What if the planet stopped spinning?
[Via Geekpress]
Category Archives: General Science
Space As Exploration
Can someone explain to me the point of this long essay (assuming that it actually has one)? Because I seem to be missing it.
An Interesting Google Ad
This looks like an interesting course:
Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses—cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history—fit together?
Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world’s great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian.
This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past.
I and others actually tried to condense this story down to something that can be told in forty-five minutes or so at the dinner table, which we tell on Moon Day (coming up two weeks from today, on the forty-first anniversary of the lunar landing).
What was really interesting, though (and what mindless stereotypers on the left will find boggling) was that it was a Google ad at National Review…
How Deep Were They Drilling?
Pretty deep. But actually, not as deep as I thought. There are lots of trenches that are much deeper.
Get Him Some Cleats
OK, not that it’s anything new, but Superman would seem to be defying him some physics here. You know, that basic Newton’s law thing?
Martin Gardner
RIP. I hadn’t realized that he’d retired so long ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some personal memories from John Derbyshire.
The Cambrian Die Off
…may not have happened. I regret not seeing the Burgess Shale when I was up in British Columbia twenty years ago. I don’t know if/when I’ll get back.
A Scientific Experiment
I can conclude, based on two samples, that cats don’t like refried beans.
This is actually good news, since at least one of them sleeps on a pillow by my head.
Where Is The Outrage?
Suppose that, a week before the Congress voted on whether or not to authorize military force, a document had been generated that showed there were no WMD in Iraq. Suppose further that it was reported that the Pentagon had sat on it, and not released it until weeks after the vote. And when asked why, the explanation was “we didn’t want to influence the vote.” Then, a Pentagon official comes out and denies that it was deliberately withheld, though the record clearly shows that the information was known by the defense secretary prior to the vote.
Imagine the howls from the Democrats and the press, and calls for firings and impeachment, and demands for a new vote.
Substitute health care reform for Iraq, HHS for Pentagon, and “will cost much more than advertised” for “no WMD,” and that’s exactly what has happened.
[crickets chirping…]
RNA Bootstrapping
Here’s an interesting theory that contributes to abiogenesis.