Sahara Dust In European Skies The skies over southern England were hazy on Friday April 08 2011.  In the evening the usual colors of sunset were absent.  A muddy grey-brown haze could be…

How much does science cost-- and how much does it cost to turn science off?  I know science can be done cheaply.  After all, you're listening to a guy who is building a satellite in his…

Forbes has done its annual Fictional 15 ranking of the richest fictional characters.    Why?  It doesn't matter why.   #1 is, as you'd expect, Scrooge McDuck, and #2 is Carlisle…

Forbes has done its annual Fictional 15 ranking of the richest fictional characters.    Why?  It doesn't matter why.   #1 is, as you'd expect, Scrooge McDuck, and #2 is Carlisle…

I'll bet that headline made you read the rest, right? It incorporates all the language tricks used by advertisers in the little side ads that compete for your attention on the internet. Let's analyze…

People may object to my calling for Ph.D. programs in Theoretical Phys Ed and Quantum Paleontology, but humor is not far off the mark.  Evolutionary psychology, for example, is practically self-…

In my post about the new CDF signal of a mysterious new resonance decaying to jet pairs, there is an active comments thread. I posted there a graph crafted by Tommaso Tabarelli de Fatis, a CMS…

Actually Paul died in November of 1966 due to a fatal car accident after leaving the Abbey Road recording studios. The evidence for this claim are clues that exist throughout the songs recorded by…

Entanglement, the quantum mechanical phenomenon, was coined as a term by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 but is still not understood completely.    From an applied perspective, while entangled…

Given the wide interest (about 20k readers in a day) that the new article by the CDF collaboration has attracted (see my original post here), I think I should collect in a separate post some…

Generally, coffee can be good for you just like in moderation fast food can be less bad for you.   Together, they are worse, according to a new University of Guelph study. Researcher Marie-…

An analysis funded by conservation charity the John Muir Trust has found wind turbine claims are overstated and output was low during the times of highest demand, producing below 10% of…

An analysis funded by conservation charity the John Muir Trust has found wind turbine claims are overstated and output was low during the times of highest demand, producing below 10% of…

XKCD makes fun of the fact that a 95% certain test is to 5% uncertain, and so, if one just often enough tests, a false positive will at some point result. Ha ha ha, good message, but I have to poop…

A 75-year old Georgian woman who was scavenging for copper to sell sliced through an underground cable and cut off Internet services to all of neighboring Armenia.   Pulling up unused…

A 75-year old Georgian woman who was scavenging for copper to sell sliced through an underground cable and cut off Internet services to all of neighboring Armenia.   Pulling up unused…

98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand went to China to make biofuel, allowing China to claim to be the world leader in green energy.  The problem: Thai exports of cassava chips have…

98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand went to China to make biofuel, allowing China to claim to be the world leader in green energy.  The problem: Thai exports of cassava chips have…

This week's "Smithsonian Snapshot" is a giant squid eye from their collection, not currently on display at the museum, i.e. ONLY AVAILABLE ONLINE: But they TOTALLY should have put it in a smaller…

Early reaction to the publication of a paper by physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory hints at the existence of a previously unknown elementary particle.  Is it the Higgs boson…