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Merging Neutron Stars Deliver Deathblow To Dark Matter And Dark Energy Alternatives

"Dark matter is interesting. Basically, the Universe is heavier than it should be. There's whole swathes of stuff we can't account for." -Talulah Riley One of the most puzzling facts about the Universe is that 95% of the energy in it, in the forms of dark matter and dark energy, are completely invisible, and have never been directly detected. Perhaps, the story goes, it’s our theory of gravity that’s to blame, rather than needing new components in the Universe. While dark matter and dark energy can explain a whole slew of observations, gravity modifications do a better job of explaining…

Ask Ethan: How sure are we that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old?

“Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like.” -Thomas S. Kuhn For all of human history, the biggest questions have fascinated us. Where did the Universe come from? How old is it? And what is its ultimate fate? Once relegated to the realm of theologians, poets, and philosophers, science has brought us closer than ever to the answers. But scientific revolutions have occurred before, in many cases significantly changing the answers to these and other…

Five Brilliant Ideas For New Physics That Need To Die, Already

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” -Ann Landers The history of physics is littered with brilliant ideas that have revolutionized how we look at the Universe... and have been discarded entirely because they’ve failed to describe reality. Theories like the Tired-Light alternative to relativity, the Steady-State alternative to the Big Bang, and even the Sakata Model alternative to the quark model of particles have come and gone, with practically no one…

Is the inflationary Universe a scientific theory? Not anymore

"I know of no other scientist, no other theoretical physicist alive who has a clearer focus on whether our theories and ideas are relevant to the real world. And that's always what he's after." -Neil Turok, on Paul Steinhardt The inflationary Universe is one of the most revolutionary new ways of looking at the cosmos to come out of the last 40 years of science. Instead of going all the way back to a singularity from which time, space, matter, and energy all emerged, cosmic inflation posits a different state that gave rise to our hot, dense, matter-and-radiation-filled Universe. With energy…

Star Trek: Discovery Analysis And Recap: Season 1, Episodes 1-2 (Synopsis)

"If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures." -Gene Roddenberry The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery are now behind us, and while I expected it to be darker and more of a continuous story than a series of self-contained episodes, I think this was full of a lot of surprises, not all of them good. Yes, the visuals were absolutely stunning, from the sleek uniforms to the sets to the ships to the Klingons to the battle effects. The binary protoplanetary system was breathtaking. And this was a suspense-filled…

If Matter Is Made Of Point Particles, Why Does Everything Have A Size?

“There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.” -Kami Garcia When we consider things like molecules, atoms, or even protons and neutrons, they all have finite, measurable sizes. Yet the fundamental particles that they’re made out of, like quarks, electrons, and gluons, are all inherently points, with no physical size to them at all. Why, then, does every composite particle not…

Proof of 'God playing dice with the Universe' found in the Sun's interior

“The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science’s great ‘open frontiers.’ These are parts of the intellectual map where we’re still groping for the truth – where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe ‘here be dragons.'” -Martin Rees Inside the nuclear furnace of the Sun, protons and other atomic nuclei are compressed together into a tiny region of space, where the incredible temperatures and energies try to overcome the repulsive forces of their electric charges. At a maximum temperature of 15 million K, and…

The Comet That Created The Perseids Might Bring An End To Humanity (Synopsis)

“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?” -Neil Gaiman Enjoying the Perseid meteor shower this year, as perhaps you do every August? As you look up, the great cosmic show might have a lot more to offer than mere streaks of light, due to cometary debris brightly burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. This year, Jupiter has slightly disturbed the debris stream, resulting in an increase in the number of meteors-per-hour, as the stream passes quite centrally through Earth’s location. The comet that gives rise to the Perseid meteor shower,…

Wildfires Engulf Thousands Of Acres As The Solar Eclipse Nears (Synopsis)

"I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you." -Tom Watson The solar eclipse we've all been waiting for is just two weeks away. Yet even though you've got your eye protection ready, your location picked out, and your plans all set, there's a wild card you need to be aware of: wildfires. The total solar eclipse in Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming-west-of-the-rockies coincides with peak wildfire season, and with over a million people headed to a 70-mile-wide strip of…

'Game Of Thrones' Home World Could Actually Exist, Says Science (Synopsis)

"Lord of Light! Come to us in our darkness. We offer you these false gods. Take them and cast your light upon us. For the night is dark and full of terrors." -Melisandre, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice Imagine a world where you know that winter is coming, but you don’t know when, or for how long, or how severe it will be. Sounds like fiction, doesn’t it? In our own solar system, where planets orbit a single star in elliptical, well-separated orbits, this is extraordinarily unlikely. But if a binary giant planet existed in the habitable zone, and a world like Earth orbited both of…

No rambos in the halls of academe, please

The Nevada System of Higher Education wants to arm their faculty. That's insane. We have rare instances of students going on a shooting spree; I don't see how turning the classroom into a firefight is going to stop that, and I also have a suspicion that any homicidal maniacs will henceforth simply put "shoot the professor" first on their to-do list. The other concern: how often has this happened at your university? Dishevelled, out-of-breath student bursts into the room in the middle of class — he overslept. Angry student storms into your office, red in the face and furious about his exam.…

Ask Ethan: Can the Universe ever expand faster than the speed of light? (Synopsis)

"In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance." -Henry Miller You know it as the most fundamental law of relativity: that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. And yet, the observable Universe itself, which has been around for 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, is now 46.1 billion light years in radius. If everything were contracted down to a tiny volume of space, it seems that such a size would be impossible to achieve. Unless, somehow, space itself were expanding faster than the speed of light. The Hercules galaxy cluster showcases a great…

How Does Earth Move Through Space? Now We Know, On Every Scale (Synopsis)

“There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.” -Thomas Hobbes It’s hard to believe, but despite being at rest here on the surface of Earth, we’re actually hurtling through the Universe in a variety of impressive ways. The Earth spins on its axis, giving someone at the equator a speed of some 1700 km/hr. Yet at even faster speeds, the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun moves through the Milky Way, and there’s a great cosmic motion that applied to the…

Ask Ethan: Why Do Stars Come In Different Sizes? (Synopsis)

"Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder." -Carl Sagan “Bigger mass makes a bigger star,” you might be inclined to say. The smallest stars in size should be small because they have the least amount of material in them, while the largest ones of all are the largest because they’ve got the most material to make stars out of. And that’s a tempting explanation, but it doesn’t account for either the smallest stars or the largest ones in the Universe. The (modern) Morgan–Keenan spectral classification system, with the…

Can Moons Have Their Own Moons? (Synopsis)

"People who work every day are kind of scared of things they don't understand." -Young Jeezy From Mercury out to Neptune, most of the worlds in the Solar System have moons, with a hitherto discovered population of around 200 known ones. Yet despite all of it, we don’t know of a single instance of a moon that has its own natural satellite: a moon with a moon of its own. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t exist! The major moons in our Solar System could contain some objects with candidates for potentially having orbiting moons of their own. If many of these moons were situated differently,…

We're Way Below Average! Astronomers Say Milky Way Resides In A Great Cosmic Void (Synopsis)

“No matter what technique you use, you should get the same value for the expansion rate of the universe today.” -Ben Hoscheit When you think of the Universe on the largest scales, you likely think of galaxies grouped and clustered together in huge, massive collections, separated by enormous cosmic voids. But there’s another kind of cluster-and-void out there: a very large volume of space that has its own galaxies, clusters and voids, but is simply higher or lower in density than average. The construction of the cosmic distance ladder involves going from our Solar System to the stars to…

The Scientific Story Of How Each Element Was Made (Synopsis)

“It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man - social and political - and to the entire universe as a whole.” -Dmitri Mendeleev When the Big Bang first occurred, the Universe was filled with all the various particles and antiparticles making up the Standard Model, and perhaps still others yet to be discovered. But missing from the list were protons, neutrons, or any of the atomic nuclei key to the life-giving elements in our Universe today.…

Ask Ethan: How many Black Holes are there in the Universe? (Synopsis)

"Black holes are the seductive dragons of the universe, outwardly quiescent yet violent at the heart, uncanny, hostile, primeval, emitting a negative radiance that draws all toward them, gobbling up all who come too close…these strange galactic monsters, for whom creation is destruction, death life, chaos order." -Robert Coover For the third time since it began taking data, the LIGO collaboration discovered direct evidence for merging black holes in the Universe. There's an incredible amount we've learned about black holes and where they're located, however, and very little of it comes from…

Break The Standard Model? An Ultra-Rare Decay Threatens To Do What The LHC Can't (Synopsis)

"There are several categories of scientists in the world; those of second or third rank do their best but never get very far. Then there is the first rank, those who make important discoveries, fundamental to scientific progress. But then there are the geniuses, like Galilei and Newton. Majorana was one of these." -Enrico Fermi Want to uncover the secrets to the Universe? Find out what particles and interactions there are beyond the Standard Model? The conventional approach is to take particles up to extremely high energies and smash them together, hoping that something new and exciting comes…

Surprise! The Universe Has A Third Way To Form Black Holes (Synopsis)

"N6946-BH1 is the only likely failed supernova that we found in the first seven years of our survey. During this period, six normal supernovae have occurred within the galaxies we've been monitoring, suggesting that 10 to 30 percent of massive stars die as failed supernovae." -Scott Adams Everyone knows the recipe for a black hole: create a massive enough star, allow it to burn through the fuel it its core, and wait. After enough time, the core will collapse, creating a type II supernova and a runaway fusion reaction. The outer layers explode while the core implodes, leaving behind a black…

Closest Supernova In Years Brings Cosmic Fireworks To Earth's Skies (Synopsis)

"When a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the explosion dispenses different elements-helium, carbon, oxygen, iron, nickel-across the universe, scattering stardust. That stardust now makes up the planets, including ours." -Michelle Cuevas Every once in a while, a new light appears somewhere in the night sky: the result of a massive star reaching the end of its life. From many millions of light years away, the brilliance of a supernova shines across the cosmos. Just a few days ago, a new light was discovered in a galaxy only 22 million light years away, making it the closest…

Hubble views the final frontier for dark matter (Synopsis)

"We find them smaller and fainter, in constantly increasing numbers, and we know that we are reaching into space, farther and farther, until, with the faintest nebulae that can be detected with the greatest telescopes, we arrive at the frontier of the known universe." -Edwin Hubble When you look out at the distant Universe, you can see all sorts of things: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, going as far back into the distant past as our telescopes can image. But where you have the greatest concentrations of mass, an extreme phenomenon emerges: that of gravitational lensing. Any foreground…

Ask Ethan: Why can't I see Mercury without a telescope? (Synopsis)

"I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces." -Kay Redfield Jamison Under ideal conditions, Mercury achieves a maximum elongation, or angular separation, from the Sun of 28 degrees. Total darkness is achieved when the Sun dips 18 degrees below the horizon. So for many of us,…

How To Prove Einstein's Relativity For Less Than $100 (Synopsis)

"The experiments that we will do with the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] have been done billions of times by cosmic rays hitting the earth. ... They're being done continuously by cosmic rays hitting our astronomical bodies, like the moon, the sun, like Jupiter and so on and so forth. And the earth's still here, the sun's still here, the moon's still here." -John Ellis Relativity, or the idea that space and time are not absolute, was one of the most revolutionary and counterintuitive scientific theories to come out of the 20th century. It was also one of the most disputed, with hundreds of…

The Failed Experiment That Changed The World (Synopsis)

"It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration." -Albert A. Michelson In the 1880s, it was clear that something was wrong with Newton’s formulation of the Universe. Gravitation didn’t explain everything, objects behaved bizarrely close to the speed of light, and light was exhibiting wave-like properties. But surely, even if it were a wave, it required a medium to travel through, just like all other waves? That…

New LHC Results Hint At New Physics... But Are We Crying Wolf? (Synopsis)

"In recent years several new particles have been discovered which are currently assumed to be “elementary,” that is, essentially structureless. The probability that all such particles should be really elementary becomes less and less as their number increases. It is by no means certain that nucleons, mesons, electrons, neutrinos are all elementary particles." -Enrico Fermi The Standard Model of particle physics -- with its six quarks in three colors, its three generations of charged leptons and neutrinos, the antiparticle counterparts to each, and its thirteen bosons, including the Higgs --…

60 years of starstuff: how humanity discovered where our elements come from (Synopsis)

"You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode..." -Lawrence Krauss Throughout the 1940s, 50s and even 60s, a debate as to the origin of the Universe raged in astrophysics. Was the Big Bang theory, where the Universe emerged from a hot, dense state some finite time ago, or the Steady-State…

Cutting Science Funding Today Costs Us More Overall (Synopsis)

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” -Carl Sagan The President of the United States just released his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, and there are some big losers in the scientific world. The EPA, the NIH, NASA Earth Science and many other organizations that exist for the benefit of America and all of humanity are poised to lose a significant amount of federal funding. This doesn't simply affect the scientists who lose their jobs. A significant fraction of the scientists and engineers…

Does Dark Matter Exist, Or Is Gravity Wrong? The Answer Lies Billions Of Years In The Past (Synopsis)

"Dark matter or invisible element? You decide." -Toba Beta The dark matter wars rage on and on, with both sides -- those in favor of modifying gravity and those in favor of adding an additional mass component to the Universe -- claiming victories for their own side and defeat for the other. But one piece of evidence, hitherto elusive, might finally hold the key to distinguishing one from the other: early, young, less-evolved galaxies. Billions of years ago, not as much dark matter had fallen into the inner portions of galaxies, meaning that the outer portions of rotating spirals should…

Ten Incredible Pictures That Showcase Astronomy's Future (Synopsis)

"With the Hubble telescope and all the other things that are out there, I believe something would have come through. Today, I really believe we are unique." -Mark Goddard Want to identify where stars are forming (or about to form) in the Universe? We’ve got no problem using visible light, which reveals unambiguous signatures associated with newborn stars. But if you want to view those stars themselves, or the processes occurring within the nebula where they’re being born? You have to go to infrared light. Taken in infrared light, the image shows the dense column and the surrounding greenish-…

Universe's largest structure caught in the act of forming (Synopsis)

"On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise." -Paul Ricoeur When it comes to the largest bound cosmic structures, it doesn’t get any bigger than galaxy clusters. Unless, that it, you consider when multiple galaxy clusters merge together. Located at the intersections of cosmic dark matter filaments, smaller clusters flow into the larger clusters located at such a nexus. When we get very lucky, colliding clusters can be seen. The combination of radio and X-ray data reveal background, lensed…

Antiscience bill dies in Arizona

From the National Center for Science Education: Arizona's Senate Bill 1213 died on February 22, 2013, when the deadline for Senate bills to be heard in their Senate committees passed. A typical instance of the "academic freedom" strategy for undermining the integrity of science education, SB 1213 specifically targeted "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming[,] and human cloning" as supposedly controversial. Unusually, however, a sponsor of the bill, Judy Burges (R-District 22), told the Arizona Star (February 5, 2013) that climate science was her primary concern,…

Mars Orbiter Adjusts, Rover Gets Twitter Account

Curiosity Rover is now tweeting its stuff. Things are going to get pretty exciting over the next few days as the space ship comes in for a landing on the Planet Mars. Meanwhile, the Mars Orbiter has made positional adjustments that will facilitate sending information back about the 15 minutes of terror. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has successfully adjusted its orbital location to be in a better position to provide prompt confirmation of the August landing of the Curiosity rover. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying Curiosity can send limited information directly to Earth as…

Power, Sex, Suicide

Power, 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 (…

Cabin Cooking Tips

Tip 1: Get some corn-on-the-cob and a large pot for which you have a tight fitting top. Husk the corn while you boil a large amount of water in the pot (salted if you like, for flavor). Put the corn-on-the-cob in the water and leave the heat on only for a minute, put the top on and turn off the heat. Since there is no more boiling the corn will not likely overcook. In ten minutes or so it will be ready, but it will sit there in the hot water for a long time (did you remember to keep the to on?) as long as you keep the top on. Variation: If you have a smallish pot, microwave the corn for a…

California Cow Is Mad

The USDA has just confirmed that a dairy cow in California had bovine spungiform encephalopathy (BSE) sometimes known as "Mad Cow Disease," which causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a deadly human disease affecting the brain. The animal was about to be, or was in the process of being, "rendered" ... turned into glue or soap, most likely ... and none of it entered the food supply. It has not been demonstrated that BSE can be transferred to humans via milk. Even so, cattle futures have dropped sharply in Chicago over the last few hours. From Reuters: The carcass of the cow, which the USDA said was…

What do you want to ask the candidates?

In particular, what do you want to ask them pertaining to science? For instance, the following questions have recently been proposed: What organization(s) or individual(s) is/are your primary source(s) for scientific information? With the overwhelming body of evidence for both evolution and climate change, why do you still not believe that both are true? Why do you oppose drug decriminalization when science and practical experience in Portugal support it? How can we use research, science and technology to help reduce the costs and improve the quality of health care? These and many other…

Lego Adventure

The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 1: Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More! by Megan Rothrock is primarily for people who have been messing around with LEG for, say, less than 10 years or so, especially those who are new at it and seek both inspiration and guidance in such daunting tasks as making a scale two engine turboprop airplane or an entire Lego town. The book guides the reader step by step through 25 exemplar models, each of which is fairly elaborate, and demonstrated with more basic information close to 200 other models to illustrate variation. Despite the name of the book and a fairly…

Update Your Southern African Bird Guide Collection

When traveling and working in South Africa, I've always used Newman's guide to the birds of Southern Africa, and more recently, I found the Sasol guide to be helpful as well. (I discuss both briefly here.) Now, I've got on my desk a copy of Princeton's Birds of Southern Africa: Fourth Edition by Ian Sinclair, Phil Hockey, Warwick Tarboton and Peter Ryan. You will know Sinclair from his South of the Saraha bird guide. All three books cover about the same species, as far as I can tell (just under 1,000) and have a similar range of illustration and information. They all have overview…

Scratch: A kids programming environment that is easy and works!

Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games is a book designed for the youngest kids who can read comics and basic text who want to learn to program. The prgramming environment, Scratch, will be familiar to those who have experimented with Logo and Squeak. Especially Squeak. Scratch is a very easily installed environment. You just download it and run it, more or less (instructions provided). When installed, it looks like this: The upper left box allows you to chose categories of property and methods sets, such as motion, looks, sensing, etc. The list-like…

Coon Rapids Baptist Church: Are they violating IRS law or not?

I have no idea if the Coon Rapids Baptist Church, is a real church with tax exempt status, but let's assume for the moment that they are. The question then would be, is this church jeopradizing their tax exempt status by taking and explicit stand on a certain issue and telling people how they should vote on it? Here are two photographs I snapped this morning: Sign in front of the Coon Rapids Baptist Church and Christian School, North Bound on Hanson Blvd, Coon Rapids, MN, on election day, 2012. Sign in front of Coon Rapids Baptist Church and Christian School, South Bound on Hanson Blvd,…

How to watch #WorldCup #Soccer in the US for Free

Around the world, productivity of businesses, service, all things related to the progress of civilization, and pretty much everything else will be delayed and repeatedly interrupted from today on through some time in July as the quadrennial event known as World Cup Soccer is played out. This is just like the Olympics but much much longer and there is only one sport. Plus, there are only a few countries involved. And, of those, most are sacrificial lambs -- only a few of the countries that play ever win. Every one in the world can watch World Cup Soccer for free by just turning on the TV or…

Atlantic Hurricane Season Prediction

The last hurricane season in the Atlantic was anemic, being one of least active periods on record. This was attributed to extra dust blown off the Sahara which inhibits hurricane development. Right now, the various forecasting agencies around the world are agreeing that there is a greater than 50% chance, perhaps a 70% chance of an El Nino event happening this year, starting in the Summer or Fall. Traditionally, we think of El Nino events as inhibiting tropical storm and hurricane formation in the Atlantic. Today, a group that predicts hurricane activity in the Atlantic every year has used…

I'm sure we can think of better TV to convince people there is no god

While I might wish that this satire were true, it has a few problems. SEATTLE--Members of The Discovery Institute, a Seattle based think tank, publicly rescinded their demands that intelligent design be taught in public schools after watching an Ultimate Fighting “best knockouts” compilation video Monday night. The video, which depicted wild men viciously attacking one another before a crowd of bloodthirsty spectators, provided “the smoking gun ” that man is descended from apes. “It is with great regret that we abandon our quest to have the theory of intelligent design taught in public…

What is causing the California drought?

Peter Sinclair has tackled this difficult topic with an excellent video and informative blog post. The blog post is here, and I've pasted the video below. This is a complicated issue. The water problem in California is obviously made worse by increased demands from population growth and expansion of agriculture. Under "normal" (natural) conditions, California and the American Southwest is fairly dry and can undergo extra dry periods. But climate change seems to be playing a role here as well. It appears that recent lack of rain in the region is the result of changes in atmospheric…

For your listening pleasure ...

Sunday Morning: "The Knowledge of Good and Evil" Listen to Glenn Kleier on Atheists Talk #146, Sunday, December 18, 2011. Glenn Kleier will join Atheists Talk this Sunday to discuss his rousing new suspense thriller, The Knowledge of Good and Evil. Kleier has a background in advertising, marketing and communication. In 1998 he published his first book, The Last Day, which received international acclaim from reviewers. His works of fiction are known for their suspense and controversial interplay of religion and politics in our modern global society. In The Knowledge of Good and Evil, Kleier…

GOP Rep. Randy Neugebauer

People are getting mad. GOP Rep. Randy Neugebauer Confronts Park Service Ranger at WWII Memorial: You Ought to Be 'Ashamed' On Wednesday afternoon at the Word War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) confronted a female U.S. Park Service Ranger as she was preventing non-veteran tourists from entering the temporarily-closed park due to this week's government shutdown. "How do you look at them and deny them access?" Neugebauer asked the unidentified ranger. "I don't get that." In his breast pocket, he carried a small American flag. "It's difficult," the ranger…

Climate Threats, Climate Future

A few items of interest from the intertubes: Mann: Reality and threats of climate change are clear This is a guest column in the Times Dispatch by climate scientist Michael Mann discussing ongoing legal issues. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli certainly has some odd characters coming to his defense in this paper for his attempts to go after climate scientists like myself. First came Charlie Battig, who sought to defend Cuccinelli’s 2009 attempt to subpoena my personal U.Va. emails ... Most recently the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley of Edinburgh, Scotland, used offensive personal attacks and…

Hey, can't a fellow even spend one day away from the computer?

Man, I step away from the ol' blog for a day, and what do I get? A rash of the right-wing dingleberries. Come on, everyone, ignore them, they're nuts. I do notice a few things, though. My post was about the concern that we would use nuclear weapons against Iran in an unprovoked attack. Read the wingnut comments, and what do we see? A great deal of pussyfooting around the issue. None are coming right out and saying that nuking Iran is justifiable. How about stating clearly that you agree that while Iran is a deplorable mess, you find the idea of using our nuclear arsenal against it…