Feeling increasingly uncomfortable on this blog, as it seems to be becoming an outlet for the Anti-God Squad, I nevertheless want to share with my friends this interesting news item which I first spotted in the Times of India Health&Science Section, where it was headlined

Cabbage fuel reduces carbon release.
WASHINGTON: Jet fuel's grave carbon emissions can be reduced by about 84 per cent by refining it from the seeds of a lowly weed, which is a cousin to the cabbage, says a Michigan Technological University researcher.

D'you dig the Geek Off? Did you email your answers to geekoff@gmail.com? If not, too late sucka! That is, too late until Monday morning, when we play another round of the feud. Yep, every week there's a Geek Off and every week you can win a free Geeks' Guide to World Domination: Be Afraid, Beautiful People. Check the quiz Monday, email your answers 'til Friday at midnight EST, then check the answers and fight about corrections starting Saturday
morning.

Here are the answers to last week's geek off:
1. Geek Culture/Ephemera
Blackbeard: 4, C, d
Black Bart: 2, B, b
Mary Read: 4, D, a
Jean Lafitte: 1, A, c

A Science Of Human Language - Part #2




Quistic Grammar : A New Universal Grammar

In Part #1 of this series, I suggested that a grammar heavily based in syntax was not sufficiently scientific as a general theory of how language functions.  In developing the current theory I shall try to demonstrate that various observations about human language can be tied together into an inclusive theory of how language functions.  The first, and to my mind most important observation about human language is its redundancy, its apparent inefficiency in the use of the resources of sounds and symbols.

That DNA evidence that could exonerate you? You don't have a right to it, says the US Supreme Court.

Actually, not being a lawyer or constitutional scholar, I don't know what kinds of evidence you have a constitutional right to when you go on trial, so I'm not going to comment on the correctness of the decision. But legal scholarship aside, two things are obvious:

1) When we try someone for a crime, we want the best, most reliable evidence possible. It's probably reasonably safe to say that most people with at least some wisps of sanity would like our criminal justice system to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent.

When you are concentrating on something, neural "noise" may cause you to miss important changes in your environment, new research indicates, and this binocular rivalry which occurs when the two eyes view radically different images means the brain temporarily rejects, or suppresses, one of those images in favor of the other.

The image that commands our visual awareness switches between the two over time. This fluctuation in visual awareness enables cognitive neuroscientists to study the neural correlates of awareness and consciousness.

According to results of a study published in Cancer Prevention Research,  men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression. 

Green tea is the second most popular drink in the world, and some epidemiological studies have shown health benefits with green tea, including a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, according to Cardelli.

However, some human trials have found contradictory results. The few trials conducted to date have evaluated the clinical efficacy of green tea consumption and few studies have evaluated the change in biomarkers, which might predict disease progression.

Sperm bigger than the actual creator of the sperm and phallic mushrooms have been all the rage this week, but immobilized microbes that can break down potentially harmful Phthalic Acid Esters (PAEs), commonly known as phthalates, are big news too, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.   So now we get to talk about phthalic symbols.

Plagued by jet lag?   If we can send a rocket to the moon why can't we figure out how to fly to different time zones and still be fresh?  Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Michigan say they have developed a software program that prescribes a light exposure regimen for avoiding jet lag.

In the first article on this topic, I suggested that we can measure what people prefer and value, but we don’t know the “why” behind those preferences and values.

An evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics, Satoshi Kanazawa, wrote a paper on the origin of individual values and preferences that suggests values are tied to IQ, and you can theoretically predict the values of a nation based on its average intelligence.