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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/08/29/ron-paul-doesnt-accept-evolution-as-a-theory/

Apparently paul was saying that evolution isn't validation of atheism. Which is a policy I think most believers in evolution would agree. Many christians that believe in evolution think the process was set in motion by god such as god put the planets in orbit... it's just a system for managing life as there is a system for managing planetary bodies.

I'm not a theist... I'm agnostic... so I don't particularly care either way.

I find theistic discussions in general to be a distraction. I don't enjoy them because I don't care. You can worship green fairies or nothing and it's the same to me.

I judge people by what they do not by what they say. If you're a good man and worship satan... then I'm going to think you're weird but I won't burn your house down. If you're a christian or a muslim or a jew I won't assume you're any less likely to rape a child or slit a throat.

Religion for me is a distraction... it's a waste of time. If it gets people to be better people then it's great. But that's a personal matter between those people and their beliefs. It has nothing to do with me.

As it regards public institutions, obviously their religion cannot be binding upon civic institutions. However, I think some institutions involve themselves in what can be a personal matter.

For example, I see no reason why public schools, marriages, or hospitals must be controlled to this extent by the government.

Each of these institutions should be individually allowed to manage their own affairs.

In regards to schools, I think we should privatize the whole system. Still give everyone a free education but make the actual schools themselves private entities. Ideally non-profit, designed for mass acceptance, and meeting all federal minimum standards. I think they'd do a better job given the same resources we spend on education in the US. Some of the schools will be more theistic then others. That's freedom. Let people have what they want. No one should be forced to go to a school that doesn't represent their beliefs. That goes in both directions. So if you're an atheist and want no theism in any of your classes then you should not be forced to suffer it. I believe in giving everyone what they want.

As to marriages, I think everyone should get civil unions and the whole practice of state marriage should be abolished. Marriage is traditionally a religious concept. It's ancient. And I see no reason to involve the government in it at all. If people in addition to getting married want to give each other power of attorney over each other, share assets, etc.... then I'm fine with that. But you don't need to get married to make those relationships. Furthermore, you can pretty much set up such a contract with anything. I mean, you can civil union yourself to a company or entirely theoretical entities that might not even have existence off paper. Then there's no issue about there being gay marriage or not. Call me Solomon... I'm very happy to split the baby in half if it will just get these two crazy women out of my throne room.

And then hospitals, neither the feds nor the state governments should tell a hospital what procedures it preforms. If the hospital administrators or doctors don't want to do something then they have a right not to do it. Understand this goes in both direction. I'm against banning abortion and I'm against forcing people to offer it as a service. I'm against putting a gun against a doctor's head and saying "do this or I'll destroy your practice/hospital."

Anyway, those are my views on the matter. I believe in freedom. I think everyone should be able to do what they want so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. You could argue the doctors hurt people if htey don't do a procedure but the doctors are free too. They're not slaves. If they don't want to do something you can't make them without violating their rights.

Apparently, there is a third type of receptor which mattters a great deal to the circadian rhythm.

I don't think it's so simple as that. See: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere-existence-of-whales/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/24/case-closed-climategate-was-manufactured/

I think five audits have already been done and all five have exonerated the Climatologists under investigation. None were able to find any evidence of scientific malpractice.
You already got exactly what you asked for but it wasn't the result that you wanted.

Apparently, the superbowl coin toss "experiment" has generated nearly as large a statistical anomaly... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/02/04/a-3-8-sigma-anomaly/

Right now they are sorting through the math on old experimental data.

I'm sure they are waiting for at least 6 sigma to acutally claim anything...

It doesn't matter what the results were, the likelihood that after 14 tosses they were what they were would be the same.

Oh shit, after flipping 14 times, I got the following:
HHTHTTTTHTHTT
A 3.8 sigma anomaly!

Apparently, the superbowl coin toss "experiment" has generated nearly as large a statistical anomaly... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/02/04/a-3-8-sigma-anomaly/

Right now they are sorting through the math on old experimental data.

I'm sure they are waiting for at least 6 sigma to acutally claim anything...

Wasn't that more or less how the US went to the moon the first time?

Yes, and look what happened when we "won" that race. The Bad Astronomer made a great post about it.

4. Earth is not a sphere, so the Haversine formula will be inaccurate.

If you're interested in "real" data like driving distances or times, then Haversine is even less useful.

If all you care about is an as the crow flies approximation within a percent or two (not counting the crow's climb to and descent from altitude), Haversine is pretty good:

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=81360

The earth is not as round as a billiard ball, but it's close.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/09/08/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-the-earth/

Oh yes and thank god Ron Paul Mr. Get Govt Out Of Our Lives thinks that it's OK and in fact right to FORCE a woman to undergo an UNEEDED ultrasound before she can have an abortion even if her doctor thinks it's not a good idea for her and even if she doesn't want to. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002161152

Lets get govt off our backs and into our beds, shall we? Vote Ron Paul!

Yeah, I hate to be the one to break this to you but Ron Paul is a total fraud. He wants HIS VERSION of Big Government rammed right up every woman's body.

And of course he's was a massive racist, opposed as he is to the 1964 civil right's legislation that said among other things that blacks could drink out of the same drinking fountains as whites, could marry whites, couldn't be discriminated against in hiring and housing etc etc you know, all the basics of a civil society....

Oh and I think there was something in that legislation that said the government couldn't refer to them in legislation as 40 swiggin' porch monkey niggers who want our white women too.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ron-paul-tells-cnns-candy-crowley-civil-rights-act-destroyed-privacy/

Ron Paul is a

homophobic

, ahref=http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/rel=url2html-32508http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/>

racist,

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1229/Racist-newsletter-timeline-What-Ron-Paul-has-said

http://www.towleroad.com/2011/12/ron-pauls-homophobia-in-context.html

sexist

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/275198/20120102/ron-paul-laws-against-sexual-harassment-s.htm

Bible thumping

ahref=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLwrel=url2html-32508http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw>

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/08/29/ron-paul-doesnt-accept-evolution-as-a-theory/

piece of fucking shit dressed up as "a man of principle" and his schtick is bought only by infinitely gullible, extremely naive people who are too stupid to use Google and, of course, other racist, sexist homophobic Bible thumpers of which there are, it goes without saying, entirely too many .

Oh and one more thing. He's never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to be the President of the United States of America.

So be sure to write-in vote for Ron Paul, because we need as many stupid people to throw away their votes as possible !

After posting the article linked in the summary, Zimmer followed up by posting the comments of evolutionary biologist David Hillis on his own website. For those that don't want to read the entire post, the basic idea is that we ought not try to define life as a collection of characteristics (i.e. reproduction, inheritance of traits, existence of metabolism, &c.). Any such definition is likely to exclude things that we think of as alive, or include things that we think of as not-alive. Instead, it may make more sense to think of Life (Hillis uses a capital L on purpose) as a biological taxa. We can discuss the history of Life on Earth, and if we ever discover anything "similar" somewhere else in the universe, we can examine the similarities between Life on Earth and Life2 wherever it is.

That said, I'm not a biologist, thus I am sure that my summary misses some important subtleties, thus I would suggest reading the original before tearing me to shreds. ;)

"We have a useful phrase to describe new fields whose energy warps spacetime: 'dark matter.'" --Sean Carroll
dark matter: just fine, thanks

Dude, seriously step back a sec and think about it:

This: http://www.insu.cnrs.fr/co/univers/les-exoplanetes/un-disque-cyan-dans-un-ciel-pourpre-coucher-de-soleil-sur-osiris is the official link

This: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/01/09/sunset-on-an-alien-world/ is an article targeting laymen. It's from Discover *Magazine*. It's science entertainment, not a peer reviewed journal. The 'planet' your so upset about is an artist paid to slap together something for people to look at the pretty colors.

Another concept might be to simply upload the astronaut's neural net into a very high capacity computer.

Indeed, since researchers have already started doing this with cat neurons, there's already a software base to work from, so to speed the work we could combine astronaut brains with the existing IBM cat brain simulation.

Also, for long duration space flights, China has already claimed that females are better than males. So we should make sure to use female astronauts for the baseline neural scans.

We should probably then provide robot humanoid bodies for the simulations in case they need to perform maintenance tasks on any space hardware components assembled by baseline humans on Earth.

Our human representatives to the stars will therefore most likely be robot space catgirls. It's scientific!

I remember someone here in a previous discusion about chimeras pointing out the male / female chicken chimeras that happen naturally. Check out this for a nice picture of a chicken that is two different colors, split right down the middle. In fact the two halves are different sexes as well. Or search google images for "chicken chimera" for pictures of others.

There is no real "Stradivari magic", except in the head of some people. Stradivari made quality violins, as did Guarnieri and Bergonzi, around the same period. There's nothing magical about them, just quality materials and craftsmanship. Virtually all Stradivarius in use today have been heavily modified (different neck, different bridge, etc.) to bring them up to the quality and consistency that modern listeners and violinists demand. Double-blind tests show no preference for Stradivarius over other quality brands (both old and new).

Old instruments are worth a lot because the ones that survived usually have some history attached (ex., owned and played by famous artists), not because they sound better than (top quality) modern ones. People who go on about "the acoustic qualities of old wood" are just one step away from buying this or this.

And I'm pretty sure the GP was making a joke (i.e., labelled in the sense of "thought to be" vs. labelled in the sense of "someone stuck a label on them with 'Stradivarius' written on it").

Well, if you buy a $2500 violin, you sure wouldn't want to read this article:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/

In a double-blind test, even experienced violinists and violin makers cannot reliably identify the sound of a Stradivarius over a newly-made violin.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/

There are studies which show that DNA and RNA can both survive digestion.

http://www.zivilcourage.ro/pdf/mazza.pdf

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/21/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes-rna-from-rice-can-survive-digestion-and-alter-gene-expression/

While that is no big reason to worry over GM food more than to worry over some strange food from the jungle that you don't know, it is still possible that GM foods can be dangerous.

This is especially true when the GM crops were altered such that lots of strange proteins are created, for example when the GM crops create their own poisons against crop diseases.

There are also other issues surrounding GM crops; One of the most worrying is the possibility that some GM crops contribute to honey bee colony collapse, and bees are vital to growing crops.

Another problem with GM crops is that they are often altered to produce seeds that do not grow into new crops, and even when that is not the case, farmers are forbidden by patents to grow and sow their own seeds.
While a rich country may don't care about this, it can be fatal for people in a poor country.

You haven't paid attention in the last month.

NDAA has just eliminated due process.

If you are a "hacktivist" you will be accused of terrorism (this has already been bandied about by various politicians, so I'm not making it up) and you will simply disappear.

Not kidding.

Even the guy over at Bad Astronomy is highly upset. You should be too.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/19/a-public-letter-to-the-us-government-upon-the-passing-of-ndaa/

--
BMO

There's recent evidence that a large moon to stabilize may not be necessary. See http://www.universetoday.com/91331/life-on-alien-planets-may-not-require-a-large-moon-after-all/ for a summary and http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103511004064 for the actual paper. The issue is that while the lack of a moon will result in less stability in general the level of wobbling will be small and slow. There's also been in general growing evidence that habitable planets are more common than one might think otherwise. One recent study indicates that around a third of all sun-like stars have a planet in the habitable zone. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/29/new-study-13-of-sun-like-stars-might-have-terrestrial-planets-in-their-habitable-zones/ http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1109/1109.4682v1.pdf (keep in mind that being in the habitable zone is not sufficient for life. Our system has three planets in that zone, Earth, Mars and Venus, and only one of them supports complex life.) There's also been recent work which shows that for red dwarf stars there habitable zones are much larger than was previously expected (essentially water ice preferentially absorbs light from just the right wavelengths that red stars emit so that the outer zone is longer).

In general, the Fermi question is a serious concern. It is a concern not just for the deep implications it has but for the practical implications for our survival. In particular, it is possible that there's a lack of intelligent life out there because life finds ways to wipe itself out. Carl Sagan for example was worried that an explanation for the Fermi paradox was that species inevitably kill themselves with nuclear war before they get off their home planets. That particular worry seems less founded right now, but other worries, like exhaustion of resources, bad nanotech and others exist. Worse, if there is such a set of very risky technologies, they have to arise quickly so that species which encounter them don't generally have time to even anticipate the risk enough. Also, if this is a common problem then that means that it needs to arise soon in our future, say the next hundred years. That's because the technology has to arise in general before one stars spreading out to space. I suspect that intelligent life is rare due to the all the difficulties, not due to civilizations destroying themselves. But the possibility that self-elimination is the problem is deeply disturbing. More resources need to be put into dealing with existential risk.

Does this explain the gravitational lensing in the Bullet Cluster?

This is the kind of theory that could have be viable prior to August 2006. When the gravity isn't pointing towards the baryonic matter, we have to postulate that there's some dark matter for the gravity to point to. Or, as Sean Carroll put it

We have a useful phrase to describe new fields whose energy warps spacetime: “dark matter."

"An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography"

Even faster, use neutrinos!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/11/22/faster-than-light-neutrinos-confirmed-in-one-way-yes-in-another-no/

Or? Maybe the answer is random? Truly random!

Forget global warming. Read this article on the acidification of the ocean by CO2 absorption:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-ocean-acidification-a-global-case-of-osteoporosis

CO2 is a far greater hazard to the ocean than the atmosphere.

"a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy."

No, it's just more confirmation that these guys don't know why things are but are far more concerned that the number deliver the right message. Anything for the religion of Global Warming.

Actually the claim is very plausible, given that both releases were before big climate conferences. Sure sounds like an attempt to shape opinion.

Here is what our favorite badass tronomer has to say about it.

True. I really like what was said in the comment section here: "The correct response to bad science, if that is what you are alleging, is more science, not stolen emails."

Bad Astronomer: Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.

Most likely microbes

Even single celled organisms can be quite amazing right here on earth. These puppies were recently found in the depths of our oceans. I can't wait to see what life will come up with on another planet/moon with a totally different set of playing rules.

I only meddle in biology, but what I have learned is that for each time you think that life can't get any stranger, you soon enough discover something that proves you wrong yet again.

You overestimate americans. This is a country with significant opposition to HPV vaccination of youths because it removes a significant danger of premarital sex,

I think the opposition is to mandatory HPV vaccinations, something that, really, only Merck wants. They are so anxious to get it that they are even saying all boys should get it too. There are side effects to HPV vaccines - it's not just irrational fear or ignorance. In addition, the actual effectiveness of the vaccine is not as great as advertised. For actual prevention of cervical cancers, it's only about 17% effective.

Thank you riverat1, Gadget_Guy, Arlet, berbo, and tbannist for correctly repeating that a solid undergraduate statistics education helps one to determine how long a timespan has to be in order to separate the long term climate sea level signal from short term weather noise (using a realistic noise model) by producing a 95% (for instance) confidence interval that's entirely positive.

The reason ocean levels have fallen is most likely because Thailand, Pakistan, Australia and a few other places have all experienced massive record-setting floods. There's actually been enough flooding to show up as a small dip in the measure of ocean levels. [tbannist]

Yes, the sea level has gone down the past couple of years. The main reason for that is all of the major precipitation events that have been going on around the world. The puts the water on land that take several years to return to the ocean. The GRACE satellites have shown by measuring gravity an increase in the areas where the precipitation has occurred. [riverat1]

You're both right; the GRACE analysis was performed by Carmen Boening at JPL. She showed that most of the precipitation fell in Australia and Brazil. As Josh Willis explained, this is because of a very strong La Nina.

Thus, when military industrial complex spending (not DoD or pentagon budget) is at 1.4 TRILLION per year, and this F35 program alone costs $300 BILLION http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/04/21/hackers-infiltrate-pentagons-300-billion-fighter-jet-project/ , people are wondering why the $8BN budget for the NSF is facing cuts, despite national funding of science being a major player in human benefit.

From gpoaccess.gov: The total spending on research from the US government in 2010 was 4.2% of total outlays. Of that 4.2%, 4% went to the NSF, 6% to NASA, 2% to Energy, 23% to NIH, and 57% to Defense. Spending on "Defense" is so far out of whack that even the small portion of federal spending allocated to research is dominated by the military. The entire budget for the NSF, which funds research from all disciplines of science, was about $8 billion. The budget for the Missile Defense Agency, which is funded through the DoD for the specific task of developing missile defense technologies was about $7 billion. I constantly see stories about how the US is investing in STEM, trying to produce more scientists and engineers, and creating a "green economy" by investing in sustainable energy, but these numbers tell a different story: that the US places the priority of war-making so much higher than anything else, that the military is tasked with deciding how the vast majority of taxpayer dollars are invested in basic research.

The overall spending on weapons development HAS gotten out of hand, all proxies by which the taxes are blown included.

When one missile costs the same as a budget for an elementary school for a year, we've got a few problems:
1) The 'competition' for contracts is not real, and thus we are paying too much for too little from these few contractors we always use.
2) The sum of projects for future weapons is far too expensive, with too many weapons being produced despite 1000:1 KDRs (I served, and everyone who has served knows how dominant our military is, and has been, even compared to 1st world armies).
3) Too many weapons are being used -- by that I mean the 'benefit' we wish to garner in our EXPENSE toward many of our current conflicts that our tax pool could be much better appropriated to help the people in general (those who filled the tax pool).

Military spending is Socialism. Taxes fund socialism, and that's exactly what taxes do. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find any significant number of 'socialist' minded people (those labeled as such for their expressed interest in funding other types of programs, like infrastructure, communications, health, and science research) in the USA that would think we need to raise taxes; rather MOST people arguing in the sense that is labeled 'socialist' are arguing that the tax pool be directed somewhat more effectively to the benefit of the people. Thus, when military industrial complex spending (not DoD or pentagon budget) is at 1.4 TRILLION per year, and this F35 program alone costs $300 BILLION http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/04/21/hackers-infiltrate-pentagons-300-billion-fighter-jet-project/ , people are wondering why the $8BN budget for the NSF is facing cuts, despite national funding of science being a major player in human benefit.

If the amount of waste in any specific facet of social spending (taxes) were to determine how often you talked about that waste, nearly everyone, nearly every time, would be talking about military industry spending. I'm looking at articles that people are attracted to about $15 muffins that the DOJ bought and costed something like $12 million.... $12 million SEEMS like a lot of money to you or I, and so we are attracted... But thats a fart in the wind compared to the massive turd of BILLIONS or TRILLIONS being spent. 12 billion is a THOUSAND TIMES MORE WASTEFUL than 12 million. Paying attention at all to the muffins is a massive distraction (albeit justified) from what really matters. Like I said, if the proportion of the amount wasted, per topic, determined the conversation about waste, we would largely only talk about military spending budget cuts.

That still won't work. First, millions of years multiplied by millions of organisms makes even quite unlikely events a lot more likely to happen.

"That won't work". Okay. In the absence of you demonstrating that it won't, I'll put that one down as another psychic claim. As I directly said, the population size and time available would be factored into the probability calculation--it would still resolve to a given probability.

Third, "irreducibly complex" is a big thing to claim, and I've yet to see any instance that hasn't been disproved. So please provide some.

You throw around "proved" and "disproved" remarkably lightly for a discussion about science. To set our context a little, can you name for me a single theory anywhere in any part of any science that has been -proven-? As for these specific cases, I've seen alternate scenarios provided. That is not equivalent to demonstrating that the alternate scenario occurred, or even could occur. Frankly, I don't think genetics is at the point yet of specifying specific causal chains of mutations for relatively-complex biological structures, and I doubt you could provide a single nontrivial case of a proposed IC structure that was -proven- to not be. In any case, this is not the point of my argument, as I stated at the outset--I am not claiming an unassailable IC example will be determined, I am asserting you have not validly argued that it will not be.

Of course it is appropiate. If you claim you saw a polka dot patterned penguin, I'm going to ask for proof of it. And Darwin didn't just go and say "stuff evolves", he produced several books with evidence.

Again, a single case anywhere in science, of something that is -proven-. Science is theory, and theories are contingent. That's what science is. As least this time you aren't phrasing your expectations in such a way as to guarantee the set of words couldn't even theoretically refer to anything in reality, regardless of the topic or the actual facts. There is no such thing as "some proof", or a fractional degree of proof, and so you'll never see such a thing or be given it. Any given thing to which "proof" could apply, would either be proven, or not proven, period. Scientific theories are such as case where "proven" is explicitly off the table if we want to actually be discussing science.

Unless you're going to claim somebody travelled back in time to run genetic experiments, or that aliens dabbled in genetic experimentation for some reason. But the record we have just doesn't match that. Traits don't suddenly appear out of nowhere outside their place in the phylogenic tree.

More accurately, I'm claiming, accurately, that you cannot exclude these possibilities other than by application of the supposed psychic powers you claim. In fact, on some level, traits do "appear out of nowhere", depending on the subjective differential we stipulate from other structures that supposedly pre-exist it. As for "the phylogenic tree", the reality is this is under ongoing revision, most recently with strong biological argument that we will need to add an entire new biological domain. To state that a particular "tree" is established biological fact as opposed to provisional relationships under ongoing correction is simply to misuse the concept.

Like I said, still waiting for your evidence.

Complexity is evidence. However, complexity is not "proof", which is precisely why you asked for a criterion applicable to no actual scientific theory, so that you can decide your stance with information so compelling you have no decision to make--such "proof" would compel your conclusion.

Our permanent teeth are that, permanent.

Well, I'll offer a quote on that, though, unfortunately the original cited document does not appear to be available on-line:

"According to the British Journal of Oral an

The GR explanations have hardly been exhausted. One whole family of GR-based explanations that would be difficult to preclude involve the ultimate "democratization" of causal cones (paraphrasing R. Geroch) - each hyperbolizable first-order quasilinear system of PDEs can have within itself its own initial-values formulation, which must describe its own signal propagation. I believe Sean Carroll dealt with this recently on his blog. There is essentially no reason why any given object could not be assigned its own such system, nor any reason within GR why any object's system should have priority over any other.

Aha, here we go, after a bit of hunting: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1005.1614 and http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/09/24/can-neutrinos-kill-their-own-grandfathers/

So while the papers you pointed to effectively discuss ways in which we can fail to generate a metric that accords with observations, they do not really suggest that we *must* fail to generate such a metric, and I think it would not be easy to do so within GR. This would seem to weaken the utility of the SR approximation in the limit of low spacetime curvature where neutrino interactions may be non-negligible, which would annoy lots of HEP people. However surely GR people think that fields of synchronized clocks and relative velocities and all that stuff from SR is a fundamental misunderstanding of tangent vectors on the manifold? :-)

My views on pharmaceutical labs were already pretty low, and I wasn't even aware of this...
Very interesting quote you just made.

For reference, I found the article from which the quote originates here:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/hpv

I'll be blunt: I'm not buying it. I give details on my blog, but I think there are too many holes in the idea. For one thing, comets aren't that small; passing within a few thousand klicks of one would put us inside the debris field. We'd have seen vast numbers of meteors. For another, no one else saw it? At all? Comets can be visible during broad daylight - I've seen one myself - yet there's not a single other observation of a comet that close from any other person on Earth. So I am very, very, very skeptical.

Not true, Radiohead earned more for pay-what-you-want sales of "In Rainbows" than from their previous album: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/07/15/caring-with-cash-or-how-radiohead-could-have-made-more-money/

And there was option to pay 0.00

...see 50,000 Years of Nativism Down Under at iSteve...

...and...

Out of Africa onward to Wallacea and The Australian Aborigines may not be just descendants of first settlers at Razib Khan's GNXP.

...see 50,000 Years of Nativism Down Under at iSteve...

...and...

Out of Africa onward to Wallacea and The Australian Aborigines may not be just descendants of first settlers at Razib Khan's GNXP.

No human has ever been killed by a meteorite, at least within historical record. The only known case of a death is a dog that was killed in Egypt in the early 20th century by a meteor. The number of known injuries (as with the Alabama woman in 1955) can probably be counted on one hand. It's really an astronomically small possibility that any one person might be killed by a meteorite.

However, interestingly, your chances of dying from an asteroid strike are actually much higher than many other accidents which have claimed far more lives throughout history. In fact, your chances of dying by asteroid are greater than your chances of dying by terrorist attack, even though no one (known) has ever died by asteroid, while thousands have died from terrosts: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/13/death-by-meteorite/

This is because, if a giant asteroid were to strike the earth, it could wipe out a whole city, or even the entire species (depending on the size and speed of the asteroid). This isn't just some vague possibility, it's actually happened before: just ask the dinosaurs. They're all extinct (except for the birds) thanks to a giant asteroid that struck modern-day Mexico. It's only a matter of time before another big one hits, and while we watch its approach (assuming we even see it before it hits us), we'll be kicking ourselves for not developing a program to handle this threat. There's even one asteroid already known, called Apophis, which has made several close approaches. Whether a big one comes in 10 years or 1000, I have no confidence humans will develop the technology in time to counter such a threat.

Don't use link shorteners on a site without character limits. It just makes people think you're linking to goatse. This is the parent's resolved link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/09/africans-arent-pure-humans-either/#more-13790

No. This planet is not like Tatooine. It is likely to be very cold because both of the two stars are in fact quite dim. Much closer to Hoth than Tatooine. See Phil Plait's description here where he discusses how you can estimate the planet's probable temperature- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/15/astronomers-discover-a-wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy/.

Here you go.

about how much NASA costs, I just posted this same link on another site. It shows an outstanding graph of the overall federal budget for 2011 broken down by Agency.

As the Bad Astronomer says in his writing, find NASA's budget.

The link.

*Ok, I'm a bit late as the ranting has already begun

This widely-publicised study that had nothing at all to do with climate change?

Wrong.

Your version of the story is not getting much press because it's not true.

Fearmonger much?

What they are proposing is pretty safe. They need to increase the velocity to reach earth. It will take months or years, allowing for plenty of time to make measurements and corrections. They are talking about pick asteroids with orbits such that an equipment failure will ensure that it doesn't quite catch up to earth - which means it won't hit us right away.

Backyard astronomers can find asteroids that have a chance of hitting earth and identify their orbits. There will be plenty of attention on any of these, and you can't really hide an asteroid.

As for the rest of your tirade, life is a risk sport. There is a risk associated with coal emissions from refining steel here on earth, and an environmental impact from the coal and steel mines, not to mention the production chains of the explosives and fuel.

Just because you are used to existing risks doesn't make them more safe. Our current mining methods likely pose a higher risk and greater environmental and social impact, but because they are familiar, you are not evaluating the risks consistently. Admittedly, appeals to fear and ignorance have worked very for the Fox network, so at least you're picking a winning formula.

The problem here is that this idea is only a modification of the way in which gravity falls off with distance. Our current observations completely eliminate that as a possible explanation for our observations of dark matter. Basically, we have observed some systems where the physics of the situation has separated dark matter from normal matter (because normal matter experiences friction, while dark matter does not), and found that the mass surrounds the dark matter, not the normal matter. This kind of observation simply cannot be explained by a simple modification of how gravity falls off with distance. Here is a blog post by a cosmologist detailing the most striking example of this kind of observation:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/21/dark-matter-exists/

In fact, our observations of dark matter to date are so varied that it is incredibly difficult to come up with any alternative models that are able to explain them all. As Sean Carroll noted, the evidence is now quite strong that dark matter really exists.

According to a Y 2009 estimation by the US Geological Survey, Mongolia has 31M tons of Rare Earth reserves, or 16.77% of the total Global reserves, making it the 2nd biggest holder in the world after China.

http://www.business-mongolia.com/mongolia/2011/04/20/first-mongolian-rare-earth-sold-to-south-korea/

Undersea deposits have also been recently found in the Pacific.

An area of one square kilometer (0.4 square miles) near one sample site in the central North Pacific could fulfill 20% of the world’s annual demand, estimated earth scientist Yasuhiro Kato, a member of the research team.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/07/05/researchers-find-rare-earths-in-pacific-ocean-mud/

China has cornered the market because they produce these materials so cheaply. Cost and pollution are driving factors.

Although they are dubbed “rare,” these resources are not in fact all that scarce. A lot of countries have these elements. China’s reserves are just 40% of the total global reserves. The fact that they are rare in other places is because other countries are unwilling to extract them because of the high cost.

There are a number of reasons China controls the export of rare earth materials. Contrary to what most Western analysts claim, "political motivation" is not one of them. China's market dominance can instead be explained by the fact that the exploitation and processing of rare earth cause serious air, surface water and soil pollution. Over the past dozen years, the supply of rare earth has exceeded demand. The Chinese supplier had no control over its pricing, thus the price has been very low.

Rare earth minerals are going to be available. They're just going to cost more.

Sean Carroll pretty much debunked that view point:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/10/01/one-last-stab/

And one last link about what "wrong" means for good measure:

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm