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My gloss on “gravity deniers” is in the latest Tangled Bank, number 59, now available for your enjoyment at Science and Reason. There’s a lot to read there, so prolific are we science bloggists. Maybe we need to develop a Tangled-Bank-on Tape product. Possibly related posts:
From the sunny city of Stockholm, Tangled Bank #58 has come to enlighten readers with incisive and witty science coverage. Pay it a visit. Tack så mycket! Possibly related posts:
The gullibility of the scientifically challenged media and buying public never ceases to amaze. Spurred perhaps by sharply higher gasoline prices, backyard inventors and shady promoters are pushing the latest wonder technology, “HHO gas,” otherwise known as water gas, Brown’s gas or Klein’s gas. For a tidy investment of a few hundred dollars, one can adapt a car to run on HHO, or for a few thousand, one can buy a device to produce HHO at home for transportation or for welding. Cars apparently can run for miles on mere puffs of HHO, and torches can burn holes in seconds through most metals. I would encourage anyone buying such devices to first watch videos of the Graf Hindenburg accident in 1937 or the Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, to get an idea of the Promethean power of HHO gas. Wait, 1937? Isn’t HHO supposed to be a new technology? you ask. Nope. In fact, the principles behind the production of HHO have been known and used for close to 200 years. If you were lucky, you might have even made some in middle school science class. If you run electric current through water, you break water down into its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen, both gases at standard temperature (20 C) and pressure (1 atmosphere). Very little current is required; a 6-volt lantern battery does the trick nicely, although quite slowly. Possibly related posts:
Superman in his latest incarnation is a box office smash, a suitable homage to the late Christopher Reeve’s version with a 21st century twist. Amazingly, some conservative bloggers find fault with the movie, for purely socio-political reasons. Chief among them is self-promoting Who is Debbie Schlussel? Well, I didn’t know either until I started blogging. Schlussel is a sharp-tongued critic of everything to the left of her far-right agenda, especially Hollywood stars who she believes suck up to Arab ass too much. Like all conservative pundits, Schlussel takes everything in popular culture seriously, as if each song lyric, film premise or TV show spells the end of civilization as we know it. Schlussel is a Jewish Ann Coulter, if you will. Anyway, Schlussel pops up on TV and radio every once in awhile to spout her special kind of invective. On MSNBC and on her own blog, she lambasts some of the plotline of Superman Returns. I will attempt to summarize, but the links to her post and to the MSNBC transcript are below if you want the news directly from the horse’s mouth.
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Mark Nickolas, whose site BluegrassReports.org state administrators have blocked from state-owned computers, filed a suit today in US District Court, contending that Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher has violated Constitutional guarantees of equal protection and free expression. State web blocking software allowed state employees access to mainstream news sites and many conservative blogs, but prevented employees from accessing Nickolas’ site and other less conservative blogs. BluegrassReports.org has been sharply critical of the beleaguered Fletcher, whose administration has been sullied by accusations of preferential and discriminatory hiring practices. State GOP leaders have recently distanced themselves from Fletcher, who intends to run for re-election next year. Possibly related posts:
For a Yale graduate, our prexy seems to express important ideas paradoxically like a 14-year-old. Witness this comment from his press conference in Chicago this week:
Yup. That’s true, but could we have expressed it with somewhat more erudition? Possibly related posts:
Despite all the media frenzy about the risks to the crew, Discovery successfully made orbit Tuesday and docked with the International Space Station this morning. So far the mission of STS-121 is so routine as to be boring. And that’s good. The big issue in media reports centered around the foam insulation surrounding the external fuel tank – the rusty-red cylinder carrying the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen “fuel” for the shuttle’s main engines. The insulation is necessary to keep the liquified gases cold. It also has a tendency to fall off during launch. A large chunk of insulation hit the Shuttle Columbia on takeoff, damaging its protective, heat resistant tiles. The Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, as a result of the damage. Atmospheric friction burned holes through the metal skin of the spaceplane, killing all on board. NASA officials, not known for their eloquence, reported that inspection of Discovery‘s external fuel tank had revealed some fracturing or loosening of the foam insulation, but that the faults would not endanger the mission. They said nothing about endangering the crew, although it is probably what they meant. The media nearly went ape-shit, claiming NASA officials were more worried about making a return to space after a three-year hiatus than about ensuring the lives of the seven-person crew. Possibly related posts:
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expert on everything Debbie Schlussel.
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