This move seems rather boneheaded. We are finally about to get an administration that will recognize science again, and CNN decides it’s no longer important. I wonder what they will replace it with? With no Miles, who will cover the shuttle launches and hurricanes!? Rick Sanchez only has so many hats to blow off his head!
I’m not sure if I liked this article because it contans an interesting description of a debate going on within the world of Cosmology, or because it contained the phrase, “the gnarliest knob of all”.
BTW, I’m not sure what any of this has to do with cutting hair
Fossil hunters in China have discovered what may be one of the weirdest prehistoric species ever seen — a four-winged dinosaur that apparently glided from tree to tree.
[snip]
It’s a phenomenal find,” Chiappe said. “We don’t have anything that resembles this in the whole dinosaur and bird spectrum.”
Fossils are cool.
It is morning. You are driving around town and it begins to rain. It’s neither a torrential downpour nor a drizzle, but a steady shower that requires the use of windshield wipers. What do you do?
a) Turn on the intermittent wipers and keep adjusting the delay as necessary. Refuse to turn wipers on at normal speed unless absolutely necessary.
b) Decide not to mess around. Go right for normal speed wipage.
c) Really decide not to mess around. Go for the super-speed wipe setting. Also you tap on your brakes every five seconds to avoid fishtailing.
d) Turn wipers off and gaze wistfully at the pretty raindrop faeries that skitter down your windshield.
e) Stop car, get out, fall to your knees, and beseech the heavens to cease their weeping.
f) Pull over, get out, and go into full Gene Kelly mode
g) Blame Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Precipitation.
h) Blame Bush for relaxing clean air standards and allowing polluters to seed the clouds with their vile toxic spew.
Continue Reading “get donkey! asks, “What wipe-type are you?””
This was one of the scariest things I’ve read today:
The man chosen to head the Bush administration’s wildfire prevention program doubts the existence of ecosystems and says it would not be a crisis if the nation’s threatened and endangered species became extinct.
…
In “The Illusion of Ecosystem Management,” published in 1999 by the Political Economy Research Center, which says it applies market principles to environmental problems, Fitzsimmons says ecosystems exist only in the human imagination and cannot be delineated. Federal policies, therefore, should not be used to try to manage or restore them, he wrote.
In another paper, entitled “Ecological Confusion among the Clergy,” Fitzsimmons criticizes religious leaders who encourage their parishioners to worship God by protecting the environment. He singled out Catholic bishops who issued their own paper in 1997 in support of protecting and restoring the Columbia River watershed. The paper was published in 2000 by the Center for Economic Personalism, which advocates limited government and promotes religion and “economic liberty.”
“By urging the public to make changes in their lives to accommodate nonexistent ecosystem needs, one wonders if the bishops are beginning inadvertently to make an idol out of their own creation, what they call the Columbia Basin ecosystem,” he writes.
He added that the biodiversity crisis religious leaders often point to is not a crisis at all. There are between 250,000 and 750,000 species in the United States and 1,201 are on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered and threatened list.
“If each of these species were to become extinct tomorrow, our total biological endowment would decline by less than 1 percent, which would be a disconcerting loss but would not constitute a crisis,” Fitzsimmons writes. “Conversely, at least 4,500 non-indigenous species have established free-living populations in the United States over the past few hundred years, so that on balance, this part of the world has seen an increase in biological diversity.”
Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Western Fire Ecology Center, said many of those non-indigenous species — like cheatgrass — are taking over native landscapes with devastating results. Cheatgrass is highly flammable, has little nutritional value for livestock and chokes out native plants.
“Making the argument that non-native species are increasing the biological diversity is pure bunk.”
Okay. It’s one thing to appoint somebody to a post like this that is pro-logging or pro-corporate. That wouldn’t be too surprising. After all, the writing is on the wall that this administration worships war and the corporation above all else. I disagree with that stance, but they are the administration, so they will obviously make appointments that fit their agenda. If these are Fitzsimmons’ actual views on basic ecological principles, however, this guy is a freaking whacko.
The concept of ecosystems is not some new environmentalist thing. It has been around since at least the early twentieth century (Arthur Tansky coined it in 1935) as an actual term, but the idea is even older (ecology became an actual discipline of biology around 1866). I just do not understand how someone could just declare that this stuff does not exist. Unbelievable.
(via marc)
This is just weird. Interesting, but weird…
People can identify the odor of close family members, but they don’t like it, according a researcher who suggests that this helps to prevent incest.
A team led by Tiffany Czilli at Detroit’s Wayne State University carried out an unusual experiment involving 25 families that had at least two children between six and 15, New Scientist reports.
The volunteers slept in the same T-shirt for three consecutive nights so that it was impregnated with their individual smell signature, and they washed using only scent-free soap.
They were then asked to sniff two T-shirts, one worn by a family member and one worn by an outsider.
Both mothers and fathers were able to detect T-shirts that had been worn by their preadolescent offspring, although they could not distinguish between their children.
All the children recognized their father’s smell, but only breast-fed sons and older children, aged nine to 15, recognized their mother’s smell.
Asked which smells they liked, the volunteers said they far preferred the smells of outsiders to those of their own family. Mothers, in particular, said they disliked their children’s smells, while children had “a strong aversion” to dad’s scent.
link sent in my general direction by cybertoad
This just in from a crack team of crack british scientists (possibly on crack):
Scientists say alcohol makes others better-looking
I’m not sure about this one. I tried to test it last night. I went out to a bar with a bottle of alcohol and a bag of cotton balls. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t rub the ugly off anyone.
Link courtesy of Marc
In this article, book hawking pshychologist Albert Harrison talks of galactic federations and happy democratic aliens. This is just too much fun:
If psychologist Albert Harrison is correct, ETs might feel very much at home with the notion of going to the ballot box. Or at least they would be familiar with the process of having input into the control of their lives, even if it doesn’t take the form of presidential elections. According to Harrison, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, if we detect a signal from advanced extraterrestrials, there’s a good chance that the basic principles of democracy play a role in their society.
“When we intercept a transmission from an ancient society,” Harrison argues, “that society is likely to have achieved its great age not through an autocratic, belligerent government, but through a democratic government whose emphasis on bargaining, negotiation, and peaceful solutions to internal problems are brought to bear in dealing with other democracies.” In Harrison’s view it’s possible that “democracy involves a set of functional principles that will work for other intelligent species in other places and at other times.”
…
Autocratic governments on Earth face an uphill battle, Harrison says, and the same challenges may limit the life expectancies of fascist regimes around distant stars. For example, autocracies tend to ignore the desires of their citizens. The resulting disconnect between leader and followers can become increasingly extreme, resulting in discontent of the masses. By contrast, democratic processes incorporate input from a wide range of individuals, yielding a more responsive and thus stable form of government. Harrison suggests that this lesson would not be lost on extraterrestrials. “The greater the number of democracies in a galaxy,” he says, “the greater the zone of galactic peace.”
Furthermore, he argues that if a federation of extraterrestrial civilizations exists, as some astronomers have suggested, its policy toward newly emerging civilizations such as ours might be guided by the values of democracy. “Members of the ‘Galactic Club,’” says Harrison, “should do everything they can to promote the evolution of stable democracies, because, by so doing, they increase their zone of peace.”
…
However slight the chance, what if extraterrestrials really are as malevolent as Hollywood often portrays them? Would we be opening ourselves up to interstellar war if we respond to a signal? In all likelihood, Harrison says, “Our response to their signal will not be a beacon encouraging them to exterminate us.” Hostility at interstellar distances, he maintains, is hard to imagine: “The immense distances that separate stars and galaxies make hostile action unlikely. Immense distance also interferes with the trade of material goods and services, but it leaves open the possibility of trading information.”
How can this guy talk about this stuff with a straight face and get paid for it? I mean, on some level it is interesting to think about this kind of thing, but this guy talks like he is stating fact. It seems both presumptuous and like a bit of “rah-rah for western democracy” propaganda to me. How could anyone seriously claim to know the political culture of a society that evolved under totally alien environmental pressures? For all we know the entire universe could be full pinko-commie liberal space bastards, big mean bugs, or damn dirty apes.
Marc (whose blog is back after what, if email traffic is an indicator, seemed to be a hella bad work week) sent me this article about the intelligence of dogs and their ability to count. This is pretty cool news, but something I always suspected. As the owner of two pups, I have seen, Buddy, the more dominant one, get extremely frustrated (to the tune of whining and jumping on the cat) if he notices Bailey gets more treats than he does.
[WARNING: Dog stories to follow]
Because I am easily amused, I have done my own “scientific” work on this counting front with popcorn. It is a common game in the get donkey! household to hold competitions over how many consecutive kernels of popcorn each dog can catch. As one dog is getting his “turn”, I have noticed that the other guy watches intently. So say Bailey hits six in a row and then drops one. It then becomes Buddy’s turn. Now Buddy is a little spastic at times, so he only catches 4. However, he doesn’t cede his turn to Bailey. Rather he will push Bailey (who outweighs him by some 40 pounds) aside and demand his other two pieces. Smart dog.
Both dogs are also quite intuitive (and manipulative). As most pup parents do, we often resort to spelling special words (e.g., “T-R-E-A-T” and “W-A-L-K”) that, if uttered aloud, will result in 150-pounds of canine tornado whirling about the house in excitement. At least we used to. I think Buddy has figured out how to spell “treat”. Now we have to spell “B-I-S-C-U-I-T” which he has not figured out… yet.
They also quickly catch onto certain nonverbal cues. For instance, if my wife walks into the family room wearing a ball cap (which is something she rarely does), they both figure out that it’s walk time. Furthermore if I come into the family room and put on my “work shoes” Buddy goes and stands by his crate and Bailey stands by the pantry both awaiting their farewell biscuit. If I come into the room and put on my running shoes, look out! It’s walk time!
Okay, I’ll knock it off with the dog stories now.
James Gordon envisions a line of wind towers off the southern coast of Cape Cod, like a stand of Norway pines in the middle of the sea, quietly producing clean, renewable electricity.
I don’t know, this plan sounds good to me. There are others that disagree. It also sounds like those in disagreement are using alarmist tactics to voice their opposition.
A giant squid that washed up on an Australian beach could be a previously unknown species, scientists said Monday.
THE 550-POUND (250-kilogram) creature was found dead Saturday on a beach in Hobart in Tasmania state and was transported Monday to the Tasmanian Museum. Experts were studying its unusual characteristics, which include long, thin flaps of muscle attached to each of its eight arms.
Now that’s a lotta Calamari!
In his new book, A New Kind of Science, physicist and software entrepreneur, Stephen Wolfram, argues that complex mathematic equations has limited scientific discovery. He posits that most of the world can be explained without mathematical complexity. I am greatly simplifying his argument, but as someone who despised all things math-like in school, the notion of math-less science is attractive.
Here is a snippet from the book’s summary:
Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments–illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics–Stephen Wolfram shows how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe.
Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science, from the origins of apparent randomness in physical systems, to the development of complexity in biology, the ultimate scope and limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the interplay between free will and determinism, and the character of intelligence in the universe.
There are detractors, however. Most notably, AI guru Raymond Kurzweil believes that Wolfram’s book is important, but maintains that Wolfram’s arguments in favor of simple explanations for complex natural phenomena may be, well, a bit too simple.
It all sounds rather fascinating to me, and I will probably try to read the 1000-plus-page tome. That is if I can ever get my hands on a copy. MSNBC reports that the book has already sold out it’s first printing. The book is currently ranked 18th in sales and is on 3 to 5 week backorder at amazon.com.
Looks like many others hate the Math as much as I do.
The Washington Post has an article detailing the Bush Administration’s use of selective science to pursue its damaging environmental policy.
For example:
…after environmentalists and world leaders condemned the president’s decision to disavow an international global warming treaty, the White House last May asked the National Academy of Sciences to assess climate science and identify any weaknesses. The subsequent report largely confirmed previous studies, showing that global warming was a serious threat to civilization and that it was at least partly the result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. But the White House highlighted sections raising uncertainties in climate science to bolster its argument against a treaty calling for mandatory emission reductions.
In March, the administration played down National Academy of Sciences findings that improvements in fuel economy standards for automobiles would decrease U.S. dependence on oil imports, save consumers money and reduce global warming. The administration, joined by the auto industry in opposing the higher standards, instead cited government and insurance industry findings that a switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars might lead to more traffic deaths — and required further study.
Again we have more hypocrisy from the Bush gang. As the article points out, Bush claims he uses “sound science” to craft his policies (“When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science,” Bush said recently. “Not what sounds good, but what is real.”), but the term seems to translate into “science approved by my corporate benefactors”.
Of course this tactic is nothing new. Corporations and politicians have been of manipulating scientific findings to indicate desired results and/or deriding any contrary findings as “junk science” for decades. The practice reached its apogee during the Clinton Administration. To wit:
[W]hen conservative Republicans in control of Congress waged war on the Clinton administration’s environmental programs. Democrats and environmental leaders fought back with a flurry of studies purporting to show how the Republicans were wreaking havoc on the environment. Republicans, conservative think tanks and industry groups dismissed the analyses as “junk science.”
For more on this topic, I highly recommend Trust Us We’re Experts by Stauber and Rampton (of PRWatch). It made me angry, and it just might make you angry too. (Plus the cover was drawn by Tom Tomorrow)
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