General

The End Of The War

We’ve been commemorating sixtieth anniversaries of World War II for a few years now, starting back in September 1999, with the anniversary of the invasion of Poland. I’m watching President Bush give a speech right now in Coronado, almost six decades after the formal surrender of the Japanese government to the Allies in Tokyo harbor (the anniversary will actually be on Friday, September 2nd).

Science And Society

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Well, OK, maybe not everything. But perhaps a third of it:

…a third of medical research articles published in major scientific journals and then cited over a thousand times in the literature are later contradicted or have major questions raised over them.

Remember this the next time you hear about a “scientific study,” particularly about politically charged issues, such as global warming. As Iain points out, this is an important point:

We acknowledge that most studies published should be viewed as hypothesis-generating, rather than conclusive.

Weird

Move Over, Shirley Maclaine

And in other news (and more trivial news, in the context of the unfolding catastrophe in Louisiana) Tom Cruise seems to have gone completely nuts, claiming tht he’s led past lives (this one apparently sucks in comparison). And he’s just asking for a libel suit from Brooke Shields:

…at his news conference, a Scientology-themed event with selected reporters from his fan club’s newsletter, he claimed that Brooke was the lover of the founder of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, in a previous life.

He said: “I could tell you stories about Brooke.

“She was the mistress of Sigmund Freud, you know. Is it any wonder she promotes his discredited theories? She’s so confused.”

[Update on Wednesday morning]

There seems to be a consensus in comments that this story is a hoax. And it’s a good one, because it’s not all that unbelievable, based on his past behavior.

General

Not So Lucky After All

It’s starting to look as though some of the worst predictions for New Orleans are coming to pass, even though they missed the worst of the winds. The north levee has been breached, and the city is filling with water from Ponchartrain. More could die if they can’t evacuate the city from the rising waters. In addition, many homes in the city are on fire, with no way to put them out, other than perhaps helicopter or aircraft water drops. It reminds me of San Francisco in the 1906 quake, and it’s going to get apocalyptic pretty quickly.

Space

Speak No Evil

Keith Cowing says that NASA continues to dig itself deeper into its hole of irrelevancy to our future in space.

[Update at 9:15 AM PDT]

As Keith correctly notes in comments, those are my words, not his. I should have written that he provides evidence of that (in my opinion), not that he says it.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!