Category: Science & Space

Anyone who knows me relatively well, or has listened to me spout about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, knows that I’m a skeptic. Psychic abilites, astrology, ghosts: I’m not down with that. There are reasons which I could elaborate on, but they are beyond the scope of this entry.

Alternative medical treatments such as the various herbal supplements, acupuncture, acupressure, etc., deserve more cautious evaluation because they haven’t been thoroughly investigated yet. Although, I point you to a past entry stating that Echinacea is ineffective.

The NY Times today had an article about the growing “new” applications of leaches and maggots by mainstream surgeons.

This rings of that scene from Gladiator after General Studly-Man was captured by the slavers and had his wounds cleaned by maggots.

For those of you who enjoy this sort of weather, the heat index yesterday was about 115 degrees.

What’s a “Heat Index?” Well for those of you, like me, who really didn’t have a notion how the number is developed, I point you to the handy-dandy wikipedia entry on Heat Index. Pay close attention to the formula; there will be a quiz.

It has come to may attention through the auspices of one of my favorite blogs, Bad Astronomy, that a number of sites are Google Bombing the phrase Intelligent Design.

Normally, I would eschew such practices as they are low and mean and could be considered unethical, but this is in an excellent cause.

So, a message to all proponents of Intelligent Design: You need to have better arguments than eyes and blood before you can truthfully question thousands of scientists. Get a Theory! Make a prediction! Do the test! Then, maybe, you will find the chink you’re looking for in the armor of evolutionary theory

In a lot of respects, I find myself the Bush-defender when I’m engaged in conversations with my generally-more-democratic friends. I defend his energy bill (a bit) and a lot of his foreign policy decisions, and lament generally on the state of politics.

Then, however, he comes out with something so mind-boggingly stupid that I want to go find him and smack him one. I was alerted through The Panda’s Thumb last week concerning his comments about teaching intelligent design in America’s schools “so people can understand what the debate is about.”

At the time, I dropped it into the pit of my sarcastic soul as another one of those stupid bushisms. Unfortuately, TIME magazine picked up the topic and ran with it. Their article, to be kind, is so scrupulously “fair” as to give perfect credence to the numbskull reasoning behind Intelligent Design arguments, which shows a lack of knowledge by the reporter of the basic issues concerning evolutionary theory.

This stuff just pisses me off! I hate reading this stuff and feeling like I need to go out, find someone who supports ID, and club them.

Rant over. Tune in next week

The tenth planet is found! At least if you jump on the bandwagon that anything larger than an existing planet (that is not a moon) must also be a planet.

Personally, I think that Pluto should be downgraded from planet status to mere Kuiper belt object. It’s not going to bother me if we only have 8 planets instead of 9.

For more information than you really care for on Kuiper belt objects, please see the Google search on Kuiper belt, or go to the first hit on the search returns

Remember, “Kuiper” rhymes with “Viper”.

The Astronomy Picture of the Day website is one of my favorites. It gets a hit every day when I get into work. They proprietors manage to come up with some exciting and interesting images.

Today they had a picture from Greece of a sun transit by the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Discovery, while docked. Far out…

I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition on the 25th that cats lack the gene that enables them to sense sweet tastes in the same way we do.

This study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center was published in the Public Library of Science’s journal Genetics.

I find this item fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint. Was the gene turned off before or after cats became exclusively carnivores? I’m not a evolutionary geneticist, but it would be my inclination to assume that the taste buds disappeared, selecting cats to prefer meat-only diets.