Brendon Loy has some thoughts.

Phil Bowermaster has an interesting interview with a researcher who think he may have one, that will start being tested in human subjects next year.

…through vibrators.

No, not that kind of vibrator. Get your mind out of the gutter:

Dr. Rubin, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is reporting that in mice, a simple treatment that does not involve drugs appears to be directing cells to turn into bone instead of fat.

All he does is put mice on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it. The mice stand there for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. Afterward, they have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform

Someone let me know when they see the first instance (and it’s when, not if–I can almost guarantee that there will be one) of a Global Warmmonger making the claim that this year’s mild hurricane season is evidence of climate change. I’m fearless in my prediction, because I haven’t yet seen any meteorological phenomenon for which this hasn’t occurred.

[Update at 1 PM EDT]

Speaking of hurricanes (or hurricane shortages), here’s an article that says that “scientists” (I use the scare quotes, because I think they’re really planetary engineers–many people confuse science and engineering, most notably in “rocket science”) are getting closer to being able to steer hurricanes. But this is an interesting dilemma:

…the hurricane modifiers are fighting more than the weather. Lawyers warn that diverting a hurricane from one city to save life and property could result in multi-billion dollar lawsuits from towns that bear the brunt instead. Hurricane Katrina caused about $41 billion in damage to New Orleans.

At first glance, this might be a problem for people who want to divert asteroids. It would be ironic if we went the way of the dinosaurs over fear of lawyers…

But the situations aren’t quite the same. The earth is big, but it’s not that big, and the Caribbean and Gulf are pretty small places when it comes to herding hurricanes. They have to go somewhere, and almost anywhere you send one is likely to encounter someone with the phone number of an ambulance chaser.

But (as Douglas Adams once noted) space is big. As long as you ensure that the rock (or dirty snowball) misses the planet entirely (which shouldn’t be that hard if you catch it early enough), there should be no fear of a day in court.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Is climate too complex to make accurate predictions? Color me shocked.

“This finding reinforces not only that climate policies will necessarily be made in the face of deep, irreducible uncertainties,” says Roger Pielke, a climate policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US. “But also the uncomfortable reality

…in the brain. I think my brain is broken, in that regard.

[Early afternoon update]

Derb has some related thoughts:

People like TD and myself understand that the universe is a deeply mysterious place, and the human personality likewise. (In reference to which, by the way, I refuse to let anyone get away with using the word “materialist.” either positively or negatively, unless that person can demonstrate to me that he has at least attempted to understand modern theories

Just in time for Noel, though it looks as though it’s going to curve around and miss us. Actually, though, if it remains just a tropical storm, I wish it would come up and cross the lake, which is still five feet below normal after they drained it last year for the hurricanes that didn’t happen.

So much for the dire hurricane predictions for this year, and the notion that global warming means that they’ll be bigger and more frequent, and that it’s already happening. So far, it’s 2004-2005 that look anomalous.

…and now garlic turns out to be heart healthy. And a cancer preventative. Life is good. If everyone would eat it, few would be bothered by the aroma.

Nobel Prize winner Al Gore is also a warmonger:

The trouble is that Gore’s preferred policies will lead to a poorer, energy starved world. Far better, one might think, to tackle malaria, sea level rise, drought, hunger, and so on directly rather than by tinkering with the chemical composition of the atmosphere. As Indur Goklany has shown, we can do this for a fraction of the cost.

I’ve been skeptical about the link between dietary fat, and weight and poor health for a long time (at least since I first read Barry Sears’ analyses, over a decade ago). John Tierney (who has fortunately escaped from behind the Times Select prison) writes that the “science” behind the linkage is bogus, and that our fat aversion is probably one of the leading causes of obesity, since we switched to carbohydrates, which are much worse for us. But the reason that the bogus theory was promoted and accepted for so long is an interesting story of scientific sociology:

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn

I was watching television tonight, on one of my new HD channels on DirecTV (no, I didn’t get paid for that, but I wish I had). If you want to understand this concept, and unintended consequences, go no further than to watch The Producers (either version).

They deliberately picked the worst play, the worst playwright, the worst director, the worst cast, and it turned into a hit. And things like that can happen all the time.

[Morning update]

Sorry some found this post cryptic. Let me rewrite. I was watching “The Producers” (movie version of the musical) last night, on one of the new DirecTV HD channels (a fact that was incidental to the real point, which was that I was watching The Producers). The unintended, and undesired success of their musical was an emergent property of their attempts to make it a failure, by choosing the worst of everything, which somehow resulted in a hit. I was not slamming HD–I was plugging DirecTV for being the first to offer a large number of HD channels.