“Illuminati” refers to various organizations … links to the original Bavarian Illuminati or similar secret societies, and often … conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations to establish a New World Order and gain further political power and influence. … the Illuminati … lurk… in the shadows and pull… the strings and levers of power in dozens of …
And now, there is incontrovertible evidence of involvement of Hollywood and music industry stars in the Illuminati. Check it out: Continue reading Who are the Illuminati?→
There’s a fungus among us—a hundred different species in fact—and nearly all take up residence on our feet, according to a study that appears in the journal Nature this week.
Only a few fungi species were found on other body parts known to house fungi—such as behind the ears and on palms—according to the most thorough analysis to date of our fungal “landscape.”
This is the question everyone eventually asks themselves. The answer is no. They live all over your body in the follicles of your hair.
But, the situation is much more complicated than that, and in fact there is a lot we don’t know about these mites. But, there is a scientist who may be willing to scrape some of the mites off your face in order to advance our knowledge … of something many people would probably not really want to know about.
We’re interested in studying the evolution and diversification of Demodex mites …we want to use the information encoded in Demodex DNA to map the mites’ “family tree” and see how closely that tracks our own human family tree.
Our first task was to physically collect the critters … Although previous research (based on human cadavers) suggests that all adults have them, most researchers have only been able to collect mites off of 15% of the people they sampled when gently expressing sebum from pores (much like what an aesthetician does during a facial).
Sure enough – after sampling 223 volunteers during public events …
Read the rest here, and see pictures of the mites and people getting their faces … sampled!
… To protect gun owners by repressing journalists.
On Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate passed a bill that would imprison and fine journalists who intentionally publish information about the state’s concealed-carry handgun permit holders. Reporters who violate the law would face penalties of up to $10,000, six months in jail, or both; public safety officials and police officers who leak permit information to the press would face penalties of up to $500, six months in jail, or both. Journalists in Louisiana say the bill is clearly unconstitutional, but that won’t stop it from becoming law: After the Senate vote, it headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk for his signature.
The thing is, I know this blatant oppression of the Constitutional Rights Rights of Americans can’t happen becase the 2nd amendment allows us to protect ourselves from an oppressive government. I assume the members of the Press in Louisiana will all now by guns so when Jindal’s black booted storm troopering thugs come to get them, the Journalists can defend themselves.
Emma Way (formerly @EmmaWay20, but she has deleted her account) was driving down the road and turned into oncoming bike riders who were in a race. She hit one of them, knocking him into the woods. He’s OK.
The police picked up on her tweet and tweeted her a suggestion that she report the incident and DM them back. Others picked up on her tweet and scanned her social networking streams and found all sorts of other horrid things. Apparently she was into doing selfies of herself (obviously) tailgating other vehicles and driving at excessive speeds.
Emma Way is a horrible, terrible, awful person. Is she redeemable? I don’t know. Maybe you found this blog post because you are googling her and she’s a job applicant. If you hire her and find out that she’s reformed, post a comment and let everyone know!
(And she will be looking for a job. Her current employer appears to be poised to fire her.)
There are good reasons to believe that global warming leads to more storminess, but the exact nature of that transition is unclear and hard to measure. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that a given type of storm may become more likely under certain conditions caused by climate change, while a different kind of storm may become less likely, with the “storminess” overall increasing but doing so indifferent ways across time. Also, the most severe, and thus possibly the most important, weather events are infrequent so it is difficult to see changes over time with any statistical confidence. I address many of these issues here and here.
Looking at the raw data, it is clear that there are “more tornadoes” over time in the US. Have a look at this graph:
Annual number of tornadoes for the period 1916-1995; the dashed line connecting solid circles shows the raw data, the red heavy solid line is the result of smoothing. Also shown in the green light solid line is the number of tornado days (i.e., days with one or more tornadoes) per year.
At first glance, his graph makes it look like there are a lot more tornadoes, but there is a strong effect of observer error; earlier tornadoes were simply missed much of the time, so the big increase you see here, while it may reflect an underlying increase in number of tornadoes, is not reliable and cant’ be taken as evidence. However the later years shown here, from 1950-something to the 1990s, seems to show an increase that could be taken as meaningfull
However, when people speak of tornadoes they often show this graph as evidence that there are not more of them over time:
Looks like the number of tornadoes does not go up over time.
Looking only at this graph it looks like the number of tornadoes per year in the US is pretty variable but not increasing, as one would expect if global warming was causing more of them.
There is a problem with this graph, however. Actually, a couple of problems (other than those pointed out here). The main problem is that the most frequent tornadoes are left off this graph. If we look at F0 grade tornadoes, not included here, we see that they have actually increased in frequency over time. If we include ALL tornadoes, and not just the kinds that don’t seem to increase in frequency over time, we get this graph:
Huh. Maybe the number of tornadoes DOES increase over time!
Compare the scales of the last two graphs. It turns out that the number of tornadoes at the smaller end of the scale goes up quite a bit. It might be hard to see. The upper graph goes up to 900, the lower graph goes up to 1900. So, if we add all the data instead of just select data, we get many hundreds more tornadoes per year.
The proportion of tornadoes that are F0 increases over time as shown here:
… and the overall distribution of tornadoes by strength changes over time as shown in this very cool graph: It isn’t just the F0 tornadoes changing over time. The overall pattern of tornadoes shifts with time.
As I point out here, one of the contributing factors to variation over time in tornado frequency is the fact that we have somewhat arbitrary boundaries in which we measure them. For instance, the US-Canada border provides an arbitrary line across our data set. By not counting all North American tornadoes the same way, we may be adding unnecessary variability to the data. To demonstrate this, have a look at this graph showing tornado frequency per year in France and Germany, two countries that are right next to each other:
Frequency of tornadoes in France and Germany … seems to be uncorrelated.
This shows a few things. For one thing, they don’t have too many tornadoes in that part of the world. For another thing, there is an increase in overall frequency over time, and this is not because of lack of reporting. The reporting problem in the US is partly because the western and central states were relatively empty in the old days, and also more technology was available for spotting tornadoes later. But the European and US data have the same shape over a similar time span, but France and Germany do not have the missing observations owing to vast unoccupied (sort of) territories.
But the main thing I want to demonstrate with this graph is the fact that dividing a largish area of land up into arbitrary units can cause your data go go all flooey. Increased variability in data owing to partitioning is a well known phenomenon and this is what it looks like.
Another part of the problem is that the largest storms, which may be the most important ones, have a great deal of variation in their occurrence. Compare any of the graphs above of all tornadoes or all excluding the F0 tornadoes of this graph of just the largest storms:
Pay attention to the vertical scale, but note that there is a lot of variation over time in these large events. This kind of data almost has too much variability to track change over time meaningfully
Not only is there a lot of variation in numbers of tornadoes at the larger end of the scale, but I suspect there is a lot of variability among the tornadoes in each class in terms of overall energy represented. An F4 tornado that lasts five minutes compared to an F4 tornado that lasts 20 minutes are hugely different, but this is not reflected in this sort of data.
Here is a graph showing the amount of storm damagein adjusted dollars over time in the US (pink) with average temperature (blue). Clearly, the total amount of damage goes up, and probably for a number of reasons including there being more stuff to damage, but also, likely overall increases in storminess including hurricanes, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, etc.
There are many who do not want to link increases in severe weather to global warming. They are probably wrong. Global warming seems to increase severe weather overall. The best way to deny this is to cherry pick the data by ignoring variability across space, leaving out entire categories of storms, or focusing on just some kinds of storms. I suspect the size and severity of tornadoes at the larger end is increasing now, but did not start increasing until recently; time will tell if this is right. But overall tornadoes are so variable across time and space that they are not a reliable canary, as it were. But overall storminess seems to be on the increase, in accordance with expectations from the basis physics of climate, under warming conditions.
Are your favorite sweaters covered with cat hair? Do you love to make quirky and one-of-a-kind crafting projects? If so, then it’s time to throw away your lint roller and curl up with your kitty! Crafting with Cat Hair shows readers how to transform stray clumps of fur into soft and adorable handicrafts. From kitty tote bags and finger puppets to fluffy cat toys, picture frames, and more, these projects are cat-friendly, eco-friendly, and require no special equipment or training. You can make most of these projects in under an hour—with a little help, of course, from your feline friends!
This week, Skeptically Speaking looks to the stars that light up the night sky, and fuse hydrogen and helium into the elements that make life possible. Science writer Jennifer Ouellette examines the possible evidence of ancient supernovae in bacterial fossils. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains the controversy surrounding the so-called black hole firewall paradox. And astronomer Pamela Gay of CosmoQuest discusses the impact of U.S. sequester budget cuts on her research and outreach.
Genie Scott of the NCSE gives a talk on Creationism.
Executive director Genie Scott talks about the history of creationist legislation, including bills that allow teachers to “critically analyze” evolution or present the “full range of scientific views of origins”. Strategies, tactics, and more. When: 12/1/2012. Where: Eschaton 2012, Ottawa. Video courtesy of www.youtube.com/user/AtheismTV
(Don’t be put off by the audio problems in the beginning it gets fixed.)
This is the time of year, spring, when a lot of people switch to drinking bottled water instead of tap water. They do this because in their particular area the tap water seems to “go bad” … usually it is a mild smell or a slightly icky taste. This makes people fear their tap water, so they go to the store and buy bottled water. What has happened in many cases is that the local municipal water supply has done everything it can reasonably do to clean up and make nice the water that comes out of your tap, but there is this slight taste or smell because in the spring, that is what water does in many of our sources, including wells, rivers, and reservoirs. It depends on where you live, and it probably depends on the year as well.
Your municipal water is safe. Tap water always has “stuff” in it that is not H2O, but in the spring, some of that stuff is a bit more detectable than at other times of the year.
People are making two mistakes. 1) Not drinking the tap water because they think it is bad for them. It may be unpleasant, and that may be a reason to not drink it, but it is not bad for you. And, 2) quitting tap water forever, switching to bottled water because they think their water has gone bad forever. Or they just get used to the bottled water and stick with it.
Peter Gleick has a lot of information about Bottled Water, some of which is on his new blog. The total amount of Carbon you are releasing into the atmosphere by drinking a liter of bottled water is something like an order of magnitude greater than for tap water, for example. You just shouldn’t be using bottled water if you have a run of the mill municipal water supply.
Speaking of water, Skeptically Speaking just did a show on the topic:
Drinking Water
This week, we’re looking at the science and the history of the water that makes life and society possible. We’ll speak to law and environment professor James Salzman, about his book Drinking Water: A History. And we’re joined by Juewen Liu, chemistry professor at the University of Waterloo, to talk about his work using DNA to detect water-borne impurities that could make water unsafe.
Vote with your wallet. Tired of the Koch Brothers ruining everything for everybody? Prefer to buy products from companies that contribute to Sandy relief? Do you just want to know which major megacorporation produced the item you are considering putting in your shopping cart?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an app that allowed you to scan the product’s bar codes and quickly determine which evile empire you are supporting, or avoiding supporting, with your purchasing decision. Well, there is, and it is called Buycott. Click here to see iOS version
From the app developers:
How Buycott works
-Join a campaign to help a cause you care about and commit to actively supporting the companies on your side of the issue, while avoiding those that oppose your position.
-Scan product barcodes and Buycott will find out what company owns that product (and who owns that company, ad infinitum).
-Using this information, Buycott will determine whether you have joined a campaign that includes the product’s owners.
Features
– Lookup the ownership structure of any product and trace it all the way back to its parent company with our interactive family tree diagram.
– Offers a variety of contact data for companies and brands, so you can easily inform them of your decision to support or avoid their products.
– Scans all major retail barcodes (UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN8, EAN13, etc).
– Create your own campaign from buycott.com
Once installed you have to sigh up. I chose the “Log In with Facebook” option and then was asked if Buycott could post to my friend’s walls. I said no. The signup failed. So, right there, somebody needs to sit these kids down (the ones who made the app) and explain to them the meaning of Irony.
So then I signed up with the manual sign up and I got an “error creating account” error. No explanation.
So, I’d like to try this app out for you but it’s broke, so I can’t. But I also know that word of this app just went around the internet a few minutes ago, so their server is probably getting hammered. I’ll try again in a day or two and let you know how it goes. If you try it and have any info to report, please put it in the comments.
This would be good if it works. But first, it has to …. well, work.
UPDATE:
I was able to join this evening, but the join up process took a long time, presumably because of the developer’s server still being overwhelmed (or attacked by nefarious forces, perhaps?). Then things were still a little glitchy. When I went into the app I was told that I needed to join before I could use it, but Ignored that and signed in using the info I had given it when I had joined earlier, and then I was told that I’d have to Join, the, I was allowed to use the app as though I had joined.
This all happened because the app seems to reset to some prior level when my iPhone does its partial sleep power down thing it does after several seconds of no activity, and everything the app does is so slow that this happens all the time.
Lawry’s Salt is OK! Yay!I tried scanning a book ISBN code and it was smart enough to tell me it couldn’t do that. Then I scanned the bar code on my lens cleaning solution. The app correctly identified it as Flents Wipe-n CLear Lens Cleaner! But there was no information on the company, which probably means it is not made by the Koch Brothers or Satan or anyone like that. I then checked out my Lexar Jump Drive, recently purchased (so the empty cardboard container was still sitting on my desk). It seems to have recognized the manufacturer but did not know what the product was, but asked me to enter information about the product in order to “earn points.” I entered the data and got an error.
I then checked All Free an Clear laundry soap, a container of little tomatoes, and a container of Laqwry’s seasoned salt. The first two returned errors, the third returned data on the product that was accurate and information about the company. I was told that there were “no campaign conflicts.”
Lawry Salt is OK!
So the bottom line is that the app works but there are glitches that hopefully will be ironed out.
The amount of time it takes to get the information back from the scan is fairly long … tens of seconds … but that is probably because their server is still working too hard.
