Police investigating serial hackers stealing and posting emails between climate researchers raided the home and confisctaed the computer of at least climate denier’s home this week: [Read more…]
The Zingularity
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Police investigating serial hackers stealing and posting emails between climate researchers raided the home and confisctaed the computer of at least climate denier’s home this week: [Read more…]
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, its a giant launch system for commercial spacecraft! It’s not built yet, but the legendary Burt Rutan claims his company will build it and space customers will come: [Read more…]
… The Protestor?! From Occupy Wall Street to the bloody sands of Libya, the person who most changed our world in 2011 was the humble protestors. AKA brave patriots when the powers that be agree with their cause in a foreign land, dirty jobless hippies when the protests are here in America. And while choosing the pseudonymous collective as the recipient of an award meant for a single human seems a little bit lame, it also feels a little bit right.
According to the headline on this MSNBC story, we’re all just a bunch of Scrooges. Sans the redeeming visiting spirits and a short trip to hell wrapped in chains bit. The title reads Atheists ramp up message for holidays: Humbug! Of course the actual message was nothing of the sort: [Read more…]
And now I have to leave this exciting story and sign in to help people fix their damn computers over the phone … if anyone is seasonally inclined, contributions to my Paypal account, Darksydothemoon@aol.com, might someday help free me of this dreary ball and chain.
BTW, we’re tweeting up a storm on this, I’m at SAndrewDKos. @CERN: Bottom line from #ATLAS: 2.3 sigma excess for a #Higgs mass at 126 GeV. More checks will come with 2012 data.
Via the Bad Astronomer: For clarity, 2.6 sigma = 99% confidence, 2.3 = 97%. Not bad, but not enough to make solid claims. It’ll be another year or so before we know for sure.
The most important insight into our entire cosmos is unfolding in the December afternoon, European time, and all my shitty cable news channels are babbling about is Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney vying to out know-nothing each other to win know-nothing votes. Churchill was right about democracy …
Word is the Higgs has been glimpsed … So far, eggheads are talking, the webcast is streaming. Still photos being posted here. The Guardian is live blogging updating text here: [Read more…]
She’s a witch! That may be a little comical what with Life of Brian and the weight of ducks and all, but the story linked below is nothing of the sort. Our staunch oily allies in Saudi Arabia literally put a woman to death for being a sorceress:
(SacBee) — Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. The Saudi Interior Ministry says in a statement the execution took place Monday, but gave no details on the woman’s crime. The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session.
I’m all for giving faith healing grifters a hard time, up to an including doing hard time when and if they cause harm to trusting victims. But this is sick. Since the details of this case are a state secret we can only speculate that this particular lady did not practice state approved magic and sorcery, aka Islam.
The mystery may get a little less mysterious in this afternoon:
(BBC) — Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester, called the quality of the LHC’s results “exceptional”, adding: “Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs particle exists, but it is likely not going to be a Christmas present.”
He told me: “The Higgs particle would, of course, be a great discovery, but it would be an even greater discovery if it didn’t exist where theory predicts it to be.”
The Higgs boson is a “fundamental” particle; one of the basic building blocks of the Universe. It is also the last missing piece in the leading theory of particle physics – known as the Standard Model – which describes how particles and forces interact.
Southern Greenland scenery, near Nanortalik, where fjords and mountains dominate the landscape.
Antarctica beckons, and on the other end of the earth, the island or continent or whatever we’re calling Greenland these days is rising, literally, thanks to global warming and a process called isostasy: [Read more…]
The blue ice covering the lake comes from glacial meltwater from the Canada Glacier and other smaller glaciers. The fresh water stays on top of the lake and freezes, sealing in briny water below.
It seems a shame, an entire continent rugged and rich in its own way, wasted, at least for exploitation by modern day humans. But that unique environment has enormous potential for science, and it could be an ideal place for astronomy and space exploration research that might reach far beyond the icy plains and frozen mountains: [Read more…]
I beg you, I beseech you, oh Mighty Gods of Twitter, please fix the myriad, aggravating flaws with your user interface. I like Twitter, my friends like Twitter, it’s become a primary Internet tool. almost on par with Google. The underlying concept is brilliant, like an adult version of Facebook, without the bullshit fluffy-feely we-wanna-harvest-every-last thing about you and exploit it for our gain angle. Just a few years ago we didn’t even know we needed Twitter and now we can’t imagine online life without it. Bravo! But goddamit, right now I’d love to see you half as engaged in user concerns as Facebook. [Read more…]