.png){kind=logo}
Here, have some beautiful high-res time lapse photography by Bjørnar Eilertsen in Kristiansund, Norway, on January 24th, following the recent coronal mass ejection event. That’s “solar flare” to non-geeks. There’s even more pretty pictures and videos at The Atlantic.
Archive for January, 2012
The numbers don’t lie: as many long guns in Toronto as in rural areas
January 31st, 2012 
Jason Thibeault The impending destruction of the long gun registry has been touted by conservatives (and most especially conserva-bot sockpuppets) as being primarily intended as a sop to the rural voters who are “disproportionately affected” by the long gun registry is another demonstrable falsehood. As it turns out, there are 287,000 long guns in the Greater Toronto [...]
Posted in Canada, Guns, Politics 
Tags: bullshit, Canada, Conservatives, domestic murder, domestic violence, Harper, long gun registry, social causes, women 
6 Comments »Study: Poor thinking skills and conservatism/racism/homophobia strongly correlated
January 30th, 2012 Jason Thibeault Via Jezebel, sometimes science isn’t just good for improving humanity’s lot in this universe, or improving (or drastically reducing) our overall life expectancy as a species. Sometimes science is also excellent at coming along and sciencing you up the perfect blog post. As it turns out, pretty much everything you’ve suspected about conservatism and racism [...]
Posted in Gender, Politics, Science Tags: authoritarianism, Conservatives, epistemology, human rights, isolationism, racism, religion 17 Comments »Fan-made Thundercats movie trailer kicks all sorts of ass
January 30th, 2012 Jason Thibeault You have to admit, whether you’ve seen the original Thundercats or not, this fan-made CG movie trailer has everything it would take to be a box-office success. It would certainly get me to watch. I mean, never mind the fact that I watched Thundercats regularly as a kid, and this probably breaks a dozen bits [...]
Narcissism has higher health costs for men
January 29th, 2012 Jason Thibeault A fascinating but not entirely surprising result from a study about narcissism suggests that men incur a higher cost health-wise for trying to appear manly, or otherwise in conformity with stereotypical gender roles. For the new study, Konrath and colleagues David Reinhard of the University of Virginia, and William Lopez and Heather Cameron of the [...]
Posted in Gender, Science Tags: cortisol, gender, narcissism, PLoS One, science, stress, study 6 Comments »Blue Marble Redux
January 29th, 2012 Jason Thibeault Via Wired Science, here’s what could be the single most powerful image of the year, though we’re not even through January yet. The full image is 8000×8000 pixels. It is extremely high resolution — if you zoom in, you can see signs of civilization in some spots on the North American continent. This was taken [...]
Posted in Climate, Science Tags: Earth, high resolution photos, nasa, satellite imagery 5 Comments »Newt’s new windmill: a moon base by 2020
January 28th, 2012 Jason Thibeault That’s right, Newt Gingrich wants a permanent American-controlled moon base by the end of his second term in office. Don’t worry Republicans, he’s not suggesting, you know, actual funding by the government or anything — just that private enterprise will, somehow, for some inexplicable reason, become motivated to find ways to do it. Speaking in [...]
Posted in Politics, Science, Space Tags: imperialism, Invisible Hand of the Market, magical thinking, Martin Bashir, moon, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Newt Gingrich, space 8 Comments »Sacrelicious slash ad
January 28th, 2012 Jason Thibeault Via Copyranter, here’s a (probably parody) ad for United Colors of Benetton that’s bound to raise some hackles. Funny how a campaign built around the idea of reducing levels of hatred in our society has this absurdly ironic tendency of drawing so much controversy. And it’s not like this stuff is unprecedented — just search [...]
Posted in Gender, Humour, Religion Tags: advertisements, Christianity, gender, homosexuality, slash fiction, United Colors of Benetton 8 Comments »Abobo’s Big Adventure
January 28th, 2012 Jason Thibeault Remember Abobo, the mini-boss with the big round head and the weird moustache in Double Dragon? The one you had to jump-kick twenty or so times to beat, who basically tried to eat your head if you attacked him in any other way? Well, it turns out Abobo had a son, named Aboboy, who has [...]
RCimT: Spacey particle physicsey sciencey catch-up Friday
January 27th, 2012 Jason Thibeault Some random science bits and bobs to clear out a bunch of tabs. Scientists have discovered the speed limit for quantum interactions, and it is much, much slower than the speed of light. It is a little faster than twice the speed of sound in the medium in question, in fact. Yes, apparently also for [...]
Recent Comments