Science Wins Again

Now and then someone will question the science of Evolution, which is widely acknowledged. If you claim that it doesn't exist, then the burden of proof is on you, right? So how can you PROVE that there is no such thing as evolution? Finally a school in Westlake, Louisiana points out the obvious.

"Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

See? SEE? The very existence of the Loch Ness monster proves there's no such thing as evolution!   Case closed!

Quote Of The Day: The Scientific Method Edition

“We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”


- Florida Representative Daniel Webster, who does not like the American Community Survey. He can't stand having information about his constituents when making laws. Remember, random surveys are the least scientific of all!

Treaties! Hunh! What Are They Good For? Absolutely Nothin'!

Fiscal conservative hero Newt Gingrich's plan to build an All-American Colony on the moon.



There are a few problems with this plan. Among them - it will be awfully hard to pay for this moonbase without raising taxes. Putting money into researching new ideas (instead of "technologies that are 50 years old") well, that's what got Obama in trouble with this Solyndra thing. And if we turn most of the development over to private enterprise, the moonbase won't be American - it'll belong to Richard Branson.

But maybe the most interesting flaw in Gingrich's extremely well-though-out plan is this - we have a treaty with the Soviets and the British forbidding the claiming of space for national interests. We can build there, but we can't declare it a state.

Global Warming Deniers -- Problem Solved!

Good news - if someone says global warming isn't a man-made problem, you can ignore them. Because THEY DON'T EXIST.

Let's take James Inhofe (said to be a Republican Senator from Oklahoma) as an example. Inhofe gets a lot of press for being a "global warming skeptic". But let's face it, have you ever seen him? Most people haven't. There simply isn't enough evidence to conclude there is such a person as James Inhofe. Plus that name is pretty unlikely.

Now say you're at a party and a guy you DO know makes the same claims. It's true that most of the people in the room will vouch for the guy's existence, including you. However, there are philosphers who insist that you can't prove that anything exists outside of your own head. The rest of the world, to them, could just be an elaborate construct of their own imagination. So while this guy has 99% of the room vouching for him (let's say someone at the party is passed out and isn't voting), that's hardly a concensus. And as any global warming denier will tell you, if there isn't a concensus then you should simply ignore it and walk away.

The great thing about this construct is that the only people who would buy it is the global warming skeptics. That is, if there were any.

The Amazing Colossal Blogger

See that? According to the New York Times, that's the plume of radioactive steam that will be over my head tomorrow just after midnight. After that according to my favorite movies I'll either grow to over 50 feet tall or, if it's a radioactive mist I could shrink to the size of atoms. If I'm not personally affected I could still have to contend with assorted giant insects.

Actually even the Times points out that "Health and nuclear experts emphasize that any plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States." Unless they're lying to forstall panic. Which they always do. The thing that worries me is that radiation is linked to cancer, which won't show up for maybe 30 years. On the other hand, in 30 years maybe they'll cure cancer. I hope so because there will be virtually no way to prove that MY cancer is the result of this radiation, therefore I would have to pay for it myself.

Anyway, worrying won't stop the cloud. The usefulness of worrying is that it makes you wonder just how cheap Nuclear power REALLY is.  It doesn't even burn clean, when you consider how long you have to hold on to the waste. If anything, coal is CLEANER than nukes. And it's not that much more plentiful than fossil fuels; so why the headlong drive for more plants? Enough! Put the solar panels back up on the White House willya?

The Dr. Dolittle School Of Geology

Here's how I think it works - anybody can get elected to Congress. However, if you display a certain IQ level you are given the go-ahead to run for the Senate. Rep Hank Johnson (D, GA) can look forward to a long career in Congress.

As an Wonkette commenter pointed out, this guy replaced Cynthia McKinney so it's still a step up!

When There Are No More Stats In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

Ever wonder why zombies want to eat brains? So they can prevent strategizing like this.

Working with a professor and two other graduate students, Munz built a mathematical model of a city of one million residents, in which an outbreak occurs when a single zombie arrives in town. He based the speed of zombie infection on the general rules you see in George Romero movies: after getting bitten, people turn into zombies in 24 hours and sometimes don't realize what's happening to them until they change.

When he ran the model on a computer, the results were bleak. "After 7 to 10 days, everyone was dead or undead," he says. He tried several counterattacks. Quarantining the zombies didn't work; it only bought a few extra days of survival for humanity. Even creating a "cure" for zombification led to a grim result. It was possible to save 10 to 15 percent of the population, but everyone else was a zombie. (The cure in his model wasn't permanent; the cured could be rebitten and rezombified.)

Turns out the only thing that worked was smacking the zombies down quickly and early. Word to the wise, people!

(h/t Boing Boing)

First Things First

The Senate is rapidly approaching its summer recess, and there is so much legislation to complete before then! Pressing issues that affect us all include our economy, health care reform, even environmental issues. Still, wise lawmakers prioritize:

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to ban the creation of human-animal hybrids.

Led by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), 19 Republicans and 1 Democrat introduced a bill yesterday that would prevent U.S. researchers from developing embryos that use both human and animal material, a controversial practice underway in the UK.

Brownback has long been an opponent of stem cell research and human cloning, yet the idea of human-animal hybrids has gotten little media attention.

"What was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality, and we need to ensure that experimentation and subsequent ramifications do not outpace ethical discussion and societal decisions," Brownback said last year when he introduced similar legislation. "History does not look kindly on those who violate the dignity of the human person."

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the only Democratic co-sponsor, has taken a similarly hardline stance against what she called "blending" of species.

"Here in the United States, we simply cannot open the door to the unethical blending of humans and animals, which the British government seems intent on doing," Landrieu said the last time she introduced similar legislation. "It creates an unnatural species and is a clear line we cannot cross."

The legislation, S. 1435, has garnered 20 co-sponsors so far, including John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

I never got that upset at Bush's stem-cell research funding ban, because it didn't ban the research itself. It just left it up to free enterprise to fund it. This, on the other hand...

A. What the hell kind of code is Human Animal Hybrid for? What are they trying to say to the base that I don't understand? Because I don't see an army of centaurs being an especially pressing problem, even among the normal talking points. It doesn't, for example, advance the rising tide of SOCIALISM if some of the socialists are horse-people.

B. Why NOT human/animal hybrids? If there is a commercial demand for GMO crops, let's sell 'em. If people decide they want dogs with hands, let's get 'em out in time for Christmas.

Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla!

Ah Tesla, the Orson Welles of electricity: great reputation despite the fact that most of his efforts were failures. I bet no one ever casts Davie Bowie as Edison!

One Less Thing To Worry About

According to Damn Interesting, a human being exposed to the vaccum of space without protection will not instantly swell up and explode. I know, you saw OUTLANDER and TOTAL RECALL and that's always the way it goes down, but in fact, it'd be more like this:

For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of "useful consciousness" would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim's mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.

So you gotta admit, that's good news. Kubrick got it right again. The article goes on to point out that after you lose conciousness and turn blue, you'd still be good for about a minute and a half before they had to get you into the airlock and administer oxygen, and then you'd probably suffer no permanent damage. Of course, past that your blood would boil and that's a hard condition to treat. But hell, you at least have time to wave frantically to the folks inside, maybe tap your keys on the window and mouth the words "let me back in" which is more than we've been told to expect. Small favors!

(hat tip to Mental Floss)

The Future Is Now

The good people at BoingBoing pointed me in the direction of a series of predictions that were made by the Ladies Home Journal in 1900. What wonders are we supposed to be experiencing today?

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Prediction #12: Peas as Large as Beets. Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does. Cane will once more be the chief source of our sugar supply. The milkweed will have been developed into a rubber plant. Cheap native rubber will be harvested by machinery all over this country. Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #21: Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

So, basically they were dead-on. Which reminds me, I have to telegraph a picture to my cold-air plant, because I found a house-fly in the spigot. After that, a visit to the public gymnasium, then a delicious bone-less steak! Ah, these are the good times.

Cum On, Feel The Noize

The best bad idea ever.

Wired magazine reports on a strange subculture of the already strange bod-mod community. For a nominal fee, people will insert a tiny rare-earth magnet into one of your fingertips. They're not doctors so they can't use anesthetic; you finger is iced for as long as you can stand it then they cut you open, pop the magnet in and sew you up. Once the throbbing goes down, you find you can sense electrical and magnetic fields in that finger.

For example, the writer working on his laptop noticed he was aware when the hard drive was spinning up. He also sensed active power lines and stereo speakers. The feeling was akin to a buzz or oscillation.

It's not totally cool. Aside from the risk of infection and the disqualification from MRI use, the magnets have not always held together. Though they're encased in bio-neutral plastic they can still break open, at which point the magnet breaks apart into tiny pieces. And here it gets weird. You can hire a real doctor to go after them, but there are too many pieces and they are too tiny remove them all. So you lose the ability to sense fields AND you have an ugly black spot on your finger.

And weirdly, after a while, the pieces attract each other and eventually settle in and align, though the resulting magnet isn't nearly as powerful. And you're still stuck with it.

Even the guy who wrote the piece doesn't recommend the procedure, and admits it's of limited usefulness. Still as bod-mods go, it's gotta be more practical than having cat whiskers screwed into your face.