gregladen | June 28, 2012This looks like one of those questions that pops up when you start typing a query into a Google Search Box, but it is really a question asked rhetorically by Claudia Sawyer on my facebook status where I made mention of the fact that toddlers will put anything you give them in their mouth (even after that "putting everything in their mouth" phase is over ... they still do it enough that you can't give them knives or sandpaper, believe it or not).
And there actually is an answer to this question and it comes from science. The answer is about five years old, and here's why:
A newborn mammal…
gregladen | June 28, 2012Just so you know, scientists do not seem to be able to detect the difference between a 3 foot and a 30 foot deformation of the surface of a planetoid body that is about one and a half billion kilometers away, and we know this because NASA's Cassini space ship had to actually go all the way to one of Saturn's moons, Titan, to discover that the tidal deformation of the surface is more like 30 than 3 feet in magnitude. This, in turn, strongly suggests that Titan has an ocean of some kind under its surface. Thus, the Sirens. The Sirens of Titan.
NASA provides us with the following artists…
gregladen | June 28, 2012Here is a valuable discussion about the following video and related topics.
gregladen | June 28, 2012We expected increasing wildfire activity with global warming, and we've got it.
The Waldo Canyon Fire has been burning since June 23rd and as of this writing is essentially out of control, with about 5% of it "contained." Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated. A friend of mine is on house watch as we speak, as various members of her family and her friends from the region have fled the area and are scanning news images for evidence of anything standing (or not) in their neighborhood. Approximately 300 homes are reported to have been burned down yesterday, I have not herd any…
gregladen | June 28, 2012Antonin Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion for today's Obamacare decision; the majority opinion upheld the Affordable Care Act. But, it appears that Scalia thought he was in the majority at the time he wrote the opinion, used terminology appropriate to that situation (referring to the other opinion as the dissent) and then forgot to change the text.
This is a little scary for two or three reasons. One, it looks like this may have been a very close decision. If Romney is elected, the USA might as well fold up shop. Two, Antonin Scalia and his staff are on drugs or something. Three, if the…
gregladen | June 28, 2012This is like an episode of Dr. Who. A star erupted and vaporized the atmosphere of a nearby planet. Holy crap. Details:
JUNE 28, 2012: An international team of astronomers using data from the NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made an unparalleled observation, detecting significant changes in the atmosphere of a planet located beyond the solar system. The scientists conclude that the atmospheric variations occurred in response to a powerful eruption on the planet's host star, an event observed by NASA's Swift satellite. This artist's rendering illustrates the evaporation of exoplanet HD…
gregladen | June 28, 2012UPDATE: Here's the full text of the decision.
Amy Howe of the SCOTUS Blog writes:
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters.…
gregladen | June 27, 2012Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. From the publisher:
If it weren't for mitochondria, scientists argue, we'd all still be single-celled bacteria. Indeed, these tiny structures inside our cells are important beyond imagining. Without mitochondria, we would have no cell suicide, no sculpting of embryonic shape, no sexes, no menopause, no aging.
In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Nick Lane brings together the latest research in this exciting field to show how our growing insight into mitochondria has shed light on how complex life evolved, why sex arose (…
gregladen | June 27, 2012A young woman, "of age" but unmarried, appeared out of the forest near the base of the hill, a few of her relatives and friends staying in the woods while she headed alone up the well worn path. Before she had taken a dozen steps, six or seven women, of her age or a bit older, spotted her and ran down the hill to greet her. They had never met before, but as soon as the women got close they touched her, hugged her, held her hand, fondled some of her jewelry and patted her hair, and all the while they shouted the worst invectives and insults they could think of at her, laughing cruelly while…
gregladen | June 27, 2012I finally watched Downfall. That's the movie about the last days of the Third Reich, a couple of scenes from which form the basis for all those Internet Memes where Hitler is talking about how much meat there is in a meal from Taco Bell. It is actually quite a good movie. If you were worried that you might end up being sympathetic with the poor Nazis hiding out in their bunker as the
"Russian Army" approaches, with constant shelling in the background, don't worry. The script has them mention little tidbits like the Holocaust and such often enough that you are reminded to continue to hate…
gregladen | June 27, 2012A lot of animal cams suck. The angle is bad, the lighting is poor, the animal is usually not there, etc. etc. But this puffin cam is actually pretty darn good. When the bird pecks at the camera you want to duck.
Check it out.
It's from Audubon. Here's some text from the press release:
Seal Island, Maine – June 27, 2012 – explore.org, the philanthropic media organization and division of the Annenberg Foundation, is expanding its collection of live HD cameras to bring people into the world of the charismatic and much-revered Atlantic Puffin. Through a multiyear partnership with Audubon,…
gregladen | June 26, 2012This is coming from a few different sources none of which are really linkable so I'll just copy and paste this press release from the Environmental Defense Fund:
*** BREAKING *** BREAKING *** BREAKING ***
...
Moments ago, a federal appeals court upheld EPA's climate pollution emission standards, rejecting four legal challenges that had been filed by industry groups and several states' attorneys general.
The court ruled in favor of clean air protections in four major cases, denying petitions against the Climate Pollution Endangerment Finding and the Clean Car Standards and dismissing petitions…
gregladen | June 26, 2012Astronomers have discovered something that should not be there. It is an arc of light. The arc is the effect of gravitational lensing which happened as light passed by a massive galaxy about 10 billion years ago in space-time. In other words, in this universe, but very far away and a very long time ago, when our universe was a mere toddler. The galaxy that supplies the light is even farther away.
(UPDATE: See this post by Phil Plait for a detailed writup on this observation: The galaxy that shouldn’t be there)
Here's the problem. A very massive galaxy...the one that is farthest away...…
gregladen | June 26, 2012This is the first and only one of these.
There really ought to be a sound track.
gregladen | June 26, 2012Matt Lowry, whom I hope to be seeing in a couple of weeks, has written an article on his blog and republished on the JREF web site, called Is It Time To Call Creationists’ Bluff And Push For “Teaching All Views”?
The idea is this. There has been a recent change in strategy among creationists (which, I'm sorry, but I may have started a few years back for which I apologize). Instead of pushing creationism per se, they push "academic freedom" which doubles as a way to repress the teaching about climate change, evolution, and other inconvenient science, and a way to introduce whatever other "…
gregladen | June 25, 2012In this video, Genie Scott dissects the claims, the tactics, and the methods being used to confuse the public about what is science and what isn’t:
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photo of Darwin by kevinzim
gregladen | June 25, 2012When installing a "porch light" (to light the entrance way ans any stairs, and the immediate area outside the cabin) do not place the light near the door as is often the custom. The light is meant to be used at night. Out in cabin country, when you turn that light on at night, 22 gazillion insects will flock to it and form a giant swarm covering a blob shaped area several feet in diameter. If the light is placed next to the entrance door, this makes that door unusable unless you wish to admit about half of the insects (about 10 gazillion of them) into the cabin.
Instead, place the outdoor…
gregladen | June 25, 2012I am going to write a bunch of blog posts about marriage.
You should regard my opinion about marriage to be valuable; I've had several of them. And in this way, I may be more like a hunter-gatherer than a "modern" Westerner, as the practice among the former is to treat marriage as very important and each partner in the marriage as a critical and similarly empowered member of the contract, while the practice among the latter has been to see women as the man's property and to form economic, social, and sexual alliances as needed outside the marriage. Who is in on the deal and how they work…
gregladen | June 24, 2012It has just been reported that Lonesome George, the Galapagos Tortoise who was considered to be the last of is kind, has died.
the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years old.
Lonesome George was found in 1972 and had become a symbol of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, which attracted some 180,000 visitors last year.
"This morning the park ranger in charge of looking after the tortoises found Lonesome George, his body was motionless," the head of the Galapagos National…