Black Swans

Science can't prove anything. No watter how much evidence may exist that something is so, it only takes one counter example to show t...

The Claus That Refreshes

Really, St. Nicholas didn't celebrate Christmas and probably never saw, or knew about, reindeer because he lived in what's now Turke...

A Different Angle on A Solar Eclipse

NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (aka STEREO) has a pair of satellites in orbit that can take pictures of the Sun simultan...

You lose most body heat through your head

A well known clothing manufacturer (can't tell you their name, but their initials are REI) claims that you lose 75% of your body heat th...

Unbelievable

In a recent survey respondents said they thought NASA gets about 25% of the total U.S. budget. It really is about half of one percent! Amer...

Want to live longer? Go To Iraq!

The University of Pennsylvania just published a report in Population and Development Review coauthored by Samuel Preston and Emily Buzzell...

What Do You Call A Comet With No Tail?

Comet 17P/Holmes is now visible to the naked eye, and an even more striking sight if you use binoculars or a telescope. Nobody is sure why, ...

Virus more powerful than a car

Relative to its size, a molecular motor used by viruses is twice as powerful as an automobile engine. That's why even very large viruses...

Where's the bathroom?

"¿Donde esta el baño?" "Ou sont les toilettes?" "Ein ahmer-hathe min fathe-lick?" Some answers to that questio...

An appendix is a good thing

No not a book appendix, silly. The one in your belly. It's been dissed all these years—everyone says it's superfluous, has no functi...

High Dynamic Range

Exposure values or EVs are numbers that refer to combinations of lens aperture and shutter speed. Your eye is capable of discerning 12EV but...

Was St. Augustine psychic?

St. Augustin, you may recall, was the first archbishop of Canterbury, and was considered the Apostle to the English and a founder of the Eng...

Can Moonbeams Heal?

Oh puh-leeze. Must be a slow news day. CNN is touting, front page, an old story from a local TV station in Tuscon that breathlessly reported...

Email routing algorithm (not)

I you ever wondered how email gets from here to there watch this short video. If you never did wonder about that, watch it anyway. It's...

Extra Foamy

A Starbucks latte option is 'extra foam.' It makes your drink more like a cappuccino, but with out the cinnamon. The folks at Yamba,...

You can help locate meteoroids

On Friday night/Saturday morning, August 31/September 1, there will be an outburst meteor shower. An outburst is a sudden, short burst of a ...

Why Won't You Do As I say?

In the Dimensional Change Card sorting (DCCS) task, 3-year-olds can usually sort cards successfully by a first rule - whether by shape, colo...

Just Wow!—over and over and over

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference held in Monterey, California. TED describes itself as a "group of remarka...

Closeup of a star

Over about two and a half days (August 16-18, 2007), the Sun's prominences were seen in extreme ultraviolet light by the Ahead spacecraf...

An espresso has less caffeine than a cup of coffee!

A cup of brewed coffee has about 110 milligrams of caffeine, and potent as it may seem an espresso about 80mg. But of course that's base...

Scary

The Pentagon Sends Messengers of Apocalypse to Convert Soldiers in Iraq By Max Blumenthal, TheNation.com Posted on August 8, 2007, Printed o...

A Bitter Dose Of Reality

This blog was started because I often found myself exclaiming, "Wow! Really?" I though other folks might enjoy some of the wowsers...

Oh, come ON!

There's yet another internet hoax* going around that starts something like: "If we could shrink the earth's population to a vil...

Stretching the limits of fashion

Chinese fashion show promoted condoms to combat HIV. One of the docs we see is just back from three weeks in China--he goes there every 2-3 ...

Get Your Story Straight

A delicious moment of reality. Consultant, reporter, author and former NASA employee Jame Oberg nails British TV news on their snide claim t...

Twins are okay, why not clones?

Bioethicist Hugh McLachlan argues the reason we're so against the idea of cloning humans--cloning is a criminal offense in many countrie...

An Unconcious Violinist

Here's a thought provoking analogy written by Judith Jarvis Thomson from Philosophy & Public Affairs , Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971). ...

Tibimet Cogitate (Think For Yourself)

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusi...

Inside Information

Ever wonder how things work inside. Well, okay, I suppose you need to go get an advanced degree in physiology or medicine if you really want...

They'll Eat You Alive

Female mosquitoes, the only kind that will infect you, have to at eat least every 3 days. When they do, they ingest the human equivalent of ...

Brute force

When you absolutely positively have to have it there tomorrow, and when "it" is about a quarter of a million pounds of stuff, who ...

Pale Blue Dot

Drop Five Second Rule . . . Or Die

Most of us use the five second rule, right? Food dropped on the floor is okay to eat if you pick it up within five seconds. But if you think...

Excerpts from Berkshire Annual Mtg Q&A

Now here's a dose of reality you can take to the bank...er, I mean invest . Some excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting Q...