I’m not trading in my anything for this “wind-powered” car.
Category Archives: Science And Society
An Interesting Google Ad
This looks like an interesting course:
Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses—cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history—fit together?
Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world’s great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian.
This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past.
I and others actually tried to condense this story down to something that can be told in forty-five minutes or so at the dinner table, which we tell on Moon Day (coming up two weeks from today, on the forty-first anniversary of the lunar landing).
What was really interesting, though (and what mindless stereotypers on the left will find boggling) was that it was a Google ad at National Review…
The Republican “War on Science”
Some surprising thoughts from Neil Tyson.
Treating The Symptom
Reducing homocysteine levels doesn’t reduce the risk of heart attack.
I’ll bet that’s true for cholesterol as well. I’m not even fully convinced that reducing blood pressure does, though I’m a lot more open to the proposition for strokes.
The War On Science
…by Elena Kagan.
In Which Andrew Revkin Is Justifiably Mocked
After which, he is a good sport about it.
Like Treacher, I still think it’s a dumb song, though.
Orangutans
Are they people? If so, what rights do/should they have?
Very Bad News
If this guy is right:
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can “get there first”…us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it….I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens…
…If the BP data correctly or honestly identified four separate reservoirs then a bleed-out might gush less than 2 to 2.5 billion barrels unless the walls — as it were — fracture or partially collapse. I am hearing the same dark rumors which suggest fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway. Rumors also suggest a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making. They are just rumors but it is time for geologists or related experts to end their deafening silence and speak to these possibilities.
This is likely to become the biggest environmental disaster in history. At least American history. And hard to top, short of the Yellowstone Caldera blowing.
The Democrat War On Science
Expect this to be a recurring theme. The latest incident:
Needless to say, there is something ugly and hypocritical about glorifying the absolute authority of scientists and sanctimoniously preening about your bravery in “restoring” that authority — and then ignoring the scientists when politically expedient.
But it is bordering on the grotesque to handpick scientists to give you an opinion and then lie about what they actually said and implement a policy they don’t endorse. (According to the Journal, the Interior Department has apologized to the scientists. But the administration refuses to publicly acknowledge it did anything wrong.)
Of course it does. Not just hypocrites, but incompetent ones, who are compounding the damage to the Gulf economy from the oil leak by wiping out the local oil industry. Oh, and speaking of incompetence, how about this?
Against Governor Jindal’s wishes the federal government blocked oil-sucking barges today because they needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board and were having trouble contacting the owners.
We don’t have elections often enough.
Ain’t No Sunshine?
Or at least not enough sunspots:
Even with the solar cycle finally under way again, the number of sunspots has so far been well below expectations. Something appears to have changed inside the sun, something the models did not predict. But what?
We don’t know as much as we think we do, about climate on either the sun or the earth. Imagine the cosmic irony if we end up with a mile of ice over Chicago because we pauperized ourselves to keep the planet from warming.