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stcynic | September 7, 2006If you liked the Crossfire episode where Lofton accused pop stars of encouraging our kids to have sex with animals, you're gonna love this interview he does with James Stengel when he was the head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia (Stengel, that is, not Lofton). You're especially gonna love the fit he throws over a skit put on at the center illustrating the 3rd amendment that featured a man in drag:
JL: (laughing) Well, that's one thing we agree on. Have you seen your Bill of Rights exhibit for the children?
RS: I have.
JL: Do you remember the Third Amendment part, the…
stcynic | September 7, 2006Does anyone remember those reports a while back about some Indian guru who hadn't had to eat any food in 7 years? Well here's a website that tells how he did it - by looking at the sun. This allowed him to "store the sun's energy in his brain" and therefore did away with the need for food. No, wait; I'm serious:
His formula was simple: either at sunrise or sunset (when the intensity of the sun is at its minimum) stand on the earth and stare directly at the sun for 10 seconds. Adding an additional 10 seconds to the total sungazing time each consecutive day. In 6 months your hungers would be…
stcynic | September 7, 2006Tuesday was primary day in Florida and Randall Terry, running for the state senate there, got thoroughly trounced in his race, losing by more than a 2-1 margin. Terry had the support of folks like Alan Keyes, which appears to be the political equivalent of waking up in bed next to a horse's head. In more cheery news, Katherine Harris won the Republican primary for the US Senate seat held by Bill Nelson (not Ben Nelson, as I mistakenly said initially), guaranteeing us a couple more months of loony entertainment. She won the primary by spending several times as much money as all of her obscure…
tqa | September 7, 2006In the Doonesbury storyline that began on Monday, Garry Trudeau managed to capture what modern technology has done for deployed families far, far better than anyone I've seen before. With many of the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan operating from more-or-less permanent bases, communications between the front lines and those left at home are a hell of a lot better than they've ever been.
In many ways, this is a mixed blessing.
At the camp my wife is based out of in Iraq, she has easy access to a payphone and can buy phone cards that allow her to call home at reasonable rates. She…
moleculeoftheday | September 6, 2006
Longtime readers will recall this Palahniuk-inspired image from my articles on the old site about the twelve-carbon detergents Sodium Lauryl/Dodecyl Sulfate and sodium laurate/dodecanoate.
Today, I point you to Adam Engelhart's excellent (and thoroughly overdocumented) home preparation of countless soaps. The roundup:
Lavender oil - in an almond oil base, I think. "Oils" from something that smells nice either come in tiny expensive vials (in which case they're a steam distillation of all the volatile greasy things in there, the "essential oil"), or in large, slightly less expensive bottles…
tqa | September 6, 2006Janet has challenged all of us to a nerd-off. I'd love to participate, but before I can I'm going to need to figure out if I'm qualified. It's not easy. Identifying nerds and geeks isn't something that you can do just based on looks, or a superficial knowledge of habits and personality. Determining whether one is a nerd is a complex procedure, requiring the analysis of a large number of interacting variables. To aid in the self-identification of nerds, I've devised the following checklist:
You might be a science nerd if...
The ratio of journals to magazines on your coffee table and/or in…
stcynic | September 6, 2006Is there anything better than getting free books? I want to hand out a few thank yous to people for sending me free copies of their books. First, to Sandefur, for sending me an advance copy of his new book, Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st-Century America. I've been so busy lately that I've only been able to get about two chapters read, but so far it's nothing short of brilliant. Second, to Herb Titus, who was kind enough to send me one large book and copies of two articles in response to an email inquiry on his views (views that I think are often misrepresented by folks on my…
stcynic | September 6, 2006Fareed Zakaria has an excellent column in Newsweek about the longstanding habit of our government to wildly exaggerate threats from their enemy du jour. This passage is particularly telling:
Washington has a long habit of painting its enemies 10 feet tall--and crazy. During the cold war, many hawks argued that the Soviet Union could not be deterred because the Kremlin was evil and irrational. The great debate in the 1970s was between the CIA's wimpy estimate of Soviet military power and the neoconservatives' more nightmarish scenario. The reality turned out to be that even the CIA's lowest…
tqa | September 6, 2006Looking through my email today, I see that Reed Cartwright has forwarded yet another news article about someone or another ranting about the dangers caused by the presence of so many "liberals" in higher education. About the only surprise was the source of this round of complaints: Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who was complaining about academics in his country.
Hmmmm. I wonder if we should send D-Ho over to help him root out the most dangerous of the bunch.
On second thought, probably not. There are just some things that I wouldn't even wish on Ahmadinejad.
moleculeoftheday | September 5, 2006The dimethoxytrityl, or DMT, ligand, is one of my favorite protecting groups in organic chemistry. Oftentimes, you need to "mask" part of a molecule to keep it from reacting during a step in a synthesis. DMT does this without breaking a sweat and gives you pretty colors to look at to boot.
Those phenyl rings form a pinwheel type arrangement (in 3-D, that is, they're twisted out of the plane of your screen).
When bound to a molecule, DMT doesn't have much of a color. When it's removed with acid, though, you actually get a (rare, usually unstable and only transient) solution of dimethoxytrityl…
stcynic | September 5, 2006Okay, I looked up the actual 1995 law that was being debated by Congress (you can find much of that information here). Having done so, I have to admit that there's a much stronger case for hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans than the Democrats. The warrantless wiretapping provisions of the bill, it turns out, actually only dealt with emergency wiretaps - taps that are placed in an emergency, but which still require retroactive submission to a judge within 48 hours. If the judge does not issue the warrant retroactively, any evidence obtained in that search is inadmissable in court.
That…
stcynic | September 5, 2006Remember those prayers for rain in Lubbock, Texas? Well the Worldnutdaily says they worked, perhaps a little too well. Here's the picture from the article:
Confirmation bias? Nah, couldn't be.
pharyngula | September 5, 2006A news article describes his last moments, and Rangel, MD gets technical.
And please, everyone, we know he was brash and some people found him annoying…but we should all agree that death is deplorable, and there's no justice in it.
stoat | September 4, 2006John Fleck found a great paper by Karl T. Ulrich on the ultimate energy costs of using bicycles versus cars. The bottom-line argument is that cycling saves energy, but because you live longer your lifetime emissions will be greater. Such fun. However: Those who adopt the bicycle as a means of transportation could potentially develop an increased awareness of the environmental impact of their actions and may over their lifetimes reduce energy consumption substantially in their other, non-transportation activities.
Some tit-bits:
Despite the inefficiencies in the energy conversion processes to…
stcynic | September 4, 2006Boy did I somehow manage to avoid a major disaster last night. After I got home from the BBQ party, I decided I was going to install Windows XP on my computer (I've been using Windows 98 SE for years and never bothered to upgrade because I never really had a reason to). So I put in the CD, it begins the upgrade process and then about halfway through, it gives me an error messages. Says there's a missing file and tells me to restore that file...but I can't restore that file because now my computer won't boot up at all (I tried rebooting and it just kept giving me that error and wouldn't…
pharyngula | September 4, 2006
The Crocodile Hunter has died. It is absolutely no surprise that it was an animal that did him in—he was pierced by a stingray—but it's still sad to see such an enthusiastic advocate for wildlife go.
I'm not alone in feeling this way: it's
a scienceblogs
thing
to regret this loss. And Skatje had quite the little girl crush on Steve Irwin some years ago.
purepedantry | September 3, 2006No way:
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - Steve Irwin, the Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, Australian media said. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 1,260 miles north of Brisbane.
A helicopter carrying…
jlynch | September 3, 2006Gabriele Amorth, Benedict XVI's senior exorcist, president of the International Association of Exorcists, and a man who claims to have exorcized over 30,000 demons, says:
"I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler - and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the devil.
You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That's why we need to defend society from demons."
So, the Nazi's were possessed by demons (a.k.a. invisible spirits).…
stcynic | September 3, 2006Well I'm spending the day doing my BBQ duty. We're having a big end of summer party today at a friend's house and I'm in charge of the meat. I'm doing a full case of spare ribs, which is the most I've ever done at once. That's a lot of work by yourself. I spent over 2 hours prepping last night, peeling and rubbing the ribs, getting the wood chips ready, cleaning the smoker, and so forth. The first batch went into the smoker about 45 minutes ago (I have to do this in two batches because I don't have room to do it all at once). I'm going to do the first batch in the smoker for 2 hours, then…
stcynic | September 2, 2006
My blog is worth $165,410.22.How much is your blog worth?
According to this guy, however, it's only worth $18,337. Either way, I'll gladly take a check. If I took it in cash, the government might seize it without bothering to charge me with anything.