Posts like this are why I read Pharyngula for the science, and not for the moral or political stances taken therein.
Of course, I’m still perfectly ok associating with PZ Myers just as I am associating with Rightwingsparkle, despite the fact I find them both to have political stances that drive me to club baby seals - innocent ones at that - as a tension reliever.
Although, no offense, PZ, but she’s hotter.
A meteorite which ploughed into the Peruvian countryside last year should have shattered and dispersed long before reaching the ground.
That is the conclusion of scientists who have been examining samples of the space rock and the 15m-wide crater it dug out in Carancas last September.
The discovery of a water-filled hole, following reports of a fireball in the sky, made headlines around the world.
Now experts say the event challenges conventional theories about meteorites.
Clearly, given that current scientific theories regarding meteorites may now have to be amended, we should accept that evolution is false and creationism is true and that quantum mechanics should be supplanted by the powerful truth of The Secret.
MIGHTY oaks from little acorns grow. In the 1840s an astronomer called Urbain Le Verrier noticed there was something wrong with the orbit of Mercury. The main axis of the planet’s orbital ellipse shifts each time it goes round the sun. That was well known, and is caused by the gravitational pull of Venus. Le Verrier, however, realised that the orbit was shifting too fast. The excess was a tiny fraction of a degree. But it was a disturbing departure from the purity of Newton’s majestic clockwork—a departure that was explained only 70 years later, when Einstein’s general theory of relativity swept Newton away by showing that gravity operates by distorting space itself.
Even Einstein, however, may not have got it right. Modern instruments have shown a departure from his predictions, too. In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America’s unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected.
Once might be happenstance. But this strange extra acceleration was seen subsequently with two other craft. That, as Goldfinger would have put it, looks like enemy action.
Oh man, if the scientific method finds a flaw in current thinking, it means we have to return to the default position that gravitation is actually a bunch of industrious elves moving things around.
Forget everything we have learned to date! Be gone, evil anti-elf secularism!
Elves, baby!
Very smart, very fast - and surprisingly magical - elves.
Amen.
Your liver, maybe not so much:
Middle-aged non-drinkers can quickly reduce their risk of heart disease by introducing a daily tipple to their diet, South Carolina researchers say.
New moderate drinkers were 38% less likely to develop heart disease than those who stayed tee-total, a four-year study involving 7,500 people found.
Those who drank only wine showed the most benefit, the researchers reported in the American Medical Journal.
Does this mean, as Benjamin Franklin once said, that the making of wine is “a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy?” If so, does that mean he really doesn’t like Southern Baptists, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists?
I guess we know who won’t be getting invited to the Heavenly kegger. Won’t they be surprised?
Boy, how I am going to laugh and laugh and laugh at them from my place in Hell reserved for atheists.
Image: Earth and the Moon as seen from Mars.
(via Below the Beltway by way of Instapundit)
* Fear not, by morning they will all be back to “full-on, raging problem” size. Which is not to make it sound like morning wood is a problem, because it sure isn’t.
Nope, same as always: absolutely no evidence that God exists.
We’ll try it again next time and see what we get.
Because, you know, we’re all about the science here.
…as Florida’s State Board of Education concurs that evolution is a scientific theory (because its status was in doubt, I guess).
Florida’s public school science standards for the first time will use the word “evolution,” although the biological concept already was being taught under code words such as “change over time….”
The standards state that evolution is “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence….”
Opponents of evolution denied they had a religious motive, arguing that there are flaws in the scientific theory of evolution and that students should be allowed to explore them.
As a compromise, the standards refer to evolution as a scientific theory, explaining that a theory is a well-supported and accepted explanation of nature, not simply a claim.
Quite the compromise the creationists got! A forthright statement of facts regarding evolution. Somehow, I’m guessing that’s not what they were hoping for.
Also of note is the denial by the creationists of having a religious motive. Riiiiiight. Roger that. Sacred cows make the best hamburger, and it seems the religious right makes the best liars.
John Sullivan, executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention, objected to calling evolution the only fundamental concept underlying biology. He wrote in an e-mail to Education Commissioner Eric Smith that Baptists firmly believe there’s evidence of a “Creator-initiated origin of life” but did not object to teaching evolution.
Hmmm, when it comes to deciding whether evolution is the only fundamental concept underlying biology, should I trust a collective of the brightest minds in the world or a man who thinks that a self-contradicting book of myths, written by ignorant men over a thousands years ago and then haphazardly compiled by men in pointy hats with their own patriarchal agendas, is the height of wisdom and learning?
Tough one, that. Might have to ask me for an answer in the morning.
Not the Iraq war - thanks to the initial mismanagement by Rummy and Company, that baby’s gonna go on for years more. Be serious.
No, the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD - and Blu-ray has come out victorious!
Toshiba Corp. abandoned its HD DVD technology, surrendering the high-definition video market to Sony Corp.’s Blu-ray in the entertainment industry’s largest format war since VHS beat Betamax in the 1980s.
Toshiba, the leading promoter of HD DVD, will shut the business by the end of March, the Tokyo-based company said today.
Let the whining by early adopters begin!
(Psst, you pays your nickel and you takes your chances, folks).
…for the University of Oxford’s Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science.
Sure, blogging here wore out his patience for the willfully ignorant and stubbornly stupid, leaving him an irascible scientist-cum-former-blogger, but I feel confident that such an honor would return him to his previous kinder, gentler, warmer, and fuzzier state of being.
If not, it’d be fun to watch anyway.
And, man, think of the chicks!
Hmmm, one wonders if those who defended pharmacists who refused to give out “the morning after” pill on religious/moral grounds will so quickly fall in line behind these doctors-to-be.
Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion.
Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.
Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be “bare below the elbow”.
The measure is deemed necessary to stop the spread of infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have killed hundreds.
Oh, please, as if MRSA is any match for the power of devout prayer. Pshaw! Silly infidels!
Here’s an idea: boot their silly asses out of the medical program.
(found via PZ Myers)
