New study results: recent global warming not due to solar effects
From The Australian (!): THE key plank of a controversial British documentary has been discredited by new research showing that the sun is not causing global warming. The findings are in stark contrast to claims made in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which is to be shown on ABC television on Thursday. The [...]
Konkokted Kreationist Krap
This would be side-splittingly hilarious if it wasn’t so evil. A digg-er spotted this scan of a restaurant children’s menu: Front Back Alongside the cheeseburgers and corndogs is a list of “DiNoSaUr FuN fAcTs”! These include: “The most up to date scientific information shows that dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago, they lived [...]
Solstice rose
Happy winter solstice, all! Related posts: I missed the solstice! Happy June Solstice! The photo I did not take just before dawn Reminder for Sydney Hoydenizens: Solstice Drinkies this Sunday! Happy Solstice
New Yorkers always tell us not to bother with Long Island anyway
If I never go to Long Island then I never have to worry about some unfortunate accident bringing me or someone I love under the knife of neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who is a professor of neurosurgery and paediatrics at State University New York (Stony Brook), and who apparently doesn’t accept that the mind arises from [...]
Gigantoraptor: 1400 kg bird-like dinosaur!
It’s not every day paleontologists discover a new dinosaur! These discoveries take me back to the wonder of imagining the dinosaur world when I was a child. We weren’t saturated with the pre-digested smoothly-animated imagery* of Jurassic Park and Walking With Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Park. We imagined the world in fits and starts, informed by [...]
1Q: How relevant are motives in assessing the public policy stance of a politician or commentator?
This week’s One Question is from Harry Clarke, who writes in an earlier post: In assessing testimony in a court of law motives are important. Elsewhere they are less so but they pervasively affect our attitudes. Some have argued that the “The Motive Fallacy’ (specifically, believing that exposing the motives behind an expressed opinion shows [...]
Blood on her shoes: hospital safety equipment and embedded sexism
There were no size 5 gumboots on the surgical unit. I was doing a six-month obstetrics & gynaecology residency. I looked all through the women’s theatre changeroom. I found nothing but single-use elasticated paper shoe covers, and a few pairs of clogs and sneakers. I sneaked into the men’s theatre changeroom. There were lots of [...]
Harradine’s poverty legacy continues
Sue Dunlevy writes an excellent column today on the legacy of Senator Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Australian Senate for long enough to drag our foreign aid policy into a position whereby, Dunlevy argues, we actively perpetuate poverty through being forbidden to provide family planning services as part of foreign [...]
Sunrise this morning
Winter sunrises in Sydney often have interesting light patterns against the morning clouds. This morning we got classic crepuscular rays. The depth of shadow cast across the sky was extraordinary. There’s a few more shots in my Flickr photostream, and I might try and put a montage together of the full effect. Related posts: This [...]
Friday Parasites at Zygote Games
Y’all who are into things that wriggle and suck should be compulsive readers of Zygote Games, ’cause it’s awesome. They run a Weekly Parasite series that is always worth a look. We’ve been treated to filarial worms, giant roundworms, intracellular bacterial parasites passed from mother to offspring, Giardia, and ew, tongue-eating isopods. This week, Diane [...]
Friday Fizzicks Fun
Have you ever wondered what happens when you add an Alka Seltzer effervescent tablet to a sphere of water in microgravity? Now you know! The narrator opens with: “I hope you folks are trying to guess what’s going to happen to all these bubbles and beads that are going to be released. The first time [...]
Friday Fun – “Museum” edition
aka When is a museum actually a theme park? Here it is: the Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” post that Hoyden had to have, made much easier by the recent spate of LOLCreationists online. Image Credit: Dancing Spring PZ Myers put together a Creation Museum roundup of poor media coverage and the best blogging detailing not [...]
How to talk to a global warming skeptic
An inadvertent companion piece to Suzoz’ earlier find from New Scientist (A guide to the Perplexed on Climate Change), from Gristmill comes How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic. a complete listing of the articles in “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common [...]
Cancer genes and other factors
There’s been a lot of press this last week about the reported breakthough in genome testing that will pinpoint clusters of imperfectly-copied genes that increase the risk of inheriting breast cancer. Much of the excitement is due to the fact that the technique can be equally well used in testing for other genetic combinations that [...]
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