Alan Boyle has a roundup of what happened in 2008.
Category Archives: General Science
First A Purple Cow
…and now this:
Dr Mike Edwards, an English teacher at Meoncross School in Stubbington, Hants, first spotted the squirrel outside his classroom window.
He said: ‘I was sitting in my classroom and looked out the window and saw it sitting on the fence. I had to do a double take.
‘Since then it’s been a bit of a regular at the school – everyone’s seen it.
‘We thought it might have been paint or something but then when you look at it up close, it’s an all-over coat, not in patches like you’d expect if it had been near some paint.
‘Its fur actually looks purple all the way through. It’s an absolute mystery.’
But I can tell you any how, I’d rather see than be one.
The Yawn
Explained. It’s for thermal management of the brain.
What Really Happened?
Alan Boyle has a piece on what looks to be an interesting PBS series on biblical archaeology. I agree that it is not the archaeologist’s job to either prove, or disprove creation myths. His job is to, as best as can be done, utilize the scientific method to figure out what the past really was.
The Big Chill?
So, are we heading for rising sea levels, or a return of the glaciers? A roundup of the debate.
Blood Suckers
No, this isn’t a political post, despite the potential upcoming ascendancy of the leech class in DC. Alan Boyle has an interesting article about them in nature, and why human vampires don’t work.
Well, that’s a relief. But then, the author in question probably never spent much time in DC.
A Beautiful Math
John Tierney writes about an interesting television special on fractals.
Due For Disaster
This article is about the potential for a great quake in San Francisco, but the problem is actually much more widespread. LA is vulnerable as well, though not, as popular imagination has it, from the San Andreas fault, which is quite a distance away. Of much more concern (particularly to me, as a property owner in the South Bay) is the Newport-Inglewood fault, which comes within a few miles of my house. That’s the fault that ruptured in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and a seven on it would be much worse than an eight on the San Andreas, because it runs right through the LA metro area.
The Northwest is also in danger–there could be a magnitude nine in the Seattle area at almost any time. Of course, the greatest danger is in those areas that get quakes so rarely that they’re in no way prepared for them, such as the east coast. There’s still a lot of unreinforced masonry there that will come tumbling down in the event of a significant temblor, and they’re not unheard of.
Of course, in Florida, I live in one of the most seismically inactive places in the country. I can put all kinds of things on top of other things here that I’d never consider doing in California. Instead, we have to watch the weather for hurricanes half the year.
Pre-Humans
Alan Boyle has a story on the latest thinking about Lucy, with a cool artist’s rendering. And of course, no post like this is complete without the usual clueless comments by the creationists.
The Last Of The Neanderthals
Here’s an interesting piece on the latest research, at National Geographic:
“Most Neanderthals and modern humans probably lived most of their lives without seeing each other,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “The way I imagine it is that occasionally in these border areas, some of these guys would see each other at a distance…but I think the most likely thing is that they excluded each other from the landscape. Not just avoided, but excluded. We know from recent research on hunter-gatherers that they are much less peaceful than generally believed.”
“Sometimes I just turn out the lights in here and think what it must have been like for them.”
Nasty, brutish, short.
And many people have no idea how close we are to returning to those days, should things take a wrong turn.