Brian notes that Bruce Gagnon (a political organizer from Maine who lists “shoveling snow” among his interests and who thinks “growth is killing our very finite planet”) is foolish to urge us to “Shop local, eat local, and walk local” while asking for home-baked banana bread for Christmas.
In the spirit of Brian’s critique, I offer [...]
Category Archives: science
“Sustainability”
December 20, 2007 – 2:49 pm
Finally something I’m qualified for
December 11, 2007 – 6:43 pm
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing’ At UN Conference:
BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to “have the courage to do nothing” in response to [...]
A fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture
February 11, 2007 – 5:44 pm
David Warren writes:
The more I think about “global warming”, in light of the most recent United Nations report, the more confident I become in averring that it is a fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture, that every intelligent journalist should be helping to expose.
I’m sure all five of them are doing everything they can.
Our brains are just faking it, apparently
January 9, 2007 – 11:59 pm
It seems we have only the vaguest sense of the world around us. Check this out, and look at other videos from the Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois.
(via the afterword of Peter Watts Blindsight, an enjoyable and interesting hard-SF book & free download)
Note to self
May 16, 2006 – 8:15 pm
If you meet Buzz Aldrin, DO NOT accuse him of not really going to the moon.
Hilarious! The slo-mo replay really makes it.
Brain worms
January 22, 2006 – 11:40 am
Parasites alter the behavior of their hosts:
I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a [...]
Coelacanth population explosion…
January 9, 2006 – 3:58 pm
As several of the contributors to this blog know, I have a special relationship with Coelacanths due my legendary forray into interpretive dance to Shriekback’s song of the same name. The Observer has an article about how a bunch have been caught-”Dinosaur fish pushed to the brink by deep-sea trawlers“. Since they are my [...]
Centralized decision-making, ignorance, and media hype
January 3, 2006 – 5:20 pm
Michael Crichton posts another of his speeches, detailing the history of our priesthood’s^H^H^H^H^H^Hmedia’s ability to grok complexity, and the fine job it does educating the the public about it.
I’m reminded of Kelly’s blogpost about the park service. Apparently the arrogance she revealed is matched only by the ignorance that fuels it.
blogbody contraception
January 3, 2006 – 12:56 pm
Over at LfDC, which suffers from the too-early closing of comments on its posts, nzc cites an article suggesting there is no biological need for women to have periods while taking oral contraceptives. JP opines:
I’m told that there are studies showing that women who skip their periods all together are at higher risk for stroke. [...]
Random space stuff
December 14, 2005 – 2:46 pm
Because of my interest in sailing on water, I’ve always been facinated by the idea of solar sailing. Came across this interesting tidbit:
The concept of space sails is not new. About the time Jamestown was being established as America’s first permanent colony at dawn of the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler penned a [...]
Pre-singularity Terranaut
November 6, 2005 – 2:06 pm
We Make Money Not Art shows that reality is just as fucking excellently weird as fiction:
Seith Weiner has created a vehicule piloted by a fish and propelled by 2 drive wheels, each driven by its own servomotor. The fish steers the vessel by its movements. A camera above the cockpit tracks the movements of the [...]
When the singularity arrives
October 30, 2005 – 2:24 pm
It won’t only be people who benefit.
(from, via)
A cunning plan
August 2, 2005 – 9:22 pm
I’ve got it! Bush’s endorsement of teaching “intelligent” design in schools is really a clever, subtle plan to deeply entrench school vouchers by making the Left want vouchers as well. Or maybe it’s even more subtle — to eliminate the Left altogether by causing its adherents’ brains to explode due to simultaneously wanting [...]
Homesteadin’ time
July 29, 2005 – 1:40 pm
My bags aredog is packed, I’m ready to go.
(btw there’s a great image here)
Finally*, a way to add 3 inches that actually works
June 7, 2005 – 5:07 pm
The Chinese get all procrustean on themselves:
Dr. Xia charges $6,000 to $7,000 to add up to six inches of height, depending on the patient’s ideal proportions. The initial operation, in which he severs the thighbone or shinbone through two small incisions in the skin, takes about an hour and a half. He then attaches his [...]
Yeah Baby!!
April 25, 2005 – 11:44 am
I WILL LIVE FOREVER!!
David Brooks, NYT:
The release of a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that overweight people actually live longer than normal-weight people represents an important moment in the history of world civilization. It is the moment when we realize that Mother Nature - unlike Ivy League admissions committees - [...]
Houston, we have a solution
April 18, 2005 – 2:51 pm
A fascinating article about Apollo 13, from the IEEE Spectrum.
[via Instapundit]
When the hurlyburly’s done
April 8, 2005 – 10:06 am
Futurepundit reports on the damage that globalism does (the crazies waving “capitalism kills” signs may be right):
Creating a new kind of caveman economics in their published paper, they argue early modern humans were first to exploit the competitive edge gained from specialization and free trade. With more reliance on free trade, humans increased their activities [...]