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Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 10:38am

Sexy Einstein

Apr. 17, 2012

Science Has Dropped

Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 1:26pm

Apocalyptic Weather Fools Americans Into Thinking Climate Change Is...

By KIRSTEN BOYD JOHNSON

9:21 PM APRIL 20, 2012

222 COMMENTS 2433 VIEWS

Here is some exciting news we almost missed: Despite the yeoman’s service performed by Fox News in explaining to its panicky viewership how global warming was just a hoax invented by the Weather Channel in a cynical plot to gin up ratings, it seems that the never-ending string of Rick Perry’s failed rain dances, the recent creepy tropical winter experienced by most of the country that is confusing the hell out of farmers’ crops, and all those thousands of category-one-million tornadoes mowing down large swaths of Real America are all conspiring to make your fellow citizens a tad suspicious about the alleged fictional nature of climate change. New polling shows that about two thirds of Americans think that global warming is affecting weather in the United States, which means that — brace yourselves — a startling two thirds of Americans believe that global warming exists. In 2009, just over half shared this view. Sustained deadly catastrophe was all it took! READ MORE »

Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 1:42pm

Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 2:28pm

Meat Eating Behind Evolutionary Success of Humankind, Global Population Spread, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2012) — Carnivory is behind the evolutionary success of humankind. When early humans started to eat meat and eventually hunt, their new, higher-quality diet meant that women could wean their children earlier. Women could then give birth to more children during their reproductive life, which is a possible contribution to the population gradually spreading over the world. The connection between eating meat and a faster weaning process is shown by a research group from Lund University in Sweden, which compared close to 70 mammalian species and found clear patterns.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420105539.htm

Permalink Reply by doone on April 22, 2012 at 6:58pm

Spring arrives to stunning effect in Kenya:

Permalink Reply by doone on April 23, 2012 at 8:27am

Is Music Innate?

Not really: 

The oldest known musical artifacts are some bone flutes that are only 35,000 years old, a blink in an evolutionary time. And although kids are drawn to music early, they still prefer language when given a choice, and it takes years before children learn something as basic as the fact that minor chords are sad. Of course, music is universal now, but so are mobile phones, and we know that mobile phones aren't evolved adaptations.

In the above video, musical phenom Kuha'o plays a beautiful rendition of a dubstep song after hearing it for the first time:

This is a video I shot with no editing. Kuha’o has been playing the piano for about 3 years and has been blind since infancy. He is only 15 years old and can play most songs after hearing it just one time on the piano. I wanted to see what it would sound like if he were to play a dubstep song and it turned out phenomenal!

The full video, including the dubstep song that inspired Kuha'o, is here. More on what it means to be musical here.

Permalink Reply by doone on April 23, 2012 at 5:53pm

River Expansion

Apr. 23, 2012

Permalink Reply by doone on April 24, 2012 at 10:27am

HAS PHYSICS MADE PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION OBSOLETE?

Ross Andersen interviews Lawrence Krauss (who may be obliquely referring to David Albert's review), in The Atlantic:

Your book argues that physics has definitively demonstrated how something can come from nothing. Do you mean that physics has explained how particles can emerge from so-called empty space, or are you making a deeper claim?

Krauss: I'm making a deeper claim, but at the same time I think you're overstating what I argued. I don't think I argued that physics has definitively shown how something could come from nothing; physics has shown how plausible physical mechanisms might cause this to happen. I try to be intellectually honest in everything that I write, especially about what we know and what we don't know. If you're writing for the public, the one thing you can't do is overstate your claim, because people are going to believe you. They see I'm a physicist and so if I say that protons are little pink elephants, people might believe me. And so I try to be very careful and responsible. We don't know how something can come from nothing, but we do know some plausible ways that it might.

But I am certainly claiming a lot more than just that. That it's possible to create particles from no particles is remarkable---that you can do that with impunity, without violating the conservation of energy and all that, is a remarkable thing. The fact that "nothing," namely empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I'll be the first to say that empty space as I'm describing it isn't necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them an eternal empty void was the definition of nothing, and certainly I show that that kind of nothing ain't nothing anymore.

But debating physics with Augustine might not be an interesting thing to do in 2012.

Krauss: It might be more interesting than debating some of the moronic philosophers that have written about my book. Given what we know about quantum gravity, or what we presume about quantum gravity, we know you can create space from where there was no space. And so you've got a situation where there were no particles in space, but also there was no space. That's a lot closer to "nothing."

But of course then people say that's not "nothing," because you can create something from it. They ask, justifiably, where the laws come from. And the last part of the book argues that we've been driven to this notion---a notion that I don't like---that the laws of physics themselves could be an environmental accident. On that theory, physics itself becomes an environmental science, and the laws of physics come into being when the universe comes into being. And to me that's the last nail in the coffin for "nothingness."

Posted by Robin Varghese at 09:01 AM | Permalink 

Permalink Reply by doone on April 24, 2012 at 6:53pm

10 Amazing Black And White Photos Of Vintage New York

History never looked so good. The New York City Department of Records recently unveiled a massive online archive of over 800,000 scanned pictures. Here are but a few.posted about an hour ago

Gavon Laessig 
BuzzFeed Staff

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1.

In this Oct. 7, 1914 photo provided by the New York City Municipal Archives, painters are suspended from wires on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Over 870,000 photos from an archive that exceeds 2.2 million images have been scanned and made available online, for the first time giving a global audience a view of a rich collection that documents life in New York City.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures, Eugene de Salignac)

2.

In this September 30, 1936 photo, baseball legend Babe Ruth, center, is joined by his second wife Clare, center left, and singer Kate Smith, front left, in the grandstand during Game 1 of the 1936 World Series at the Polo Grounds in New York.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, WPA Federal Writers' Project)

3.

In this circa 1890 photo, a pair of girls walk east along 42nd Street in New York. Acker, Merrall and Condit wine shop delivery wagons are on the right and the C.C. Shayne Furrier sign can be seen on the roof overhead.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, DeGregario Collection (New York Camera Club))

4.

In this May 18, 1940 photo, a man reads a newspaper on New York's 6th Ave. and 40th St, with the headline: “Nazi Army Now 75 Miles From Paris."

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, Borough President Manhattan)

5.

In this April 18, 1936 photo, the police booking photo of Charles “Lucky” Luciano is shown in New York.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, DA Case Files)

6.

In this 1918 photo, police work a homicide after children found the body of Gaspare Candella stuffed in a burlap covered drum out in the middle of a Brooklyn, N.Y. field.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, NYPD Evidence Collection, Detective Charles A. Carlstrom)

7.

In this Oct. 2, 1930 photo, workers assemble bricks to build the roadway on 28th Street in New York.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, Borough President Manhattan)

8.

In this July 29, 1908 photo, workers dig in the street along the sidewalk on the north side of Delancey Street in New York.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures, Eugene de Salignac)

9.

In this June 5, 1908 photo provided by the New York City Municipal Archives, the superstructure from the Manhattan Bridge rises above Washington Street in New York.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures, Eugene de Salignac)

10.

In this Dec. 22, 1936 photo, a man looks at the Hudson River from the New York tower of the George Washington Bridge.

(AP / New York City Municipal Archives, WPA Federal Writers' Project, Jack Rosenzwieg)

Permalink Reply by doone on April 24, 2012 at 8:43pm

Browse more infographics.

Permalink Reply by doone on April 24, 2012 at 11:23pm

Browse more Science infographics.

Permalink Reply by doone on April 25, 2012 at 9:45am

Browse more infographics.

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