Fascinating work in the exo-planet community on the ultimate search for worlds beyond our solar system:

Planet-hunters say they’ve developed a relatively simple method for determining how livable a faraway world might be, and they’ve used the formula to identify a top candidate: a super-Earth that’s 36 light-years away.

Most current detection methods are still limited to planets several times more massive than earth orbiting relatively small stars. But the eclipse method used by NASA’s Kepler observatory and increased sensitive in earth-bound observations offer hope this will be refined, until earth-mass planets circling larger stars are detectable. The next step after that would be obtaining a readable spectrum which could produce the chemical signature of quasi-terrestrial conditions.

First of all, thank one or more Gods — and more probably none — it’s Friday (Stole it from Futurama), and that it’s a holiday weekend here in the states! A decent day for meta, and since this is the first here, it will be the beta. No doubt as part of the beta some will insist this be alpha. Speaking of which, if I don’t get some new computers soon, it may be my omega.

There’s an interesting diary on the reclist at Daily Kos about education and climate change. The author, screen name lawyernerd, complains his or her child’s science teacher has willfully joined the walking brainless dead by dissing climate change.

I am so mad I can’t hardly see straight. My kid came home from school yesterday and said that the science teacher for the middle school says that global warming is a myth. She is also going to have all of the 7th and 8th graders do a “lab” which “proves” global warming is a myth. she also told them that it is a lie made up by scientists to keep getting money for research.

I’m not sure what it is about thermometers that these clowns haven’t grasped yet. It’s a simple invention by today’s standards, anyone who knows how to count can use one, I’m willing to bet if a single cheap thermometer indicated that teacher’s own cute little baby was running a few degrees above normal they’d take it damn seriously. But thousands of ultra precise thermometers all over the world monitored by experts 24/7, backed up by optical and infrared satellites and sensitive proxy data going back as far as one wishes to study? No, the silly scientists must have it all wrong or be making it up.

Anyway, an interesting thing happened in that Daily Kos diary: the author found support and information via comments that helped them pursue an effective and proactive course of action to address the issue. Yay science, yay community.

FreeThoughtBlogs could soon become a thriving online community the way things are going. Here’s a thought to stir your noodle over the long weekend: How could we encourage that process? Does it just have to happen, or are there steps which might help?

Among those who value a clump of cells more than a person, the idea of diverting material headed for a medical waste incinerator to the research lab is somehow akin to killing children. And that’s with material in the earliest stages of development, called blastocysts, as small or smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. No fingers, no toes, surely no brain, not even a single nerve cell.

If the usual suspects get wind of this new treatment in late stage testing, it’ll be a full on wingnut freakout jamboree:

“Data from the laboratory safety tests, neurological examinations and neurofunctional tests conducted thus far indicate that the ReN001 treatment is safe and well-tolerated at the initial dose,” the company said in a statement on Thursday. The procedure involves injecting ReNeuron’s neural stem cells into patients’ brains in the hope they will repair areas damaged by stroke, thereby improving both mental and physical function. It uses stem cells derived from human fetuses rather than embryos, which were used in a stem cell trial to treat patients with spinal cord injuries by Geron Corp of the United States.

Oh yeah, fetal stem lines, from fetuses, of the human species, or the human kind for you flat-earthers. OK, it’s a little gory sounding. But not nearly as much as, say, removing the still beating heart from a brain-dead corpse and putting it in uncle Jim’s chest, or work on grafting artificial skin made from a derived pus gland on the underside of large arachnids into the freshly seared flesh of a burn victim.

The fact is human trauma is gory, it is after all the definition of blood and gore. That’s why only a segment of the population at large look forward to a career up to their elbows in someone else’s blood and guts. There was a time when they would have been heretics, when cutting into a dead human body or a live one — with the possible exception of saving their immortal soul with horrific torture of course — was considered a sin. Fortunately we got past that, despite the same kind of resistance among the same kind of authoritarian shitheads trying to stop stem cell research.

         

Left Oldowan tools, right, classic Archeulean hand axe, via the Wiki, click pics for more info

Paleo-anthropologists have unearthed evidence for complex stone tools being used 350,000 years earlier than  than thought in Northern Kenya:

“We suspected that Kokiselei was a rather old site, but I was taken aback when I realised that the geological data indicated it was the oldest Acheulian site in the world,” said lead author Christopher Lepre, a geologist from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Rutgers University, both in the U.S., of the paper published in Nature today.

The two early primary stone tool cultures are Oldowan and Acheulean, shown above. Oldowan tools tend to be simple flakes sharpened along one edge, while Archeulean hand axes are generally bi-faced, tear-dropped shaped, and sometimes rather beautiful pieces of work. Most scientists speculate the simpler tools were made by Homo habilis and/or his close kin, whereas the oldest hand axes now firmly overlap the time period of H. ergaster, a larger brained hominid considered the best candidate to give rise to several successful clades of hominid including the classic Home erectus and H. heidelbergensis. (Although, who used what probably wouldn’t be completely settled even if a complete fossilized hand from a specific hominid was found wrapped around one tool or the other).

As important as stone tools and fossils are, wouldn’t it be fascinating to actually see these early humans? Anthropologists have been able to extract and infer a great deal from bits of bone and chipped stone, but imagine what creatures in the distant future would make if they found a few petrified ivory keys stuck in a chunk of fossilized wooden frame from a grand piano? They might infer it was intended to be operated by fingers, maybe even the idea of a musical instrument. But the rich and diverse history of symphonies and operas and rock and roll would be forever lost to time.

Or in this case, Texas Governor Rick Perry’s dominionist version of the ancient rain dance he performed on cue last month in Houston. You remember it, right? It was called The Response — there’s even a dedicated webpage for the fond memories — and featured the latest bat-shit crazy or devious, cunning fundamentalist grifters. They prayed to God-eh and praised the super rich. But alas, no rain followed. If the idea was to produce a drop of rain, we can now safely pronounce Perry’s Response a complete failure.

Now, weeks later, the one system that could have brought sweet drenching rain to the crumbling Texas hill country and baked coastal plains may not quite make it. Although there’s a good chance the system becomes tropical storm Lee, perhaps even hurricane Lee similar to the surprise Humberto bestowed, it is forecast to stay just slightly to the east of the crooked Houston-Austin-Dallas line. No rain soon, praise be to science!

I blame Perry (Yeah, get used to it, Rick).