Category Archives: Other science

aka stamp collecting

This isn't The Onion?

Posted on by

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 as a cultural “world view”.

Teachers should take the time to explain why creationism had no scientific basis, Prof Reiss said.
He stressed that the topic should not be taught as science.

Yeah, I can see how summing that up should be worded as a call for teaching creationism.

It's Not the LHC Black Holes That Will Destroy Us

Posted on by

Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute Ready to Start “Squirrel Smasher”

Scientists currently rely on computer simulations to smash biological units, but simulations can only do so much, and without the visceral enjoyment of seeing two squirrels collide at thousands of miles an hour.

Malwin said there will be controls in place to prevent new undesirable species from forming. “Only species of the same type will be smashed together, so you don’t have to worry about the flying rat, or poisonous Chihuahua nightmare scenarios.”

Wait, what about nanoevolution happening during the collision, changing the theoretical subbiological particles? Madness, I tell you, madness. It’ll be the end of the world. Biologists should be aware of the particle physics maxim: that which is not forbidden is mandated. Poisonous Chihuahuas and antiChihuahuas are inevitable. (Flying rats already exist. They’re called pigeons)

via Pharyngula

If U Cn Rd Ths, U Cn Slve Crimes

Posted on by

Txt Crimes, Sex Crimes And Murder: The Science Of Forensic Linguistics

Based on techniques that were first used to measure similarity between marine ecosystems, and then applied to the analysis of sexual crime, Dr Grant has now developed a method to quantify people’s style of text writing. His technique, which assigns a numeric measure of stylistic difference between any two texts, encourages the move from expert opinion based evidence to more methodologically rigorous and empirically tested techniques.

This Isn't My Tenth Top-Ten List

Posted on by

Ten things you don’t know about the Earth

Destroying the Earth is hard
[…]
Even giant collisions can’t vaporize the planet. An object roughly the size of Mars impacted the Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago, and the ejected debris formed the Moon (the rest of the collider merged with the Earth). But the Earth wasn’t vaporized. Even smacking a whole planet into another one doesn’t destroy them!

Bringing Home the Gold

Posted on by

From Google Maps to Gold Medal

Kristin Armstrong, who won gold in the Women’s Individual Time Trial in Road Cycling, got a GPS track when she rode the Beijing Olympic course in December of 2007

After returning home to Boise, Idaho, I exported the GPS data to several different formats, one of which I was able to launch with Google Earth. I was then able to trace the entire course from the comfort of my home half a world away and find a similar route to train on back in Boise. This capability along with having the elevation profile proved invaluable in my preparation for my Gold Medal race.

GPS relies on precise time, provided by some colleagues of mine, and knowing where the satellites are relative to the earth, which is aided by some other colleagues of mine. Woohoo! We won gold!

I Don't Like Cell Phones

Posted on by

But it has nothing to do with radiation safety concerns.

Fraud Charges Cast Doubt on Claims of DNA Damage From Cell Phone Fields

The only two peer-reviewed scientific papers showing that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cell phones can cause DNA breakage are at the center of a misconduct controversy at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV). Critics had argued that the data looked too good to be real, and in May a university investigation agreed, concluding that data in both studies had been fabricated and that the papers should be retracted.