Post number 100!

I've been thinking of stopping it here. One hundred is just such a tempting number to stop at.

Christmas

I'm pretty cynical about Christmas, you know. I loath Black Friday, and everything related to it that comes afterwards. It is disgusting. But there is also a part of me that is fond of Christmas. I remember a fire on Christmas eve, family gatherings, the feeling of something special - back in innocent times. It still follows me, this nostalgia. Nostalgia, "a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." But times have changed, and though I still hold Christmas as a unique month in my calender, I find more to dislike than to like. For a time that is supposed to be so positive and happy, why is it that so many people are stressed and depressed? Why are there people storming the malls, even hurting each-other, for something their 8 year old really wants? I guess I just wish consumerism wasn't such an integral part of Christmas. It's grotesque.

Anyway, merry Christmas! At the very least, try to keep the Man out of it.

Exoplanets

The holy grail in the search for exoplanets is to find a rocky, Earth-like planet that orbits its star in the "habitable zone", where is liquid water is possible. There are several ways to detect these planets, and even determine what their atmosphere is like, but by far most exoplanets that are discovered (over 1000 now) are huge gas giants like Jupiter, unlikely to support life. However, as we know from our own gas giants, these massive planets can often have very interesting moons, so the recent discovery of a Jupiter-like planet in our galaxy is causing a bit of a stir, not because of the planet itself but because it very probably has rocky moons also in the habitable zone.

 Gliese 581d

A discussion

It's always nice to come across a sensible conversation on belief and non-belief as opposed to the usual "debates" where the same old points get dragged out and beaten senseless. Here we have a discussion between Seth Andrews AKA the Thinking Atheist and a Methodist minister named Bob.

Missionaries

Past, present, and future missions to objects in our solar system, with pictures!

There are no hover boards yet, but there is this

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/inform/

Shaming the "day moon"

I think this new Pete Holmes show got some potential. Lots of off the cuff riffing and funny time moments.

In this clip Rory Scovel (eventually) does his bit about the day moon.
"Get out of here! You don't see the Sun coming out in the nighttime do ya? Show some respect"

A sci-fi playlist, for sci-fi people

Here are a few songs with a science fiction feel to them, you know what I mean?

Effective population

I came across this idea here. The effective size of a given population is, from what I understand, the minimum idealized number of individuals you would need from that population to reproduce the genetic diversity of the actual population. It's not easy to find an explanation of this stuff in layman's terms, but this article at genomena.com seems relatively understandable. Actually, here is one in Scientific American that goes over all this stuff, and very briefly.

Up close

real close. All of the following images were obtained using an electron microscope.

Beard hair. On the left is a hair cut with a straight blade, and on the right with an electric shaver

And what we had imagined we believed.

It was always a goal of mine to write here just what it is that I believe. To commit it to the cloud and be done with it. When you think about it, it's a very vague question to answer - "what do you believe?" - I mean, there is so much I believe about so many different things! But everyone knows what that question is asking, so lets get to the point: when you boil life and existence down to their fundamentals what do you believe is left? What of God and all that?

Ancient Aliens

I had heard of Ancient Aliens before last night, mostly through the alien guy meme,

Exhibit A:

But I had never witnessed the profound silliness of it firsthand...

Utopia

A couple of weeks ago I picked up this book called "A World Elsewhere" by Bernard Levin at a used bookstore. It was slim pickings there at the time, and though I had never heard of the book it was only 4 dollars, so why not? Plus it really sounded interesting, having to do with the various incarnations of Utopia throughout the ages. So, like, what's the deal with Utopia?

Wildlife photography 2013

The Natural History Museum held a wildlife photography competition, and the results are in.

The website is sort of confusing if you ask me, but here are some of my favourites:

Millions

So I'm reading this book called Evolution by Stephen Baxter and it has got me thinking of time. In this book the story of the evolution of mammals - more specifically, of primates - is traced from tiny shrew-like animals that existed at the time of the dinosaurs to us Humans, and even to our descendents thousands and millions of years into the future. Obviously, this is a work of fiction and uses liberal doses of speculation, but it is all based on what we might call a plausible reality.

Holy crow!

I love displays of intelligence in other animals - I love anything that makes us reconsider our perceived exceptionalism. A while back I was on dolphins, now it's onto the family Corvidae. The corvids include jays, ravens, rooks, magpies, and crows, along with a few others. The species that has been getting the most attention over the past decade have been crows.

More after the caw cut

What if Seinfeld still on today?

Alright, this one takes a little set-up. I came across this on slate today during some down time at work. Apparently the twitter account @SeinfeldToday was named one of Time's top twitter accounts of 2013. The author basically posts synopses of would-be Seinfeld episodes if Seinfeld was still on the air today. For example:

Jerry's parents video chat him but always call it "THE Skype," which slowly drives Jerry crazy. JERRY:"There's no 'the.' Stop adding 'the'!"

Kramer becomes an obsessive, but almost always wrong wikipedia editor. George can't keep himself from texting women back right away

Once you comb through a few dozen of these you basically get the idea. Just put the words Jerry or George next to words like iPhone and Craigslist and presto! That's what it would be like if Seinfeld were on TV today. I think it was the Slate article that made the valid point that these tweets are really just random strings of nouns. Enter Seinfeld2000. This account directly parodies SeinfeldToday and at the same time mocks every trend and meme we hold so dear, which at the end of the day seems closer to the real 'spirit' of Seinfeld. I found it really hilarious. There are lots of spelling mistakes, all purposefully done, which adds to the absurd humour, and kind of makes it seem like these tweets are being pumped out by a spambot.

 If you like that then you may also like this video created by the same person (who remains anonymous). I can't embed the video, so you'll have to go to the website:

http://seinquest2000.com/

Mars or bust

Maybe you've heard of this, the story has been published in most media outlets, has made the blog circuit, and has surprised a lot of people in the process. The Mars One project was announced some time ago - the project hopes to send four people to Mars in 2022 to begin colonization of the planet. The catch? You can never return. You must say goodbye to this world and everyone in it. So how many applicants have they received? Well, the count has now surpassed 100,000.

Clearlake

I used to listen to this band Clearlake quite a lot back in the day. Then I moved, packed up my cd's, lost all the music on my hard drive - you know, history became legend, legend became myth and for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge until...no wait, that's something else.

So anyway, Clearlake, good band. Figured I mention 'em. Here are some songs:

The Myth of Sisyphus

“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

Enhance.....enhance: a homage to enhance

Enhance....

Enhance....

Enhance...

Dolphins and such

I saw a youtube clip recently where a wild dolphin - struggling to move because of a hook and a bit of net on its pectoral fin - presented itself to some divers and made it quite clear that it wanted help getting free. It is a pretty neat video; I'm gonna embed it after the cut, along with some further musings.

Super-Kamiokande: neutrino detector

In Japan, near the village of Higashi-Mozumi, 1.8 km into a horizontal mine-shaft underneath Mt.Ikenoyama, there is the coolest looking detector I have ever seen. It looks like something straight out of science-fiction.

The purpose of the Super-Kamiokande is to detect neutrinos . These particles are of great interest to physicists, but they are so far undetectable. Well, there are high-energy neutrinos that are 'artificially' created during nuclear reactions, and these are detectable, but the ones that are of interest are those formed 1 second after the big bang - these ancient particles do not interact normally with matter, and are even thought to comprise 0.3% of dark matter.

Anyway, for more on that try this article. I mostly just wanted to post pictures of the detector, which is a body of water surrounded by photomultiplier tubes (see after the cut):

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Swedish art house campaign

It's Always Sunny is one of my favourite shows. Oh, how I laugh.
Not that any of the characters are likable, really, except for Charlie - but Charlie's likability comes from his particular brand of twisted innocence and childishness. They're all sociopaths who do terrible things to other people without a hint of regret and they never suffer any consequences for it. Sounds hilarious doesn't it?

Maybe it's a shock comedy thing, but it's also laughing at how ridiculous they are in reality, compared to how awesome they think they are in their heads. Like when Mac becomes over-weight but rationalizes it in his head as "gaining mass". Or the time Charlie believes he is an amazing lawyer (even though he can't read or write).

Anyway, season 9 starts this September, and they're been promoting it with a strange Swedish art house campaign (see after the cut):

Starstuff

Carl Sagan famously said that we are all stardust. Well, the actual quote goes like this:

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

I really like the thought; it is a fine example of how science can inspire a strong spiritual sense. We are made from the same stuff that is found all around us, even to the ends of the universe (if such a thing can be said to exist.) We differ only in how we are arranged. If there ever was a reason to believe we are one with the universe - even a part of the universe become conscious of itself, as I once heard it said - than this is a good reason. The elements that compose our bodies were first formed inside of a star, as were those that make up a rock or an apple pie!

But how does it work? How are all the elements formed and then flung into space as the building blocks of all we see?

The Onion

Some of my favourite Onion videos:

Remembering Domo-kun

Remember?

Philes

Double blind tests are the snake's hips; both the investigator and the subject are completely clueless as to what is being tested at any particular moment. This removes the possibility of bias or subjectivity on either part. Want to know just how well people are able to distinguish between, say, coke and pepsi? Pour 'em into some unlabeled cups and have at 'er.

I mention this because I have a certain interest in people who claim to be connoisseurs of one kind or another, and the double blind test is a good way of testing those claims. For example, there is a subculture of self-proclaimed audiophiles; people who dish out thousands of dollars for cables or speakers that are supposed to significantly increase the quality of sound. Check out this link for people bragging about spending 10 or 20 grand on a set of speakers! A similar sort of thing is seen with wine lovers or coffee aficionados.

Superman 2013

So I saw this movie last night. It was good, aside from some minor quibbles. The most major of the minor quibbles for me was a scene where one of General Zod's henchpeople confronts Superman and explains to him why he will lose. She said something along the lines of, "you learned morality, we evolved with no morality, and you know what they say: evolution always wins!"

Well sir, I wanted to yell at the screen, "no! you're misrepresenting evolution! You'll ruin everything!" How many people, after seeing this movie, are going to think (despite the fact it is said by a villain) that evolution and morality are mutually exclusive? That evolution is something that "wins" over compassion and kindness? The opposite is true; the two are inseparable (at least on Earth. And from what I could tell of Krypton, the same moral sentiments are present is some of the people there.)

Your rights as a wireless consumer

The CRTC's new Wireless Code will be coming into effect on December 2, 2013. Seems like there are some improvements here:

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/t15.htm

For example, many of us use postpaid services, and under the new code people who pay their wireless bills this way will have the right to cancel their contract at no cost after 2 years. Also, if you are not satisfied with your contract you can cancel it within 15 days at no cost (it also notes there will be "specified usage limits" within those 15 days)

Anyway, maybe a step in the right direction for Canada's poor wireless service.

Lou Dobbs and his friends

At your own risk, check out this video of Lou Dobbs and a couple other guys reacting to news that the percent of women in the US who make the most money in the household is up to 40%:

It's always a little entertaining to see people who, feeling that the status-quo is under threat, pull random facts out of their asses. You gotta love the "it's against nature" argument; as if humans exist outside of nature and are able to decide whether or not to "follow it". Anyway, this one may be a little hard to watch, so if you are not in the mood for a little Dobbs, here is another video that catches what they are saying between the lines:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51lXfc2zDw

Aw, man, this is another one of those I can't seem to embed. Why the hell is that?:

Hume - Of Morals

This is the final book of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, looking at the nature of morality

Back to the past

I had this dream last night

Somehow I traveled through time, back to the middle ages (exact time unspecified). Luckily, as I wandered through a village there was a family who agreed to take me in. They found me curious enough - what with my strange clothes and funny ways and talk of being from the future - to let me stay with them awhile. Now, there were lots and lots of historical anachronisms in this dream, but I'll just glaze over those. What was interesting was the ethical dilemma I felt: I really wanted to tell them all about the future, but if I did that I would forever alter the course of time! The temptation was too much, however, as I whispered in one person's ear, "there is no edge to the world" and told another group how there are devastating world wars in the future where tens of millions of people die. Really my self-control was terrible - I must have left them in quite the tizzy.

The world's funniest joke

I sometimes wonder to myself, is there a joke so funny that it would cause everyone who heard it to die from laughter? The immaculate joke, crafted by the gods themselves. Today that thought came to me again, and this time I queried google. What I found was a project called Laughlab created by Richard Wiseman over ten years ago. He wanted to find the world's funniest joke, and so he compiled, with the help of jokers all over the world, thousands of jokes - forty thousand to be more or less exact. The jokes were then judged on a basic scale of 1 to 5. By the end of the project some 1.5 million ratings were submitted.

So what joke won? I should say, this isn't exactly my idea of the perfect joke, but it received more positive reviews across more different cultures and countries than any other joke. Judge for yourself:

A vaccine against cocaine

This is different. A vaccine has been developed which offers long-lasting immunity against a cocaine high, the idea being that the man or woman on Hastings street (for example) who wants out need only take this vaccination, probably with a couple boosters.

“The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-man before it can reach the brain,” the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, said in a news release. “We believe this strategy is a win-win for those individuals, among the estimated 1.4 million cocaine users in the United States, who are committed to breaking their addiction to the drug. Even if a person who receives the anti-cocaine vaccine falls off the wagon, cocaine will have no effect.”

You know, I'm kind of tired of the Pac-man analogy. I think that you can pretty much tell it like it is when it comes to antibodies and how they work - people will understand. I'm sure Dr. Crystal has good intentions, but "like a little Pac-man"? Come on. It's one thing to make technical stuff digestible for the public, it's another thing to underestimate just what the public is capable of understanding.

Patton Oswalt's Star Wars Filibuster

Oswalt's amazingly nerdy imagining of Star Wars Episode VII (from Parks and Recreation):

Comaptible

I came across this explanation of compatibilism - the notion that free will and determinism are compatible - written by D.D. Raphael in his book "Moral Philosophy".(If it seems like I obsess a little over this, it's probably because I do!)

Know your enemy - the rhinovirus

The Greek word for nose is 'rhino' - or at least rhino is derived from the Greek - and it is the rhinovirus that is usually responsible for the common cold.

These guys are about 30 nanometers in diameter; one nanometer is one billionth of a meter - so, pretty small.

Is that such a good idea?

Before mechanical and automatic pipettes, and apparently before these,
















folk in the lab would use their mouths to suck up whatever awful thing they were working with.

A survey of 57 labs in 1915 found 47 infections associated with workplace practices, of which 40% were attributed to swallowing a corrosive or toxic substance or infectious lab specimen. A longitudinal study of 921 workplace laboratory infections between 1893 and 1950 found 17% were due to “oral aspiration through pipettes or to splashes of culture fluids into the mouth.”(link) 

...delicious

Hume - Of the Passions

In book 2 of A Treatise of Human Nature Hume attempts to understand the passions. He defines a passion as "a violent and sensible emotion" - sensible here meaning that it has an impression, or is sensed. What causes things like pride and humility; love and hatred? What effect do they have on us and our actions?

How does an archeologist date something?

I mean, as in fossils and rocks and the like.

The trees knees

I saw this Nature program on TV about all that is strange and wonderful about Australia. At one point they mentioned the huge mountain ash 'Ada' that was the tallest tree in the world until lightning took its top off. Even still, I think it is the largest flowering plant on Earth. That got me wondering about the evolution of trees. How do you go from marine plant life, depending on water for support, to huge trees on land reaching over 100 meters in height, supported by a trunk? I'm going to attempt a very brief, very simple, very unplanned accounting of this. And keep in mind, I'm no botanist!

Genetically modified organisms

There is a lot of discussion around GMO's these days, especially as it relates to genetically modified food. What are the arguments for and against?

Conspiracies that came to light

To continue the conspiracy theme, these I can't deny...

Current events and conspiracy

This is something I've been thinking about today after reading up on the various conspiracy theories surrounding the Boston marathon bombing. Just what we are to accept or believe when it comes to current events?

I think that anybody would (or should) admit that we cannot know with perfect certainty what happened, say, when Osama bin Laden died . The information we have is very limited. As I see it we have a few options: you could accept the official story in its entirety, you could accept that there is a government cover-up, you could accept some sort of mix of the two, or you could choose to withhold your opinion altogether.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A few years ago I had APOD bookmarked and locked in. I would check it every day, like clockwork, and very often my mind was - how they say - blown. Somehow I forgot about it, and like the One Ring, it "passed out of all knowledge." (How's that for a double hit of the geek?) Well to continue the analogy (against my better judgement), I'm like Bilbo Baggins finding the ring again; or maybe the more appropriate analogy would be Gollum, who had the ring, lost it, and found it again (unfortunately when he was falling to his death.) But I'm getting sidetracked,

Unless....

 The Southern Ring Nebula

But as far as I can tell there is no Gollum nebula.
After the cut for more rings.

Nuclear fusion engines to propel humans to Mars

Using energy released from a fusion reaction to power a space-vehicle has been talked about for a long time. Now it appears that scientists are closing in on something efficient and doable. The efficiency is noteworthy because the problem in previous fusion experiments has been that the energy required to start the process has been greater than the energy produced, which is obviously not ideal. The newest technology encases plasma in a magnetic field which is then compressed using lithium rings to a point where fusion is initiated - say the fusion of two hydrogen atoms to create a helium atom. The energy released is funneled out through the back of the spaceship to create thrust.

Driving an engine in this way could apparently get a spacecraft to Mars in 30 days, as opposed to the current 250 days when traveling at speeds of up to 5,000 meters per second. If it takes that long traveling at those speeds, I am amazed to think of the speeds necessary to get you there in 30 days. I'm seeing ridiculous numbers like 343 km/s and even 700 km/s!

For your perusal:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/04/17/missions-to-mars-and-nuclear-fusion/
http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/04/rocket-powered-by-nuclear-fusion-could-send-humans-to-mars/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket

Wild dogs in Moscow

This morning I saw that someone had posted an article on facebook about wild dogs using the subway system in Moscow to commute. I was a little skeptical so I tried to get a sense of the truth of the story through google. I found that the exact same article with the same stock photos and videos had been posted a few times before, even as early as the year 2000. I didn't think that was a good sign, but a little more searching seemed to confirm that the story was true. It's pretty damn cool, and gives a lot of food for thought.

Here is an interesting video from ABC news on the subject:

There are thousands of stray homeless dogs in Moscow, and they have worked out some pretty clever ways to survive. A few of the most intelligent dogs have indeed figured out how to use the subway to get from where they sleep in the suburbs to the urban center where they scavenge for food. They have also honed their skills at begging; staking out places where it has been found that people are most receptive to giving out food, and even sending out the smaller "cute" dogs to beg on behalf of a pack. It's pretty remarkable stuff.

Awwww....they're just like people!

What does a lab tech do? The Third

One of the most common tests ordered when someone gets their blood drawn is a "complete blood count" or CBC. There was a time when this test would be done manually, in Hematology, but these days the tech can just pop the tube onto an automated analyzer and the results will come through less than a minute after the machine takes the sample,

Water drop photography

I found this on the very cool website io9

These are photos taken of water drops by Marcus Reugels. You can browse the pictures here: http://www.markusreugels.de/liquidart .

And here is a video showing how he does it:

Top Eight

Albums, that is - of the musical variety. Also, I'm not necessarily saying that these are the greatest albums of all time, and OMG there are no better, but to me they are somehow important, or at least they stand out. I was gonna go for ten, but I ran out of steam. You can throw the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and The Beatles' White Album into the mix too.

Hume - Of the Understanding

David Hume was twelve years old when he went to the University of Edinburgh, and fourteen or fifteen when he left. Before he was twenty the inspiration for A Treatise of Human Nature struck him, and by the time he turned twenty-five it is supposed to have been composed. The Treatise was published in 1739 with the subtitle of An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. I don't know what you were thinking about when you were a teenager, but I think it safe to say that Hume was something of a philosophical prodigy.

The Treatise is a massive undertaking, and would be for anyone of any age at any time. It is amazing how closely Hume touches the very nature of our understanding and reasoning, and the various operations of the mind. I'm not sure how much justice I could do it, but what the heck. Here is a summary of Book I: Of the understanding. Be warned, this will be lengthy; very lengthy indeed!

Robert Dziekański

I would say that most people in Canada are aware of the killing of Robert Dziekański by four RCMP officers. Dziekański had flown to Canada to visit his mother in October of 2007. His flight was 2 hours late, arriving at 3:15pm in Vancouver, and the baggage claim area where his mother told him to wait for her was actually a restricted area, so she was unable to meet him there. After a while it seems she went back home to Kamloops believing her son to have missed his flight; she even asked airport staff where he was, and they told her he was not in the airport.

All told, Robert, who could speak no English, was in the airport for 9 hours, and near the end was becoming extremely agitated, throwing chairs and computers around. Finally the RCMP arrived - what ensued was caught on video (it is somewhat disturbing):

Swarm intelligence

 I'm gonna just lazily copy and paste some stuff:

Of course, the most comforting application of swarm intelligence is the creation of swarms of intelligence robots.

After the cut, a national geographic article on the phenomenon.

Chris Hadfield in space

Canadian astronaut and current international space station commander Chris Hadfield has been drawing a lot of interest with his pictures, words, and video. The videos are pretty cool, if sometimes strange; see them after the cut:

 

The state of science in Canada

Democracy Watch requested that the Information Commissioner of Canada investigate "the federal government’s policies and actions to obstruct the right of the public and the media to speak to government scientists." In response to this request a 128 page report was released detailing some interesting government policies and showing just how active a role government takes in controlling what scientists and experts are able to say to the media and public via the Media Relations Headquarters. One case that is stated as an example shows how Canadian scientists attending the International Polar Year 2012 conference were given explicit instructions as to how they ought to respond to requests for interviews - basically, run it by the Media Relations Headquarters. Also:

Media Relations employees were sent to the conference to shadow Canadian

government scientists during interviews. The employees were tasked with monitoring and recording scientist interactions with the press. Although the government scientists were unwilling to speak on record about the Media Relations

staff sent to monitor them, one researcher told a CBC reporter that the strict communications measures were an embarrassment to Canada.

I think this is a sad state of affairs, but it is hardly surprising. The evidence is piling up and it seems that Harper is someone who desperately wants to control every word that comes out of any government employees mouth to ensure it doesn't contradict the approved message and narrative.

Hume - a prologue

A couple of years ago I had a roommate who told me that she didn't have any time for philosophy because philosophers talk in circles and never arrive anywhere. That is a fair criticism, and it would be enough to damn philosophy altogether if not for developments in recent centuries that have attempted to bring it back to Earth, so to speak.

Vsauce

Vsauce is a pretty cool youtube channel. The videos usually ask a quirky or interesting question and then makes an attempt to answer the question as scientifically as possible. Videos after the cut:

Supertasks

I first heard about this when being taught about Zeno of Elea during a philosophy lecture in university, though at the time I simply knew of it as one of Zeno's paradoxes. A supertask is a task which has an infinite number of steps but is completed in a finite amount of time - something that seems like a certain impossibility. But, we in fact complete a supertask every time we move from one place to another, and this brings me to Zeno's paradox:

Voyager 1

So, you've probably heard that recently the Voyager 1 space probe entered a new region of space. At first we were told that it had indeed left the solar system altogether and entered interstellar space, apparently this rumour got started by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). But NASA then sent out a press release saying that it was their opinion that the probe had in fact not yet left our system. I doubt it is very easy to determine where the boundary of our solar system is from data being sent back from a probe launched over 30 years ago, but it seems that there are a couple clues.

TEDtalks "moral behaviour in animals"

Interesting TEDtalks, I particularly enjoyed the grape/cucumber experiment near the end:

The true North strong and genetically superior

Maybe it was Hitler week on the History channel, or it might have been that time when I got on a World War 2 kick, youtube style. Anyway, however I got into it I found myself looking around the world wide web at the history of Eugenics. Eugenics, which roughly translates to "good generation" from the Greek, is the (or was the) 'science' of improving the 'inheritable' characteristics of a race or a collective through control of breeding (I find it hard to define Eugenics without using lots of scare quotes). It was a pretty popular movement in the decades before WWII, before Hitler showed the world just what evil such a notion would lead to, now it is much maligned. 

Varmints and Game

Alright, this is kind of off-the-cuff, but here I go.

I was perusing some sportsman magazines recently; well, the Newfoundland Sportsman in particular, but a simple trip down google-lane will reveal similar sentiments all across Canada and the United States. That is, anti-coyote and wolf sentiments - 'varmints' as they are almost exclusively referred to in some magazines. These animals, many say, are pests that if left alone will decimate the caribou and moose populations, the former of which are experiencing declining herds populations in the province. And so the government has decided to introduce a "seasonal" coyote harvest aimed at controlling their numbers and easing pressure on the large ungulates. That season runs from September to July, and licenses are free. It's basically open season, boys, kill those 'yotes!

Camels in Canada

A research team headed up by the Canadian Museum of Nature have discovered fossil fragments from the leg of what appears to be a camel (or at least a close relative) - a camel that lived over 3 million years ago.

Pan-STARRS

http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/03/09/sun-diving-comet-will-be-visible/

Logical Fallacies

There's hardly a politician that speaks, hardly an argument or debate that wraps up, hardly a talking head that gives an opinion without some logical fallacy in the mix. These fallacies are usually honest attempts to prove a point, but can also be intentionally used to mislead. Here are a few:

Telekinesis

Well here is something cool. In the interest of saving time, I'm going to just post a link to the blog where I found it:

http://io9.com/5988596/this-wireless-brain-implant-could-make-telekinesis-a-reality

"In particular, this implantable neural interface technology will greatly assist in the development of advanced neuroprostheses. Once refined and proven safe for humans, it could allow disabled people to move objects remotely with their thoughts. It would be a kind of technologically-enabled telekinesis. Indeed, the project is very closely linked to the BrainGate initiative — another Brown University project that's working to develop brain interface technologies for the disabled.
And of course, this technology will very likely trickle over to non-medical applications, allowing even able-bodied people to move objects with their minds."

Indulge your inner geek

Back before my iPhone tragically fell in a river I had this cool little app called Skyview. You might have to dish out a buck or two to get it, but it is worth it. One thing I think everybody should try is to track the International Space Station and watch it pass over on a clear night. When you find the station it might be directly on the other side of Earth, but it takes surprisingly little time to come around, though I guess it is going 7.71 kilometers per second. There's no mistaking it when it passes over; it move too fast to be a plane, and it doesn't blink. It looks more like a star.

On the subject of fast things, the fastest outbound spacecraft is the Voyager I, which is now leaving the solar system at a speed of 17 km/s. The fastest man-made objects on record are the Helios probes, reaching 70 km/s on their closest approach to the Sun.

At the very least, useful information to have for trivia night.

Cyclical Time

For us in Western society the perception of time is quite simple: it goes in a straight line, it is unrecoverable, and it ends. We see time as linear. This is not wholly wrong, of course, it is easy to see why we view the passing of time in this way, but what can be said for time as a cyclical phenomenon?

The Sunday Funnies

The first video is an Onion video that has a slightly unnerving twist near the end, and the twist is also the punchline.

The second is a clip from the BBC series The Trip, which I really liked. It is available as a movie as well, which I take it is just a edited and shortened version of the episodes.

Next is Eric Clapton showing off his guitar skills. Turns out, he plays like he only picked up a guitar for the first time last week.

Then a comic strip with the most hardcore game of tic-tac-toe ever.

Lastly is Ze Frank telling us some true facts about the angler fish; including the doomed male angler fish.

Shoeprint: the place to get your shoes printed

I have heard scraps and passing remarks about 3D printing, but I never took it very seriously. I assumed the technology was impractical and probably not as impressive as it sounded. What I didn't realize was that people have been working on 3D printers for two decades now and there are even consumer models available:

Books

Another list; this time a list of books I like. In no particular order, and certainly not all-inclusive:

The Republic

I came across this video where professor Larry Lessig of Harvard speaks about what he thinks is the core problem with the US republic; basically, money. It is an interesting talk if this sort of thing floats your boat. If you don't have the hour to spare, here is an article that discusses the same ideas:

Free Will

This is another head-scratcher, and one that can get some backs up. Because there are few things we want more than to believe that we have volition and act of our own free-will. But not everyone takes this for granted - there are some who believe that everything is determined, and we are at the mercy of untold causes. It's enough to make you think.

Rome Sweet Rome

It all started with a question on reddit:

"Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?"

This started a discussion and attracted many readers, including Warner Bros who are now in the process of developing a movie based on this premise.

Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/
http://www.reddit.com/r/RomeSweetRome/

Variety's article:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118064641/

The Gambler's Fallacy

You're at a Roulette table, and no matter what you do you can't seem to catch a break; Lady Luck has left the building. But there is something you've noticed: for the last 8 turns in a row the ball has come to rest on black. Now you have an edge on luck, you think, feeling an almost scientific certainty that the chances of the next throw landing on red are very high. I mean, what are the chances of landing on black 9 times in a row? You put all your money on red....