Interesting Stuff Thread

robindch

^^^ Libertarians in reality-denial shocker!

I was going to bet 50p that the Koch brothers were implicated, but on skimming through the text, I see they already are. In that case, there's your link to the Tea Party + our Republican preseidential fruitcakes.

//rewards self with half a chocolate bar

RichieC

I wish i could have been a trust fund baby like the kochs and become a libertarian hero :C

Turtwig

RichieC wrote: »

I wish i could have been a trust fund baby like the kochs and become a libertarian hero :C

You still can just get a science degree, declare something controversial that is in Heartland's interests. Next, wail LOUDLY about censorship, bias and corruption among the scientific cardinals and popes. Eventually Heartland will probably fund you. It's my fall back plan for when I lose complete hope,morals and become apathetic towards the human race. Complaining about censorship is fun and easy. (Has anyone read their blogs and how they drag scientific papers and articles wayyy out of context!!??:D It's so easy to do...so, so, so easy.)

RichieC

Jernal wrote: »

You still can just get a science degree, declare something controversial that is in Heartland's interests. Next, wail LOUDLY about censorship, bias and corruption among the scientific cardinals and popes. Eventually Heartland will probably fund you. It's my fall back plan for when I lose complete hope,morals and become apathetic towards the human race. Complaining about censorship is fun and easy. (Has anyone read their blogs and how they drag scientific papers and articles wayyy out of context!!??:D It's so easy to do...so, so, so easy.)

Would an internet degree be of any use?

Oh BTW... Watch how the US liberal media just jumps all over this story like they did with climategate... pesky liberals :rolleyes:

robindch

On Tuesday, 28th February, the National Library on Kildare Street is opening a ten-month exhibition of items of scientific/historical curiosity:

http://www.nli.ie/en/list/latest-news.aspx?article=10566601-9b37-4631-9d76-9044303d1d52&utm_source=Circulator&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Invitation:%20%27Particles%20of%20the%20Past%27%20Exhibition%20Launch

National Library wrote:

'Particles of the Past' Exhibition Launching in February

This February, we will launch Particles of the Past - Phase Four of our interactive multimedia exhibition Discover your National Library at 2/3 Kildare St. To celebrate Dublin City of Science 2012, the exhibition will showcase a fascinating selection of science-related gems from our collections.

With topics ranging from 17th century home remedies to the engineering feat of Ardnacrusha, from a handwritten journal recording Captain Cook’s second voyage to early photography, the exhibition promises to be as eclectic as it is interesting. “Even though we’re a humanities library, we have pieces that reflect what was going on in the scientific world hundreds of years ago. A lot of the material we’ve chosen would have been very popular science at the time” says Co-Curator Riona McMorrow.

Robert Boyle is considered by many to be the father of modern chemistry. Alongside his seminal work ‘The Sceptical Chymist’, another gem on display in the exhibition is a book containing an interesting collection of home remedies for everything from sore throats to piles. “Some of the cures are just amazing” says Co-Curator Aoife O’Connor. “In the 1700s they were doing things like crushing up earthworms, powdering them and feeding them to people; the powdered earthworms were generally served with white wine it seems! Another remedy involved the use of human faeces to cure eye complaints. Fantastic stuff!”

Eighteenth century archaeological drawings in the exhibition include sketches by Gabriel Beranger and Austin Cooper, who travelled around Ireland drawing historic monuments and buildings. Many of the buildings they recorded no longer exist, which is why their work is so important.

Booklets and postcards of Ireland’s first hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha were selected because they highlight the significance of the project in 1920s Ireland. “Ardnacrusha was a tourist attraction at the time” says Aoife. “You could buy collector’s item images of it! One of the books on display at the exhibition describes Limerick as ‘the Mecca of Ireland’. That’s how highly thought of Ardnacrusha was. Nothing like that had been seen in Ireland before. It was a huge engineering undertaking.”

Particles of the Past is an interactive exhibition so, in addition to viewing items in their cases, visitors will be able to examine them in greater detail by using our innovative ‘Discovery’ touchscreens. Each item will also have an accompanying video where visitors can listen to an expert discuss the item in greater depth.

Finally, visitors can also look forward to the conservation and preservation elements of the exhibition where they can see how science is used here in the NLI to protect individual items in our collections so that they can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Discover your National Library: Particles of the Past will run from February to December 2012.

joseph brand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGTtFZFwskc&feature=related


Pastor Steven Anderson (who prays for Obama's death) gets tasered by cops after being stopped by Border Patrol.

The look on the cops face at 3:37 "Git some!"

BTW, Steve was honoured with the Worst Pastor of the Year Award 2009.

http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/worst-preacher-ever-2009/

MagicMarker

I only watched the tasering part but it seemed a little excessive, personally I would have smashed in the windscreen and pulled him out by his balls.

Turtwig

An interesting pastor indeed. ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXMA4xOS5BY

recedite

MagicMarker wrote: »

I only watched the tasering part but it seemed a little excessive, personally I would have smashed in the windscreen and pulled him out by his balls.

:eek: I'd prefer to be tasered, than have you "help" me out of my vehicle.

joseph brand

Jernal wrote: »

An interesting pastor indeed. ..

Class A brainwasher. I notice the victim barely gets a word in edgeways, and the charlatan actually puts words in the victims mouth. Fast talking.

Since there are so many contradictions in the Bible, he can pick and choose.

I bet Derren Brown could do some Witnessing in his tv proramme. Exposing the tricks of the trade.

Derren has some videos on youtube where he talks to Dawkins about 'Psychics', exposing the 'cold reading' techniques.

joseph brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYQuvwQ4y-k

Larry David on religion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSADaYCkYBc

muppeteer

Another portion of the CC's privileged position looks to be dismantled. Of course this is nothing to do with fairness but in fact secularism attacking the church:rolleyes:

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Mario Monti plans an amendment to an Italian law that will force the Catholic Church to pay taxes on all its commercial properties, according to a statement posted late yesterday on the government’s website.

The church currently pays property tax only on buildings designated as “purely commercial,” based on an Italian law originating 20 years ago and extended in 2006. The wording is ambiguous when it comes to clinics that have a chapel or monasteries that offer bed and breakfast accommodation.

The Catholic Church owns about 100,000 properties in Italy, a third of which are commercial, according to the Italian Radical Party, which historically has challenged the church.

Italy would gain an additional 100 million euros ($130 million) from increasing levies on the church to include all its commercial property, Paolo Berdini, an urban planner and consultant for local administrations, said in an interview last month.

The Vatican reported a profit of 9.8 million euros ($12.7 million) in 2010 after three years of losses during the recession.

EU Probe

Following a complaint by the Radical Party, European Union regulators opened a probe in 2010 into Italian tax breaks on real estate granted to the Catholic Church, saying they may distort competition.

The outcome of the investigation will be made public by next month and if the decision goes against Italy, the EU could order the country to pay a fine and to demand that the church reimburse the government for unpaid taxes of the last five years, the secretary of the Radical Party, Mario Staderini, said in an interview in Rome on Dec. 21.

Monti has informed European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia of his decision to overhaul the rule and hopes “the government’s initiative will allow the European Commission to close the procedure,” according to the statement.

Monti served as the EU’s competition commissioner from 1999 to 2004.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-16/italy-to-end-tax-breaks-on-church-enterprises-monti-says.html

18AD

I thought this was whopper interesting:

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/16-interview-lynn-margulis-not-controversial-right/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

tl;dr version: Symbiogenesis is needed for a more complete evolutionary theory.



This also:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/is-sensitivity-a-curse-or-a-blessing-my-latest-on-the-orchid-dandelion-hypothesis/

tl;dr version: Specific genes (and inter-genetic feedback) simultaneously code for good and bad traits.

muppeteer

Well worth a look. Hope this gets made.
http://vimeo.com/36724471?rss=1

An Honest Liar profiles the life of famed magician turned professional skeptic James “The Amazing” Randi as he embarks on a series of public crusades to expose America’s beloved psychics, mentalists, preachers, and faith healers with religious fervor. Along the way, the film will show how easily our perceptions can be fooled – by magicians, con artists, and even documentaries.

Galvasean

Scientists run out of good dinosaur names:
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/e11-062

joseph brand

Richard Dawkins expresses disbelief over slave owner ancestor story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/richard-dawkins-disbelief-slave-trade-ancestor

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Henry Dawkins had amassed more than 1,000 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744, and quoted campaigners calling on Dawkins to pay reparations.

Seems legit. :rolleyes:

robindch

joseph brand wrote: »

Richard Dawkins expresses disbelief over slave owner ancestor story.

I trust that the hivemind is examining Adam Lusher's family history with a very powerful microscope.

Original Das Telegraf article is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9091007/Slaves-at-the-root-of-the-fortune-that-created-Richard-Dawkins-family-estate.html

joseph brand

robindch wrote: »

I trust that the hivemind is examining Adam Lusher's family history with a very powerful microscope.

Original Das Telegraf article is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9091007/Slaves-at-the-root-of-the-fortune-that-created-Richard-Dawkins-family-estate.html

They should check The Royal Family's history too. See how they took acquired so much land.

Turtwig

joseph brand wrote: »

They should check The Royal Family's history too. See how they took acquired so much land.

What about searching for incest?
I blame George R.R Martin for this one.

Delirium

Single-atom transistor busts the records

Researchers in Australia said on Sunday they had made with pinpoint accuracy a working transistor consisting of a single atom, marking a major stride towards next-generation computing.

The device comprises a single phosphorus atom, etched into a silicon bed, with "gates" to control electrical flow and metallic contacts that are also on the atomic scale.

"Our group has proved that it is really possible to position one phosphorus atom in a silicon environment, exactly as we need it, with near-atomic precision, and at the same time (incorporate) gates," said lead scientist Martin Fuechsle.

Transistors, which switch or amplify electrical flow, are the building blocks of computer chips.

For more than 50 years, the semi-conductor industry has been upholding Moore's Law, the celebrated prediction by Intel Corp. pioneer Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months or so.

But the astonishing run of success could hit a wall by the end of this decade without a breakthrough in miniaturising transistors.

The team made the transistor from a silicon crystal that was placed in a vacuum.

To etch it, they used a device called a scanning tunnelling microscope, which is able to see atoms and manipulate them using a super-fine metal tip.

Phosphorus atoms were deposited in a nano-scale "trench," covered with an inert layer of hydrogen, and the unwanted ones were then weeded out. A chemical reaction welded the "transistor" atom to the silicon surface.

The minute device operates in ultra-cold temperatures provided by liquid helium.

It is not a finished product but proof-of-principle, designed to show that single-atom devices can be built and controlled.

Scientist have made atomic-scale transistors in the past, but through a chance find rather than by design, said Michelle Simmons, director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales, where the work was carried out.

"But this device is perfect," she said.

"This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate [chip base] with this level of precise accuracy."

The research is reported in the specialist journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Source

robindch

It's a few years old at this point, but if this paper is to be believed, then it seems that you can't be prosecuted for committing a crime in a certain, very specific 50-square-mile area in Idaho.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=691642

Delirium

Flies drink alcohol to medicate themselves against wasp infections

Some people drink alcohol to drown their sorrows. So does the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, but its sorrows aren’t teary rejections or lost jobs. It drinks to kill wasps that have hatched inside its body, and would otherwise eat it alive. It uses alcohol as a cure for body-snatchers.

D.melanogaster lives in a boozy world. It eats yeasts that grow on rotting fruit, which can contain up to 6 per cent alcohol. Being constantly drunk isn’t a good idea for a wild animal, and the flies have evolved a certain degree of resistance to alcohol. But Neil Milan from Emory University has found that alcohol isn’t just something that the insect tolerates. It’s also fly medicine.

Insects the world over are plagued by parasitic wasps. The wasps lay eggs in or on the bodies of other insects, turning them into living larders for their developing grubs. The grubs eat their hosts from the inside-out and eventually burst out of their dead or dying husks. It’s a grisly fate, but D.melanogaster can do something about it.

Milan raised some fly larvae on food that contained 6 per cent alcohol, and offered them to the wasp Leptopilina heterotoma. This species is a generalist that targets a wide variety of flies. He found that the wasps laid three times more eggs on tee-total flies than on boozy ones. Maybe they were sickened by the fumes. Perhaps they detected a hostile environment for their grubs. Either way, among alcohol, the flies were less likely to become a wasp buffet.

Even if the wasps manage to lay their eggs, an alcoholic fly larva proves to be a bad place to grow up. Twice as many of the wasp grubs die if their hosts chow down on alcoholic food. Even those that survive fare badly. When Milan cut them out of the flies, he found that their internal organs were deformed, and they could barely move.

Normally, flies try to deal with wasp infections by imprisoning the unwanted grubs in special cells. But those that get a drink don’t bother. They don’t need a special defence – the alcohol does the job for them.

And the flies seem know this. Milan found that infected larvae will actively medicate themselves. If given a choice between alcoholic and non-alcoholic food, larvae with wasps inside them will crawl towards the intoxicating meal. And as a result, they’re more likely to survive their ordeal.

But these defences aren’t unbreakable. A different but closely related wasp – Leptopilina boulardi – only pursues D.melanogaster and it has evolved resistance to its target’s defences. This specialist can take more alcohol than its generalist relative L.heterotoma. It’s more willing to lay eggs on a fly that eats alcoholic food, and its grubs are better at tolerating an alcoholic environment.

This looks like yet another example of an evolutionary arms race, where parasites and hosts are locked in a cycle of ever-escalating counter-measures. Because L.boulardi targets a species that regularly encounters alcohol, it has evolved ways of coping with this defence.

And it’s possible that the larvae know this too. Milan found that infected larvae were more likely to seek out an alcoholic meal if they were infected by L.boulardi (the specialist) than L.heterotoma (the generalist). Alcohol does slightly harm fly larvae, so it’s only worth drinking it if it’ll do more good than damage. If the drink will kill a parasite, that’s a tick in the plus column. If the parasite is resistant, it might be better to stay tee-total and try another defence. (Alternatively, the wasp might be manipulating the fly away from a potentially life-saving medicine.)

The flies are far from the only animals to medicate themselves. Humans obviously do it. Chimps with worm infections in their guts will dose themselves up with the pith of the Veronia plant. Rainforest animals from tapirs to macaws will lick clay deposits to neutralise the poisonous chemicals in their diet. A few years ago, Michael Singer found that woolly bear caterpillars will actively eat toxic plants if they are infected by parasitic wasps.

There are hundreds of such examples, but Milan may have found the first one of animals using alcohol to control an infectious disease or a internal parasite. Whether other species, including ourselves, could do the same is currently anyone’s guess. Certainly, this guy might have found a stiff drink to be quite useful.

Source

robindch

Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.

Turns out that people who believe conspiracy theories are likely to believe conspiracy theories that contradict each other:

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/18/1948550611434786.full.pdf

Galvasean

joseph brand wrote: »

Richard Dawkins expresses disbelief over slave owner ancestor story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/richard-dawkins-disbelief-slave-trade-ancestor



Seems legit. :rolleyes:

I really don't get the idea of paid reparations. Why should someone pay for something someone else (whom they never met or spoke to) did over 100 years ago? It's just weird.

joseph brand

Galvasean wrote: »

I really don't get the idea of paid reparations. Why should someone pay for something someone else (whom they never met or spoke to) did over 100 years ago? It's just weird.

Problem is, you're dealing with idiots. These people believe in fairy tales. And they're angry.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9090325/A-good-week-for-the-smiting-of-the-ungodly.html#disqus_thread

Janet Daly said:

The chief premise of the Dawkins case then was that we should never believe in anything (viz the existence of God) for which we do not have factual evidence. So I asked him if he believed that it was wrong to hurt people unnecessarily. And, of course, he replied that he did. I then asked him what his evidence was for that belief: a question to which there can be no answer because beliefs of this kind are not based on “evidence”.

What in christ is she on about?

Oh and btw, The Daily Fail are running this story too, only with a chart of his family tree and a lovely old image of a slave master and his slaves. Nice touch guys.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103319/Campaigner-Richard-Dawkins-faces-awkward-truth-money-came-slave-trade.html

This comment I read below the article sums it up:

And just when you were starting to think that journalism couldn't possibly get any worse... If this is the level that Dawkins' detractors must stoop to in order to discredit his views, I say he can rightfully claim victory.

18AD

Galvasean wrote: »

I really don't get the idea of paid reparations. Why should someone pay for something someone else (whom they never met or spoke to) did over 100 years ago? It's just weird.

I think the usual argument is that something has been basically stolen off someone else.

The simplified example is say if my granfather gives me a bike he stole. I don't know he stole it. But the original owner shows up and asks for his bike back.
What is one to do?

This doesn't even really apply to the Dawkins case.

kylith

Galvasean wrote: »

I really don't get the idea of paid reparations. Why should someone pay for something someone else (whom they never met or spoke to) did over 100 years ago? It's just weird.

A friend of mine was working with a black guy a while ago and he told them that reparations had been paid, on behalf of his great-great grandfather, or whatever. Rather than going to the man's decendants it had been paid to the tribe in Africa that he had been taken from. The problem was that that was the tribe that had kidnapped him from his family and sold him into slavery in the first place!

amacachi

Can't get peace to look for the clip (it's on youtube somewhere) but one of my favorite things ever was on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? when Ainsley Harriott found out he was descended from slave-owners.

recedite

Hobo Sapiens hibernates for two months.
Well, probably more starvation than hibernation, seeing as he still didnt beat Bobby Sands. I wonder if a depressed mental state can help someone in that situation to slow down their metabolism, so that they survive in a "barely existing" kind of physical/mental state?

Galvasean

Also, a tenner says Dawkins' slave owning great grand pappy was a God fearing Christian..