Somedays I really love Seattle’s weather

Hot!:
[Via SciGuy]

Another day, another record. The temperature at Bush Intercontinental Airport hit 103° today, making it seven 100° days in a row. That ties a June record for consecutive 100° days, set in 1902. By my rough calculations, through today, this…
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The high near my house today in Woodinville was 62.8°. Forty degrees different! I had forgotten just how hot it can get in Houston but 7 days in a row? That means that August could be really tough.

At least it was a dry heat, with the humidity about 35% when the temperatures were over 100. We were down to about 20% during the hottest part of our days.

Technorati Tags: Environment, General

Scorpions and frogs

by noodlemaps

I discuss Paul Krugman’s column on the cynical ploys of so many Representatives in Congress at Path to Sustainable. In this case, their denialist views on climate change.

As I said, it reminds me of the fable about the scorpion and the frog. This led me to a very interesting page about the ethics of the situation. In particular, it discusses the scorpion’s response or defection, in the context of a real game, one with a definite end..

As the scorpion thinks, ‘If the game comes to an end, then I need to get mine before that happens. I need to grab for as much of what is available NOW before the frog gets theirs.’

If there is no future, no shadow on the scorpion, then it might as well do what it wants and follow its nature. No future means it is free to defect from the beginning and never have to cooperate.

Since the scorpion will cynically defect and sting at the first opportunity (why wait until the end anyway?), the decision of the frog now becomes paramount. What should the frog do?

Perhaps a quote from Snopes about the story of the scorpion will help:

The story uses animals to impart a caution about human behavior: Some folks are wholly irredeemable, says the legend, and woe betide those who forget that some cannot be dissuaded from their evilness, no matter who undertakes the rehabilitative efforts or how they are carried out. Ultimately, blame is laid at the victim’s feet for not accepting what he recognized and understood to be true but chose not to believe: “You knew what I was when you found me.” The victim’s arrogance in thinking he will be the one exception proves fatal, and his folly serves as a warning to others not to make the same mistake.

The decision of the frog to listen to the scorpion, to carry the scorpion on its back, was the one that doomed them both. If the frog really understood the scorpion’s nature, if it recognized that the scorpion would defect no matter what, then the frog should have simply ignored the scorpion and swam across the river by itself.

It did not need the scorpion. And trying to be thoughtful of the scorpion’s needs simply resulted in both of them dying. Better to ignore the scorpion and do what needs to be done.

Including changing the end of the game.

Technorati Tags: Government, Politics

Hammering in the dark

The science of hammering:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

When it comes to something as simple as hammering a nail, some people are naturals and get the job done after a few clean, sharp strokes of the hammer, whereas for the rest of us a similar challenge is likely to end up with the nail bent in the middle, a sore thumb and a wounded pride. Dr. Duncan Irschick and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have measured hammering performance in men and women and found that men are more accurate than women when hammering under light deprivation, and, conversely, women are more accurate in the light, regardless of target size.

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Does this mean that men hit their fingers in the dark less than women and are women really more effective at driving a nail? And does being more accurate actually result in driving the nail with fewer hits? Is speed included? What is the bent nail count?

I do love the fact that men can hit nails better in the dark than women. That seems like a really useful survival trait. Of course, anyone who watches the SImpsons knows that Marge is much better at handling tools that Homer.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Science

Real Science. Real Odd.

by Cam Switzer
So THAT’s where that condom went…:
[Via NCBI ROFL]

Accidental condom inhalation

“A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. In spite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio
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I’ve heard of inhaling latex balloons but latex condoms is another matter. It is an interesting read (and it is Open Access). 27 year old teacher who had been suffering from coughs and fevers for 6 months. They have a nice photo of the reconstructed condom. The paper ends with this delicate suggestion:

Quite interestingly, one would wonder that an incidence of this nature took place on the Indian sub-continent, which enjoys a traditional conservative culture. People tend to have religious attitudes and sex is largely considered to be a subject limited to a person’s private life. Apprehensions may, however, exist in the young minds towards opposite sex. Perhaps, the young lady in our case was also quite apprehensive about fellatio, a fact, that could have played a part in the condom inhalation. It is, much desirable that sex taboos prevalent on the sub-continent are curbed and greater sexual awareness created in the people’s minds.

I’m glad someone is putting up articles like this. To think someone got a publication because of an inhalation of a condom. Or because vampire bats recognize you by your breathing and will come back to find you (Open Access).

Or because a stuck titanium penile ring can only be removed by an electric saw (Costs $34 to read). Or because someone discovered that self-administered hydrofluoric acid enemas are bad news (although not available online the abstract states that the patient did this “while intoxicated from intranasal cocaine administration”).

I do love that someone got a paper published discussing how Superman’s x-ray vision could work. I can’t download the article but here is the abstract:

Requirements that a vision system must meet to make Superman ’s x-ray vision possible are stated, and two solutions are proposed. In one, emitted x-rays carry the information to Superman ’s eyes; in the other, emitted rays make objects transparent to a second type of ray. Further subjects lending themselves to this type of research are superhearing , the biomechanics of leaping tall buildings, or being faster than a bullet.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

Not trusting Big Business

Trust science on global warming but not genetic engineering?:
[Via SciGuy]

The current issue of Seed magazine has a thoughtful article the delves in the views of environmentalists toward climate and genetically modified foods. Here’s the crux of the article, in which the opposition of Europeans to GM foods is characterized:…
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The plant scientists are not really bewildered. They generally have the same answer I do – Environmentalists accept the science of global warming and not of GMO because, to a large extent, the same enemy is responsible for both. That enemy is Big Business, whether Big Oil or Big Agra. Heck many of these same people do not like vaccinations or take homeopathic medicines because of their distrust of Big Pharma.

And in some ways, they have a reason to. Big Business has not shown itself very sympathetic to the same issues that environmentalists do. Monsanto wants to force farmers to buy their seed, not make the environment a better place. Profits do not often mesh well with idealism.

Unfortunately, the stories against Big Business are easier to tell and understand than those for Big Business.

The problem GMO has, which is also seen with many drugs, is that the companies and their scientists are not trusted sources of information for many people. So even when their science is right, they have large hurdles to overcome.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science, Sustainability

Denial in Australia – Updated

Senator Fielding says there has been no warming for 15 years:
[Via Deltoid]

Senator Fielding has rejected the science and now claims:

Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven’t been going up and, therefore, there hasn’t been in the last 15 years a period of global warming,

Clearly there was never any chance of convincing someone who can look at a graph like this one and not see any increase in temperature since the mid 90s:

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[UPDATED - Be sure and read the linked article at Open Mind. It nicely demonstrates that looking at the last 40 years or so one decade at a time, there is very little apparent heating and very large error bars. But when you look at the entire period, there is definitely heating and much lower error bars. As usual deniers cherry pick data.]

Poor Australia. I’m sure glad all of our politicians are able to examine a graph. It makes it so much easier to hold an adult conversation about climate change. /snark

So many people see only what they want to see. It is like some kind of weird kind of optical illusion. From this chart, without looking at anything else, you can see that there are 20-30 year periods where the temperature goes up split by a 30 year period where it stayed the same.

It goes up but never comes down. Perhaps we are entering another period of stasis. That would only suggest that another period would follow where the temperature goes up again.

But we do look at other things, and we have an extremely good idea why things get hotter. We may not be able to explain year to year variations but it comes very close to being able to explain what we have seen in this graph and what we might expect to see in the future.

Simply saying global warming has stopped tells us nothing. It is simply kicking the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Sustainability

A very extraordinary woman

Jerri FitzGerald, Who Treated Herself at South Pole, Dies at 57:
[Via NYT > Health]

Breast cancer recurred in Dr. FitzGerald whose treatment was guided via computer for months in 1999 until a rescue plane was able to land.

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An amazing woman whose almost spur of the moment decision in 1999 changed her life forever. Sorry she has left us.

Technorati Tags: Health

Can any review of n Elsevier now be trusted?

What’s With Those People at Elsevier, Anyway?:
[Via In the Pipeline]

Via a reader comes this article, which takes us to Elsevier’s hard-hitting textbook publishing operation. The co-authors of a psychology text for the publisher were recently taken aback to get this e-mail from a publicist at the company: “”Congratulations and…

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This has the same corrosive that payola did in radio. How can anything be trusted? If Elsevier was paying for reviews of textbooks, something it says is not outside the norm in publishing. than most likely every review online is just a paid ad from someone getting a $25 gift certificate. I wonder if we can do some checking of the reviews of Elsevier books at Amazon and figure out who was on the payroll.

Man, even if I liked one of their books, I would not leave a review now. Someone might think I was doing it just for the money. There is a word for someone who uses one’s talents for an unworthy or corrupt purpose.

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media

BJ for BK?

Good lord.:
[Via Unscrewing The Inscrutable - .]
Via dKos:

I’ll let the ad speak for itself.

Good lord. Advertising has sunk to a new low.

Jim Downey

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Another in the long list of very bad, in poor taste BK ads. No subtlety at all. ‘It just tastes better” “Seven incher” “Fill your desire for something long…” And the burger strategically located in front of the open lips of a woman made up to look like a blow-up sex doll (not how the eyes are vacantly looking forward rather that at what she is about to eat.

Sandwich as phallic symbol. All well and good but did they envision the effect this sort of ad would have on men? I mean, if this is just a cute way to suggest their sandwich is like a penis, then what does that suggest for any man who eats it? I can see many parts of the country where insinuating that a man who ate this seven incher was gay would not go over well.

Their masked King in the ads is just freaky but this is just awful, Seems like this would hurt the brand but who knows. There is no such thing as bad publicity. Right?

Technorati Tags: General

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and be very misleading

by CATR *Recomiendo ver fotos con su tamaño original
A New Creationist Strategy!:
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Those of us who’ve been active in defending science education from the attacks of creationists, as I have for most of my adult life, often find great amusement in the fact that the anti-evolution movement evolves quite rapidly in response to changes in the legal environment. The latest strategy, apparently conceived by the brilliant minds of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, is relatively clever in concept and mind-numbingly idiotic in execution.

What did these two geniuses come up with? How about publishing an abridged edition of On the Origin of Species — it is in the public domain now, after all — and slap on an introduction full of blatantly creationist nonsense. Here’s their sales pitch:

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And if you want to really laugh, go to the website for the book. It has a nice quote that denigrates the book that they are using to help sell it. see, if a scientist says the intro is crap, it must be right!

Since it is an abridged version, I wonder what was left out. And since you can rad the introduction for free at the website, why would you even want to pay 99 cents per edition. Unless this is being underwritten by someone who hopes they can get this book into libraries under the mistaken impression it is really a legitimate view of Darwin.

Nice try. If someone is going to pull these sorts of tricks, then I think we should see about getting the Jefferson Bible into more places. Unfortunately, the Amazon book costs 10 times more than the Darwin book. Since it is in the public domain, perhaps we need someone to self publish it with a nice intro.

Technorati Tags: Science

Seattle’s wonders

by faeryboots

I was driving into to Seattle today on the 520 bridge over Lake Washington. At the western edge, near the Union Bay, I saw a pair of bald eagles flying overhead, not more than 30 yards ahead of me. They were flying south, headed towards some trees on the edge of the marshlands here.

I can only believe that they are a breeding pair. One of them has been responsible for quite a few traffic slowdowns. While I am sure many localities in the US have gotten used to hawks sitting on lamp posts, Seattle gets the extra treat of bald eagles sitting there on the lamp. This posting at West Seatlle blog describes them and has some stunning photos.

Amongst all the natural beauty of this area, I am amazed at the varied wild life that still maintains a foothold. Watching these majestic birds fly in the middle to a major populated area is simply awe-inspiring. There is even some video of them hunting, not to far from where I saw them.

Technorati Tags: Environment

The puppet masters

by Gilles Gonthier
This Week’s Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite: Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga:
[Via Observations of a Nerd]

There is an entire family of wasps who use other species to raise their young, and they’re a seemingly endless source of sci-fi worthy parasites. I’ve covered a few of them before, but none is quite so elegant as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga, a Costa Rican wasp with a fascinating and unique way of keeping its young safe until they can cocoon and turn into adults: it preys on spiders.

Spiders wouldn’t seem like the best choice for nanny, what with their taste for bugs and all. But the daring Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga uses them anyhow. Unlike many parasitic wasps which lay hundreds or thousands of eggs into their hosts, this meticulous mom carefully avoids getting trapped in a hungry spider’s web while it paralyzes the soon to be host temporarily and lays only one egg on the host spider’s abdomen. Soon enough a larvae hatches, which stays on the spider’s back sucking hemolymph (spider blood) through small holes while the spider goes on as if there’s nothing new to see. It continues web building, eating and all its other daily activities for the next one to two weeks.
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What happens next is really a fascinating story. It really is like the Heinlein book but with spiders. It is fascinating to read about the behavior control of one thing by another. Since most behavior, especially in organisms as relatively simple as spiders, is simply a matter of chemistry, the ability of the wasp larva to make the spider do its bidding is not a mystery.

It is another great example of how evolution can mold one species to use another one. There are so many of these types of wasps that use another insect/arachnid to host the larva. This is the best one yet.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Ozone Solution Poses a Growing Climate Threat

Ozone Solution Poses a Growing Climate Threat:
[Via Dot Earth]

A new study shows growing greenhouse threat from a chemical aiding the ozone layer.

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Yep, the group of chemicals are hydrofluorocarbons. The same ones that the GOP energy plans want to prevent from being regulated. Can’t use the Clean Air Act or the Endangered Species Act. Smart move.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Science

Why I love Apple

by Codexian

The new software has only been out since friday but here is the first story about using MobileMe to find a lost/stolen iPhone. A nice story and one with a happy ending. I’ve got find my iphone set up also. It is showing me that it is at my home. I wonder if the new iPhone gives a smaller diameter circle?

Technorati Tags: Technology

Why better post-conviction processes need to be created

Funny how that works.:
[Via Unscrewing The Inscrutable - .]

Dogs are great. I love dogs. Most of my life I’ve had at least one.

So, I don’t blame the dog.

For what? This:

Not just any dog. A wonder dog helped convict all three men: a German shepherd named Harass II, who wowed juries with his amazing ability to place suspects at the scenes of crimes.

Harass could supposedly do things no other dog could: tracking scents months later and even across water, according to his handler, John Preston.

If it sounds hard to believe, there’s a good reason.

After providing prosecutors with testimony for years, Preston was finally discredited by a judge who had the sense to do what others had not: test the dog for himself.

That is to say, the three men referenced were convicted of crimes largely on the testimony provided by the dog’s handler. And together they served over 50 years in prison, just recently having been released due to actual DNA evidence showing that they couldn’t have committed the crimes for which they were convicted.

Seems that oftentimes prosecutors would turn to John Preston to resolve problems with cases. Almost as if by magic, Harass II would be able to “track” clues after months.

Sure he could. Why, his handler said so. Just like the prosecutors needed.

Funny how that works.

Jim Downey

(Via Balloon Juice.)

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The Supreme Court said that allowing DNA testing would clog up the courts. Well, maybe if they did not have so many crappy cases decided by a dog in order to convict innocent people, the courts would not have to deal with that problem.

Technorati Tags: Politics