Science/Technology blog

Do you remember stepping outside your door and being hit with a sound that produces a din that can overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools? This distinctive noise is the mating call of the cicada or commonly known as “locust”. A single male’s shrill courtship call can reach 90 decibels which is equivalent to a blender. You may recognize them as the common red-eyed, shrimp-sized insects that don’t bite or sting but make a helluva lot of noise. The annual or dog-day cicadas that appear every summer are common around the world. However, there is a special kind of periodical cicadas which are only found in the eastern half of North America and are considered among the longest-lived insects in the world. Well, anyone living in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana better be prepared for a massive re-emergence of billions of the Brood XIII. It sounds kind of like a horror flick, doesn’t it. But it’s not.

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A fellow blogger, who regularly comments on this site, once asked me about the re-use of images on his blog. He’d published a logo or something similar from an organisation that does not grant re-use permission for such materials. So I advised him to remove it from his blog before they sent in the suits.

In the world of journalism, as opposed to the blogosphere, minor copyright infringement, such as the mistaken re-use of an image accompanying an article often results in a standard copyright infringement notice, removal of the offending image, and a notice of apology. Obviously, in print it is slightly different, but yesterday’s news is today’s fish and chips wrapper anyway (at least it was until they banned the use of old newspapers in chip shops).

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Gertrude Weise — a deposit of silica uncovered by
the wheel of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit.
Credit: NASA/Mars Exploration Rovers.

Watching the unfolding story of the exploration of our solar system’s fourth planet is like watching an episode of CSI: Mars. Robotic orbiters, like police helicopters, constantly circle the neighborhood while determined rovers doggedly comb the ground for evidence. Back at the lab (Earth), forensics investigators put all the clues and data through detailed analyses, looking for the smoking gun that will solve the crime….

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Not long ago, nuclear power was unthinkable among environmentalists, particularly in California, where a moratorium on new power plants has put a lid on the industry for thirty years. But that sentiment may be changing.

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It sounds preposterous, and it is—just look at this thing! This striking Volkswagen GTI concept features a host of performance upgrades and some dramatic design modifications to accommodate them. Most notable are the flared wheel wells to house the really big tires, necessary to manage the 650 horsepower being delivered by a six-liter W-12 engine. Zero-to-60 in 3.7 seconds. Top speed: 202 mph. Ferrari F430: dusted. —Eric Adams

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After these last couple of days, I am so fu*king mad, so livid, so frustrated that I want to turn in my good citizenship card and go postal on America! What in the hell is wrong with us? You have the Republicans who have no morals, no logic, no ethics and a psychopathic imagination of doing “God’s” work all while the elitists, the loyal Bushies and Bushy lobbyists reap the greenest of all benefits. They are like parasites living off of their host, the innocent citizens of any country with natural resources to pillage for their selfish benefit. Oh, and then you have the Democrats. Where do I even start with them. They are about as aggressive, as powerful, as strong as a moderately dehydrated earth worm. Spineless, castrated and about as effective as a water gun during a massive air strike. Watching these gutless wonders go against Bush is like watching a marathon runner in a sumo wrestling contest.

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These things are always non-scientific, and this one’s more than a little macabre, but I figured — hey, what have I got to lose?

You’ll die from an Unlikely Illness (like the plague).

You will unfortunately succumb to a random and unlikely disease. Only to find out after death that eating more broccoli would have cured you.

‘How will you die?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

Sure, virtual reality is pretty cool to begin with, but when it’s paired with police investigations and is used to take down the criminal underbelly? Ah, the possibilities.

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I plan on producing a series of podcast episodes on human evolution and our ancient relatives, so I thought it would be helpful to start out with a bit of history. As the Neanderthals are prominent figures in discussions of human evolution, and accordingly are brought up in the press from time to time, we’ll look at them first.

So this episode is devoted to the history of Neanderthal discoveries, and how those discoveries were viewed culturally.
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Tenure Denied

Posted in Astronomy, Scientific American, Astrobiology/Origin of Life at 2:06 pm by Kevin

Astronomy professor and intelligent design proponent Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied tenure at Iowa State University. To be denied tenure means basically that his teaching career at Iowa State is over, and it will be a challenge for him to find a similar job at another research university. Whatever one thinks of the ID movement as a whole, Gonzalez has demonstrated that he is a highly qualified researcher and professor, and it is difficult to see this tenure denial anything less than religious or ideological persecution.

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