The headline to the link article below is a bit over the top. It reads “Is there life on Ceres?” The answer is, we have absolutely no way to know that because that pic above represents the best we’ve got. Ceres is tiny, distant, and dim. But our knowledge of this enigmatic world is about to change radically: [Read more…]
I’m an atheist by birth. I have never believed in any supernatural beings, not ghosts, not demons, not gods. It’s not a conscious choice, it’s just the way I am. It turns out PZ weighed in on this and some of his thoughts are quoted at CNN today: [Read more…]
An op-ed worth reading popped up in the NYT over the weekend. It’s written by a former “wiz-kid” who was pulling in millions by age 30 and grew disillusioned: [Read more…]
Pretty cool, cosmologists are developing the Standard Model for the universe. A while back I saw something on TV that speculated on how galaxies and clusters move. It almost reminded me of material moving through a cell along ionic channels on the submicroscopic scale. I’m not saying the universe is alive or anything, but it is probably way more complicated and ordered than we currently know.
Derogatory and scary comments directed at women, in large part women who are for one reason or another known by a real name to an online community, is a hot topic these days. The Internet is definitely a sewer, go to just about any active youTube video and check out the comment section for easy-to-find examples of pointless vitriol.
As someone who has waded through interminable chat logs for online communities of all kinds, I have seen some bizarre and at time unintentionally funny shit. Men posing as women and cybering with other men posing as women. Classic. I’ve seen men cybering with other men and then contacting that man and trying to scare them or even blackmail them by threatening to out them. But the worst thing I’ve ever seen was … [Read more…]
I know this route, I’ve been on it and I’m still friends to this day with the guys who first established it. The climber may have rehearsed it, inspected it carefully for loose holds, and cleaned it from top to bottom. and it’s still every bit as dangerous as it looks.
A couple of plug in updates, some other updates, and things seem better. I may be less frustrated and back in business. If this awesome pic posts anyway, that’ll be a good sign.
I take this as yet more proof there is no God. Jesus, how hard would it have been for an omnipotent being to nudge justice along when the killers were already in custody and the murder was captured on video surveillance cameras showing the victim begging for his life as the blows and taser jolts fell? [Read more…]
The political divide on evolution has grown over the last few years. Which, given the increasingly hard right turn of the GOP, where thigns like science or expertise are now held in contempt except when they pledge complete fealty to the party line, should not be a surprise: [Read more…]
Just goes to show, stats and empirical science beats the pants off of anything else:
WU — As notable as this week’s cold wave was–bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation–the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. As wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me, “The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country–18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California.” Part of the reason that this week’s cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate.
As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, “While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability.” For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.