In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
Researchers at Edinburgh Napier’s Biofuel Research Centre have done something unthinkable - they have used Scotch to fuel cars instead of violence-filled weekends.Well, not Scotch specifically, rather whisky manufacturing waste from Glenkinchie Distillery (The Edinburgh Malt). Whew, the culture dodged a bullet there. But it's also a good idea. Scotch is a $5.5 billion industry in Scotland and Edinburgh Napier hit on the idea that whisky by-products could be an excellent resource for developing biobutanol, a next-generation biofuel with 30% more output power than ethanol. To understand how it works, you need a quick primer on whisky.
If Big Science complains about U.S. budget skepticism in the future, they are going to have to answer questions about the James Webb telescope. It is currently 3 years and $1.5 billion over budget with no end in sight. The latest projection, 2014 and $5 billion, has been greeted with so much derision that even the people behind the project in government have demanded an outside panel to oversee the boondoggle.
The difficult thing about popularizing movements is that, in the beginning, you want recognition but as time goes on the interests of the movement may be divergent from the people involved in it. So it goes with the singularity. In 1993, Vernor Vinge said "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." But 17 years into that, only the most optimistic thinkers think substantial progress has been made. Ray Kurzweil thinks so, but he said so in 2005 also, including a whole book called The Singularity is Near.
Fabio Casati and his collaborators at LiquidPublication, an EU-financed research project, want to change how you do science. Namely by allowing you to do more of it, instead of sifting through journals.“The more papers you produce, the more brownie points you get,” says Casati. “So most of your time is spent writing papers instead of thinking or doing science.”
No one here at Science 2.0 really noticed the Scienceblogs Pepsigate thing, being busy writing about science, but I lurk in a number of other places and, since Scienceblogs is the Big Kahuna in science blogging, it merited some attention, at least from me.
BeautifulPeople.com, the dating site where ugly people need not apply, has launched a virtual sperm (and egg) bank for people who want to have beautiful babies. Really. They call it the Beautiful Baby service and they have also made it available to non-members because, let's face it, the only way for more beautiful babies to be created is to have pretty men impregnate ugly women too, so take one for the team, fellow awesome men who are both smart and hot.
I just noticed a study from a few months back that correlated male shopping habits to ... evolution. Yes, the necessary survival skills that women used for foraging and men used to hunt evolved into the inability of men to match socks and the reason women can't find the escalator in the shopping mall if you give them directions.So if you are disinclined to believe, as friend-of-Obama Larry Summers does, that women cannot do math, you militant anti-science types will really dislike knowing that women are intrinsically obligated to spend the day picking through racks of clothes with friends and talking about that "Sex in the City" movie.
I happened to be reading Howard Bloom's book The Genius of the Beast when I saw something odd happening in social media - there was a minor blow up on a science blogging site called Scienceblogs.com over a new column that would be written by people from Pepsi, which threatened to become a major blow-up because of social media, and it got me thinking about re-purposing and symbol stacks.
The 4th of July is a holiday in the United States because it's the day a group of British citizens decided to throw off the shackles of tyranny and go out on their own, and they inspired a nation to join them. Or, if you are one of those self-loathing cynical Americans who don't realize how lucky you are to be born in a wealthy western country, it is a day when a bunch of rich guys decided they didn't want to pay their taxes(1).But the 4th of July is not just history, it's also apple pie, motherhood and ... chemistry.
Homeopathy's origin should be a clue to why there is no evidence to show it has ever worked. In the words of Samuel Hahnemann, the German physician at a time when being an M.D. was not a mark of respect, believed"The vital force that animates the healthy body, rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation . . . so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purpose of our existence."..."when a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by another dynamic influence hostile to his life."
It's World Cup time and that means sports fans worldwide are focused on important issues, like complaining about vuvuzelas and this year's soccer ball, the Jabulani, which will push fan and player hatred of the 2006 ball, Teamgeist, into the background.Why does this happen (the ball complaints, not the vuvuzelas) every World Cup? FIFA, governing body of Big Football, loves controversy, that's why. So FIFA has strict regulations on the size and weight of the balls but makes no regulations at all about the outside surface of the balls. Thus, we go from an inordinately smooth ball one World Cup to one with ridges the next.
As a younger, unmarried man I wanted to visit Sweden, but more for the volleyball team than for the science(1), but since I don't want to find out if there 'are other fish in the sea' these days I might instead like to go to Kosterhavet Marine National Park.
