Swans on Tea

Yeah, right.
Tech puts JFK conspiracy theories to rest
“The question we were trying to answer is, given the spatter evidence in a vehicle, and knowing an individual was sitting at a particular location, is there something we could use to determine where the shot originated?” said Steve Schliebe, a blood spatter and trace evidence specialist with [...]

I have scienceray on my RSS feed, and they are a source of some pretty neat pictures. The latest is on crystals: Introduction to Crystals and Their Formation

Crystals are neat-looking, so I looked at the pictures. And then I started reading the text.
This is a first of a series of articles dealing [...]

Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes
Interesting, I thought.
Then I scrolled down to the discussion, and there was crud about how AGW, relativity and evolution should be listed with the hoaxes.
The trouble with most folks ain’t so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain’t so.
Josh Billings

Credulous media will apparently never run out.
Blacklight Power bolsters its impossible claims of a new renewable energy source
It’s difficult to pay attention to these claims, because scientific history is littered with ambitious, revolutionary theories that turned out to be groundless. But Blacklight is an interesting case. Its “hydrino” theory isn’t put forth by a single [...]

A question asked over at The Great Beyond
A while back I ran across a blog post about the “dangers” of Bose-Einstein Condensates — the purported great peril of a “Bosenova” explosion happening in liquid He, and wrote a post about the various misconceptions that were present. Malcolm Fairbairn and Bob McElrath wrote a response [...]

Oh, wait. It’s just the time-honored (sorry, honoured) tradition of writing a headline that has the opposite implication than the actual story.
Call for creationism in science
Professor Michael Reiss says that if pupils have strongly-held beliefs about creationism these should be explored.
Rather than dismissing creationism as a “misconception”, he says it should be seen [...]

And I still feel fine.
The latest brouhaha, of course is the LHC, which is supposed to destroy us all, but this is not the first time that science, some (quasi-) scientific phenomenon, or scientists, have supposedly threatened to pushed us into the abyss. Here’s a sampling of recent scenarios, ignoring the many-more-numerous armageddon/rapture predictions [...]

Teaching evolution — and, by the sound of it, doing a good job — in Florida. He realizes that if the science sounds dogmatic he’s lost before he even starts.
A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
When Florida’s last set of science standards came out in 1996, soon after [...]

Cryptophysicists
One major difference between cryptophysicists and cryptozooligists is that the public is generally able to perceive that the latter are outside the mainstream. Everyone knows from daily experience that there probably aren’t yeti or sea monsters hanging around. Modern physics is abstracted enough from everyday lives and intuition, though, that many people, including some journalists, [...]

Cities play hardball to host biodefence lab
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disregarded the advice of carefully selected experts to put a Flora, Mississippi, site on the shortlist of candidates, the Associated Press said Monday.
[...]
Now, other applicants are crying foul. “It is very suspicious,” said Irwin Goldman, whose Madison, Wisconsin, site failed to make the [...]

Charlie Brooker’s screen burn
Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don’t want to hear
The wariness [of scientists] stems from three popular misconceptions:
1) Scientists want to fill our world with chemicals and killer robots; 2) They don’t appreciate the raw beauty of nature, maaan; and
3) They’re always spoiling our fun, pointing [...]

If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you ARE! Crash Davis
The Quirkbook
“Making a list of superstitions / foolish consistencies / lightweight OCD behaviors e.g. I always put my RIGHT shoe on first. You?”
[...]
“In what order shall I put [...]