Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 20-11-2009

Winter, spring, summer or fall, it’s always a Swell Season.

  • Think humankind is immune to extinction? Think again.
  • Mass extinctions and the open ocean.
  • Separating the quantum and classical worlds, one ripple at a time.
  • Solar Tsunamis. SSIE.
  • Fossils from the once swampy Sahara reveal a cache of crocodiles.
  • Fossilized mammoth dung reveals clues to the woolly one’s demise.
  • NASA greenights test to study long-term effects of radiation on primates for future space travel. What, Carrot Top wasn’t available?
  • Trials to cure blindness with embryonic stem cells could soon be underway. Ladies and gentlemen, start your controversy engines…
  • Trials to study whether blind people hallucinate on LSD reveal illuminating results.
  • New evidence leads to new understanding of large animal extinction.
  • The LHC restart could take place this weekend. Higgs Boson here we come!
  • The birth of a star, captured on video.
  • Do you want to go… faster?
  • Scientists discover that eating buttered movie theater popcorn is equal to 3 quarter-pounders with 12 pats of butter. Cheeseburger popcorn, anyone?
  • Then again, if we all stopped eating beef the Earth might breathe a welcome sigh of methane-free relief.
  • Will religion evolve, devolve or disappear?
  • Is the mysterious X-37, the Space Shuttle’s red-headed stepchild?
  • Can you memorize 4000 numbers in sequence? Are you training for the Memory Olympics? The geeks shall inherit the Earth!
  • And if you’re training for said Menta-lympics, you’re probably sleeping with lots of sounds to keep your gray matter finely honed.
  • Nominations for the Bad Faith Awards are now open—Who’ll take the trophy for most outstanding contribution to the cause of unreason this year? Place your bets!
  • Were the ancient Greeks sun worshippers? Just ask their temples.
  • Small world, big pictures. Not to be confused with TV’s ‘Small Wonder’.
  • The genetic maze of maize, solved.
  • Are you in like Flynn? Fire up your light-cycles kids, because TRON Legacy is coming soon to theater near you (and by soon I mean Dec. 2010).

Many thanks to Greg & RPJ & Moezilla!

Quote of the Day:

“Probably the central concept of shamanism, wherever in the world it is found, is the notion that underlying all the visible forms in the world, animate and inanimate, there lies a vital essence from which they emerge and by which they are nurtured. Ultimately everything returns to this ineffable, mysterious impersonal unknown…”

Douglas Sharon, Wizard of the Four Winds: A Shaman’s Story

  1. Beef eaters be damned?
    I am constantly dismayed at the perception that if we, as a race, were to suddenly give up eating beef, that it would somehow save the world from global warming.

    Now, this is not to dispute that cattle herds contribute some methane to the atmosphere. No argument either against the many, many varied numbers available as to exactly how much said gas contributes to global warming.

    Where I personally have a problem is in the attention paid to beef production while, at the same time, we seem perfectly content to continue our happy swim in the Vaseline jar. We pay lip service, but little more, to the contributions of millions and millions of automobiles and diesel burning trucks, not to mention oil and coal fired industrial plants.

    We should note here that Chrysler’s effort to field a line of 100% electric vehicles by 2010 was just vetoed by their new overlords at Fiat. We can also be sure that the boys in OPEC were happy to hear that!

    There was even an article a year or so back slamming those of us who dare to burn charcoal or hardwoods when cooking our meats!

    Maybe global warming is a fact and maybe, just maybe it is indeed the result of man-made (or man-caused) greenhouse gasses. But before we start disrupting the food supply, perhaps we should begin by changing those bad habits that are maintained because they are merely so handsomely profitable for such a very few.

    Porterhouse, medium rare, please.

    🙂

    1. fewer cows
      There are cultures that raise cows and don’t even eat them, because they are somehow sacred. Isn’t that worse than eating cows?

      And what about the cultures that say it’s bad to eat pigs? They favour the methane exhalers as a food sources more.

  2. X37
    The X37 is an unmanned vehicle, which is too bad. The payload bay is supposedly 7 feet by 4 feet. You could just fit in a short person in a space suit. If only they made it a little bigger, someone could go for a ride for a day or so.

  3. Quantum V classical world
    I have the over powering feeling I am in a quantum projection where as my other self is functioning in another say, classical world. I am two in two distinct environments and this one is a source of amusement.

  4. LHC restart……
    the amount of money used so far and still being used to create and then use a VERY BIG HAMMER is rediculus. At worst we could be destroyed, or there will be a big hole in the ground.
    There are passive ways of doing the same thing but science refuses to acknowledge this technology. At least their useing photons and NOT H electrons or atoms. You know, the funny thing about this is they have already answered their questions in the actual construction of the thing. Science is like a naugthy child that has to experience the pain to understand rather then take advice or learn from watching.
    Hope their public liability is paid up………………..

    1. not photons
      Here is what they are using, according to one of their
      web pages:
      [quote]
      Two beams of subatomic particles called ‘hadrons’ – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.
      [/quote]
      so no photons. Electrons as part of the lead ions, I don’t know if they have free electrons floating around too.

      1. thanks…..
        for the correction. I could have swarn that article said photons. I think photons as a particle is still a theory. Anyhow their already traveling at the speed of light.

        1. photon particles
          The fun part about the question whether photons are particles or waves is that it can be answered experimentally. Thus nature gives us a definite answer.

          What makes it even more fun is that the answer is “Yes”.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal