SodaHead - Science Blogs

Blogging the venus society so others can watch at lesiure

2008-10-06T19:39:30Z

HairlessKat

+4 raves

Are you afraid of change?

Spermicide Coke, stale chips research wins Ig Nobels

2008-10-06T17:12:29Z

Mollydolly

+5 raves

Fri Oct 3, 2008 7:01pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A researcher who figured out that Coke explodes sperm and scientists who discovered that people will happily eat stale chips if they crunch loudly enough won alternative "Ig Nobel" prizes Thursday. Other winners included physicists who found out that anything that can tangle, will tangle and a team of biologists who ascertained that dog fleas jump farther than cat fleas. The Ig Nobels honor real research, but are meant as a funny alternative to next week's deadly serious Nobel prizes for medicine, chemistry, physics, economics, literature and peace. Awarded by the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific humor magazine, the prizes are based on published research, some intended to be humorous but often not. Usually the "honored" researchers go along with the joke. Deborah Anderson of Boston University Medical Center and colleagues were awarded the chemistry prize for a 1985 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found Coca-Cola kills sperm. She said she was serious in testing the soft drink because women were using it in a douche as a contraceptive and, later, to try to protect themselves from the AIDS virus. "It definitely wouldn't work as a contraceptive because sperm swims so fast," Anderson said. But Coke made with sugar quickly kills sperm, she said, probably because sperm soak it up. "The sperm just kind of explode," she said in a telephone interview. It kills the AIDS virus too, she said. The Ig Nobel committee made up a "nutrition prize" to go to Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Britain's Oxford University, who tricked people into thinking they were eating fresh potato chips by playing them loud, crunching sounds when they bit one. The biology prize goes to a French team that found dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas, while the medicine prize was awarded to a team at Duke University in North Carolina who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine. Dorian Raymer of the Scripps Institution in San Diego and a colleague won the physics prize for demonstrating mathematically why hair or a ball of string will inevitably tangle itself in knots. The peace prize was given to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology for adopting the legal principle that plants have moral standing and dignity. There is a website explaining this: here A team at The University of Sao Paulo in Brazil won a special archaeology prize for showing how an armadillo can mess up an archaeological dig. The economics prize went to researchers at the University of New Mexico who learned that a professional lap dancer earns bigger tips when she is most fertile, while David Sims of Cass Business School in London won the literature prize "for his lovingly written study 'You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations'," the committee said. Past winners include the creator of the plastic pink flamingo, a researcher who recorded a mallard duck sodomizing a dead drake and a doctor who cured hiccups by applying digital rectal massage. (Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Anthony Boadle)

Oldest 'Footprints' on Earth Found

2008-10-06T16:57:36Z

HairlessKat

+5 raves

The oldest-known tracks of a creature apparently using legs have been discovered in rock dated to 570 million years ago in what was once a shallow sea in Nevada.

Scientists think land beasts evolved from ancient creatures that left the sea and evolved lungs and legs. If the new finding is real — the discoverer says will fuel skepticism — it pushes the advent of walking back 30 million years earlier than any previous solid finding.

The aquatic creature left its "footprints" as two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter. Scientists said today that the animal must have stepped lightly onto the soft marine sediment, because its legs only pressed shallow pinpoints into that long-ago sea bed.

The tracks were made during what is called the Ediacaran period, which preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved. Scientists had once thought only microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, said Ohio State University Professor Loren Babcock.

"We keep talking about the possibility of more complex animals in the Ediacaran — soft corals, some arthropods, and flatworms — but the evidence has not been totally convincing," Babcock said. "But if you find evidence, like we did, of an animal with legs — an animal walking around — then that makes the possibility much more likely."

Soo-Yeun Ahn, a doctoral student at Ohio State, presented the discovery today at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.

Babcock was surveying rocks in the mountains near Goldfield, Nevada, with Hollingsworth in 2000 when he found the tracks.

"This was truly an accidental discovery," he said. "We came on an outcrop that looked like it crossed the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary, so we stopped to take a look at it. We just sat down and started flipping rocks over. We were there less than an hour when I saw it."

Little can be gleaned about what sort of creature it was, but Babcock "reasonably certain — not 100 percent" that it was an arthropod, such as one resembling a centipede or millipede, or by a leg-bearing worm. It might have been about one as wide as a pencil and may have had multiple, spindly legs.

In 2002, other researchers reported a similar fossil trail from Canada that dated back to the middle of the Cambrian period, about 520 million years ago. Another set of tracks found in South China date back to 540 million years ago. At approximately 570 million years old, this new fossil not only provides the earliest suggestion of animals walking on legs, but it also shows that complex animals were alive on earth before the Cambrian.

"I expect that there will be a lot of skepticism," Babcock said about the discovery. "There should be. But I think it will cause some excitement. And it will probably cause some people to look harder at the rocks they already have. Sometimes it's just a matter of thinking differently about the same specimen."

"Fire Spots"

2008-10-05T18:56:27Z

LadyLeprechan~NObamaNOwayNOhow

+2 raves

I am a member of Wrongdiagnosis.com. It's a place where you can go to discuss anything and everything from a stubbed toe to a brain tumor. There's a forum in there for Skin Pain. There's a topic in this forum for "Fire Spots". As of right now, these spots are a medical mystery. There's no scientific name, no diagnosis has ever been made, and that makes it impossible to find a cure. We have found that it mainly affects women of all ages. I don't think we've ever heard of a man suffering from this. There's woman who began suffering from it during or right after pregnancy, some after a surgery, after an injury, after a cold, or just out of the blue. There's absolutely nothing linking the onset of this from one person to the next. In my case, it started after bilateral knee surgery. It's almost impossible to describe the feeling of these spots to someone who's never experienced them before. When I tell someone, I get the look of I'm going crazy! For a while, I thought I WAS crazy. Then after finding WD, it proved it was NOT all in my head. I'm hoping that bring it into this forum, someone might have some insight as to what this is and how it can be treated. The spots are generally the same for everyone, despite no one's spots starting for the same reasons. They can be anywhere on the body, ranging in size from a dime to an entire extremity. They usually affect only one or two areas of the body, but can spread across the entire body. I get mine usually from the waist down, and occasionally above the waist. It feels like an opened wound, and the slightest touch is agony. Even a pant leg or the bed sheets rubbing on a spot is torture. A hot shower is a living hell, making you feel like you're on fire. The best way to describe it, someone took a cheese grater and ripped my skin open with it, leaving the inner meat exposed. With all this pain and the feeling of being on fire, you'd think there would be SOME kind of visually evident symtoms, yet there's none. The skin is completely normal, with no bruising, rashes, cuts, discoloration, NOTHING. This is what makes it such a mystery. These spots can last anywhere from 10 minutes to several days. When you get the ultimate combo of a spot over an entire extremity for several days, all you can do is wish for death because the pain is just that bad. No pains meds help. I've tried simple aspirin and tylenol to percocets and vicodins. I might as well be eatting M&M;'s. There was one incident that shed some light on this illness. I had a spot on my outter left knee. This was a place where I'd gotten spots several times in the past. I stood up from the edge of my bed, and my knee just ripped open. I expected to look down and see blood gushing down my leg, yet there was nothing there. It felt like someone ripped my knee open from the inside out with a serated knife. Then several SECONDS later, the pain just disappeared, and I never felt anything, ever. This was 4 years ago, and that spot has remained completely numb with no feeling at all. This led me to the theory that it's some sort of nerve disorder. I believe that when a spot flares up, it's the nerves just going crazy(not the person!). The nerve endings are so damn sensitive, anything feels like hell. I also believe that the spot on my knee was one that had acted up several times before, those particular nerve endings just couldn't handle it anymore and "exploded", for a lack of better words. This "explosion" is what felt like the knife tearing me open. The numbness I've felt since is because the nerves there have died, and are unable to produce any feelings. I've never heard of anyone experiencing these explosions, so this is my own theory, but the most logical yet. I'd love to find a definite cause, a name for this disorder, and a cure. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. As for now, we at WD will still call them "Fire Spots". Thank you for your time.

700 BILLION BAILOUT IS NO CURE FOR GREED, LYING, CHEATING.

2008-10-05T16:46:56Z

NEWT

+2 raves

THE "DISEASES OF GREED . . . LYING . . .AND CHEATING" THAT NEARLY CAUSED THE DEATH OF THE U S ECONOMIC "BODY" A FEW DAYS AGO ARE DEEPLY INGRAINED IN AMERICAS FINANCIAL ENTITIES, CORPORATE BOARDROOMS AND POLITICAL ENVIRONS. THE SO CALLED 700 BILLION BAILOUT, IS AKIN TO PUTTING A TERMINALLY ILL HUMAN ON A SOON TO FAIL "LIFE SUPPORT" SYSTEM. LIKE THE MILLION'S OF $$'s THAT WERE GREEDLY SKIMMED OF THE TOP OF THE FEDERAL GOVT'S TEN'S OF MILLIONS OF $$'s TO AID/ASSIST VICTIMS OF KATRAINA AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS, GREED, LYING AND CHEATING WILL CONSUME MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF $$'s OF SUBJECT MATTER "BAILOUT." THE GRAVEYARD OF SOCIAL ORDERS THAT ONCE EXISTED ON THE PLANET EARTH GIVES TESTIMONY TO THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF GOOD INTENTIONS WHEREIN MONEY IS THE DRIVING AND COHESIVE ELEMENT, RATHER THAN SHARING, TRUTHFULNESS, AND HONESTY.

There is an interesting Intelligent Design blog here.

2008-10-05T11:00:04Z

yukkione

+5 raves

http://www.sodahead.com/question/166416/ I of course took the opposite position. What do ya'll think?

Piglet 'with face of a monkey' born in China

2008-10-04T18:09:59Z

SpiritualEyes

0 raves

A piglet with the face of a monkey has been born in a remote Chinese village, astonishing local residents. The animal has a simian jaw, bulging forehead, small snout and eyes that are so close together that they appear almost attached. Its front legs are much shorter than its back legs, causing it top hop rather than walk on all fours like a normal piglet. The animal was one of five piglets recently born to a sow owned by a family in Fengzhang village, Xiping township. “It’s hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it,” owner Feng Changlin told the Oriental Today newspaper. But the monkey-piglet has become something of a local tourist attraction, with people coming from across the area to photograph its remarkable features. And not everyone in the family is disgusted by its appearance. “Our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk,” said Mr Feng’s wife. The piglet’s rare condition is thought to be caused by a form of holoprosencephaly, a brain development disorder that can cause cyclopia, the failure of eyes to properly separate. Story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/24697...

Endangered Species? So What?

2008-10-04T17:48:15Z

Dave Sawyer (McCain-Palin '08)

+10 raves

Why do people who believe in Evolution worry about the extinction of a few species? Isn't this how Evolution works?

Help Protect Wildlife from a Leading Cause of Global Warming!

2008-10-04T06:14:43Z

Stacey A. Ward ~ No McCain!

0 raves

Urge the EPA to Help Protect People and Wildlife from Global Warming Pollution: http://online.nwf.org/site/R?i=rDtbzsMOdNG4S3UOOLA-_g.. Dear Wildlife Advocate: For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has argued that it doesn't have the authority to control global warming pollution. However, the US Supreme Court recently rejected that argument, confirming that the EPA does have authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases if they "endanger public health and welfare." http://online.nwf.org/site/R?i=hl_esqTJZiCyluGJ_8QpPg.. This landmark decision has caused the EPA to ask the public a very simple question: Do greenhouse gases that cause global warming endanger public health and welfare? http://online.nwf.org/site/R?i=5pyYdKaXNlnXIuJ15pBz5Q.. NWF believes there is no single GREATER threat to people and wildlife than global warming. What's missing is the commitment of our public officials to actually get the job done. http://online.nwf.org/site/R?i=ghiD0saHWc07AuuMMctG3Q.. Unfortunately, industry polluters are using their money and influence to a mount campaign to persuade the public that the EPA shouldn't take action to cut global warming pollution. Don't let them be the only voice! Please let the EPA know you think greenhouse gases are endangering public health and welfare! http://online.nwf.org/site/R?i=Ua19NDUWum34eAE0CcrTXg.. Thanks so much, Dominique Burgunder-Johnson Online Grassroots Coordinator National Wildlife Federation alerts@nwf.org Inspiring Americans to protect wildlife for our children's future. © 2008 National Wildlife Federation. All rights reserved. 11100 Wildlife Center Dr., Reston VA 20190 | 1-800-822-9919 |

Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians:

2008-10-03T23:54:30Z

PLANETEATER

+1 raves

Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians: By Tim Wise Published on Counterpunch, www.counterpunch.org, 2/9/05 I should have known better than to listen in to the conversation immediately to my left, sitting as I was in the Northwest Airlines World Club, in Detroit. Unlike most of the folks who have paid their $450 for an annual membership -- which entitles one to little more than some free booze, cheese, crackers and coffee, along with a comfy chair between flights -- I am hardly, after all, the typical "business traveler." I usually spend my time in such places, hastily composing one or another radical screed, while waiting to fly somewhere to deliver a speech that will, in some small way (I hope) move forward the cause of social transformation. This is not the purpose for which the guy talking about mutual funds in the cubicle next to me, is here. But this time, I couldn't avoid hearing the discussion between the two men, appropriately white and with matching blue suits and red power ties, whose familiarity with a bottle of scotch had apparently reached intimate proportions. They were ruminating on the recent goings on at the University of Colorado, where Ethnic Studies professor, Ward Churchill is under siege for an article he composed back in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; an essay in which Churchill sought to explain that a nation really ought not be surprised when its policies abroad -- which have resulted in the slaughter of millions of innocent civilians -- cause some in those nations to "push back" and seek to exact a similar collective death upon the people of that first country. While Churchill's essay was indelicate in places, it paled in comparison to the truly bloodthirsty things being said by representatives of the state or the denizens of talk radio around that same time--folks who were itching to level Afghanistan, turn the Arab world into a parking lot, or, as Bill O'Reilly put it, put a bullet to the heads of any Afghans who weren't sufficiently supportive of our ousting the Taliban for them. I remember reading Ward's missive at the time, and being bothered by the "little Eichmanns" reference (for those who worked in the World Trade Center), not because I thought Churchill actually believed these folks deserved to die, but because I knew the statement would be taken out of context and used to smear not only him, but the larger left of which we are both a part. In other words, Ward was perhaps guilty of naivetÈ, assuming that people are far more capable of discerning nuance and irony than they really are. But to the two men in the World Club, he was guilty of a lot more than that. To them, Churchill's most egregious crime was not having died, "like all the other Indians." I shit you not. One of the men, fuming about the article that now has Ward facing down the barrel of a Board of Trustees looking for any reason to fire him, despite tenure, turned to the other and said: "Just when you thought we'd killed all the Indians, one pops up talkin' some shit like this, and reminds you that we didn't finish the job after all." White guy number two laughs, in fact, damn near spits Dewar's and soda all over the leather barca lounger he's plopped down in, finding this affable romanticizing of genocide to be the funniest fucking thing he has apparently had the luxury of hearing, at least since the last time he and his buddies sat around in a sports bar, farting, and trading jokes about fags, or some such thing. I was stunned, because just one day before, I had speculated, only half-seriously, during an interview with KPFK in Los Angeles, that this anti-Indian sentiment might lay beneath some of the vitriol aimed Ward's way. After all, the attacks on him have seemed so personal, so vicious, so much worse than even the histrionics normally leveled at white leftists like Chomsky, or Parenti, or Zinn, who said much the same thing about 9/11 after that fateful day. The bombast has seemed to include an unhealthy dose of racial resentment -- absolute rage -- at the notion that a person of color and an Indian no less, should dare to condemn the American empire. "Didn't we get rid of those people years ago?" One can almost hear the refrain, as if broadcast from a loudspeaker. "Goddamit, be silent," comes the stare from others, or the words themselves. "Don't make us go all Trail of Tears on your ass. Don't make us send out those smallpox-infected blankets again. Remember, we still got some of that stuff in a vial at the Centers for Disease Control. Do not make us break that shit out, 'cuz we'll do it." "Oh the ingratitude! Here we are, honoring your ancestors by naming sports mascots after your people, and this is how one of yours repays us? Oh, hell no, not today Chief!" Even having concluded that racism was part of the reason for the overwrought reaction to Churchill, I was utterly unprepared to hear my suspicions confirmed in such a manner; probably because I've grown so accustomed to white people lying about their racist views, going out of their way in fact to deny them, at least around others. As such, I couldn't even think of what to say. My inclination was to ask for the guy's business card, pretending to have liked his comment, and then send his address and phone number to the American Indian Movement, so they could harass his pretty white ass for a few months. But in the end, all I did was glare, a gesture the meaning of which I'm sure was lost on them both, lubricated as they were on second-rate blended whiskey. And while these two guys might not be representative of the masses of people so driven to distraction by Churchill's commentary, I have little doubt but that, like the rest of the teeming hordes out to see him fired, they regularly shrug off comments about civilian deaths being justified, when made by representatives of their own side. More to the point, they glibly accept, as a consequence of war, the deaths themselves (not merely talk about them) as justified, as in Iraq, where even the lowest of low-ball estimates places the numbers of these around 15,000, and where the highest reach above 100,000. So what? they might say, in a tone and manner little different from that echoed in the caves of Afghanistan that have served as a home for bin Laden all these years. They surely are not bothered by pundit Ann Coulter's recent comments, to the effect that we should "nuke North Korea," so as to "send a message" to the rest of the world, and because it would be, in her words, "fun." They are not bothered by the comments of radio talk show host Jay Severin last year, to the effect that the U.S. should tell the Arab world that unless "they" stop killing our troops in Iraq, we will drop nuclear weapons throughout the region, destroying all of the holiest sites of Islam, and killing ten million people, without batting an eye. They were not bothered when former Secretary of State Madeline Albright rationalized the deaths of a half million children in Iraq as a result of Western sanctions, by saying that those deaths had been "worth it." Dead people of color, the world over, or right here in the U.S., whose ashes they step over every time they walk out the door of their homes, mean nothing to them. Their deaths are cause for no tears, no contrition, no recompense, and certainly have never served to disqualify those responsible (or those who applaud the carnage) from positions of authority, in colleges, or government. Nor will schools now move to block dear Madame Albright from speaking on their campuses, as happened to Ward; nor will Ann Coulter find herself a pariah for fantasizing about the incineration of folks whose only crime was to be born North Korean. But Ward Churchill, who has merely laid out the facts about America's murderous ways around the globe is to be silenced. Those who do the deed are cheered, re-elected and get buildings named after them. Those who merely tell of their exploits and suggest that perhaps there may be consequences, get crushed. This is what happens, in a nation built on lies from the beginning; whose empire has been constructed on the sands of self-delusion; whose inability to tell the truth about itself has now become the stuff of farce. Our lack of self-awareness, not to mention the way in which Americans pride ourselves on how little we know about the world, and how reflexively patriotic we can be, would all be funny were it not so miserably pathetic, and ultimately so dangerous. The sickest irony of the entire episode with Churchill is this, of course: namely, if there is anyone whose views and actions lead to the inevitable conclusion that the civilians in the World Trade Center were legitimate, if unfortunate targets, it is the President of the United States. It is he, whose doctrine of "preventative" warfare, assumes by definition that it is acceptable to target buildings that house offices tied to the government and military apparatus of one's enemy, which, indeed the WTC did, and which of course describes the Pentagon in its entirety. It is Bush whose "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq was planned, even though all agreed that thousands of civilians would die in the process. And if such a mentality is acceptable for Americans -- one that reduces innocent civilians to mere collateral damage and shrugs at their untimely demise as if they were the sad but inevitable consequence of modern warfare -- then surely we must extend the same courtesy of barbarism to every nation or group on earth with a bone to pick. So the squealing of those on the right when it comes to Churchill -- persons who wholeheartedly endorse the notion of America's right to bomb other nations, even if innocents will be killed, and knowing full well that they will be -- does nothing so much as call to mind the Shakespearean adage: "Methinks the lady doth protest too much." Or perhaps the psychological concept of projection, whereby the patient displaces their own sickness onto others, finding in them the very flaws and pathologies to which the patient him or herself has been given over. We're akin to the national equivalent of a child, whose mommy and daddy are trying desperately, against all hope, to maintain the child's belief in Santa or the Easter Bunny, or even the tooth fairy. And we rage against any who seek to dispel the myths out of a desire to protect our children's "innocence." While such deceptions are perhaps excusable when dealing with the fantasies of real children, one would hope that a nation run by full-grown men and women would ask a bit more of itself; would find truth more valuable a commodity than innocence; would recognize that, as James Baldwin explained, "Those who insist on maintaining their innocence, long after that innocence has died, turn themselves into monsters." And so we have: a monster that sees no evil and hears no evil, unless it comes from the despised "other," and who in the process perpetrates its own version of the thing daily.