Atheists can't figure out religious people. It shouldn't be that hard, religious people only believe in one more God than atheists, so they aren't all that different, while atheists only believe in one fewer God than religious people, who don't believe in a lot of other Gods, so they aren't that different either. Yet they just don't get along.There may be new hope for understanding and dialogue. Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism (HFA) finds that autistic people are more likely to be atheists than neurotypical (NT) people.
The Times Atlas of the World, published by HarperCollins, exaggerated the rate of Greenland's ice loss in its thirteenth edition last week, scientists are saying. It said that Greenland lost 15 percent of its ice cover over the past 12 years, based on information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado in the United States. The Greenland ice sheet is the second biggest in the world.
Living in northern California, I have enjoyed one of the nicest summers I have ever had anywhere. It's been spectacular. Of course, climate instability can be a very bad thing - next year it could be heat winds like vorpal blades, dogs and cats living together...real mass hysteria. But this year was pretty good, since I did not live in the southern or eastern US.The Champagne region of France is also loving life. They say climatic shift has made their lives easier and their Champagne better. Recently, the Champagne harvest ran from mid-September to early October, but it has progressively crept earlier, late August through mid-September.
Nature invited some prominent names to comment on Al Gore's recently concluded Climate Reality Project.Barry W. Brook, director of climate science, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Australia, said, "Overall, I don't think this initiative will do much good. For one thing, Al Gore is now as much a hindrance as a help on climate change advocacy, as he's been characterized (probably unfairly) as a highly partisan figure, and so immediately gets about half of all folks offside..."
Obama Foodarama, the public portion of the digital archive of record about Obama Administration food and nutrition initiatives from the White House by Eddie Gehman Kohan, has this nifty article on President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama's mark on culinary. They served homebrewed White House Honey Ale, made with a pound of honey from the White House Beehive, to guests at last year's Super Bowl party. Turns out no one, not even Thomas Jefferson, had done it before. This won't make any campaign speeches in 2012, but it should.
We've all met people who ask what college we went to - it's a silly question, the first time it happens (well, if you are out of college anyway) but soon you learn it is simply a segue for the questioner to tell you what college they went to.So no matter what school you went to, they will then introduce something along the lines of 'I went to a little school in Massachusetts, perhaps you've heard of it, called (Harvard/Yale)'. Basically they want to lay the groundwork for bolstering the credibility of any future idiocy they may speak by invoking a school every has heard of. I mean, those Whiffenpoofs are famous the world over.
A study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs says what you already knew - if you get drunk and pass out, you are more likely to die in a fire you could easily have escaped, if you weren't hammered drunk and sleeping on the floor.Bonus: they manage to take shots at smokers too. The researchers' recommendation; have a designated house sitter. Yes, if you are going to pass out drunk, have someone sober staying at the house. Because all sober people want to watch you get smashed.
The HARPS team today announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including 16 super-Earths - the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time.One of the recently announced newly discovered planets, HD 85512 b, is estimated to be only 3.6 times the mass of the Earth and is located at the edge of the habitable zone — a narrow zone around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right.HD 85512 b - Super Earth in habitable zone one of 50 new exoplanets discovered by HARPS - Science Codex
I thought it was a joke when Alex Berezow of Real Clear Science sent this to me. You know, someone sets up a spoof site for laughs because the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks naturally lends itself to humor.Even the .ico file for the subdomain is a big ol' heart - and it is a subdomain so it must be real.
The COTI (Clip On Thermal Imager) by Optics1 gives warfighters "Predator"-style vision to better tag those terrorists and other threats; it adds thermal signals to to existing night-vision devices.The human eye sees light in wavelengths between 400-700 nanometers, while a night-vision device is near the infrared range, around 900. The COTI's long-wave infrared technology is in the 8- to 10-micron range, allowing users to see through smoke, foliage, fog, rain and other conditions where standard devices provide only limited capability.
