Registered users of Gawker.com media sites have had their names, email addresses, reading histories, and passwords stolen. But that’s OK, because just yesterday I heard you say that any information hackers steal from secret computer databases should be public. (Or did I hear you wrong?)
Continue reading Read Gawker? Gizmodo? Lifehacker? You’ve been pwnd.
“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
11-year-old Birke Baehr presents his take on a major source of our food — far-away and less-than-picturesque industrial farms. Keeping farms out of sight promotes a rosy, unreal picture of big-box agriculture, he argues, as he outlines the case to green and localize food production.
Continue reading Birke Baehr: What’s wrong with our food system
William Ury, author of “Getting to Yes,” offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations — from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Gretch Who Saved the War on Christmas | ||||
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How come we don’t all have one of these? I suppose one possible down side would be that if you fell off it would drag you into the vortex and crush you. But still … well, have a look:
Continue reading I’m totally selling my horses and oxen and getting one of these sno machines!
Of course, it would burn up in the process, but whatever. The following is one of those size and scale videos mainly showing the relative size of our planets and selected stars, then making quick reference to other larger scale structures. It is a good video (hat tip: Joe) but it does have a major flaw: It demonstrates that the earth is small, then it demonstrates that there are many other big structures in the galaxy, then it concludes that we are not the center of the universe. But being small does not make us NOT the center of the universe.
They’ve mixed up their fallacies here. Either they’ve conflated bigosity with centrality, or they’ve taken importance for geography. In any event, being told that you are very small is not the same thing as being told that you are not the center of the Universe.
Continue reading It would take a 747 over a thousand years to circle the largest star
A new species of stork has been identified from Flores, which is the Indonesian island on which the famous “hobbit” fossils have been found. The “hobbit” is a form of hominid (human relative) that seems to be a diminutive form of Homo erectus but different enough from that widespread species to give it a distinct taxonomic status, Homo floresiensis. The Flores hominids were probably about 120 centimeters in height, and the new stork was probably about 180 centimeters in height. The following artist reconstruction is meant to demonstrate bigness of the stork in relation to our diminutive relative:
More on that artist’s reconstruction later.
Continue reading The Newly Discovered Giant Flores Stork
If you’ve been in a restaurant kitchen, you’ve seen how much food, water and energy can be wasted there. Chef Arthur Potts-Dawson shares his very personal vision for drastically reducing restaurant, and supermarket, waste — creating recycling, composting, sustainable engines for good (and good food).
Volunteer Point in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean
Continue reading What’s a Penguin to do?
Everybody loves to give or to get a book as a present, right? They are small, interesting, there is a wide selection in every price range. As gift giver, it is a way you can impose your will on others, which is always true for gifts, but specially so with books. As a recipient, you can easily get rid of it by claiming that you loaned it to your cousin Leo who just moved to Borneo.
Also, books are very easy to order on line. Well, you can order anything on line, but with books you know what you are getting.
The following is a list of books that I happen to have on hand (or recently held in my hands) that have something to do withs science, are good, and are current. If you are the author of a recent science book and you don’t see yours listed here, that is probably because you or your publisher were too cheap to send me a review copy (shame on you). Some but not all are already reviewed on this blog (here).
Continue reading Current Science Books: The perfect holiday gift!
It is probably true that every culture has child safety devices. It is also probably true that all of these devices are very limited in their effectiveness.
Continue reading Elephant Tracks and Child Safety Devices
Which is very handy if you are a Department of Motor Vehicles desk clerk who hates Teh Gay. Or a Senator.
Continue reading Religion gives you a pass to break whatever rules seem to not apply to you