchauffement pouvait être amplifié (ce que l’on a fini par appeler la rétroaction de la vapeur d’eau), tout le récit s’est inversé. Le réchauffement jusqu’alors décrit comme optimal est devenu une conséquence à craindre. Ce n’est qu’à la suite de la décision de tirer la sonnette d’alarme sur le réchauffement climatique que l’effet de serre est devenu un élément central du discours sur le climat.

L’enjeu du changement climatique est extrême car un grand nombre d’intérêts particuliers ont de fortes motivations pour croire aux allégations catastrophistes, et ce malgré le manque de preuves.

Frank Press, le conseiller scientifique du président des États-Unis Jimmy Carter, a demandé au National Research Council d’enquêter sur la question, ce qui a mené au célèbre rapport Charney de 1979. Ce rapport résumait les conclusions des modèles climatiques primitifs de cette période et révélait que ces modèles présentaient une gamme de sensibilités du climat à la suite du doublement du CO2 dans l’atmosphère allant de 1,5 à 4,5 °C. Le rapport considérait de tels résultats comme possibles, mais accordait peu de crédibilité aux modèles, soulignant la nécessité de mieux comprendre pourquoi les modèles se comportaient comme ils le faisaient. Le rapport a néanmoins donné une certaine crédibilité à l’hypothèse du réchauffement climatique. Ensuite, il a fallu, pour convaincre, répéter et répéter encore. Il en allait de même pour l’affirmation, que l’on retrouvait déjà en 1988 dans Newsweek, que « tous les scientifiques étaient d’accord ». Le grand public n’avait donc aucune raison de creuser le travail scientifique pour se faire sa propre idée. On pourrait donc dire que le récit a été “dramatisé” dès que la question a été amenée dans le débat public. Voyez plutôt Sauver la planète Terre, l’écologie et l’esprit humain, d’Al Gore, et Dead Heat : the Race Against the Greenhouse Effect, de Michael Oppenheimer et Robert H. Boyle, tous deux publiés autour de 1990. La transformation du réchauffement climatique en catastrophisme climatique est si invraisemblable, pour ne pas dire complètement absurde, qu’on ne saurait guère par où commencer. Il est crucial de mettre l’accent sur le catastrophisme, car la situation est rendue encore plus incohérente par un amalgame volontaire entre des résultats élémentaires, qui sont largement acceptés mais qui n’ont aucune implication catastrophique, avec le catastrophisme lui-même.

Vous affirmez qu’il est dans l’intérêt de nombreux groupes de personnes de nous faire croire à la catastrophe. Pouvez-vous les citer ? L’enjeu du changement climatique est extrême car un grand nombre d’intérêts particuliers ont de fortes motivations pour croire aux allégations catastrophistes, et ce malgré le manque de preuves. On peut citer pêle-mêle : les économistes de gauche, pour qui le réchauffement climatique représente un exemple suprême de défaillance des marchés, ainsi qu’une merveilleuse occasion de proposer des mesures correctives ; les apparatchiks de l’Onu, pour qui le réchauffement climatique est la voie vers une gouvernance mondiale ; les dictateurs du tiers-monde, qui considèrent la culpabilité liée au réchauffement climatique comme un moyen pratique de réclamer des aides, c’est-à-dire d’opérer un transfert de richesses entre les pauvres des pays riches et les riches des pays pauvres ; les militants écologistes, pour qui tout enjeu de société est bon à prendre s’il peut effrayer les naïfs et les inciter à faire d’importantes contributions à leurs nombreuses ONG ; les ploutocrates, qui voient les énormes sommes d’argent mises à disposition pour l’énergie “durable” ; les organismes de régulation gouvernementaux, pour qui contrôler un produit naturel de la respiration est un rêve devenu réalité ; les milliardaires de la Tech qui trouvent que l’enjeu de “sauver la planète” est à la hauteur de l’idée qu’ils se font d’eux-mêmes ; enfin, les politiciens, qui profitent du réchauffement climatique pour agir en démagogues sans crainte d’être contredits par la réalité, ou de subir les plaintes des prétendus bénéficiaires de leurs actions… À tout cela s’ajoutent les militants, les experts, les conseillers, etc.

Vous faites référence à un “triangle de fer” ; que représente cette image pour vous ? C’est une image que j’utilise pour décrire le fonctionnent de la dynamique entre scientifiques, politiciens et médias… À un sommet du triangle se trouvent les scientifiques, qui affirment des choses nuancées ou ambiguës ; l’évaluation scientifique du groupe de travail numéro un du Giec en regorge. Au deuxième sommet se situent les promoteurs de la cause climatique et les médias qui “traduisent” ces affirmations en déclarations alarmistes ; ce groupe inclut également les groupes de travail numéros 2 et 3 du Giec, qui traitent des impacts et de la mitigation en adoptant les scénarios catastrophe du groupe de travail numéro 1 comme postulats de départ. Au troisième sommet, on trouve les politiciens, qui répondent aux thèses alarmistes en allouant plus d’argent aux scientifiques du premier sommet. Si un scientifique venait à se sentir coupable de participer à un tel système, deux facteurs irrésistibles auraient raison de ses états d’âme : ce sont les promoteurs de la cause climatique qui définissent les codes de la nouvelle vertu publique, et les administrateurs ou les directeurs de laboratoire, toujours ravis de recevoir les bourses et subventions qui y sont liées.

Qu’entendez-vous par l’expression “science à la demande” ? J’entends qu’il y a des scientifiques qui, lorsque les résultats ne satisfont pas les politiques alarmistes, sont prêts à “réanalyser” les données afin d’obtenir satisfaction. Ainsi, lorsque le Giec n’a pas réussi à établir la correspondance événements extrêmes-changement climatique, Benjamin Santer a inventé une procédure absurde qui présupposait que les modèles représentaient correctement la variabilité interne naturelle du climat (ce qui n’est évidemment pas le cas) afin de prétendre que la correspondance était établie. Lorsqu’il est devenu évident que le réchauffement observé depuis le petit âge glaciaire était faible et qu’un réchauffement comparable était associé à l’optimum climatique médiéval, Michael Mann a créé une analyse bizarre qui éliminait l’optimum climatique médiéval et (concluait) que le réchauffement actuel était « sans précédent ».

La science est en train de perdre sa raison d’être, âprement méritée, qui faisait d’elle l’outil humain le plus efficace pour l’évaluation objective .

En fait, sa méthode de remplacement était calibrée pour une période de trente ans de données instrumentales, ce qui a entraîné “l’élimination” de l’optimum climatique médiéval. Lorsque sa méthode a été testée sur la période subséquente de données instrumentales, elle a montré un refroidissement plutôt qu’un réchauffement ; Mann a simplement remplacé la deuxième série de données par les données observées, produisant ainsi le fameux graphique en “crosse de hockey”. Lorsque les données observées n’ont révélé aucun réchauffement statistiquement significatif après 1998, Tom Karl, du centre météorologique NOAA à Asheville, a “réanalysé” les données pour montrer que le réchauffement se poursuivait ; mais, malgré son ajustement, le réchauffement qu’il a constaté était encore bien inférieur aux prévisions des modèles. Or, il n’a pas mentionné ce fait. Des marégraphes soigneusement sélectionnés dans des endroits stables sur le plan tectonique ne montrent aucune accélération de l’élévation du niveau de la mer pendant au moins un siècle. Toutefois, plusieurs groupes soutiennent que l’élévation du niveau de la mer s’est accélérée. Pour soutenir cette thèse, ils ont pris des mesures inexactes du niveau de la mer à partir du satellite Topex qui montrent un taux environ deux fois supérieur à celui indiqué par les marégraphes ; ils ont ensuite supposé que les données issues des marégraphes étaient correctes, jusqu’à ce que les données satellites deviennent disponibles. Ils ont alors remplacé les données des marégraphes par les données satellites, et appelé la différence entre les deux « accélération ».

Quels sont les points les plus faibles du scénario de réchauffement climatique du Giec ? Toutes les affirmations qui concernent des possibilités alarmantes sont, au mieux, très faibles. Il serait futile d’en mettre certaines en exergue car cela suggérerait que les autres pourraient être valables.

Enfin, pourquoi considérez-vous que la science est davantage en danger que la planète ? La science est en train de perdre sa raison d’être, âprement méritée, qui faisait d’elle l’outil humain le plus efficace pour l’évaluation objective ; cela signifie perdre les fondements de la confiance et du soutien du public. Si nous ne faisons rien pour arrêter cette folie, la science sera, à juste titre, considérée comme une arnaque parmi d’autres.

[byneddiedingo]

Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell, Pamela Britton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, Henry O'Neill, Carlos Ramirez, Edgar Kennedy, Grady Sutton, Leon Ames, Sharon McManus. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart, Natalie Marcin. Cinematography: Charles P. Boyle, Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Randall Duell, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Adrienne Fazan. Music: George Stoll. Anchors Aweigh is not in the top tier of MGM musicals. It doesn't have the smooth integration of story with music found in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) or Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952). What it does have is Kelly in his breakthrough film, blazing with his uniquely muscular dancing style in some great set pieces, not only the famously beloved sequence in which he dances with Jerry the Mouse, but also in the charming "Mexican Hat Dance" with little Sharon McManus and the spectacular "La Cumparsita" that has him doing stunt leaps and swinging from a curtain to a balcony occupied by Kathryn Grayson. Kelly did the choreography for these numbers, and they depend heavily on long takes that show the dancing to best advantage. But the film also has Frank Sinatra, still in his skinny idol-of-the-bobby-soxers phase, which earned him top billing -- Grayson is billed second and Kelly third. He's in fine voice, and the phrasing that would make him one of the best singers who ever lived is already in evidence; he was also coached by Kelly into being a more-than-passable dancing partner. Unfortunately, the film also has Grayson, the least charming and talented of the run of Hollywood sopranos that began with Jeanette MacDonald and encompassed singers like Grace Moore, Lily Pons, and Deanna Durbin before fizzling out with Jane Powell. Plus there's José Iturbi, the pianist and conductor whose movie stardom remains a mystery (at least to me); he hashes up the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a number shot at the Hollywood Bowl where he's accompanied by a stage full of young pianists. The plot, such as it is, hangs on Kelly and Sinatra getting Grayson, with whom both have fallen in love, an audition with Iturbi at MGM and then figuring out which of them will get Grayson. The whole thing unaccountably earned an Oscar nomination for best picture, but it also landed Kelly his only nomination as best actor. It was also nominated for cinematography and for Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's song "I Fall in Love Too Easily," which Sinatra introduced, and it won for George Stoll's scoring.

[darkydrakens613]

GENI@S MATEMÁTICOS FÍSICOS Y QUÍMICOS MÁS DESTACAD@S DE LA HISTORIA

A

Abraham Ben Ezra

Ada Lovelace

Adam Smith

Al Batani

Al Juarismi

Alan Turing

Albert Einstein

Alessandro Volta

Alexander Borodin

Alfred Nobel

Amadeus Avogadro

André Marié Ampéré

Andrew Wiles

Andrews Millikan

Antonie Lavoisier

Apolonio Pérgamo

Aristóteles

Arquímedes Siracusa

Aryabhata

Arzaquel

B

Bernhard Riemann

Bertrand Russell

Bháskara

Bill Gates

Blase Pascal

Bonaventura Cavalieri

Brahmagupta

Brook Taylor

C

Christian Huygens

Christian Orsted

Claudio Ptolomeo

Colin Maclaurin

D

Daniel Bernoulli

David Anderson

David Hilbert

Dimitri Mendeleev

Diofanto Alejandría

E

Edwin Hubble

Emmy Noether

Enrico Fermi

Eratóstenes Cirene

Ernest Rutherford

Erwin Schrodinger

Euclides Alejandría

Eudoxo Cnido

Evangelista Torricelli

Evariste Galois

F

Francis Crick

François Viète

Franz Hess

Friedrich Wohler

G

Gabriel Cramer

Galileo Galilei

Geber Ibn Aphla

Georg Cantor

Georg Öhm

George Boole

Gilbert Lewis

Girolamo Cardano

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Guillaume L'Hôpital

Guillermo Marconi

H

Hiparco Nicea

Heinrich Hertz

Hendrik Lorentz

Henry Becquerel

Hermann von Helmholtz

Herón Alejandría

Hideki Yukawa

Humphry Davy

Hypatía Alejandría

I

Isaac Barrow

Isaac Newton

J

Jacob Bernoulli

James Joule

James Maxwell

James Watson

Jean Baptiste Fourier

Jean Le Rond D'Alembert

Johann Bernoulli

Johannes Kepler

John Dalton

John Forbes Nash

John Neper

Johnn von Neumann

Jons Berzelius

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Thomson

Jules Henry Poincaré

Julian Schwinger

K

Karl Friedrich Gauss

Karl Gustav Jacobi

Karl Wilhelm Weierstrass

Kurt Gödel

L

Leonard Euler

Leonardo Fibonacci

Linus Pauling

Louis Cauchy

Louis Lagrange

Louis Pasteur

Luca Pacioli

Luca Valerio

Ludwig Boltzmann

M

Marie Curie

Maurice Wilkins

Max Born

Max Planck

Michael Faraday

Murray Gell Mann

N

Niccolo Tartaglia

Nicola Tesla

Nicolás Copérnico

Nicolás Lobatchevski

Nicolás Oresme

Niels Böhr

Niels Henrik Abel

O

Omar Jayam

P

Paul Dirac

Peter Lejeune Dirichlet

Pierre Alphonse Laurent

Pierre Fermat

Pierre Laplace

Pitágoras Samos

Platón

R

Raymundo Lulio

René Descartes

Richard Feynman

Robert Boyle

Robert Oppenheimer

Rosalind Franklin

S

Shin'ichiro Tomonaga

Simon Stevin

Sócrates

Sophie Germain

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Stephen Hawkins

Steve Jobs

T

Thales Mileto

Thomas Edison

W

Werner Heisenberg

Z

Zenón Elea

[scienceblogtumbler]

Colliding Neutron Stars May Unlock Mysteries of Universe Expansion

The National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has proven itself instrumental in another major astronomical discovery.

An international team of scientists, led by the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, found an asymmetrical double neutron star system using the facility’s powerful radio telescope. This type of star system is believed to be a precursor to merging double neutron star systems like the one that the LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the United States)/Virgo discovered in 2017. The LIGO/Virgo observation was important, because it confirmed the gravitational waves associated with merging neutron stars.

The work published by this team today in the journal Nature, indicates these specific kinds of double neutron star systems may be the key to understanding dead star collisions and the expansion of the universe.

“Back in 2017, scientists at LIGO/Virgo first detected the merger of two neutron stars,” says physicist Robert Ferdman, who led the team. “The event caused gravitational-wave ripples through the fabric of space time, as predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago. It confirmed that the phenomenon of short gamma-ray bursts was due to the merger of two neutron stars.”

One of the unique aspects of the 2017 discovery and today’s is that the double neutron systems observed are composed of stars that have very different masses. Current theories about the 2017 discovery are based on the masses of stars being equal or very close in size.

“The double neutron star system we observed shows the most asymmetric masses amongst the known merging systems within the age of the universe,” says Benetge Perera, a UCF scientist at Arecibo who co-authored the paper. “Based on what we know from LIGO/Virgo and our study, understanding and characterizing of the asymmetric mass double neutron star population is vital to gravitational wave astronomy.”

Observatory Scientist Benetge Perera.

Perera, whose research is focused on pulsars and gravitational waves, joined the NSF-funded Arecibo Observatory in June 2019. The facility, which is managed by the University of Central Florida through a cooperative agreement with the NSF, offers scientists around the world a unique look into space because of its specialized instruments and its location near the equator.

The Discovery

The team discovered an unusual pulsar – one of deep space’s magnetized spinning neutron-star ‘lighthouses’ that emits highly focused radio waves from its magnetic poles.

The newly discovered pulsar (known as PSR J1913+1102) is part of a binary system – which means that it is locked in a fiercely tight orbit with another neutron star.

“The Arecibo Observatory has a long legacy of important pulsar discoveries,” says NSF Program Officer, Ashley Zauderer.  “This exciting result shows how incredibly relevant the facility’s unique sensitivity remains for scientific investigations in the new era of multi-messenger astrophysics.”

Neutron stars are the dead stellar remnants of a supernova explosion. They are made up of the densest matter known – packing hundreds of thousands of times the Earth’s mass into a sphere the size of a city like New York.

In about half a billion years the two neutron stars will collide, releasing astonishing amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves and light.

That collision is what the LIGO/Virgo team observed in 2017. The event was not surprising, but the enormous amount of matter ejected from the merger and its brightness was unexpected, Ferdman said.

“Most theories about this event assumed that neutron stars locked in binary systems are very similar in mass,” Ferdman says. “But this newly discovered binary is unusual because the masses of its two neutron stars are quite different – with one far larger than the other. Our discovery changes these assumptions.”

This asymmetric system gives scientists confidence that double neutron star mergers will provide vital clues about unsolved mysteries in astrophysics – including a more accurate determination of the expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant.

Other members on the discovery team are: P.C.C. Freire from the Max-Planck Institute f¨ur Radioastronomie in Germany, F. Camilo from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, J.M. Cordes from Cornell University, F. Crawrod from Franklin and Marshall College, J.W. T. Hessels from the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, V. M. Kaspi and E. Parent from McGill University, N. Pol from West Virginia University, I. H. Stairs from University of British Columbia. And J. van Leeuwen from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Perera has multiple degrees including a doctorate in physics from West Virginia University. He’s authored or co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and presented at conferences around the world. He previously taught at the University of Manchester and was a summer scholar at Purdue University.

source https://scienceblog.com/517262/colliding-neutron-stars-may-unlock-mysteries-of-universe-expansion/

[fibula-rasa]

The Bat Whispers (1930) 

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: Roland West

Cinematographers: Robert H. Planck, Ray June

Performers: S.E. Jennings, ???, Una Merkel