The Zingularity
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The headline screams, minor memory lapses could be early sign of Alzheimer’s! Jebus fucking Christ, no one needs to read this. And I don’t mean no one over age 30, because we all know people over 30 if if we’re not, and we all have memory lapses. And yes, minor lapses do get worse over time. But if you want to read some of it and be very afraid, go below: [Read more…]
Update — Guys I’m having all kinds of fits with WP and the edit screen all of the sudden. I don’t even know if you can see this update, I can’t — DS
Carl Sagan was fond of saying gold is only made in supernova exploisons. An elegant and relevant way to bring the beauty of cosmology fown to earth. But some Harvard scientists are right, earth’s gold came from a cataclysm rarer than supernova, and every bit as violent if not more so: [Read more…]
With all the former tobacco shilling one time defense scientists turned global warning deniers, and a few scattered young earth creationist nuts buttressed by our friends looking for cosmic aliens in various physiological mechanisms, AKA Intelligent Design, you’d think the US still sports the most willfully ignorant subset of purportedly educated human beings in the western world. Perhaps we do — there is national pride to consider after all, so perhaps we do. But cast the eye of shame down south, way south, where our friends down under are giving US illiterates a run for our dumb money: [Read more…]
I’ve often preached to friends and family that, if you want to have good relationships, you must reward good behavior, or at the very least not reward the bad stuff. Admittedly it’s always easier to tell others to do this than to consistently practice it yourself, but it’s not exactly controversial either. This is common sense we all learned by 1st grade and spend the rest of lives trying to unlearn with varying and often miserable consequences. I hope the latter happens to ABC network executives, who just signed vaxxer nut and former playmate Jenny McCarthy to cohost The View: [Read more…]
Remember all that bullshit during the run up to the Iraq War about love it or leave? A lovely holdover from the Vietnam clusterfuck, carefully designed and tested to silence anyone who points out a policy happens to be both insane and deadly on a mass scale. Not to mention an economic super-massive black-hole. Secession compares with the best of that compartmentalized genre and, once again, rears its ugly head, this time in northern Colorado, where locals are whining they should be allowed to become a land-locked, insular state in the middle of the US — I dearly that wish could be granted as an example and warning to all future confederate wanna-bees.
Thankfully, I don’t have to link it, because Mistermix did that and succinctly summed up this nasty intersection between Teabilly politics, wealthy sociopaths, and traditional media dutifully posting some rotting online-chum: [Read more…]
Not long ago, a rare form of iron was found in oceanic crust worldwide dating to about 3.5 million years ago. Astronomers at the time noted that would be consistent with a relatively nearby supernova explosion. Now, another groups of scientists have the same substances incorporated into bacteria dating to the same time:
Columbus Dispatch — Dust from supernovae contains a radioactive isotope of iron called Fe-60, which could settle on Earth and be taken up by certain types of bacteria called magnetotactic. These single-cell organisms take up small bits of iron, producing nanometer-size grains of an iron-oxygen compound called magnetite, which they presumably use for navigation.The recent news from the American Physical Society meeting is that Fe-60 was detected in these bacterial fossils using clever technology developed for particle accelerators. Fe-60 does not occur naturally on Earth and is produced almost exclusively in supernova explosions.
These measured amounts of Fe-60 are small, but they are well within the detection limits of modern technology. In fact, two previous measurements by a different group using the same accelerator technology found Fe-60 in other ocean-floor sediments of about the same age — about 2.5 million years ago. The newly reported results are different in that the Fe-60 is now linked to fossils of magnetotactic bacteria.
And what is the most likely candidate for that supernova? The Scorpius–Centaurus Association, which our system drifted by beginning about three millions years ago and which includes, among other massive stars, the mighty Antares. Better known as the ruby red heart of Scorpio.
My friend John Cole over at the excellent sight Balloon Juice lost his cat unexpectedly last night. Cole’s cat Tunch, named after former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle and two-time pro-bowler Tunch Ilkin, was a most unlikely bloggy superstar. But because his antics were posted to a high traffic site on a regular basis, thousands of people from all over the world grew to appreciate him. He even appeared on T-shirts.
There are a lot of things that attracted me in the early years to Balloon Juice. Cole’s journey to political awareness mirrored my own in many ways. He started out as a relatively apathetic center-right Republican and, over time, moved toward the center. As the malfeasance during the Bush admin grew, Cole was able to examine his own beliefs and rather quickly came to cast off the conservative trappings that snare so many for life. Today he may call himself a moderate progressive, or he may not as I really don’t know, but based on most every issue I’ve seen him write about he comes across like a well informed, raging lefty. Another appealing feature is Cole will let fly, with a rare mix of passion, love, and anger, on people, places, and things he cares about. Plus he’s done a great job of recruiting like-minded writers who do the same and with whom he does not always agree with. [Read more…]
I’ll update it when the verdict comes in, reportedly any second now. I bet I won’t have to change this part though: people are going to go bananas over the verdict no matter what it is. They will spin implausible arguments involving unlikely conspiracies …
Update 9 PM Central: ********************************* Not Guilty ******************************
I remember vividly years ago when a bunch of us at an office were ushered into a room where a motivational speaker had been commissioned to make us all feel guilty for wasting our lives. Carpe Diem, Latin for seize the day, was the theme. But the underlying intent was to shame us all into working harder for no raises or promotions. I took it too heart, completely, just not in the way my scheming employer intended.
If you really need to get your ass kicked in that regard, here’s an excerpt from a reporter in Syria who got herself into a bad situation earlier this month and wrote what she thought might be her final words: [Read more…]