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News Briefs 13-04-2006

If you don’t see me till Sunday, don’t assume too much…

  • Erich von Daniken’s World Mysteries Theme Park is in financial trouble.
  • South African crop circle was an April Fool’s joke.
  • More on that Near Death Experience study finding correlations with REM sleep (no, that’s not people who find Michael Stipe’s singing boring). The last sentence is a very important statement – and it’s refreshing to see researchers making this point. Something which this article completely missed.
  • Harvard telescope will search for E.T.’s lights.
  • Moon and Mars Russian space targets by 2030.
  • The great space debate: should China and the U.S. cooperate?
  • Saturn’s moon is the best chance for life.
  • Bizarre things in space: a Rorschach gallery.
  • Dan Brown to face new plagiarism claim from Russian art expert?
  • That secretive and camera-shy guy takes time to reveal his thoughts – Zahi speaks!
  • Bosnian town hopes to cash in on their pyramid.
  • A response to the story about global warming stopping in 1998 (see Tuesday’s news).
  • Global warming could cause mass extinctions by 2050.
  • Or, conversely, global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
  • When information goes missing: the bioterrorism trailers that weren’t.
  • Physicist says heat substance felled the WTC.
  • Big earthquake could devastate the U.S. Midwest, say scientists.
  • Synthehol: all the pleasures of alcohol, without the downsides.
  • Another ambivalent review of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell.
  • Literally playing Devil’s Advocate: the slander and lies which have plagued the Devil over the years.
  • The man who wrote the book on American religions.
  • A book that’s bound in human skin. Gives new meaning to the phrase “I read him like a book.”
  • Judge orders forced medication of Death Row inmate, in order to make him mentally competent enough to be executed.
  • Scientists attach motor to single-molecule car. But how do you turn on the car radio?
  • DNA’s dark side challenges the most basic concepts of modern biochemistry.
  • Will machines ever think? Just as long as there’s no Nutri-matic Drinks Synthesizer on the horizon.
  • Are laser weapons ready for duty?
  • When rabbits go bad: monster rabbit stalks U.K. village. I think, considering the time of year, there is a very simple and scientific explanation for this. The Easter Bunny is stocking up for his yearly run (hop?).
  • Just in case monster rabbits don’t keep you up at night, what about a fish that hunts on land? With video.
  • Evolution of irreducible complexity explained. In your face Intelligent Design (in my best Homer voice)!

Thanks Kat.

Quote of the Day:

The Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Douglas Adams (‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’)

Editor
  1. I’m really taken with the Devil’s Advocate story
    But then I would be, wouldn’t I.Me being me.
    The nuns in the convent used to call me the Spawn of the Devil.I used capital letters for that so you all realise how important it is to be.
    Actually they called all of us born on the wrong side of the blanket the Spawn of the Devil.
    It is only a couple of years since an aunt of mine referred to me as that when her son asked about me, so I guess when stupid gets in a family it stays there.

    I believe that Lucifer who is Satan was once more beautiful than God, and more powerful than God and so wanted to tell God what to do.
    So they had a big fight and God won, and Lucifer and his cohorts were banished to Hell where they would not ever see the most glorious sight in the universe again, the Face of God.
    I have always been interested in Lucifer,I guess all his spawn are, but there are some great stories about him.
    I will follow up this fellow, Lucifer’s advocate, and see what else he has to say.

    Thanks Greg, for reuniting me with stories of lost rellies.

    shadows

    1. Except In Christian Scripture,…
      Shadows

      Lucifer is simply an advocate! It’s the Christians that have villified poor ole Lucifer. I bet he’s really a good ole boy!

      What do you think?

      kennc

  2. GW response
    The link to the response to the Global Warming debunking on Tuesday leads to nothing except some back-and forth side-links. I was expecting something important supporting GW by great scientific minds like Al Gore or Cher.

    Oh, you mean “nothing” is the response? Okay, I get it now.

    Good one, Greg.

    Bill

    1. Bill, everyone knows
      Bill, everyone knows man-made global warming is the greatest scam on this planets history. The arguments are full of holes and I still don’t feel bad about driving my SUV 🙂

      I sure miss your news posts, wish you would post again. You brought a much needed balance that I really enjoyed.

      By the way, that’s a great quote for the next post at the bottom of that alarmist article:

      Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

      M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

      1. Everyone Knows
        I sure miss your news posts, wish you would post again. You brought a much needed balance that I really enjoyed.

        Thanks Thrustbucket. It’s good to know someone misses me. But my life is taking some twists and turns right now so I can’t post often. But when can, I like to make a post or so.

        You’ll just have to post more often to make-up for my absence.

        Bill

          1. So Can I!
            Shadows

            What does coping with change have to do with missing Bill’s Posts? They were interesting even though I didn’t agree with every perspective in them either. As for change, I cope better than most and just as well as you! So, what’s the problem?

            What do you think?

            kennc

          2. No problem
            You’re looking for a deeper meaning and there isn’t any.
            Actually it is what I used to say to my kids when they were growing up and things changed.It became a family thing.
            I used to enjoy Bill’s posts too.I would order a roast garlic pizza on Fridays and read Bill’s links and sometimes tease him a little.
            I guess it indicates that my life has changed dramatically since then and not for the better.

            shadows

          3. I Just Couldn’t Figure It Out!
            Shadows

            I wasn’t really looking for anything. I just didn’t know where you were coming from. Now, I understand! You wanted to make me hungry and you succeeded! So, I’m eating sashimi with natto and thinking about a garlic pizza with salami and onions on it!

            kennc

          4. Adaptation – we all have to do it eventually
            >>I used to enjoy Bill’s posts too. I would order a roast garlic pizza on Fridays and read Bill’s links and sometimes tease him a little.

            Speaking of pizza on Friday, I don’t mind the smell of garlic. 😉 But it’s hard to keep those Oz times straight from way over here, so maybe I’ve just been posting Friday’s news a little too late for dinner in Oz. If that’s the case, just punch me up and I’ll try to adapt.

            Have you wrestled all those wires away from Captain yet, or did he build a nest out of them? And also, how are your ankles doing?

            Kat

          5. Punch you up? I wouldn’t dare!
            I don’t know what time Bill posted there Kat, but I usually ordered my pizza around 5.30m.
            I haven’t had a roast garlic pizza since Bill stopped posting.
            My dogs and parrrot all eat garlic too which is good because I fill all the food up with it and all of us have garlic breath when anyone comes to visit.

            Captain is his own person.Translated that means that he reserves the right to destroy anything he wants to.
            Jake isn’t home yet, but I will get him to do something before anything else happens to the wires.

            I only found out last week that I broke my left tibia in two places.Now I understand why that leg flopped so badly and why they had to connect everything with a plate on one side and pins on the other.
            I am doing well though, I think, even though I have broken a pin.It is painful but the bone seems to be knitting around the bits of pin.
            A friend told me that the pins are made of titanium and that you could sit the Queen Mary on a titanium pin, so I am a bit embarrassed that one of my pins broke.
            Yes, I am overweight.

            I hope you have a Happy Easter,and the same to all other TDGers.

            Love shadows

          6. I’m Sorry About Your Broken Tibia!
            Shadows

            I hope that your leg heals quickly! You might try accupuncture for the pain! I do it all of the time! Accupuncture is wonderful, the needles are painless, and it improves the taste of pizza! Be Brave!

            What do you think?

            kennc

          7. Painless!
            Kennc sweetie,
            I had acupuncture years ago for sinus trouble and my memory of the pain breaks me out in a sweat.The doctor put needles all around my eyes and on my nose and cheek bones and then electrified them.
            The pain of broken bones is as nothing compared to that.And I don’t recall it curing my sinus trouble.
            Thanks for the advice though.
            I am healing but today I pushed the bed with my bad leg and wished I hadn’t.
            Mmmmm, I can still taste all the garlic I had today.

            shadows

          8. I Understand; But,…
            Shadows

            There are different types of accupuncture and that wasn’t what I was talking about. In any case, I feel for you! Take care!

            kennc

          9. Sinus trouble eh?
            You could try eating tons of natto, because it has nattokinase in it. Probably the most accessible cure for sinus troubles is serrapeptase. The TGA has recently relaxed its prohibitions on importing supplements. There’s a place in NZ that supplies it, so you could easily import it from there.

    2. Response
      Once again Bill, while you always argue intelligently, your emotional response betrays a pre-determined agenda. I have no conclusion on Global Warming…it certainly seems to be there, though I have my doubts about the human contribution to it (versus it being a natural cycle). I’m yet to be convinced either way, considering that most articles I read are either by Bush/oil apologists or alarmist environmentalists.

      I linked to this article because it makes a very good point – Bob Carter cherry-picks the date 1998 as a start point, and thus begins his essay with the startling fact that mean temperatures have actually decreased since that time. It’s a disingenuous argument, because 1998 is the hottest on record, which throws out the data (and I’m still not sure it presents a decrease even by doing that)…when you look at that data over the longer term it is obvious that there is a warming trend (at least on the surface data from CRU that he is referring to).

      Supporters of Mr Carter might argue that is his whole point, that we can’t just use small amounts of data to prove our case. However – (a) he never makes that clear, and thus looks to be trading on his ‘shock’ evidence to sway the reader, and (b) the CRU data for over a century is still quite obviously trending upwards.

      There are good points within his piece – comparing the temperature changes with the times of massive global industrialisation shows that a separate mechanism may well be at work. But in terms of his disingenuous use of the statistics listed above – and also his careful use of terms such as “accelerated warming” – without ever conceding that there is quite obviously a rise in temperature levels over the past century and a half, leads me to assume that he is just yet another agenda-based mouthpiece for whatever group you might like to name. My skeptical cup runneth over.

      I posted the original article Tuesday, I posted an article with a worthy point in response today. I even posted another anti-GW link in today’s news. I think that’s a pretty fair posting of different sides of the argument. I’m not sure what warranted “Good one, Greg.” Perhaps I need to train a bit more on working to the Fox news ethic?
      😉

      Peace and Respect
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

      1. Humor
        Hi Greg,

        A joke’s no good if you have to explain it. I suppose that technical (engineers and scientists) folks sometimes see humor where others don’t.

        Carter’s “cherry picking” is exactly the right thing to do. If a factor is directly proportional to a result (as CO2 is supposed to be to Global Warming), and if the factor is constantly increasing or trending upward, then, unless your assumptions are in error or your data is poor, you don’t get anomalous changes in the trend.

        If you can cherry pick decreasing trends in the result then there are other factors having a greater influence than your assumed cause. Ignoring results can cause erroneous results. That’s exactly what’s happening here.

        I’ve never tried to conceal my agenda when it comes to bad science.

        Bill

        1. Re: Humor
          [quote=Bill]A joke’s no good if you have to explain it. I suppose that technical (engineers and scientists) folks sometimes see humor where others don’t.
          [/quote]

          Oh, I’m quite capable of seeing humour, even when it’s from engineers and scientists. Put it down to my straight A math-science upbringing and couple of years of engineering at University (college) before I realised it wasn’t the life for me.
          😉

          [quote]Carter’s “cherry picking” is exactly the right thing to do. If a factor is directly proportional to a result (as CO2 is supposed to be to Global Warming), and if the factor is constantly increasing or trending upward, then, unless your assumptions are in error or your data is poor, you don’t get anomalous changes in the trend.

          If you can cherry pick decreasing trends in the result then there are other factors having a greater influence than your assumed cause. Ignoring results can cause erroneous results. That’s exactly what’s happening here.[/quote]

          I wouldn’t imagine too many “pro-GW” scientists would say that CO2 is directly proportional to Global Warming (and in fact, the author of the response I linked to actually explicitly labels that a straw man argument in the comments section). Most articles I’ve seen mention at least in passing things like solar and volcanic activity. Can you point me at scientists who are claiming that the relationship is directly proportional? Obviously, all it would take is one decent sized volcano to change the data in one year, so to say the relationship should be proportional is a joke.

          Carter’s cherry-picking is actually completely the wrong thing to do. It betrays as much bad science as you would have the GW side performing, and is just plain sneaky to boot. If he says 1999-2005, the trend is clearly upwards. To work off such a small data-set is unscientific in the extreme, and tells nothing about what is happening. You might claim to speak for him, in mentioning the “directly proportional” reasoning for the sample, but he makes no such reference in his article. In fact, he reinforces the “decreasing average temperature” statement later in the article, rather than explaining any irony or humour behind the statement.

          [quote]I’ve never tried to conceal my agenda when it comes to bad science.[/quote]

          Then you should take Carter to task for his bad science, rather than be an apologist and mention the CO2-GW proportional straw man as justification for his underhanded propaganda of using 1998 in his dataset (if he’s writing in the Times, then his audience is clear – ie. not “engineers and scientists” – and if was making a point he should have been explicit).

          As I said, the rest of the article is very worthwhile (I wouldn’t have linked to it in the news if I didn’t think so), brings up valid points, and debate on these topics is essential. You’ve been someone chipping away on this debate for some time, and kudos to you for being skeptical of the mainstream view (anyone on this site would know i have a soft spot for that!). However, the response I linked to brought up also a very good rejoinder to Carter’s article (at least on that one topic) and was also deserving of a link.

          I will start believing people’s arguments when I see them criticise/be skeptical of *both* proponents and critics of GW. Partisan arguing doesn’t do anybody a favour.

          Peace and Respect,
          Greg

          1. CO2 and GW
            Of course volcanoes and sunlight are the major contributors to surface temperature! But for years the GW folks have been citing CO2 as the main cause of GW. That’s what upsets me the most.

            I won’t spend a lot of time researching it, but a simple search on Google yields this article:

            http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=570702006

            Many in the GW camp never credit anything but CO2 as the cause. That’s what the Kyoto accord is all about.

            Bill

          2. Re: CO2 and GW
            [quote=Bill]Of course volcanoes and sunlight are the major contributors to surface temperature! But for years the GW folks have been citing CO2 as the main cause of GW. That’s what upsets me the most. [/quote]

            My criticism of Mr Carter has nothing to do with this point though, and neither does the response I linked to. The point of this thread has been to bring attention to Carter’s loose use of the data as propaganda to support his argument.

            Interesting bit of useless information: I actually did my University years at Carter’s home – James Cook University in Townsville.

            [quote]I won’t spend a lot of time researching it, but a simple search on Google yields this article:

            http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=570702006

            Many in the GW camp never credit anything but CO2 as the cause. That’s what the Kyoto accord is all about.[/quote]

            Again though, there is nothing in that article about CO2 being the only thing responsible, let alone that there is or should be a directly proportional relationship (in response to your argument against the 1998 ‘anomaly’). Two things seem clear to me, from the data – (a) that the planet is currently warming, and (b) that CO2 is increasing dramatically. Whether those two are linked or not, and additionally whether the CO2 increase is man-made, I can’t say (I’m hardly an expert on how the correlation is worked out). I also can’t say whether the warming is just a short term (150-250 years) trend which will stop. So I think your points are valid and essential to a real debate about this controversial topic. I just think you should stop siding completely with people who are as badly partisan (and sneaky) as those you dislike, just because they agree with your POV (on the point I have been making…as I said, the rest of the article is quite interesting).
            😉

            Peace and Respect,
            Greg

          3. what should we do?
            Let us step back a little. At least I will take that approach.

            The climate system is chaotic, that is a technical term. Not a capitulation.

            It means that there is not linear correlation between CO2 contentration, and the mean temperature for example. Or a linear correlation between water vapor and mean temperature.

            Or between mean temperature or north polar ice melt, or north polar ice buldup.

            There is no linear correlation between any single factor that influnences things, to any other single factor that measures any of these things.

            This is a highly convoluted systems (in the mathematical senss Greg). Polynomomials of polynomials. And with random variables in the middle of it.

            Nobody understands these kinds of mathematics. People put their mathematics models in big computers and then see what comes out.

            And then they argue about who should get more funding.

            My estimate is that there is global warming. It is only my personal estimate.

            I also estimate that this is influenced by our industries. We make the atmosphere (!) warmer. Probably not the oceans, that is because of the sun. My guess only.

            The consequence? There is not a damn thing we can do. Kyoto is irrelevant.

            We are not in a position to control the climate. Maybe, Maybe we have enough resources.

            But we have no idea what whe should do.

  3. Lucifer s only a poor devil 😉
    Lucifer is the Star of the morning, it brings the light, in this way it is no so bad…
    Take off the negative vision of this character, is possible to read it as a way to see all things under a different angles: even when it is a negative character never it is negative in absolute, because never it forces to do what we really don’t want, this character can reveal what we are. I spoke about the Devils and Gods, Good and Evil, with 2 Christian exorcists, for the Christians priests all what happen is the result of our choices (when the lot is not too fixed I add, I don’t believe that always always is only our choice)…Lucifer it is a long and articulated topic…

    BESOS!
    Katya

  4. No Tea
    Ah good old Douglas Adams. I remember that part of the book very well. In the ASCII game HGTTG, poor Arthur actually has No Tea in his inventory. Ever since playing the game, whenever I don’t have a cup of tea, I always claim I have no tea.

    Rest in Peace treasured author!

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