retrospectacle | July 31, 2006One more reason NOT to go to Kentucky (as if I needed another one?).....
A 25 million dollar "creationist" museum, which depicts people walking around with dinos.
Mark Looy, a vice president at Answers in Genesis, said the museum has received at least $21 million in private donations. He said two anonymous donors have given $1 million, and he expects the museum to be debt-free when it opens next May.
John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, an organization that promotes creationism, said the museum will affirm the doubts many people have about science,…
retrospectacle | July 31, 2006Over at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, he's got a fun little link you should try! You upload a picture of yourself, and a program analyzes your facial structure and then compares it to a database of celebrities.
So, after uploading a picture of myself, here's who the program said I resembled. The percentages refer to how similar our faces are:
Kate Hudson 71%
Sharon Stone 70%
Kim Catrell 70%
Avril Lavinge 66%
Naomi Watts 66%
Pretty cool!
retrospectacle | July 31, 2006Almost as inevitable as evolution is the law that states, where there are stupid naive people, there will be someone to hustle them.
People were persuaded to buy a powder which they could allegedly turn into "Magic Cheese", said to make skin look younger and to be highly valuable.
The powder, called Yo Flex and costing up to $500 (£270), turned out to be an almost-worthless food supplement.
More than 20,000 Peruvians and 6,000 Chileans were reportedly duped.
Now, as if that wasn't crazy enough, it gets weirder.
According to reports, victims of the scam believed they only had to mix the…
retrospectacle | July 31, 2006
The residents of this community should be happy that this wasn't a flock of chattering African Greys! :) Although I bet their cars were covered in "surprises" the next day.
retrospectacle | July 28, 2006
Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine, said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots."
Meet N'kisi, a captive bred, hand raised Congo African Gray Parrot. He is 4-1/2 years old, and has been learning "language" for 4 years. He is now one of the world's top "language-using" animals, with an apparent understanding and appropriate usage of over 700 words. His owner, Aimee, intuitively taught N'kisi as one would a child, by explaining things to him…
retrospectacle | July 28, 2006Apparantly, the residents of Denmark are the happiest in the world, and the resident of Burundi Africa are the unhappiest. America's #23 in the world, Britian is in the 40s.
UPDATE: Check out how this correlates with the recent rankings of evolution acceptance here.
retrospectacle | July 27, 2006A comment I got today. Warning! The below ranting is extremely assinine and/or stupifying!!!!!
I dare you to post this 'truth' and exposure of your criminal intentions: You, like Adolph Hitler, and like Bin-Laden's suicide pilots, have been implanted with foreign thought forms by psychiatrists, and are a puppet of the forces of ev il. Your sense of a Supreme Being has been wiped out; replaced with a self-involved, blind lust for craven power. Lost on you is the ultimate truth that responsibility for self, always including the greater good for others, is what makes us able to be tru ly great…
retrospectacle | July 27, 2006Its been a long time coming, but I have finally updated my blogroll with some interesting new sites that I have noticed lately.
The main way I find new blogs is through my commenters, so if you want a link, leave a comment and your blog url! I read every comment and go to every url. If I like it, I'll bookmark it.
So, check out some of the new links, there's some gems!
retrospectacle | July 27, 2006Adventures in Science and Ethics raised an interesting question today: How are graduate student getting their education funded? When I was first interviewing at graduate programs, I was astounded at the variability in their offered "recruitment package." It often had very little to do with prestige of the university, cost of living in the city, etc. But all of them offered something on which to live, tuition paid for, and health insurance. I feel quite comfortable on the stipend that Univ. of Michigan gives me (~$25k) and cost of living in Ann Arbor isn't so bad. My only complaint is no…
retrospectacle | July 27, 2006The 18-year-old French woman was hospitalized with scaly skin on her legs and hands, appearing unsteady and mentally sluggish, doctors said.
They found the condition puzzling, especially since the woman's twin sister displayed similar, but less severe, symptoms and there was no family history of the problem, the doctors reported in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.
Then they found a bag of mothballs statshed in her hospital room.
The two teenagers had been using the mothballs to get high. They been inhaling the air in the bag for about 10 minutes a day, at the advice of their…
retrospectacle | July 26, 2006I saw this link over at The Island of Doubt, and it certainly deserves a repost due to my Captain Kirk obsession.
retrospectacle | July 26, 2006As a fair skinned person, I'm totally into this idea! This new bikini has a UV monitor built right into its belt, so you can safely swim and play in the sun. Made by Solestrom Swimwear, its already a big hit in South Africa and Australia where skin cancer rates are extremely high. Now this may sound dorky, but......waiiiiit a minute! I LOVE that its dorky! It looks like something a Bond girl would wear! Gimme gimme gimme!!!
retrospectacle | July 26, 2006Its no secret that you can go overseas, notably to Asia, to receive embryonic stem cell treatments for a variety of neurological disorders.
Well, I just found an interesting website which reports on the progress of China's stem cell therapies (mostly for wealthy Westerners) as well as patient follow-ups to track the recovery post-op. Take a moment and read the testimonials.
This could have been America.
retrospectacle | July 26, 2006Someone call Sam Raimi!
Although not bound in human flesh and signed in blood, I'm pretty sure this recent "miraculous find" is the Necronomicon.
Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog. The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000.
The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.
Directly after unearthing the book, the archaeologists' faces…
retrospectacle | July 25, 2006Over at the Intersection, Chris Mooney brought to light a recent interviewby Morgan Spurlock in which he was quoted thusly:
We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people using p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are.
I find this quote so refreshing (not just because it places us scientists up on a lofty pedestal), because it validates scientific authority figures as someone worth listening to. For a long time, I sat idly by as governmental agencies such as the…
retrospectacle | July 25, 2006Technorati, an online blog rating system, has rated ScienceBlogs in the top 50 most popular blogs in the world! Woohoo! We're currently #33, and yes, we've even beaten out Cute Overload.
Now, please could you make ScienceBlogs a "favorite" blog? Or, if you're feeling mighty generous, you could even favorite Retrospectacle! Go here to do it! Just type in a blog to search for it, and then favorite it. :)
The word on high from SEED is this: in order to make ScienceBlogs truly the biggest conversation about science, we need to get the word out. Now, I'm usually not so shamelessly self-promoting…
retrospectacle | July 25, 2006
Last night I went to go see "A Scanner Darkly," the dis-topia flick starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder based on the 1977 sci-fi novel by Philip Dick. Now, before you shout "Keanu Reeves!" and pan the movie, believe me, the acting issue was more than made up for by a phenomenal performance by Robert Downy Jr., among others. And even then, somehow Keanu was handed a role that was MEANT to be somewhat cardboard, somewhat jaded and stilted.
"What does the scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly?"
This is the line from whence the title…
retrospectacle | July 24, 2006It wouldn't be funny, really, unless it was in the Onion.
My favorite:
"Maybe Bush would pass the bill if, instead of research, the stem cells would be used for torture."
Ah the Onion. Irreverent to the last.
(Thanks to Kendra!)
retrospectacle | July 23, 2006Apparently, China now really believes that Americans landed on the moon.
More anti-Ipod alarmist garbage. Just listen to it at a reasonable level and you'll be fine.
Our ability to spot snakes helped humans evolve?
Tina Fey is leaving SNL. (Too bad, she was like the only funny one left.)
Best to avoid the herb Longdan Xiegewan
Flaming dog meat, a bribe offered to other teachers by a man who sold the school's trees, set the school on fire..
And, cars that run on cooking oil. Come on Marty, we gotta go back to the future!