Check out what I just posted at our sister site Rude GMO Critics.
February 24, 2011
February 21, 2011
Superhero comic books are one giant allegory about misuse of technology.
February 16, 2011
The whalers have all but admitted defeat. Congratulations all around!
FAJ official Tatsuya Nakaoku blamed the suspension on harrassment by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has made life progressively more difficult for the whaling fleet each year by sending faster and better-equipped boats.
This season, it has regularly managed to park across the back of the Nisshin Maru factory ship, making it impossible to winch whales on board.
Mr Nakaoku said it was a question of Sea Shepherd boats endangering safety.
So has Sea Shepherd won? It has pursued its campaign not only in face of physical opposition from the whaling fleet, but also objections from some anti-whaling observers who believe the annual confrontations handed the FAJ an opportunity to garner support by painting an image of anti-whaling activists as anti-Japanese and akin to terrorists.
The whiners at Greenpeace have been saying this for years while Sea Shepherd was out there saving whales. But I must grudgingly admit Greenpeace has done a little. Still, this victory belongs to the Sea Shepherd and everybody knows it.
February 15, 2011
Dr Large’s central conclusion was that “The results…confirm the need for a renewed public health warning about the potential for cannabis use to bring on psychotic illness.” However, the scientific evidence for such a very bold statement is absent from the paper. The study provides no new data. It consists of a recalculation of data from 83 previous studies. It’s all correlation and association, and correlation does not equal causation. Dr Large provides no evidence of a causal relationship between cannabis use and psychosis whatsoever.
Further examination of the “meta-analysis” shows that the majority of subjects already had a predisposition towards psychosis (usually by genetics). Additionally, as well as being consumers of cannabis, participants were also regular users of tobacco and other psychoactive substances, including cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Therefore Dr Large’s claim that it is cannabis specifically that caused psychosis in these patients is illogical and un-scientific. 90% of diagnosed schizophrenics smoke cigarettes – but nobody is claiming tobacco causes schizophrenia.
Sir, you seem to have gotten some propaganda in your science.
February 13, 2011
Japanese scientists have spotted two huge holes on the sun’s magnetic field, and it appears there is some reason to be concerned about.
February 8, 2011
Rooster armed for combat kills spectator at illegal cockfight.
February 7, 2011
Just as cruel as flypaper or sticky traps and at least ten times as nightmarish.
Let’s begin with their digital wall clock, which doesn’t need a battery or a plug because it gets its energy from eating flies.
This carnivorous clock (”8 dead flies makes it work for about 12 days,” says co-designer Professor Chris Melhuish, of Bristol Robotics) is just a prototype. It doesn’t catch enough flies to power the motor on top and the digital clock. But this is just a first step.
As Professor Melhuish explains on another video:
What we have here is a belt. The white thing is a belt that’s covered in honey. So it operates just like standard flypaper. Flies would be attracted to that honey. They’d land on the belt, get stuck, as you can see it is moving down very, very slowly, and right underneath here there’s a blade and the blade scrapes off any insects that have become stuck to the honey. They fall into the microbial fuel cell underneath. And this is the device that turns that organic matter into electrical energy.
There is also a table that eats mice, although I’m not sure why a table would need to generate energy in the first place.
February 2, 2011
“A primer on police, military, gender and capitalist dynamics behind the Egyptian uprising”
This blog post is, quite dazzlingly, the best explanation of WTF is going on in Egypt I’ve seen yet.
Mubarak is already out of power.
As the signs say, “GAME OVER MUBARK”.
February 1, 2011
Boy, nothing lights up the internet like a good organic food fight, huh? You could power every home in the Western Hemisphere from the energy organic partisans expend bickering, tweeting, blogging, and flaming each another.
But the latest skirmish isn’t merely a skirmish — it’s a civil war, and for a number of reasons, it probably marks a historic turning point for organics.
The shit has hit the fan.
Update: Ronnie Cummins of OCA sets the record straight.
