Before I read the text, my first thought was "Darn, I missed the Wisconsin state fair and should have looked up the dates sooner." But I can be relieved to know I'll still get my yearly fried-food-on-a-stick quota in about a month.
The Banach–Tarski paradox was a proof that you can break a sphere into a finite number of parts (as few as 5 parts), rearrange the pieces by only moving them around (not changing their size at all), and getting two whole spheres out of the process. It doesn't apply in the real world because it would require infinitely small and many cuts to make the parts, and the parts have a property called "nonmeasurable" meaning they can't have a defined value for their volume. Measure theory alone can give headaches to math undergrads, which applies to things that are measurable, so the math behind the paradox can be quite esoteric. But part of the point was to demonstrate that geometric intuition doesn't apply if you can make infinitely complicated cuts and divisions to things.
I spent more time getting the link to work on my browser than actually watching it because sound wasn't working and they didn't have a closed captioning option...
I'm not sure if it is quite an attention span issue, but I have a lot of issue with videos that are used to convey information that could easily be done much better in still images and/or text. Too often I've had friends try to insist that I comment on something (political or often pseudo-science...) that is only in video format, and is either just a talking head for an hour that could have been edited down, or something that alternates between talking and fuzzy images that would be a lot more useful if I could see at higher resolution and take the time to understand. It doesn't help I don't have the greatest hearing, and takes me a lot more effort to understand what some people say versus reading something. I'm still interested in video format when it actually conveys motion, or at least a speaker with some dynamics.
Once upon a time, the pop versus soda site had an option for you to enter an "other" name for a carbonated drink, and if you clicked through a few pages you can find the list of all other entries. Years ago I glanced at it to see what other things might come up, and saw whole political arguments breaking out, because there was a very long space limit on how much you could put in that other input box. The site and even other page is still there, but it looks like some of the older junk may have been cleared out. Still, that amounts to arguing on a webpage where comments weren't even easily visible and several pages away from the front page or where you even enter the comment.
I've seen these for a couple years at least in other communities (old enough in some cases to have really faded flags). It is useful for kids that might be on the short side for good visibility. I've also found it handy when driving through areas where it is hard to tell if someone is waiting to cross the main street, or a side street, or waiting for the bus, instead of having everyone slow down and find the person not crossing.
While the chances of getting two of the same birthdays in a group of 23 is about 50.7%, the chances of getting exactly 16 of 32 groups to have such a pair is only about 14%. It is about like asking how often would you get exactly 16 heads our of 32 flips, there will be quite a few times with 15 or 17 (26 % of the time), 14 or 18 (22% of the time), 13 or 19 (16% of the time), 12 or 20 (11% of the time), etc. It seems odd, at the least, to use examples of statistics where the result is exactly the average, or examples of probability where the result is exactly the expected value, as it might convey the wrong thing about how such math works.
It would also help if they don't call it a math axiom in bold right at the start, as it most certainly is not an axiom, which in math (and a few other fields) is quite specifically something unprovable but assumed.
Depends a lot on the monitor and fluorescent light bulb. Older fluorescent light bulbs with a magnetic ballast will flicker at 120 Hz, while ones with an electronic ballast will be at 10+ kHz. LCD monitors use pulse width modulation to dim the backlight, and this can be kind of crappily done in some cheap models, and is more noticeable to even humans if it has an LED backlight.
I can't imagine the trouble that someone researching animal senses can get into with so much stuff, audio and visual, designed around human limits. Even with stuff made to work for timing and parts of the spectrum relevant to the animal, without careful checking it could be hard to miss if something breaks or goes wrong, or there is a chance the original measurements on their sensory range missed something.
Young kids quite quickly pick up some of the basic aspects of things like graph theory, set theory, and even abstract algebra in the right contexts. I've seen multiple mathematicians speculate that teaching such topics more and at much younger ages could raise both kids interests in math and their long term prospects in pure math. The issue is that for 99% of people these math subjects have no direct practical use (still great mental exercises in multiple ways though), and some efforts to teach such subjects in the past did so at the expense of more practical arithmetic and applied math that people need in today's world. While I'm all for kids exploring topics for sake of interests or to help improve abstract thinking, the basics still need to be covered.
But with the way math is taught in most schools now, the closest most get to pure math is a proof-centric geometry course (which some like much more than a cookbook algebra course), and those that trying to go more heavily into math in university hit a wall with an abstract algebra course that weeds out a large number of people from math programs.
The type of experiment you've proposed has already been done and is on going with more typical model organisms like the fruit fly and E. coli. I'm not a biologist though, and can't quickly recall a variety of such work off the top of my head, and have unfortunately forgotten a lot of detail from conversations from a friend who actually did genetics research on D. melanogaster. But the gist of the conversations was that there are experiments now on the grad student level that show drastic changes in gradually changed environments, to the point the population at the end would quickly die off if put back into the original environment. These included experiments that would create two separate populations, develop tolerance to some different environmental difficulties, then recombine to find that the populations had a preference for mating withing their own populations and not cross-breeding.
A particularly famous experiment that had been in the news a couple years ago was Lenski's long term E. coli experiment, that has breed 50k+ generations of E. coli. A couple years ago. A couple years ago, some of the E. coli in the experiment appeared to suddenly evolved the ability to aerobically metabolize citrate. This was a big deal, as that ability is not present in E. coli and is used as a test to separate Escherichia from Salmonella. The experiment preserved batches every so many generations, so they can go back and do genetic analysis and rerun some generations. The cumulative change allowing it to live off of citrate in an aerobic environment involved several genetic changes, such that if you go far enough back, it doesn't evolve in a new batch, but at an intermediately point in the history it redevelops because the a particularly difficult change was already made.
As far as grant wordings, I don't think I've ever seen a public grant word such that payment came after results for that particular experiment... however if your experiments end up as a dead end (good or bad) you will need to find something new and interesting for your next grant.
The wording is vague about whether there were silent ones before the big change, and I couldn't tell if that was because a few examples had been seen before, or that they had not observed any before ~2003 and acknowledging that limited observations may have just missed it previously. Although the species was studied going back into the 90s, because before the appearance of the silent type, a bunch of changes in the songs were observed and being studied as a response to the parasite. There is plenty more information in the papers (which seem to be all open-access of the ones I looked at). I only looked through a couple and probably missed a lot.
Some of the linked updates and papers from the link in the quote suggest that is a change to a single gene in a sex chromosome. I didn't see anything saying exactly when they think it first showed up other than an estimate of the late 90s, but populations from other nearby islands and crickets collected before 2003 then bred in a lab do not show the mutation at all.
I think that is the opposite Janson was suggesting. If you using ping pong balls or something else that is a consistent bright white, and have them bulge inward, then you don't need any moving parts or electronics. It is an optical illusion and our minds are used to seeing the eyes as being ball shaped, not dimple shaped, and will see the dot as moving when really you are just obscuring some of the white on one side or the other depending on your angle.
A neutron bomb is basically a low yield nuclear bomb, plus or minus a little bit if it was specially designed to enhance the neutrons released by a fusion reaction. Neutrons can only go so far in air before even the air stops them, so most nuclear weapons over a few tens of kilotons have a blast radius larger than the distance the neutrons stop and you would never notice direct effects of the neutrons. But even the smaller bombs would still do extensive damage to unreinforced buildings up to a kilometer away, while maybe allowing lethal radiation out to about 2 km.
I can't comment on the tree biology, but one potential problem with trees is that light elements, especially hydrogen, are really effective at slowing down neutrons. So things like water and organic compounds, meaning thicker trees or stuff in the soil might not get much neutron radiation (still plenty of gamma around) depending on its distance from the bomb. On the other end you'll get neutron activation of elements in the area, leading to weeks or longer of radioactivity in the area depending on what is around and what type of bomb was used. Insects also tend to handle 10 times or more as much radiation as vertebrates, and might survive up until close enough to be killed by the blast or fire.
In other words, it is one of those things that probably needs a lot of simple but monotonous calculations and a good materials reference book... and could go either way. Or digging through badly scanned reports from the Cold War when way too many calculations on radiation damage was done, probably including effects on trees and insects.
I'm not sure if it is quite an attention span issue, but I have a lot of issue with videos that are used to convey information that could easily be done much better in still images and/or text. Too often I've had friends try to insist that I comment on something (political or often pseudo-science...) that is only in video format, and is either just a talking head for an hour that could have been edited down, or something that alternates between talking and fuzzy images that would be a lot more useful if I could see at higher resolution and take the time to understand. It doesn't help I don't have the greatest hearing, and takes me a lot more effort to understand what some people say versus reading something. I'm still interested in video format when it actually conveys motion, or at least a speaker with some dynamics.
It would also help if they don't call it a math axiom in bold right at the start, as it most certainly is not an axiom, which in math (and a few other fields) is quite specifically something unprovable but assumed.
I can't imagine the trouble that someone researching animal senses can get into with so much stuff, audio and visual, designed around human limits. Even with stuff made to work for timing and parts of the spectrum relevant to the animal, without careful checking it could be hard to miss if something breaks or goes wrong, or there is a chance the original measurements on their sensory range missed something.
But with the way math is taught in most schools now, the closest most get to pure math is a proof-centric geometry course (which some like much more than a cookbook algebra course), and those that trying to go more heavily into math in university hit a wall with an abstract algebra course that weeds out a large number of people from math programs.
A particularly famous experiment that had been in the news a couple years ago was Lenski's long term E. coli experiment, that has breed 50k+ generations of E. coli. A couple years ago. A couple years ago, some of the E. coli in the experiment appeared to suddenly evolved the ability to aerobically metabolize citrate. This was a big deal, as that ability is not present in E. coli and is used as a test to separate Escherichia from Salmonella. The experiment preserved batches every so many generations, so they can go back and do genetic analysis and rerun some generations. The cumulative change allowing it to live off of citrate in an aerobic environment involved several genetic changes, such that if you go far enough back, it doesn't evolve in a new batch, but at an intermediately point in the history it redevelops because the a particularly difficult change was already made.
As far as grant wordings, I don't think I've ever seen a public grant word such that payment came after results for that particular experiment... however if your experiments end up as a dead end (good or bad) you will need to find something new and interesting for your next grant.
I can't comment on the tree biology, but one potential problem with trees is that light elements, especially hydrogen, are really effective at slowing down neutrons. So things like water and organic compounds, meaning thicker trees or stuff in the soil might not get much neutron radiation (still plenty of gamma around) depending on its distance from the bomb. On the other end you'll get neutron activation of elements in the area, leading to weeks or longer of radioactivity in the area depending on what is around and what type of bomb was used. Insects also tend to handle 10 times or more as much radiation as vertebrates, and might survive up until close enough to be killed by the blast or fire.
In other words, it is one of those things that probably needs a lot of simple but monotonous calculations and a good materials reference book... and could go either way. Or digging through badly scanned reports from the Cold War when way too many calculations on radiation damage was done, probably including effects on trees and insects.