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http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/featur e4/index.html

The article is about allergies in specific, but is very relavant. A few researchers are claiming that because our environments are so sterile as children these days, more adults have allergies (and illness) as a result of not being exposed to certain elements (good or bad organisms, etc) as a child. Compelling read, I highly recommend it.

-Ponga

the cover story of the Nat'l Geographic last year sometime disagreed with your assessment, detailing litanies of abuse from the burning of the house of an untouchable who drank from the wrong tap to throwing acid in the face of another for some social tresspass. Unfortunately, the whole article is unavailable online, but here's the teaser: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/featu re1/

The Earth's magnetic field is fading. It has decreased by about 10% the last 150 years or so. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0 909_040909_earthmagfield.html)

Since the magnetic field is shielding the Earth from cosmic radiation, I suspect it would affect the temperature in some way. The key word here is 'suspect'. I'm not a scientist, but I really want to know if my suspicion is real or not. Does it affect the climate (thus making it convenient to leave this out of the debate for people who predict man-made climate disaster), or doesn't it?

This story is from yesterday, so my hopes of getting any answers here are slim. I can still hope...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html this tech has been recently been used on humans. Japanese nerds made a robotic hand that moved with your real hand like traditional movie techniques. However, no glove was needed, the only readings were taken from your brain, with the results decoded. Though the remote control tech hasnt come to humans, our desicion making structure is more complex.

Better - A V-chip:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_Bigger,_L onger_&_Uncut

or a rat remote control chip:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html

Even if we did think that we had found something beyond nature would that mean that we *really had* found something supernatural, or just that our knowledge of nature is limited? For early man, lightning seemed to be beyond nature, but of course it wasn't.

Carl Sagan posed a test for the existence of God: if pi, represented in base 11, were to contain a string of 1s and 0s that form a circle when plotted on the right-sized screen, then that would convince him that God really did exist. However, it may turn out to be the case that pi contains any arbitrary string of digits, in which case his test will be satisfied ... but for the wrong reason. It would be a natural rather than supernatural satisfaction of the test conditions.

So either way, your epistemology is toast. You cannot prove conclusively that something which seems to be beyond nature actually *is* beyond nature; nor can you prove conclusively that all of the many open questions in science can in fact be answered by science.

The good scientists know this, which is why relatively few of them, with the exceptions such as Sagan and Dawkins, will make grandiose claims about science demonstrating the non-existence of God.

Specific factual issues:

1. You're incorrect in claiming that literalism is a 20th century phenomenon. The central point of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, was taken as literal truth by the majority opinion from 1st century until roughly the 18th century (F.C. Baur, I think, was the first, IIRC). Generally speaking, historic theology worked within a combination of literal and allegorical interpretations until the 19th century.
2. You are wrong to think that the Bible was seen as inaccurate until the 20th century. Even until the late 19th century, the Bible was considered a reliable guide to archaeology. Some still try to use it in that way.
3. There is no "anti-science movement" in the United States. That term is a scare phrase used to try to link various separate arguments (creationism, flat-earthism, anti-global-warming-is-man's-fault, anti-ozone-layer-is-man's fault, anti-birth-control, anti-vaccination, etc.) into one coherent package. But there is no such coherent package, and there is no "anti-science league" or any recognized leaders of an "anti-science movement." Different individuals have different takes on each of the issues mentioned above, and there is little correlation between one's opinion on one issue (say, creationism) and another issue (say, vaccines).

   The term "anti-science" is really just an ad hominem attack in disguise. The term is used to label certain groups so that their arguments against belief X, held by many scientists, can be dismissed out of hand on the grounds that the group in question is just "anti-science." That's a classic ad hominem fallacy. If X is right, then the identity of its adherents and of its detractors is irrelevant.

:D in past it has only been applied to animals, i think this is a first for decoding human thought patterns. Apparently i wasn't the only one jealous of the mouse that could control his water with his mind. However please take note ... This first phase of the project was controlling the animals long before we could read their minds :o ... i'm hoping no mind control stuff comes to humans :p but atleast it is a reward based control rather than punishment. Artificial bliss doesnt sound all that bad, probably addictive though (but who isnt addicted to bliss). I hope Sanjiv K. Talwar gets the deserved credit. super mouse: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s948847.htm remote control mouse: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html

I wonder if this technology is similar to what (might) be being used here:
Mystery Robot

Here's a picture of the gas station

And here's a story in National Geographic about the gas station and the owner and the Fed's actions on that day.

-FL

Indeed, they do use other cues:

Over the years laboratory experiments have shown that birds orient themselves based on cues from the sun, stars, Earth's magnetic field, and by memorizing landmarks while migrating. But the relative importance of such cues was unknown and a source of scientific debate.

Makes sense. Any animal whose life cycle was entirely dependent on a single environmental variable would be one that wouldn't exist for any longer than an evolutionary flash in the pan.

The following national geographic article describes a company that started this type of thing years ago. They built a plant next to a turkey farm to convert byproducts to oil. My understand is it worked, but was not as efficient as they hoped.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/11 25_031125_turkeyoil.html

What some people on slashdot should be interesting to know is Bush proposed some tax credits for this company in 2004 to help with R&D. It got shot down by the Democrates who literally made fun of Bush and called them "Turkey Credits".

But you don't have to be a Sci-Fi author to imagine crazy abuses of this data.

According to most evolutionary biologists, meat was the catalyst for the evolution of human intelligence. Frankly, you owe /. to meat eating, as well as your computer, your room, your excellent house, and the country you live in. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/02 18_050218_human_diet.html http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99lega cy/6-14-1999a.html Oh yes; that 4 days thing is bull. Your stomach maintains a sterilized environ, and food goes through it. Hence, sterile food, unless there's tapeworms. Then that's your fault for not cooking it properly.

The ship will become part of the ongoing University of the Azores research program intended to establish greater scientific knowledge of the importance of deep-sea habitats and marine life.

Giant squid have already been photographed in their natural habitat by Japanese scientists. Greenpeace is a radical political organisation with little scientific credibility. Marine science is already in more capable hands. One can only wonder about their real motivations.

After months of confronting whalers and pirates...

It takes one to know one.

Both type efforts (archaeology and minerals/oil location) are benefiting from satellite remote sensing. We just recently had the lost city in guatemala found, the huge impact craters in the sahara, etc from satellite analysis (radar/photo). The impact craters were also helped by web based universal access, google maps helped amateur researchers there.

As to the bosnian pyramid, it has long been known/suspected there in the locals handed down oral histories. It was more accurately RE-discovered. Just like when western scientists "discover" some new animal the locals have been *eating* forever and have names for.

There's another interesting development off the coast of cuba, an alleged underwater city.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 28_020528_sunkencities.html

similar off of japan

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s110720 3.htm

(I am sure there are better links for those stories)

It's an interesting topic. A lot of oral and written tradition from around the world all relate a period in history with a "great flood". It will be nice if modern tech helps us discover what really happened and add to our knowledge of the real "olden days", whichever way it shakes out.

Nat.Geo.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/04 12_060412_catfish_video.html

I'm not sure the U.S. is actually a carbon sink. Well, it's a sink, but it's not big enough.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/06 21_carbonsinks.html

Thanks for the advice. I found this without much difficulty. I didn't find any credible sources for your doomsday rice scenario.

Water Vapor is the leading cause of global warming, something we as humans have essentially no control over. 95% of the greenhouse gases produced, are water vapor. I'm sick of all these people saying that WE'RE causing global warming, when it is simply just a natural phenomenon like the Northern Lights.

Asphalt or tar compounds

These have more info than the BBC story
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/05/news/teeth. php
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/04 05_060405_teeth_drill_2.html

Is there really anybody who expects privacy when sending information over something called the "public internet"?

FWIW, I'll never type anything into a computer that that requires secrecy or privacy. After 25 years in software, I can say with great certainty that no matter what precautions are taken, anything stored or transmitted over any medium (digital or not) can surface again at an inconvienient time, either by accident or intent, and generally not due to government interference. Typically unintended information disclosure is from employees (both gruntled and disgruntled) and various flavors of black-hat engineering (social and/or technical).

I'm much more concerned about things like the huge die-off of the Coral Reefs than the government finding my secret recipe for Pesto Garlic-Pizza.

You are right. There is no missing link. There is no transitional species . There is no evolution. The proof is alive today. Called Snakehead Fish. The Snakehead Fish have invaded Maryland. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/07 02_020702_snakehead.html The are originally from Asia and Africa. This fish is air-breathing, land-crawling, voracious predator. It will eat almost anything and some snakehead fish species have been known to attack humans. This snakehead fish proves that air-breathing and land-crawling fish exist but it disproves evolution.

Also Scientific American's article has a couple of pictures. AND National Geographic has a write-up on it.

Hi, everyone. I wrote one of the original news releases about this planet discovery, so I'm very interested in the discussion of whether the "super-Earth" is exciting news or not. When I first found out about the planet (I work at Ohio State University; one of our astronomers heads the team that identified it) I knew I had to write a news release (I mean, this is a new planet!) but I also had to wonder how much of a splash the story would make in the media.

Some 170 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the last decade, so there's already been a lot of news coverage. But it's easy to forget that before a decade ago, scientists had no real evidence of what other solar systems are like. This planet is unusual in that it's terrestrial, and its solar system doesn't seem to have any giant gas planets like Jupiter. So the find expands our ideas about what kinds of solar systems are out there, and it also suggests that we're getting closer to our goal of finding other Earth-mass planets.

There's more information in the Ohio State news release, and the one written by my colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. There are also lots of other news stories out there right now, most notably by New Scientist, National Geographic, and Space.com.

Pam Gorder

I was involved with programming the first version of national geographic mapmachine back in 2001. Good to see another rendition.

The foreboding threat of world disaster from explosive population growth could turn out to be overly alarmist, say the authors of a new demographic study. Their forecast shows there's a high chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the 21st century. It suggests that the total number of people may peak in 70 years or so at about 9 billion people, compared with 6.1 billion today.

Kuwait's largest oil field has peaked and is now in decline,

And...

there is serious speculation that Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar oil field is either at peak or is very close,

And...

Global warming is clearly a fact,

And...

The antarctic is melting off at an uncomfortable clip not to mention Greenland

And...

Population growth continues unabated

And...

The freakin' idiots in TFA want to go merrily galumphing about the galaxy like a bunch of wide-eyed disease ridden nuclear weaponed kindergartners. All they need to do is SNEEZE on a foreign planet and they could wipe the whole place out and turn it into one giant slimy stromatolite. That's my idea of being a good will ambassador. As if we have enough stored solar power (petroleum) to fuel such silliness.

On a daily basis I battle the darkest nihilists - whether of the Olduvai Theory Peak Oil variety or the Eco-Catastrophe Variety. And when a clueless bunch of science geeks go prancing about like some fourth grade ninnies playing "Star Trek" and cheerfully yapping about the intricacies of hyperdrives, when most of the world can barely feed itself and the privileged fat few use Microsoft Windows... well... it makes the case of the doom-mongers that much stronger.

Hyperdrive, my ass. It's this same inane idiocy that cut jillions out of the NASA science budget so we can send some space cowboys somewhere they don't really belong.

RS

Of course I fully expect the clueless technological fan boys who all to often spend their sad empty lives begging for mod points will give me a -1 Flamebait, regardless of the fundamental merits of my argument.

Well actually, Man is encumbered by second thoughts about using animals for warfare, at least the United States has a clear record of caring for thier war animals, honoring thier deaths and caring for them.

""Thousands and thousands of dogs have given their lives for their handlers," said John Burnam, president of the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association and author of Dog Tags of Courage, a book detailing his experience as a handler in Vietnam. "They should be honored for their bravery and courage. A national memorial will honor all dogs in all wars."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/07 25_020725_wardogs.html

"One such hero pigeon, "President Wilson," died in June 1929. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, "President Wilson" flew twenty-five miles in as many minutes under heavy machine gun and artillery fire with a shattered leg and a badly wounded breast.

Found dead at the age of eleven, he was stuffed, mounted, and donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

The last of the World War heroes, "Mocker," died at Monmouth in June 1937. Badly wounded, Mocker homed from the vicinity of Beaumont France on September 12, 1918 with a message giving the exact location of enemy heavy artillery batteries."

http://www.monmouth.army.mil/monmessg/newmonmsg/se p022005/m35pigeons.htm

http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mam mals/
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mam mals/veterinary.html

soy bean oil??cant it be cheaper(and easy to get any where around the globe?)?? sumthin like ...urine?..check this out..http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/ 08/0818_050818_urinebattery.html and this..http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8973626/.

You're confusing the lab sciences (physics, chemistry, some biology) with the field sciences (geology, geography, some biology). All use the scientific method to determine the most reasonable explanation by Occam's Razor. Darwin's speciation is accepted as reliable because it can be demonstrated in the field many different ways, in the same way geologists look at rock structure and determine geological activity in the past. Speciation is not easy to demonstrate in a lab setting, but I remember reading in the National Geographic about an article entitled 'Was Darwin Wrong?' where laboratory evidence for speciation was discovered. Unfortunatly, the link is only a summary.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/featur e1/

A minor (but important) technicality: We didn't "evolve from" apes --- we are apes. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] etc.

Castorocauda has the ankle spurs characteristic of its nearest living relative, the platypus, which uses them for territorial defense. And like the platypus, Castorocauda was probably an egg-layer, Luo says.

Actually, your PMM model only has to work in their office for one year. A real PMM could do that standing on its head.

"This means that mammals must have existed earlier than 65 million years ago"

Mammals originated in the Triassic period over 200 million years ago, they are as old or maybe even a tad older than dinosaurs. Most known fossil mammals are small and shrew-like, but recently suprisingly large and advanced forms have been found. This new find is just the newest reason to rethink the evolution of Mesozoic mammals. Looks like they were way more diversified already in the age of dinosaurs than previously thought. However, it was the generalists that survived the KT extinction 65 mya and gave origin to modern mammals, including us.

The study of DNA proves animals evolved from other animals. Entire family trees of animal evolution can and are being drawn up. For example look at the way dogs have evolved from Wolves.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/0 1/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html

And even wolves evolved from animals before them and so on, generation after generation for millions of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote

ID is wrong, has always been wrong and will always remain wrong. Get over it. :)

From what I've heard, incidents of stalkings and attacks are increasing in the USA. The 'tastes bad' seems to be a myth.

Bears seem to like us just fine. Treadwell hung out with them for a few years, until they ate him.
Lions, Tigers both will attack, kill, and eat humans.

The hunter's theory is that until we discovered 'conservation', we'd gotten so vicious throughout history that we killed any large predators, both because they were competition and a direct threat.

The idea is that by allowing hunting, you both maintain population numbers that can comfortably stay within their ranges(away from humans) and kill the ones least cautious around hunters, thus encouraging them to avoid humans like the plague. Stalking an armed hunter is a far different proposition than an ordinary hiker. There are places in the US that I wouldn't go without being armed or in a large group, and there are a few that I wouldn't go without being part of a large armed group.

So, effectively you are saying "People have the right to protest if they protest something I believe in or agree with. Otherwise I will connect them with terrorists."

I have seen many people get very passionate about sports. Many of my geek friends have been physically hurt by sports enthusiasts. I and many of my geek friends have been threatened with death by sports enthusiasts. I do not for a moment, however, pretend that the people with impoverished minds doing the illegal activities actually represent all sports fans. They do not represent the masses of sports fan even though I often see scenes of violence at sports events (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_fighting) (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0 620_050620_sportsriots.html).

For the misbehaviour at Hockey games (I'm Canadian), I have enough cultural sensitivity to be able to pick out the "real bad guys" from the people who got in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not all hockey fans are bad.

For the misbehaviour at soccer games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disas ter), I do not have the cultural sensitivity to be able to pick out the "real bad guys" from the people who got in the wrong place at the wrong time. All soccer fans that I saw on the TV _look_ like bad guys to me. However, I have the wisdom to know that a) the TV shows the most interesting clips (read: most violent) b) I'm not sensitive to that culture, and c) Not all soccer fans are bad.

For the cartoon protests, I do not have the cultural sensitivity to be able to pick out the "real bad guys" from the people who got in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, I have the wisdom to know that a) the TV shows the most interesting clips (read: most violent) b) I'm not sensitive to that culture, and c) Not all Muslims are bad.

------
Question: What would a "significant voice for modernity among muslims today" look like? I doubt you would know one when you saw one.

{This post was made with out using cursing in any language or derogatory terms. If a point is not strong enough on its own, cursing only emphasises its weakness.}

I read such a topic 3 weeks ago in National Geographic. The article was pretty well written. Chemical imbalances, irregular brain patterns and oxcotin (i think that was the chemical).

Check out this video. Pretty cool.

Yes, I am serious!

The Nature news report is based on another Nature article by Xu (subscription required) which does not mention feathers because there are none!

John Roach did this with a National Geographic article on the discovery of dilong paradoxus, also reported in Nature. Five fossils were found, the most decripit of which had "a partial coat of hairlike feathers", which in other articles are described as "evidence of hairlike structures" on its head and as "'protofeathers'". Need I point out that there is a world of difference between hairs and feathers?

D paradoxus' "hairlike structures" got turned into a rich, thick coat of fully-developed feathers by the concept artist. Excellent way to do science, no? Guanlong wucaii has no feathers.

Want to hear the logic for feathering it? I quote from the NatGeo article: "Holtz noted that, if the early feathers of Sinosauropteryx and the feathers of birds and other feathered dinosaurs are all expressions of the same evolutionary change, 'then we have to infer that tyrannosaurids also had some expression of the same trait [feathers]. [...] To infer otherwise would be invoking an evolutionary change for which we had no evidence,' he said."

Ta-dish boom! There you have it, folks: it has feathers because we think that they all did.

Obviously, several people really, really want there to be feathered dinosaurs, even if they have to glue each pinion on personally.

Maybe. As this article says, it's not clear that small quantities of iron will do the trick. And what happens to the carbon once the algae die? Will it sink to the bottom and stay there as a solid, or will it be released into the atmosphere again (in which case as soon as we stop adding iron the problem comes back just as bad). And how badly are we going to stuff up marine ecosystems in the process?

I would agree with you- But look at the number of high school graduates in some areas of our country... It is sadly low... Plus, check this out... If 11% of American kids can't find the US on a World Map, well....
From the nation Geographic Article (exerpts)
About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.
In a nation called the world's superpower, only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, according to a new worldwide survey released today.
Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country.
Read more at... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/11 20_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html

The Nat'l Geographic story on the CT scans debunks the head injury. IIRC, the Nat'l Geo TV special described the knee injury as bad enough that it ripped a knee cap off. There was some question about whether the knee injury was caused near time of death or was a result of Carter's butchery at time of discovery. Carter's team did a lot of damage to Tut, but the Nat'l Geo team found the presence of structures that demonstrated that the knee was trying to heal. From the size of the structures, which have a known rate of change, the team estimated that he died 3 days after the blow.

Or those with Zaphod Beeblebrox' problem? Are they one or two engineers, under US law?

I suggest you spend some time actually seeing a foot in increase in sea level will do to coastal cities before you randomly spout off - here

Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long. In the last year we've seen the discovery of a super giant squid, the first videos of a giant squid in the wild, and now this!

Look.

Do you know how fucking big a sperm whale is? It's huge. HUGE. And giant squid eat them. Listen to your heart - no matter what the scientists tell you, 4th grade ecology has convinced us all that whales are intelligent loving animals. Did you see Star Trek 4. They're the freakin' saviours of humanity man.

And giant squid eat them

Eat them

Not beacause it's easy. Oh no, not because a sperm whale is an easy catch. Big, remember? No. It's because squid are evil incarnate

Do you know how long they've been down there? No one does. But my guess is the squid and it's precurser have been down there in the depths for a lot longer than man has been knucklewalking. That's old. And you know they think down there. Brood down there. Their tentacles floating like the limbs of children relaxing in the water, they brood and wonder how to conquer us from below.

Things that think and brood also dream. And things that dream begin to worship the stuff of dreams. Out of man's insecurity we have sublimated a great father figure into the sky, according to Freud. What about the tentacled things in the watery darkness, whose females are larger than their males?

I'll tell you what they worship

A great multilimbed mother of the dark watery brood. Deep down in the very molten cracks of the earth filling the sea with inky blackness. THAT's what they worship. We killed men in the crusades. Men who looked the same as other men. What will the dark octupi and squid do to US who are mere flabby bloodsacks to rip apart and drink out fluids with their beaky maws? What in the name of their Dark Mother goddess will they do to us when they rise into our airy realm?

Think about it dudes

Us computer geeks are basically fucked

So you're saying they should just _lie_ to the Chinese government? Or perhaps shirk off and do a poor job of doing what they said they could do? Neither of those gets them out of the hypocrisy hole.

While I don't think overt lieing to China is a reasonable option, I would maintain that it would not be hypocritical in light of their "Do no evil" motto. Sometimes it's more moral to lie than not. "Are you aware of any runaway slaves hiding in the area?" "Are you aware of any Jews hiding in the area?" "Are you aware of any Tutsis hiding in this area?" I'll agree that enslaving or killing people is far worse than denying them free speech or access to a free press, but my point is that it's possible to lie and being doing the moral thing. Lieing to authorities to preserve access to free speech would seem like "Do no evil" to me. Of course, I'm not banking on Google doing that.

What I am interested in, is what do people who think that the Earth is less then 10,000 years old, think when they pick up a National Geographic magazine, or turn on The Discovery Channel? Is all this information a big lie to them? How about the Genographic Project? Even the "family-friendly" movie March of The Penguins begins with Morgan Freeman stating that penguins have made this journey for millions of years.

It appears that everywhere around us we are exposed to information about the Earth being millions/billions of years old, and yet half of America does not believe this to be true? I'm not taking a stand on the issue, I'm just really confused about why/how people belive these things.

No kidding; they're really going to be in trouble if all their crops are engineered for heat and the NA current brings on a local ice age, as some doomsdayers predict [see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/11 30_051130_ice_age.html/]. Maybe Brits should diversify their investments at the seed bank.

What, no Hobbits discovered? Well, perhaps they were eaten by those spiders. ;)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/08 01_050801_terrorbirds.html