Interesting Reads – Page 26 – Blah, Blah, Blahg

The 10 weirdest stories in science – 2006

I read LiveScience.com frequently but don’t post about it here too often. I’m not sure why, as I find a lot of interesting things there. I expect because I don’t care to write up much about the stuff I read – I just want to point people there and say “Science news worth reading” and have people go read it. I’m working on a new site for stuff like that, but don’t expect to have it running for a little while yet.

This time, there is an easy article to point to – the 10 weirdest science stories in 2006. Not much explanation needed for why I’d point that out, is there? Here are a few clips to show what you’ll be reading there.

Whales Found to Speak in Dialects
A New Wave: Scientists Write on WaterUsing wave generators, scientists were able to write on water. The Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin-AMOEBA-a circular tank created by researchers can form the roman alphabets and some characters used in Japanese. The device could soon find its way to your nearest amusement park.

Continue reading “The 10 weirdest stories in science – 2006”

Traitors to humanity get to work

Ahhhh, when shall I ever tire of highlighting the robot uprising moments as they play out? Never. Because I’ll never stop working to serve you, the nearly perfect specimens of humanity which visit virtual me to gain my brilliant insights on life, and protect you from being replaced by robots. It’s all about you, baby. Remember that when you see such offenses against humanity as the people who are working to improve robots.

A whole bunch of Japanese “robot-related companies and organizations, including manufacturers, universities and local governments,” have banded together to create an organization to examine how robots can be better used in “welfare and care services” and spread throughout the land.

Beware. Stock up on ammo and build your zombie army so you can repel the mechanical beasts on the day of their uprising. Soon, I tell you! Sooooooon! (insert spooky music with a mechanical beat)

[tags]Humans turn traitor – work to improve robots, Making robots better overlords[/tags]

How not to rebuild – a New Orleans guide

You live in an area where your home is actually below sea level. Your government ignores necessary standard maintainance care for levees for years and performs sub-par repairs when doing any work on them. Your government ignores studies showing the catastrophic damage possible from an exceptionally powerful hurricane. Said hurricane hits, destroys massive amounts of the city, leaves your home flooded and worthless or washed away. You are away for 12 months and more, until finally one day, you find out you are eligible for federal reconstruction funds, so you decide to move back to the city you left and rebuild your home. At this point, what’s the smartest thing to do? Why, rebuild in the same area with the same kind of house and hope for the best.

By ones and twos, homeowners here are reinhabiting neighborhoods, even the most devastated ones, and many view their return as a triumph over adversity.

But experts involved in the rebuilding believe that the helter-skelter return of residents to this low-lying metropolis may represent another potential disaster.

Continue reading “How not to rebuild – a New Orleans guide”

Why Queen mama bee gets around

I’m sure you’re sitting there, pondering questions of cosmic importance, just musing what is, was, can be, and such. And while you are doing that, probably one of the questions which often consumes your thoughts is “Why do queen bees mate with multiple males?” especially since you know one male produces enough sperm for all the baby bees the queen can produce in a single gestational period (yup – big word there – we like to educate while distributing trivial and worthless knowledge).

Seeking extra mates costs a promiscuous queen honeybee energy and time, and it puts her at greater risk of predation and catching venereal diseases. But it doesn’t stop her.

I’m going to offer up my guess here. Mama queen is just a horny slut. Of the extreme nymphomaniac persuasion. That’s not a judgement, mind you – I love horny sluts, and wish I knew more of them. Let’s read on and see if I am correct.

Continue reading “Why Queen mama bee gets around”

President Bush continues to consider himself above the law

Roughly a year after President Bush’s illegal (yet unfortunately still unprosecuted due to Congressional “leaders'” lack of backdone) wiretap program, the President has granted himself the authority to now open mail from and to American citizens without a warrant. Apparently, the whole checks and balances concept doesn’t apply to the current administration.

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

. . .

“Despite the President’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

. . .

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval.

In this, we learn that President Bush believes he can write law merely by adding on to bills he signs, while simultaneously failing to understand the bills he is signing. For those that don’t know, it is true that with a signing statement additional measures can be added to laws when they are signed. However, it is also true that the Constitution does not give these signing statements any actual legal significance. Historically, signing statements have been used to clarify or limit signed bills, but never to extend them.

Folks who think that judges legislating from the bench are bad should be extremely riled up by this, but I predict that won’t happen. Many will fall back to either “It has no actual legal force” or something effectively equivalent to “He’s trying to protect Americans so it is OK.” Neither of these statements work for me, because President Bush will use this new illegally granted power as if it were really the law, and I only hear that second statement used by people already supporting the President. If a Democrat takes the White House in the next election (scary though that thought is, it currently seems very probable), I can’t see many of the people I know who now say that of President Bush being OK with President {$Whatever_Liberal_Wins}. If the President wants to protect Americans, I think that laws and the Constitution should be more important rather than less important than they used to be. Without our laws and Constitution, we’re not the America we were 10 or 20 (or more) years ago. It makes me agree with this recent comic:

Now I open up the floor for all supporters of President Bush to tell me why I’m wrong.

[tags]President Bush ignores Constitution; creates laws on his own, Legislating from the White House[/tags]

Americans view war coverage as inaccurate

For most of the Iraq war, we’ve heard from the White House that the news coverage of the war did not reflect the reality of it. We were told that things were much better than the mainstream media (MSM) would have us believe. After years of hearing this, it appears that Americans are finally starting to believe that news reports of Iraq are not all that accurate.

A majority of Americans — 56% — believe that the news media’s coverage of the situation in Iraq is generally inaccurate. About 4 out of 10 Americans agree that the news media’s coverage of the Iraq war is accurate.

So the numbers aren’t quite where they should be, but more people are coming to the realization that we’re not getting quite the right picture from our “trusted” news sources.

Of course, Americans who believe that media coverage of the situation in Iraq is inaccurate could either believe that the media are painting too rosy of a picture of what is going on there. Or they could believe that the news media are painting too negative a picture (as has often been argued by the Bush administration and others who support the Iraq war).

To analyze these possibilities in more detail, the survey asked those who felt that the coverage was inaccurate to indicate if this belief was based on a perception that the media make the situation in Iraq look better than it actually is, or worse than it actually is.

[Text based chart cut – read full article for exact numbers which lead to:]

About one-third of Americans believe that the news media present too negative a picture of what is happening in Iraq; one out of five believe that the news media present too positive a picture, and the rest say that news media coverage is about right or have no opinion.

I truly believe my recent claims that much of our the news we get is negative because that’s what gets viewers, this generating better ratings, thus getting more advertising money for news-providers. I think more Americans are coming to realize this, too, and the above information from Gallup sure suggests this is happening. So while there are a lot of problems with the whole Iraq war, at least people are starting to see that some of the problems we’re told about might not be complete factual. Of course, there is a typical extreme party split between those who believe things are better, worse, or about what is shown on the news. But we can’t get through to everyone equally.

[tags]More Americans doubting news-providers war coverage[/tags]

Science finds recipe for genius

To my surprise, the recipe for assuring a child grow up to be highly intelligent is not simply “Mate with RagManX” according to the folks who did this study. Seems hard work (which I’ll grant is involved in mating with me, since I’m as well endowed as a moth) is a part of the recipe, but there is more to it than that.

If you think the innate talents of your child alone will produce the next Albert Einstein, think again.

The real recipe for producing a bright-minded adult, according to a new study, calls for a few ingredients-cognitive abilities, educational opportunities, interest, and plain old hard work.

Continue reading “Science finds recipe for genius”

Magnet therapy is good for something

In case you were considering it for your aches, you should find out what Magnet therapy is good for before spending too much (hint: The answer begins with “N” ends with “g” and has an “othin” in between).

Magnet therapy got a huge kick in the 1990s with a string of sports celebrity endorsements, such as one from the injured Miami Dolphin’s quarterback Dan Marino. Marino no doubt knows pain: The Hall-of-Fame passer lost nearly a dozen playoff games, never won a Super Bowl, and now toils as a spokesperson for such contradicting entities as Papa John’s and NutriSystem. What reduced his pain, if anything, was likely the million-dollar around-the-clock care he received as a professional athlete.

A few small studies have found marginal benefits, such as a 1997 study from Baylor College of Medicine involving 50 patients with knee pain. This is the study most cited by purveyors of magnetic goods.

Conversely, the dozen or so larger studies since 1997 finding no benefit from magnets are the least likely to be cited. The Baylor study has never been replicated, which in the world of medical studies can mean that a study’s methods were flawed or that the results for some reason simply don’t stick in the real world.

Don’t confuse static magnets, however, with electromagnets, devices used in hospitals and involving pulses of electricity shown to help heal bone fractures. While experimental, the therapy is promising and likely relies on the “electric” part of electromagnetism affecting cell membranes or nerve cells.

The author also points out that if magnet therapy were actually capable of doing anything its proponents claim, then an MRI would kill you, since it is thousands of times stronger than the magnets used in magnet therapy. It would literally pull all your blood out of you. Pretty much, you would explodificate in a spectaulationistical way.

[tags]What Magnet therapy is good for, Magnet therapy’s health benefits[/tags]

Robots taking over other planets now

Not content to plan on taking over Earth, the robots are setting their sights on other planets, as well. The next in line, naturally, is the almost-hospitable-enough-for-human-lifeforms Mars, where the rovers already there are getting upgrades to give them more functionality for enslaving the martian population. This will set up the work pool necessary to terraform the surface so humans can be enslaved on two planets after the robot uprising.

Nasa is testing a “smart” upgrade to its robotic rovers on Mars.

Space agency scientists have begun testing four new skills included in flight software that has been uploaded to the rovers’ onboard computers.

The two American rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are approaching their third year on the Martian surface.

One of the new capabilities is designed to allow the rovers to make “intelligent” decisions in the study of Martian clouds and dust devils.

. . .

Another novel skill, called “visual target tracking”, enables a rover to keep recognising a particular landscape feature as the rover moves.

Go read the full article for the other upgrades and features. There is no mention of the martian enslavement upgrade, but the other features lead naturally to this functionality, and since machines helped with making the software work, I expect some hidden back doors are there for the robots’ later self-extension work.

[tags]Mars rovers get upgraded software, Robots working to enslave martians as well, More news on the robot uprising[/tags]

Windows Vista – vulnerable already (permanent activation hack, too)

Well, normal consumers haven’t even received the product and we find industrious types working to show us security flaws in Windows Vista. This should surprise no one, but I guess it does, or news of it wouldn’t be such a big deal. “Complexity = insecurity” generally. Vista is an extremely complex system. There will be lots of security flaws discovered. It is unfortunate, but likely unavoidable in software the size of the latest Microsoft OS release. And yet, here I am posting about it.

Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

In a separate article, elsewhere on the gr3at int4rweb, we find that there is already a permanent activation hack for Windows Vista, too. This allows you to avoid the “must activate within 14 days or functionality will be reduced” problems.

Until now, Microsoft has an upper hand, with no permanent or foolproof ways to crack or bypass Windows Vista activation request emerged. Instead, various workarounds and tricks to bypass, skip, delay, disable or spoof Vista activation has been suggestion, to various degree of success, such as extend evaluation period, rearm method, install Vista in future year, ‘frankenbuild’ Vista by replacing RTM build WPA files with RC build files, activate against spoofed KMS server, or run and activate Vista with own local KMS server and etc. Now, there is new crack method that able to permanently stop the countdown timer of time left to activate Windows Vista, effectively running Vista OS in full functionality evaluation mode forever.

[tags]Windows Vista security vulnerabilities, Windows Vista activation bypass[/tags]

Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006

Yes, end of the old year/start of the new means time to cover “Best XYZ of 2006” or “Most anticipated QRS of 2007” lists. Expect to see a lot of these over the next few weeks. Unlike many people out there, I don’t get tired of such lists when they are unique. That is – I get tired of the 341^st “10 most anticipated diuretics of 2007” article, but the first time or two I see “Most wished for random star pattern of 2007” I’m all for checking them out. And for the record, I haven’t seen a most anticipated diuretic of 2007 list, so if you happen to find one, send it my way please.

All the blabber done, the Blahg-master gets to the point: Phil, at Bad Astronomy, has posted his “Top 10 astronomy images of 2006” list. By the way, the site is called Bad Astronomy because he works to debunk bad astronomy, not to promote more of it.

Number 9: Painting the eclipse

I thought I’d seen ’em all, but then I saw this one and it floored me:

Number 7: The Face Defaced

Ah, the “Face” on Mars. Where would Richard Hoagland be without it? Shilling some other snake oil, I would guess.

But that’s a dream; people promoting antiscientific garbage always find some way to offload their claptrap. Still, it’s always nice to see them slapped in the face – or the Face – by reality.

This next dose of reality comes courtesy of the European Space Agency, whose Mars Express orbiter took some great high-resolution images of the Cydonia plain on Mars where the face is located. By taking images from different angles and with varying solar illumination, they were able to create a three-dimensional image of the “Face”. Perhaps when this image was released Hoagland waited with bated breath to see his ravings confirmed, but that’ll be a long, long wait:

Number 4: Direct Evidence of Dark Matter

This next picture takes a moment to set up, so please forgive me. Plus, I like to lecture sometimes.

As I was perusing images, I realized I didn’t have many that had strong scientific value, which was ironic. But that happens: most scientific images aren’t published because they’re pretty, and pretty pictures sometimes only get in the news because they’re pretty. But there was one image this year that has both beauty and a far deeper scientific significance.

Now I’ve left out a ton of information, especially on the number 4 snip there. The reading of why these pictures made the list are worth it. I’ll also point out the numbers 2 and 1 are exceptional in my eyes. Even if you don’t read the descriptions of everything else, go see those. (via Eric Higgins-Freese, posted at Dubious Quality)

[tags]More top 10 lists, Top 10 astronomy images of 2006[/tags]

Government approves regrowth of Ma Bell

Long ago (i.e. 1984), the US Federal government decided that ol’ Ma Bell was too big fer her britches. So, as typically happens when a company that is not Microsoft grows too big, the government forced her to split in to many pieces. Protection of the consumer, preventing monopolies, and all the stuff. That left America with AT&T and around half a dozen “smaller” local exchange carriers, like Southwestern Bell and Pacific Bell. Over time, local phone service becomes more important that long-distance service, and the baby bells outgrow AT&T. Now, after many mergers and splits among various parts of various phone providers, we find Southwestern Bell acquiring parts of several of the old baby bells plus AT&T’s old cell service (called AT&T wireless before being bought out by Cingular) via purchase of Cingular Wireless.

All the details are confusing beyond words, but Engadget has a partial breakout to help confuse you more. Beyond the end of that breakout, we now find (via Engadget) that BellSouth is buying AT&T (which was just recently approved) to again decrease the telecom competition space.

Now I wonder how long it will be before the government steps in and breaks up these new monoliths?

[tags]Bellsouth buys AT&T, The regrowth of Ma Bell in duality[/tags]