Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Is Ginkgo Biloba Still Good?

And two more health fads bite the dust. I think the garlic thing was only helpful if you were dating a vampire, but that's just me.

Grenade Found in Sack of Potatoes

I know that spud-launchers have become popular and are part of a new recreational arms race, but this is ridiculous.

El Niño Dead, Long Live La Niña

According to the NOAA, El Niño is over, and La Niña will be taking over very soon. La Niña is usually responsible for milder springs in the Northeast, droughts in the Plains, and more hurricanes for the southeast. Let's see how quickly all these climate events get blamed on global warming, when no climate model in the world has successfully described CO2 radiative warming in conjunction with El Niño and La Niña. Of course, the debate is over, so no sense doing any more research about it, which means all those scientists should stop receiving grants and focus on their speaking engagement careers. But that's not crushing dissent, is it?

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Avian Secret of the Chinese Stock Market Plunge

No, it wasn't bird-flu, but remote-controlled pigeons! The Chinese researchers successfully controlled the birds' flights, but unfortunately crossed some signals and crashed the birds into the stock exchange's powerlines! And we know what happened next... Seriously, I like the last sentence of the Reuters article: "The report did not specify what practical uses the scientists saw for the remote-controlled pigeons."

Monday, February 26, 2007

Taiwan Still Panda Lorn

Yeah, good luck with that, Taiwan: "Oh, Taiwan, so sorry, the Ministry for Zoological and Happy Thoughts Concerns is still offering the pandas named PRC Rox and ROC Sux, but only if you agree not to change their names. Maybe your facilities will be ready next year."

Sunday, February 25, 2007

A Personal Protest

The protest culture has really changed since the 1960's, when movements were predicated on an exchange of ideas and not personal animus. The best way to see the change is just look at the different signs used in the marches. And now that politics is all about the personal, since the authenticity of one's argument is based on the strength of emotions evoked, the signs' messages are all about the best put-downs. But just take a look at that sign to the very right and remember: never underestimate geek power.


Get Fuzzy courtesy of Darby Conley

Friday, February 23, 2007

Halp!

Just look at the damn picture, and laugh your "ise" off!

Folk Medicines Fail to Cure AIDS

I am shocked, shocked I say, that the results of the trial ended this way. At least the AFP reports that the Gambian president has "come under fire" for making the same ridiculous claims.

The Dark Temp of the Sith

It just makes sense that telemarketers would use the Dark Side of the Force to know the most inconvenient time to call you. Of course, you might have some sympathy for Darth Vader's younger brother Chad, because I've never seen Error 4-12 in the manual either.



"You have failed me for the last time" - "I don't get it."

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Quick Question

I just have a quick question for all the AGW (antropogenic global warming) activists out there: In 30 years, when we see that all the efforts we've put into changing energy policy, forcing people to relocate their homes and businesses, because these people and others like them said we needed to, but we find out that the sea level rise will still be only three feet by the end of the century and the temperature rise will still be only 3 degrees Celsius, and nothing would have helped anyway, can we go to them for reparations? Just checking. Maybe if they knew they were playing with their own money with their predictions and recommendations, we might get reasonable public responses to the results of their incomplete climate models.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Healthy Hearts Love a Cuppa Joe

Alright, so I'm doing my bit to keep my heart healthy after eating those big meals. Now if they could only get that fifth cup of coffee to taste as good as the second...


What? No prize at the bottom?
"I don't even taste the first cup, it goes down so fast... Why are you looking at me like that?"

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Psychologist Group: Sexual Images Damaging to Girls

Gee, you think? Any comment from the sexualized young girl poster child?



"Sorry, I'm a little busy with my public meltdown right now. Y'all can come back a li'l later."

Surgeon Gamerz Pwnz!

Another study has confirmed that surgeons who play video games perform precision operations better than surgeons without skillz. This shouldn't be surprising, since any non-invasive procedure involves looking at a monitor while moving a scope around with control pads. That amounts to playing a first person shooter with better graphics, but not as many explosions. Fighter pilots and racecar drivers already spend lots of time on computer simulators, so why not surgeons who specialize in laparoscopic surgery? I can see it now: scopes equipped with tiny lasers taking out cancer cells...



Die Mutant Cyborg, er Cancer Cell, die!

Tour of California Crash Lands in Santa Rosa

The Tour of California started with a bang on Sunday, by having some unknown American on the Slipstream Team scare the big boys with his prologue time trial run. It took the very last rider, Discovery Channel's Levi Leipheimer, last year's winner, to beat the suprising time by about a second. Now why is this little tidbit important to the crash that ended Stage 1? Levi won last year. He's a big name in the sport. Also, Santa Rosa is his hometown, which was where the finish was for Stage 1. There is a 3 km rule for crashes at the end of a race, where anybody caught in a crash and the pile-up within 3 km from the finish line, get the same time as the winner. There's also a stage neutralization rule, if the commissaires (race officials) cannot guarantee the safety of the riders by maintaining road conditions, which was hampered because the course was not cleared of ambulances after the crash, but before the leaders came around the circuit again. But, the judges of the race are the final arbiters on the rules. So, what happened? No neutralization, and everyone caught in the crash got the same time as the sprint finishers, even though the crash was closer to 5 km away from the finish.

I'm actually going to agree with the judges' decision to apply the crash time rule. Here's why: the crash affected more than half of the field, causing a gap of more than a minute. During a three week Grand Tour, a loss of a minute at the start of the race is no big deal, but during a week long tour, that time gap means you're out of contention. Sponsorship and ratings motivations rear their head in this case, since only "unknown" riders would now have a chance of winner overall. Also, this decision is the same as the Tour de France judges nullifying the time-gap disqualification rule during the alpine stages. That particular rule says that riders must finish within a percentage range of the stage winner's time or be disqualified. The percentage range is determined by the difficulty of the course; sometimes its 10 percent, I've seen it go as high as 15 percent. But the percentage cannot be changed once the race starts. If the judges did not nullify this rule during certain stages of the Tour de France, we would have only 30 or so people actually finishing the race. Sprinters' legs are just not conditioned to climb mountains. The California judges made a similar decision.

But what about the neutralization of the race? Also a bad decision because then the sprinters would have less chances at picking up points. Again, one race out of 20 stages is no big deal, but when you only have 7 or 8, and one of them is an individual time trial, and a few stages are designated as climbers' stages, then the big sprinter boys don't have a chance to shine as well.

Detractors will criticize the "hometown" bias, or complain that their team has the "real" overall leader. That's fine. But in cycling, the Big Boys really do have an advantage, and it doesn't come from doping. If that decision was not made, then the rest of the race would have garnered much less attention, and the only story to come out of the international coverage would have been summed up in one picture:


Photo courtesy of Velonews
photo: Graham Watson

For more coverage of Stage 1, excellent notes and reactions can be found at VeloNews.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Inconvenient Weather

I'm not the only one who gets a little annoyed when the weather doesn't cooperate with your message. Like when you have to cancel your subcommittee hearing on global warming due to snow, or cancel a screening of your favorite "documentary" because of inconvenient weather. But think of the poor animals!


Over the Hedge courtesy of Michael Fry and T. Lewis

"Filthy Fascist Vermin"

Don't ask me why I found this so funny. Unless you're a gerbil, then you already know why.


Get Fuzzy courtesy of Darby Conley

Friday, February 16, 2007

Gadget A Go Go

Here at Helmety Goodness Fridays, we like to inform, as well as entertain. I'm sure most of you, especially the ones that are actually reading this blog, have a closet full of outdated, broken, or useless electronic gadgets. I myself just ran across my old tape recorder FM AM radio Walkman. Wow, huh? Playing radio on your Walkman? Well, the guys from Red vs. Blue offer us news from the future. Not really any solutions, but at least I can look forward to playing mp48s on my wristwatch/pedometer/time machine.



"I have a lot of moistness that I need to dismoisten!"

Thursday, February 15, 2007

AP Shows Warming Bias in Antarctic "Lakes" Story

After reading the AP version of this story about water channels found in Antarctic ice, one would get the impression that Global Warming melted all this ice, and this water could be the source of the coming sea level rise. Look at this sentence: "It's a finding that may improve understanding of the interaction between global warming and the melting of Antarctic ice, which could contribute to a worldwide rise in ocean level." From my understanding of pressure and low temperatures from statistical mechanics, I immediately knew that I was being given a very skewed presentation of the sub-surface water. Take a look at the Reuters version of the story. The point of the story is that ice is moving around quickly (in terms of ice packs anyway) because of rapidly melting and freezing of ice thousands of feet below the surface. The coolness of the story was supposed to be about the new satellites that can detect the movement of the ice and map the water channels. Reuters makes it very clear here: "Global warming did not create these big pockets of water -- they lie beneath some 2,300 feet of compressed snow and ice, too deep to be affected by temperature changes on the surface -- but knowing how they behave is important to understanding the impact of climate change on the Antarctic ice sheet, study author Helen Fricker said by telephone." Let me repeat that first part, Global warming did not create these big pockets of water! But that's not the impression one gets from the AP story. I call global warmening shenanigans on the Associated Press!

Error Checking on SPM Begins

Roger Pielke, Sr. of Climate Science, found four flat-out wrong statements in the IPCC's Statement for Policymakers, which shows either cherry-picking of data, or just plain wrongness. The first is that snow coverage in both hemispheres has decreased, when they have increased. The second is that the average ocean temperature has increased since 1961, but ignores the 20 percent loss of that heat in the last two years. The third is that atmospheric vapor content has increased during the last 25 years, consistent with the average increase of atmospheric temperature, but global average precipitation records during the same time show no noticeable increase or decrease consistent with this "added" water vapor. And fourth, is that mid-latitude westerly winds have gained in strength, which is a gauge of average temperature increase in the mid-latitudes, however, a corresponding warming of the arctic troposphere has not been reported for these westerly gains. Incidently, Gavin Schmidt, one of the main koolaid drinking climate modelers at RealClimate, shows up in the comments, only to be swatted down by Roger Pielke. That was enjoyable.

He Didn't Mean to Ignore His Wife

A new study on reactance, doing the opposite of what is asked, in men shows a strong correlation between subconscious impulses tied to one perceived as "giving orders." Not exactly the news women want to hear about their husbands: "He can't help it."

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Love Links

Valentine's Day, Schmalentine's Day. Just click on the "interesting" links below.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Got Bilk?

The people in Hokkaido either have very strange tastes, or desperate ones. The milk industry has been declining, so instead of continuing the practice of destroying overstock, one company decided to ferment the milk, and make beer out of it. As a bachelor, I'm not unfamiliar with the smell of sour milk, so I'm a little skeptical of the article's claim: "apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer." Yeah? What kind of beer? Lager? Ale? Pilsner? Porter? Details, man, details! Knowing that Hokkaido also specializes in potato beer does not instill me with a lot of confidence...

The Thai Valentine's Day Massacre

And what exactly is this upcoming crimewave in Thailand? Underage virginity theft. The story lede made me laugh out loud: "A third of Thai teenage girls think Valentine's Day is an excellent time to lose their virginity, and police in Bangkok are out to stop them." Thai police are going to enforce a 10 PM curfew, but what is going to stop the teenagers from having sex before ten o'clock? School guidance counselors? I can hear it now: "Um, underage sex is bad, m'kay?"

Monday, February 12, 2007

Devolution of France Continues

Since the price of raw metals remains high because the communications industry keeps expanding (Oops! Globalization! Not supposed to be good thing!), heavy metal theft has not been rare. Now, France reports that industrial metal theft has increased 144 percent in 2006 from the previous year. We already knew that France was not very friendly to business, but to have to secure power lines from theft? Ridiculous.

Thanks to the bro for the tip.

Simpsons Did It!

Well, not exactly, but this is a Simpsons episode in reverse. Instead of building a shield to block out the sun, a Swiss village wants to construct a large mirror so they can actually have sunlight during the winter months. No word yet on environmental activists protesting the future melting of local alpine glaciers.

Astrophysicist's Views on Politics and Culture

An absolutely cool interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson appears on MSNBC today. He touches on a lot of topics, like death by blackhole (which just happens to be the title of his bestselling book), perceptions of science in pop culture, the importance of communicating publically funded research through the national media, politics in research, and race relations (he happens to be a black man living in New York). Here are a few quotable quotes that had me thinking about all the recent coverage on the Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC's 4th Assessment on Global Climate Change:

On public perception of research scientists: There’s this widespread expectation that scientists sit there in blissful confidence that they’re lords of the universe because they understand what’s going on. And then, all of a sudden, some new theory comes along and everybody has to go back to the drawing board. If only I had a nickel for every time that picture was played out in the first sentence of an article. If a scientist is not befuddled by what they’re looking at, then they’re not a research scientist.

On the importance of science communication with the public: The reason why somebody’s got to do it, is that most of the science that we do is completely taxpayer-funded — the National Science Foundation or NASA, for instance — so to suggest that the work we do is off-limits from the public is to create a priesthood. And that’s not what science is. One of the greatest features of science is that it doesn’t matter where you were born, and it doesn’t matter what the belief systems of your parents might have been: If you perform the same experiment that someone else did, at a different time and place, you’ll get the same result.

On the politics of science: Now, there’s science, and then there’s the politics of science. … I don’t mean to denigrate what is a very important and fundamental part of modern society, the role of politics in decision-making. But when politics shows up in science, in almost every case, it gets in the way. It is a barrier between where you are and where you want to take your experiment. To the extent that it’s a barrier, it can show an ugly head, and express itself in the form of sexism, racism, creedism. And this can affect employment opportunities, salaries, office space, this sort of thing.

Dr. Tyson also has some interesting things to say on the improvement of race relations in America, and emphasizes access to opportunity, instead of the feel-good, but demonstrably incorrect notion of equality. Read the whole thing.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Star Wars: A Clone Apart - Episode 03 (Part 3 of 3)

Don't you hate it when Human Resources decides you don't make a good fit in your department, and that you have a cooler rifle than everybody else? I know! I hate it too! But what can someone, like our hapless hero Danson Delta Forty, whose skillset only includes being a clone, not fitting in, and holding a cool gun, do for a living? Perhaps another clone can provide Danson with the answer...


Random quote found near the end of Episode 3:
"What is it with the future? It's full of assholes."


Thursday, February 08, 2007

Awww! Triplet Tigers


REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

Again, I say "Awww!" Somehow, seeing two identical tigers, and the different one being left out in the background, seemed awfully familiar to me. Hmmm.

Counterfeit Souvenirs

Knock-off Olympic Tchotchkes seized in China? I am shocked, shocked! I could almost spit (into a cab-bucket, of course).

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

"I'm Improving My Eyesight!"

Heh. So, instead of wasting time, according to this new study, I can say that I'm doing something good for my eyes. But what does it mean that I get "tired eyes" after only two hours of playing a first person shooter on a big screen TV?

It's Energy Policy Debate

Apparently not climate change debate, that interests the Greens, the Liberals, and the Democrats. I have seen the pattern for years, using some emotional argument regarding any environmental phenomena that could be construed, however slightly, that Man's involvement is at fault, and must be swatted down. Like using the Endangered Species Act to slow logging, housing developments, transportation planning, or fuel exploration. Nowadays, it's all about using the climate change debate to change energy policy, to break the hold petroleum companies have over the entire energy industry. This is why the climate change debate needs to be over as soon as possible, so the energy revolution can begin. Scientifically, the debate over Man's contribution to climate change is far from over. Carbon dioxide's radiative forcing of warming the average land surface temperature is just one small part of how people can affect the climate. But only the agenda driven scientists are getting the attention of the media and policy writers, because their agendas match up. And I'm not the only one who sees this happening. Roger Pielke, Sr. writes regarding Barbara Boxer's survey on climate change:

The clear conclusion is that this survey is designed to promote energy policy with climate change being used as the vehicle to encourage the political adoption of changes in energy policy. This also provides a reason that climate assessments such as the IPCC focus on the radiative effects of fossil fuels, rather than the broader issues of the human role in regional and global climate variability and change as clearly articulated in the 2005 National Research Council Report Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties. They are essentially ignoring that Report. Their goal is to change energy policy.

My plea is to be honest and clearly separate energy and climate policies, such that the science issues, rather than being used as political weapons in arguing for or against particular politcal actions, can be used to provide the actual diversity of peer reviewed research information on climate (and energy) science.

Of course, I join that plea, but in today's political climate, the science and the political debate have been so successfully intertwined by propaganda programs, wholly endorsed by the editorial boards of most major newspapers and media outlets, that the political course now, is to limit the damage that new policy will have on energy infrastructure. The science debate will continue, but very quietly, because the media will not cover new conclusions based on better climate models, since the answers will not match the climate change narrative.

Incidently, I believe the Summary of the IPCC data that was just released made a strategic error in overselling the disastrous nature of their version of global warming. They made it clear that Man was responsible for bringing us over the tipping point (90 percent consensus doesn't mean much to real scientists, since in Copernicus' time, there was 100 percent consensus that the Sun orbited the Earth, but that's a warning, not a reason to believe or disbelieve the IPCC's conclusions), and that the damage is now irreversible. Part of selling the energy policy debate was the fiction that we could reverse the warming by some strange scheme of cutting emissions to some arbitrary level. But the Summary says it's too late. According to them, the warming will proceed for centuries, no matter what we do. I can hear the African nations rejoicing now, because the Kyoto emissions protocols will be abandoned, but the Climate Impact grants will increase. Like I said, the UN made a strategic error in the eyes of those who wish to change energy policy, but the UN's political goals have always been to elevate the poor nations through economic wealth redistribution. The Summary fits perfectly with those goals.

As for me, I'm tired of writing about this stuff, because the issue has become more political than science-oriented. The policy writers and politicians have fallen for the junk science, and for them, the debate is over. Since, this is now a political issue, I'll be writing about it less often. If I do see something science related, I'll write about that, but for now, climate change has fallen off my radar.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Web is still The Web

Heh. Watching cheese mold is okay, but where are the traditional pastimes of watching paint dry or grass grow?

I Want My Free Anime!


"Say it ain't so!"

In a potential blow to world-wide anime fans who can't wait years to watch their favorite Japanese animation on DVD or Cartoon Network, Google's deep pockets are making it harder for YouTubers to share video clips of copyrighted materials. I'm pretty confident that posting a copyright warning in Japanese will do nothing to deter fans from uploading the latest episodes of Naruto or Bleach, since these videos are already available for free downloads from many fan sites. But what about the outrageous gameshow clips? Will we have to go back to the 1990's where we had to catch glimpses of Japanese pop culture from the dribs and drabs of video that made it into the "Odd Files" sections of news reports? After Viacom requested the removal of over 100,000 videos, and this Japanese media group's request for 30,000 videos to be removed, my reaction is a little emotional.

Monday, February 05, 2007

I Couldn't Resist

Now Lake effect has a snow machine! But how did the weather gods know that the "other" Los Angeles basketball team was on a fast-moving road trip?

Friday, February 02, 2007

Net Neutrality?

For those who depend on internet connections for their livelihood, which is pretty much everyone from the small business owner, creative content contractors, to mega corporations, the idea that ISP's have been kicking around, to charge different rates for different kinds of access to different kinds of content, could mean the difference between profit, or going out of business. Then there are the free speech issues involved too. Of course, I can't explain this issue in two sentences, so I'll let some bobbing helmet do it for me.



"You know, you've got yourself a nice little talkshow outfit here."

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Be Afraid, Very Afraid

Hey there, uh, Stacy, uh, Rachel, uh, Mabel...
Aiiiii! Los ojos!

Encountered at friend's apartment: La Gata Diabla! Seriously, little Suzie wouldn't hurt a fly (she can't catch them, but moths better watch out!). I have been helping my friend sort through his recently departed father's things, which explains the sketchy blogging this week. But I mean it, watch out for La Gata Diabla! Her eyes will turn you to mush.