This is a pretty weird story. Was a time traveller captured on film in 1928?
Category Archives: Science And Society
What Happened To All The Hurricanes?
Al?
The crazy 2004 and 2005 seasons were supposed to be the new normal. Pretend scientists like Al Gore said global warming was here, and we had better listen to him because he had all the answers. People pay Al Gore $200,000 to speak, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything.
I hope this is another bubble. We’d be better off paying him that much not to speak.
Health And Beauty Benefits
…from s3x. Print it out and tape it to her mirror, guys.
Worse Than You Thought
There’s long been a known correlation between heart disease and belly fat. This may be the reason why:
Scientists are reporting new evidence that the fat tissue in those spare tires and lower belly pooches — far from being a dormant storage depot for surplus calories — is an active organ that sends chemical signals to other parts of the body, perhaps increasing the risk of heart attacks, cancer, and other diseases. They are reporting discovery of 20 new hormones and other substances not previously known to be secreted into the blood by human fat cells and verification that fat secretes dozens of hormones and other chemical messengers.
Does this imply that we should be removing it via liposuction as preventive medicine, and not just cosmetic surgery? Having too much weight is apparently self reinforcing, not just because it makes it harder to exercise (and increases damage to joints in the hips and knees), but perhaps also because of the hormonal effects. Have there been any studies to see whether lipo patients’ health improved afterward, as well as their looks, or do they just put it back on?
Iowahawk’s Carbon Day
It appears to have been a huge success.
Mind Your Own Business
I was going to comment on this the other day, but Ezra Levant, who has more of a dog in the fight (so to speak), has:
NASA used to be about exploring space — that’s what the S stands for. But NASA’s new boss, Charles Bolden, recently told Al Jazeera TV that Obama has given him new marching orders: Inspire children to learn math, expand international relationships. “Perhaps foremost. he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”
I guess that’s what happens when a “community organizer” becomes president.
But when you think about it, Hansen is following Obama’s instructions perfectly: The Saudis probably do “feel good” that NASA is trying to shut down their Canadian oil competitors.
I wish that Hansen was muzzled half as much as he pretends he is. He is, or at least should be, an embarrassment to the agency.
Cure Alzheimers
…and solve the social security problem. Thoughts from Jim Pinkerton.
Heretic
Why Hal Lewis resigned from the American Physical Society.
Was it always this politicized?
Carbon Action Day
Iowahawk has a contest to increase your carbon footprint. I’m going to go for heavy breathing, myself, though if I had the money, I’d hire a private jet.
Monkey Self Awareness
I continue to be baffled by research such as this:
It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants.
What I continue to not understand is why they don’t think that (e.g.) cats are self aware. My cats recognize each other, so they clearly recognize cats. When they see themselves in a mirror, they don’t treat it like another cat — they basically ignore it. Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves? What am I missing here?
According to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, the new findings fit with his work on capuchin monkeys who don’t quite recognize themselves in mirrors, but don’t treat the reflections as belonging to strangers. “As a result, we proposed a gradual scale of self awareness. The piece of intriguing information presented here may support this view,” he said.
However, de Waal cautioned that “many scientists would want more tests and more controls” — a warning especially salient in light of a high-profile controversy involving Marc Hauser, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist who appears to have overstated the cognitive powers of his own monkeys.
“What you’re seeing in the videos is subject to all kinds of interpretations,” said Gordon Gallup, a State University of New York at Albany psychologist who invented the mirror test, and has administered it with negative results to rhesus monkeys. “I don’t think these findings in any way demonstrate that rhesus monkeys are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors.”
It seems to me that, for whatever reason (Homo Sapiens chauvinism?), some scientists go out of their way to deny the obvious. It reminds me of the arguments during Descartes’s day that animals couldn’t feel pain, and the even more absurd ones that babies couldn’t, either, used as an excuse to not have to use anaesthesia to operate on them.
[Update a while later]
I should add that there is no definitive test for self awareness. There is no way to know for certain that anyone other than yourself is self aware.