Archive for February, 2010
Bill Nye: Climate Change Skeptics “Unpatriotic”
Most children of the nineties have fuzzy memories of Emmy-winning scientist Bill Nye the Science Guy, creator and host of a beloved educational television program of the same name that was [is?] shown in middle school science classes across the nation.
On Wednesday, Nye got tough when he appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, stating twice that climate change deniers are “unpatriotic.”
For young adult climate skeptics, it must hurt to have a childhood icon emerge ghostlike from the past to call you anti-American.
Insomnia May Shrink Your Brain
Uh-oh! Discovery News reports that chronic lack of sleep could end up costing you more than the price of that extra cup of coffee you need to stay awake:
Chronic insomniacs losing out on sleep may also be missing brain matter.
For the first time, brain imaging has linked chronic insomnia to lower gray matter density in areas that regulate the brain’s ability to make decisions and to rest. The research could lead to new treatment plans for people who struggle with sleeplessness.
“The findings predict that chronic insomnia sufferers may have compromised capacities to evaluate the affective value of stimuli,” said Ellemarijie Altena, lead author of the study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. “This could have consequences for other cognitive processes, notably decision-making.”
The study, published in Biological Psychiatry, compared the white and gray matter volumes of 24 older, chronic insomnia patients to 13 normal sleepers, and controlled for physical and psychiatric disorders…
Scientists Discover The Secret Of Aging
From the Financial Times:
One of the biggest puzzles in biology – how and why living cells age – has been solved by an international team based at Newcastle University, in north-east England.
The answer is complex, and will not produce an elixir of eternal life in the foreseeable future.
But the scientists expect better drugs for age-related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, to emerge from their discovery of the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.
The Newcastle team, working with the University of Ulm in Germany, used a comprehensive “systems biology” approach, involving computer modelling and experiments with cell cultures and genetically modified mice, to investigate why cells become senescent. In this aged state, cells stop dividing and the tissues they make up show physical signs of deterioration, from wrinkling skin to a failing heart.
The research, published by the journal Molecular Systems Biology, shows that when an ageing cell detects serious damage…
Marxism vs. Conspiracy Theory
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
I am fully aware that much of what I write here can easily be categorized as “conspiracy theory.” However, I would like to take some time to differentiate what it is I do here from what you might read on a more obviously “conspiracy” oriented website.
For the record, and for anyone who is confused, I do not consider myself a “conspiracy theorist,” nor do I think that Marxism is some kind of “conspiracy theory of the left.”
Rather, I consider Marxism to be to the social sciences what Darwinism is to the evolutionary biology. Specifically, I consider it a scientific method of analyzing history and current events, particularly in its historical materialist form. Conspiracy theory, conversely, is an anti-scientific mish-mash that seems to have more to do with the neuroses of a defeated middle class than a working class on the move against the bosses.
It’s a Conspiracy! No, It’s Not: A Debunking of the Classic Theories
Image by quarkscrew via Creative Commons
The New York Times’s Michiko Kakutani, so often the purveyor of eviscerating book reviews, for once truly loves something: an all-out mockery of a myriad of conspiracy theories, from 9/11 to Princess Diana, by David Aaronovich, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History:
The principle of Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest hypothesis is usually the correct one — or as the character Gil Grissom in “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” succinctly puts it, if you hear hoofbeats, “think horses, not zebras.”In his lively new book, “Voodoo Histories,” the journalist David Aaronovitch uses Occam’s razor to eviscerate the many conspiracy theories that have percolated through politics and popular culture over the last century, from those that assert that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually a United States government plot to those that claim that Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered at the direction…
Despite Obama Admin’s Promise, DEA Continues Raids On Medical Marijuana Growers
From Raw Story:
On Thursday, a Denver news station interviewed Chris Bartkowicz about his medical-marijuana operation in the basement of his home. Bartkowicz, confident of his compliance with state laws, boasted of its size and profitability.
“I’m definitely living the dream now,” he told 9News.
The following day, the dream was over.
Drug-enforcement agents raided his home, placed him under arrest, and carried off dozens of black bags of marijuana plants and growing lights…
[continues at Raw Story]
Philip K. Dick Contacted FBI to Warn of Secret Neo-Nazi Plot to Start World War III
This is a great story for PKD fans and others alike. Read Nick Redfern’s “The Strange Tale of Solarcon-6″ in the current issue of Fortean Times:
Undoubtedly, one of the prime reasons why Dick attracted attention from the FBI was a series of bizarre letters he penned to the Bureau in the early 1970s, in which he described his personal knowledge of an alleged underground Nazi cabal that was attempting to covertly manipulate science fiction writers to further advance its hidden cause.
And the nature of that cause was even more bizarre: to initiate a Third World War by infecting the American population with syphilis. On 28 October 1972, Dick wrote to the FBI and outlined his distinctly odd beliefs:
“I am a well-known author of science fiction novels, one of which dealt with Nazi Germany (called MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, it described an ‘alternate world’ in which the Germans and Japanese won World War Two and jointly occupied the United States).
“This novel, published in 1962 by Putnam and Co., won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year and hence was widely read both here and abroad; for example, a Japanese edition printed in Tokyo ran into several editions. I bring this to your attention because several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involved in politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels ‘to be read by the right people here and there’, as he phrased it. I refused to do this.”
A Meteorite, Older Than the Sun, Contains ‘Millions of Organic Compounds’
Definitely adding to the ideas for an exogenesis-related explanation for life on Earth. (I won’t go so far to embrace panspermia, although the co-discover of DNA, Francis Crick, did later in life.)
Interesting nonetheless. Doreen Walton writes on BBC News:
Scientists say they have confirmed that a meteorite that crashed into earth 40 years ago contains millions of different organic compounds. It is thought the Murchison meteorite could be even older than the Sun.”Having this information means you can tell what was happening during the birth of the Solar System,” said lead researcher Dr Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin. The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed,” said Dr Schmitt-Kopplin, who works at the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany. Meteorites are like some kind of fossil. When you try to understand them you are looking back in time,” he explained.
The researchers says the identification of many different chemicals shows the primordial Solar System probably had a higher molecular diversity than Earth.
The Scary World Of Synthetic Biology Goes DIY
A few months ago I posted a New Yorker story about synthetic biology. Now the New York Times reports that the stakes are getting higher, and scarier:
…The first thing to understand about the new science of synthetic biology is that it’s not really a new science; it’s a brazen call to conduct an existing one much more ambitiously. For almost 40 years, genetic engineers have been decoding DNA and transplanting individual genes from one organism into another. (One company, for example, famously experimented with putting a gene from an arctic flounder into tomatoes to make a variety of frost-resistant tomatoes.) But synthetic biologists want to break out of this cut-and-paste paradigm altogether. They want to write brand-new genetic code, pulling together specific genes or portions of genes plucked from a wide range of organisms — or even constructed from scratch in a lab — and methodically lacing them into a single set…
Americans Stock Up To Be Ready for End of the World
Paul Harris writes in the Guardian:
Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly.
Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs.
“I feel safe and more secure. I have taken personal responsibility for the safety of myself and of my family,” Pennington said. “We have decided to be prepared. There all kinds of disasters that can happen, natural and man-made.”
Pennington is a “prepper”, a growing social movement that has been dubbed Survivalism Lite. Preppers believe that it is better to be safe than sorry and that preparing for disaster — be it a hurricane or the end of civilisation – makes sense.
Unlike the 1990s…
Poisonous Sweetener Aspartame Renamed AminoSweet
I can personally attest that aspartame is a poison to be avoided at all costs. I guess that also applies to AminoSweet, as reported in Natural News:
In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.
Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health.…
Richard Branson Predicts Peak Oil In 2015
As the owner of a major airline, Virgin’s Richard Branson must think about the prospect of peak oil more than most of us. Apparently he’s a believer, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor:
Long-accustomed to being dismissed as alarmists, the arguments of those warning of an impending peak oil crisis are now being bolstered by support from multi-billionaires like Richard Branson.
A major report funded by the Virgin Airlines owner and other British business leaders warned this week that the world is running out of oil and predicts shortages and price spikes as soon as 2015. A future of painful hikes in the cost of food, heating, and travel in a world unprepared for surging oil prices was forecast by the Industry Taskforce for Peak Oil and Energy Security.
“Don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did,” wrote Mr. Branson and other business executives in a forward to the report…
DNA 2.0: A New Operating System for Life is Created
Linda Geddes writes in New Scientist:
A new way of using the genetic code has been created, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.
In all existing life forms, the four “letters” of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid.
Not any more. Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have now redesigned the cell’s machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets.
In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic “words” are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein…
Rethinking Hitler’s ‘Dumb Blonde’: The True Story of Eva Braun
Kate Connolly writes in the Guardian:
For decades she has been seen as a decorative companion to Adolf Hitler, an apolitical “dumb blonde” whose attentions served as an occasional diversion for the Führer. But the first academic biography of Eva Braun draws a different picture of the dictator’s long-standing girlfriend, claiming historians have hugely underestimated the role she played in his life.
Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker reveals her as a politically committed woman who won Hitler’s affections, enjoyed a healthy sex life with him, sympathised with Nazi politics and gave him psychological support. Görtemaker spent three years researching her book, Eva Braun: Life With Hitler, due out this month from the prestigious CH Beck publishing house. She was able to draw on previously unseen or little-known documents, letters, diary entries and photographs.
The Boy Behind Chat Roulette
I recently posted a story about the Internet insanity that is Chat Roulette. The good old New York Times, always a little late to the party, actually does a nice follow up by interviewing the man behind the madness:
…The lingering mystery, though, was who was behind the site. The question was answered on Saturday when Andrey Ternovskiy responded to the questions we sent to an e-mail address on Chatroulette. Mr. Ternovskiy said he was a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow.
“I was not sure whether I should tell the world who I am mainly because of the fact that I am under age. Now I think that it would be better to reveal myself,” Mr. Ternovskiy wrote.
I asked Mr. Ternovskiy about the origin of the idea for ChatRoulette, how he manages the technical challenges of running the site, whether he viewed it as a business, and about the way some…
New EPA Scrutiny for Commonly-Used Herbicide Atrazine
Jim Morris and M.B. Pell write on the Center for Public Integrity:
After years of fielding complaints about the ubiquitous weed-killer and water pollutant atrazine, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to take a closer look at the product, used on corn and other crops, mainly in the Midwest. Some of those complaints are documented in a database produced by the Center in 2008 as part as of our perils of the New Pesticides investigation.
Last week, an EPA advisory panel began assessing the latest science on the chemical, frequently found in surface waters and groundwater, and two more meetings of the advisory group are planned for later this year.
The Perils of the New Pesticides project includes a tool that allows the public to search 15 years of previously undisclosed EPA data for reported environmental and health effects of specific products. A search of “atrazine” produces 242 pages of results from 1992 through 2007. This…
Sitting Now (Podcast) Raises Pan with Brian Butler
Via: sittingnow.co.uk:
This week we venture back into the worlds of the Occult, and film-making. Brian Butler is a filmmaker, magician, and colleague to legendary director Kenneth Anger.
In this weeks episode we discuss: Jack Parsons and his magickal journey, The Night of Pan, Kenneth Anger, and how the occult can influence the filmmaking process.
This weeks guest is Brian Butler
Brian is screening his new film The Night of Pan, as well as performing live music with Death in Vegas’ Richard Fearless in London this week, make sure you don’t miss it — the event is free, and you can get more details here.
Read More: sittingnow.co.uk
Where’s Your Flying Car (and Your Jetpack)? (Video)
Via h+ magazine:
This article lists three real flying cars that are already in development — and provides video of each one!
MIT engineers are already taking deposits for next year’s roll-out of a “Roadable Aircraft” that can fold and stow its wings in less than 30 seconds — and then drive like a regular car.
And NASA’s electric-powered flying suit will even take off vertically like a helicopter before converting into a propeller-driven airplane. Though it accelerates up to 300 mph, one NASA engineer reports it has zero emissions, and “It’s a 10 times reduction in noise from the quietest helicopters today.”
Director Kevin Smith Thrown Off Oakland Flight Over Weight
Reports CBS13:
OAKLAND, Calif. ― A cult-favorite movie director has claimed that he was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland due to a dispute over his weight.
Kevin Smith, the creator of movies like Clerks, Dogma, and the upcoming Cop Out, posted a series of angry, sarcastic messages on his Twitter feed (@ThatKevinSmith) blasting Southwest Airlines for allegedly throwing him off a flight at Oakland International Airport after he had already been seated and buckled in.
According to Smith, a flight attendant told him the flight captain had deemed him a safety risk and requested that he leave the flight.
“I broke no regulation, offered no ’safety risk,’ (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?),” he wrote. “I’m way fat … But I’m not THERE just yet.”
Smith’s followers (numbering more than 1.6 million) flooded Twitter with support for the filmmaker and insults for Southwest Airlines’ official Twitter page.
Read More: CBS13
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