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Evan Longoria Makes An Insane Bare-Handed Grab - But There's A Catch

Evan Longoria Makes An Insane Bare-Handed Grab - But There's A Catch

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

Evan Longoria is giving an interview to a reporter when a foul ball flies his way.  Because his Spider Sense tingles when a ball is in play, Longoria snatches it out of the air bare-handed.  

In my title, I used 'grab' and then 'catch' but catch, in the second instance of course, means a gimmick or trick, so I was being clever.  

Three Gorges Oops

Three Gorges Oops

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

We've been skeptical of the Three Gorges Dam project for a number of years.   It isn't that dams are a bad idea, they are a great idea, it's just the the ecologists who endorsed the thing invented the absolutely perfect outcomes and assumed it would happen.
When It's Not Freezing, The Earth's Core Is Melting

When It's Not Freezing, The Earth's Core Is Melting

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

The Earth's inner core is a ball of solid iron about the size of the Moon. This iron core is surrounded by a dynamic outer core of a liquid iron-nickel alloy - along with other, lighter elements - a highly viscous mantle and a solid crust that forms the surface where we live.

That inner core is simultaneously melting and freezing due to circulation of heat in the overlying rocky mantle, according to new research .   Over billions of years, the Earth has cooled from the inside out causing the molten iron core to partly freeze and solidify. The inner core has subsequently been growing at the rate of around 1 mm a year as iron crystals freeze and form a solid mass.
Satoshi Kanazawa, racist or reporter of actual human behavior? A quick look at OK Cupids data

Satoshi Kanazawa, racist or reporter of actual human behavior? A quick look at OK Cupids data

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

Satoshi Kanazawa has caused a firestorm by asserting that African women are less attractive than other races women. For this he has been called racist. He actually didn’t say anything new, or for that matter scientifically incorrect. However politically incorrect and insensitively stated it was. The man is guilty of being so stepped in his scientific ivory tower that he forgot how what he says may affect real people in the world. That said the conclusions of such work no matter how disturbing and un PC must not be grounds for a scientist in any field to lose his or her job.
Zombies Ate My Research Assistant

Zombies Ate My Research Assistant

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

Zombies Ate My Research Assistant

Now it can be told: the hidden truth behind the climate change hoax.  Global warming may not be real, but zombies are!  If you don't believe me, go argue with America's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: Zombie apocalypse survival guide published by US government.
Saturn in a 24-Inch Dob

Saturn in a 24-Inch Dob

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

Last night I had the pleasure to visit Mauro, a friend of mine and an amateur astronomer. Mauro owns a 24" dobson telescope with a mirror crafted by the superb hands of Romano Zen, the same who made my own 16". The precision of the optics of Romano is legendary, and as far as my limited capabilities allow me to judge, his reputation is entirely deserved. With my dobson scope I have been able, in nights of lucky seeing, to discern details on Jupiter of the order of half an arcsecond in angular extension. And with Mauro's 24"...
Arctic Ice May 2011 - Update #1

Arctic Ice May 2011 - Update #1

May 19 2011 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice May 2011 - Update #1

Even if it leaves you too tired to come back and read my own humble offerings - but I hope you do come back  -  there are two very topical blog posts that I want to recommend to you:

Tell good stories that entertain and are relevant. It is so easy to say “use simple everyday life language”, but for a scientist who are trained to do the exact opposite it hurts. Almost physically.
Wave Power Inspired by Squid?

Wave Power Inspired by Squid?

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

This is totally cool!
Scotland's leading marine energy test centre has opened its doors to a new generation of developers to test prototype machines, one of which is aiming to harness wave energy using a design based on the humble squid. . . . SQUID, which looks somewhat reminiscent of its namesake, has an inflatable absorber similar to a large balloon which fills with sea water. Sitting just under the surface, the absorber is moved by passing waves and the energy from this motion drives a generator to produce electricity.
I'm not exactly sure how this
As The Federal Ban On Incandescents Arrives, Get Ready For $50 LED Light Bulbs

As The Federal Ban On Incandescents Arrives, Get Ready For $50 LED Light Bulbs

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

LED bulbs will finally be bright enough to replace 100-watt incandescent light bulbs but there is a problem - they will cost $50 each.  And won't be available until after the ban.  And they produce almost as much heat as incandescent bulbs, making them ridiculously inefficient.

Advocates always believe in legislating perfectly healthy businesses out of existence because they contend 'the miracle of capitalism' will make the replacement they just subsidized and mandated through government fiat cheaper.   Well, why should they get cheaper when the government created a monopoly market?    If capitalism works, and $50 is a good price to pay for a light bulb, it doesn't need government bans on regular light bulbs.
Some Skepticism On TSA Full-Body X-Ray Scanners

Some Skepticism On TSA Full-Body X-Ray Scanners

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

Is going through one of the TSA porno-scanners (now at selected airports near you!) really safer than eating a banana?  

Let's hope so.   If you object, you are going to get groped, even if your child is a pre-school girl.   But White House science adviser John Holdren recently received a letter signed by five physics and medical professors professors noting that the scanners actually don't work all that well and the ion chamber used to test the scanners can get overwhelmed by the levels of radiation the backscatter deposits and might not have provided accurate readings in testing.
Who Would You Pick To Play Marie Curie?

Who Would You Pick To Play Marie Curie?

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

First, a cultural fact: The NFL Draft can be seen for three solid days by every cable subscriber in America.   This is hours and hours of nothing but 30 seconds of reading out a name punctuated by 14.5 minutes of nothing - actually, brief bursts of activity separated by committee meetings sounds a lot like most football games, but it consumed an entire network a short while ago even though the sport may not even be played this fall.

How is that relevant on a science site?
Species Extinction Rates Wildly Overstated

Species Extinction Rates Wildly Overstated

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

A new paper in Nature says the most widely used methods for calculating species extinction rates are "fundamentally flawed" and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent.
BCL6 Protein Is Key To Fighting Drug Resistance In Most Common Childhood Cancer

BCL6 Protein Is Key To Fighting Drug Resistance In Most Common Childhood Cancer

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

A team of scientists say they have uncovered the basis for drug resistance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer.  Acute lymphoblastic leukemia accounts for about 23 percent of all cases of cancer in children under the age of 15, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The Ohio State Science Day

The Ohio State Science Day

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

Cosmic Embryo #5: Aiming For The Moon With All Rockets Blazing? A Critique Of Breast Cancer Deadline 2020

Cosmic Embryo #5: Aiming For The Moon With All Rockets Blazing? A Critique Of Breast Cancer Deadline 2020

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

Cosmic Embryo #5:  Aiming for the moon with all rockets blazing? A critique of Breast Cancer Deadline 2020®  

The multibillion dollar breast cancer enterprise has just issued its damning self-assessment:  

On Narrow Bumps

On Narrow Bumps

May 18 2011 | comment(s)

A question posed by Tony Smith in the thread of the previous post (which dealt with the choice of the bin width in histograms) triggered me to do a little work to produce a convincing answer to him.

The issue is the following. Tony got interested in a few top candidate events in a few mass distributions published by CDF and DZERO quite some time ago, which seemed to all cluster in the surroundings of 145 GeV. Could those eight candidate events (once summed across the various channels and experiments) be the signal of some resonance different from top quarks ?
Much Ado About Hawking

Much Ado About Hawking

May 17 2011 | comment(s)

So Stephen Hawking doesn't believe in Heaven.  This is apparently a big deal.   It's not that he is wrong, he is most likely right, though the nature of faith is belief in defiance of any evidence so that doesn't matter, the important question is why anyone cares.
 
Schedules are better than plans

Schedules are better than plans

May 17 2011 | comment(s)

Just a quick note today, on getting DIY stuff done.  Schedules are better than plans.  Just blocking out the time during which you will tackle a task is more important than figuring out how you're going to do it.

This applies to writing also.  All the proposal work and outlining won't get your book down.  Being forced to sit down and type will get your book done.

For a large project, you need to have a plan because you have multiple people involved.  Even in an Agile setup, you need a project plan.  "Agile" isn't an excuse for no planning or for laziness.  However, once that's set up, it's too easy to fall into the trap of making plans, 'to do' lists, and task orders-- and find the work has slipped past you.
Horus Help Us - Diagnosing Heart Disease From 1580 B.C.

Horus Help Us - Diagnosing Heart Disease From 1580 B.C.

May 17 2011 | comment(s)

Whole body computerized tomography (CT) scanning has helped diagnose the earliest confirmed case of coronary artery disease in history.

The Egyptian princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, who lived in Thebes (Luxor) between 1580 and 1550 B.C.,  lived on a diet rich in vegetables, fruit and a limited amount of meat from domesticated (but not fattened) animals. Wheat and barley were grown along the banks of the Nile, making bread and beer the dietary staples of this period of ancient Egypt. Tobacco and trans-fats were unknown, and lifestyle was likely to have been active.