Posts Tagged ‘risk’
“Fortune sides with him who dares”*…
… or not:
Does hot weather actually make us hot-headed? Does a warming planet induce us to take more risks? According to new research, there is indeed a correlation: When it comes to rational decision-making, changes in climate shape how individuals think about loss and risk—even if it takes centuries for that evolution to occur…
New research finds that people living in climatically turbulent regions tend to make riskier decisions than those in relatively more stable environments. The full story at “How volatile climate shapes the way people think.”
* Virgil
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As we feel the heat, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Volume 1, Number 1 of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was published. Concerned with scientific and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that might have negative consequences for humanity, the group created “The Doomsday Clock” which has featured on its cover since its introduction in 1947, reflecting “basic changes in the level of continuous danger in which mankind lives in the nuclear age.”
The current “setting” is 2 minutes to midnight, reflecting the failure of world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change. This is the clock’s closest approach to midnight, matching that of 1953,
The cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has featured the famous Doomsday Clock since it debuted in 1947, when it was set at seven minutes to midnight.
“The blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone”*…
The odds of being hit by a meteorite are extremely low. You’re far more likely to die in a car crash or a fire than you are to die from a meteorite strike. It’s also more likely that you’ll be killed by lightning or a tornado – both of which are extremely rare. However, there’s bad news too – you have a higher chance of being hit by a meteorite than you do of winning the lottery…
Oh, and avoid the United States (and India)! See why at: “What Are Your Chances of Being Hit by a Meteorite?”
* Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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As we duck and cover, we might recall that it was on this date in 1969 that a large meteorite fell near Murchison in Victoria, Australia. Both because it was an observed fall (its bright fireball was seen by many) and because it proved to be rich in organic compounds (an abundance of amino acids), it has been one of the most-studied meteorites.
Odds are…
On the heels of the cosmic coincidence of a flaming fireball over Russia and a close approach by a larger asteroid, The Economist offers a comparative chart sketching the mortal risks one faces this year…
Of course, as astronaut Rusty Schweickart reminds us, the odds of an asteroid strike over a materially-longer period are much higher; over the next 100,000 years…
– There’s a 10% chance of an asteroid causing planet-scale damage with 100,000 megatons of energy released.
– There’s a 50-50 chance of a 500-meter asteroid that could destroy an area the size of Texas with a 6,000 megaton explosion—100 times the USSR’s biggest bomb.
– There will be about TEN 200-meter asteroid impacts, good for 400 megatons.
– There will be about A HUNDRED 70-meter-diameter asteroids, each causing 15 megatons of damage (i.e. worse than the Tunguska explosion, which would have wiped out all of London if it had hit there instead of the remote wilderness).
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As we struggle to keep this all in perspective, we might send grateful birthday greetings to the man who wrote the book on perspective, Leon Battista Alberti; he was born on this date in 1404. The archetypical Renaissance humanist polymath, Alberti was an author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cartographer, and cryptographer. He collaborated with Toscanelli on the maps used by Columbus on his first voyage, and he published the the first book on cryptography that contained a frequency table.
But he is surely best remembered as the author of the first general treatise– Della Pictura (1434)– on the the laws of perspective, which built on and extended Brunelleschi’s work to describe the approach and technique that established the science of projective geometry… and fueled the progress of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Greek- and Arabic-influenced formalism of the High Middle Ages to the more naturalistic (and Latinate) styles of Renaissance.
from Leon Battista Alberti, Della Pictura
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