Science/Technology blog

Welcome to the 25th weekly Carnival of Space — the best space-related blog carnival that you’ll find within a parsec of home! I’ve gathered up a bountiful crop of blogging goodness for you, so let’s get right down to business.

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (a.k.a. SETI)

If these gizmos were pointed at Washington, D.C., it’d be a long, grueling search…

Starting right at home (but looking outward) the interwebs are all atwitter with discussions of the new Allen Telescope Array. Named after Microsoft co-founder (and major project funding source) Paul Allen, the ATA has been a bit of a soap opera to date. It’s planning was announced, then construction was delayed, funding was on, then off… Well, as of the 11th of October, this beastie is officially a going deal.

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Posted in Coupons at 4:00 pm by David Bradley — Click to comment

I’ve been struggling this week to think of an excuse to mention Disney coupons. This is a science blog after all, but as regular readers are well aware it is supported in part by a coupons section. At the weekend, I usually try to shoehorn in some spurious reference to a product or service for which there is a coupon on the site in the hope that dedicated readers, hoping to see the site continue well into its second decade (version 1.0 appeared in May 1996), will lend support by using said coupon.

Anyway, it’s the turn of Disney coupons this week, but where’s the science link? I could talk about some of the absurdity of the organisation’s paranormal output - Mary Poppins, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, and Herbie, for instance. Or, I could mention the psychological damage caused to me in trying to ponder, as a child, how Mickey Mouse’s ears always face forward no matter which way his head is turned. I could even mention Discover magazine, but, then again, maybe not.

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original image from flickr user
“Nemo’s great uncle“

Three years ago, I joined a small group at the Academy of Sciences named the Greenteam. Little did I know that green issues would be such a hot topic today because of global warming. Many people feel that little to nothing can be done about turning back the clock. Yet, if everyone did a few things it would lead to significant progress. I’ve observed over the past two years that little things people do consistently have a greater impact than going to the extremes. Our Executive Director recently took a step toward sustainability by banning water bottles at meetings and functions, noting that bottled water is expensive, wastes plastic, and is harmful to the environment. Better and cheaper alternatives are tap water as well as filtered water. The following bullet points explain why tap water is a more sustainable choice:

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Snipped from DailyMail.co.uk.

Some of the arguers against evolution ask, “Well, if evolution exists, where are the species that are evolving themselves? Or middle-species?” Well, although there doesn’t need to be a middle species, this story may give a debater of evolution some ammunition. If a middle species is what you want then a killfish (among many more, but let’s stick with this one) is what you get. Here is a fish that is adapting has adapted to surviving outside of water for longer than thought possible.

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You know you hate me?

When the voice with India-accent started to ask my social security number and my password, that’s when I hung up. Don’t the customer service reps in India know that’s a no-no. And then I thought, that was a damn good way to make me hang up and call back and be someone’s else problem. Is that what was going on?

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Posted in Health, Bird Flu at 4:00 pm by David Bradley — Click to comment

Is flu vaccination a shot in the dark? Regular readers will recall the recent debate on multiple vaccines, statistics, and risk we had here in September. I also have rather close personal experience of one of the risks associated with having the annual flu vaccine - Guillain-Barr� Syndrome (GBS). This autoimmune disorder is purportedly associated with a respiratory or gastrointestinal tract infection although there is a statistical risk that connects it to the flu vaccine. A close relative of mine developed GBS symptoms about six weeks after having the flu jab last December and has not yet fully recovered. GBS support groups recommend she not have the vaccine again.

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Gitmo Rendition Camp.

The prisoners know from day one the proposed torture ain’t going to work. How so? Listen, say, Randolph will tell you why:

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Posted in Science at 4:00 pm by David Bradley — Click to comment

Sciencebase is now on Scintilla, the science blog portal from the journal Nature. It’s worth checking out and with the help of the site’s guru Alf Eaton, I got a couple of minor technical issues quickly resolved.

One of the key features of Scintilla you will discover as you browse its myriad science blog listing is a neat little box that shows up offering you a list of similar sources. It does exactly what its name suggests and provides links to other sites with content that is likely to be closely related to the blog you are currently reading. “Those are actually calculated based on what users are subscribed to (’people who subscribed to Sciencebase also subscribed to…’), rather than content,” Alf told me.

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This fall, fishing was banned or sharply limited in 18 percent of California’s ocean waters from Half Moon Bay to Santa Barbara under a landmark state plan. But that was only the first part. Now, scientists need to see how fast sea life recovers. QUEST finds out: how do you count the fish in the sea?

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B-52 dropping some lovelies.

The U.S. Air Force has reworked the B-52H Stratofortress cover story. Check out yesterday’s news story re the Air Force. They’ve gone beyond their first draft of the news release re the B-52H episode on the 29th-30th of August. It took them six weeks to “investigate” and issue a report. That is, a second press release.

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