If you paid attention to video that appears to show a missile launch off the coast of California, you can imagine what conspiratorial types are making of the military's silence.   
 
The silence is because from plenty of angles it looks like an airplane contrail.  

Sometimes I read sentences like "It occurs to me that I ought to thank Mark Hyman, "pioneer of functional medicine," and creator of "Ultrawellness," particularly since he started blogging for that wretched hive of scum and quackery (WHSQ), The Huffington Post" on Scienceblogs.com and think, 'gosh, it must be fun to never about science on a science site and get away with it' but then I realize we would lose most of our audience; no one can outdo Scienceblogs for progressive politics, atheism and culture wars and people who like that stuff are already reading them so I guess we'll

When times are good, green technologies can make projections stating that they will develop a prototype and the miracle of capitalism will make it popular and cheap and people will basically turn a blind eye to the suspect math but when things are tough, there needs to be an actual business plan.

Sure, Google is a multi-billion company that got there selling ads - and its contextual engine is smart but at heart it's still based on keywords and content.  So when it goofs, it goofs to funny effect:

Here's one and then the link below is to the full 10.



All 10

Wish that, like fantasy baseball players or civilization builders, you could have your own planet to kill with greenhouse gases?  Good news!  "Fate of the World" lets you run a UN environmental group tasked with saving the world by cutting carbon emissions or - and you know most people will do this - seeing what soaring temperatures do.

The people really excited about this "issue-led gaming" concept are the same people who think a game about cleaning up pollution would lead to less pollution and comic books about religion make kids want to go to church.   Basically they think people are pretty dumb and will only understand climate change if it's a game.    But let's face it, BP executives are not buying this game and getting rehabilitated, the already convinced are.

Burt Rutan, who designed the first private manned rocket to reach space, has announced he will retire next year.    Though everyone in aviation knew him well (including this blogger's aerospace engineering wife) he became famous worldwide in 2004 when his SpaceShipOne prototype won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for being the first privately financed manned vehicle to reach space.

In 1986, his Voyager aircraft made the first nonstop flight around the world without refueling.   I shall grow mutton chops and dig out my leather jacket in his honor.

Concerned about rising political attacks regarding climate change research, 700 members of the American Geophysical Union are going to wade further into the political muck and campaign against skepticism.    Namely, they are creating a 'rapid response team', which reads like SWAT, except they are gunning for conservative radio hosts and all Republicans.

Scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. 

The discovery could mean that people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012.

Disputing that no screening method had proved effective at reducing mortality from lung cancer,  annual CT scans of current and former heavy smokers reduced their risk of death from lung cancer by 20%, a huge government-financed study has found.

Previous studies stated scans can catch cancers at an earlier stage but did little to affect death rates.   So why isn't that a big jump for you?   Even the longest-term smokers only have a 10% chance of getting lung cancer and the cost for the scans is very high.