In the 1920s the Soviet Union sponsored a “humanzee” breeding program. From what I recall the ultimate rationale for the funding was that the program might create a race of superior warriors, combing the incredible physical strength on a per pound basis of the chimp, with the greater level of intelligence found in human beings. To our knowledge the experiments were failures, though there have long been rumors of successes in these sorts of programs. I suspect the possibility per ...read more
Being a computer nerd just keeps getting worse. Not only can being addicted to the interwebz make it hard to meet chicks, but now research is showing that a man’s relationship with his laptop computer can affect even his most intimate of areas.
The study, titled “Protection from scrotal hyperthermia in laptop computer users,” studied how laptop positioning affected testicle temperature. Participants were asked to sit with a laptop on their knees while the research team monitore ...read more
Some recent scholarly research on the relevance of storytelling to the climate change debate gets aired out in a USA Today column by Dan Vergano, of which this is the thrust:
“Scientists, academics, and politicians on the left, do not do stories very well,” says Harvard political scientist Michael Jones, who earlier this year led a Policy Studies Journal report on the use and misuse of narrative in policymaking. “You have to tell a story, though, if you want people to retain i ...read more
The Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought us those gut-wrenching pictures of pelicans covered in oil, but up to now there have been mercifully few reports of the disaster causing specific large-scale damage to the Gulf environment. That may be beginning to change: This week oceanographers report a vast swath of coral about seven miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon site that are coated in brownish-black gunk and dying off. The team says the evidence points to the oil spill as ...read more
Polar bears have become a poster child for the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Their future may be bleak but their past is altogether more glorious. Polar bears are an evolutionary success story. They’re a recent addition to life’s repertoire, splitting off from their closest relatives – the brown bears – as recently as 150,000 years ago. Within just 20,000 years, they accumulated many adaptations that have made them the masters of their icy realm. But some of the ...read more
The big news today is that climate researchers are banding together, preparing for the onslaught they fear is coming at the hands of the new Congress. I’m honored to learn that one of the researchers behind the effort, Scott Mandia, was inspired by our book Unscientific America:
The science of climate change and even the scientists themselves are under attack from a well-orchestrated and well-oiled misinformation campaign. The best defense against this anti-science offensive is ...read more
Spiral galaxies are among the most magnificent objects in space. Grand and sprawling, they are icons of the night sky.
Like a snapshot of coins tossed in the air, we see them at all angles, from face-on disks to nearly edge-on lines. And sometimes we catch them so precisely to the side that what we see is hard to believe is real. But then we get pictures like this one from Hubble of the galaxy NGC 4452:
[Click to galactinate, and yes, you really want to.]
Holy perpendicularity!
There are lots o ...read more
Y’know, when you looked at maps of Egypt in school, you could see the Nile cutting through the desert, but you didn’t get the real perspective of where the people were, what that river means.
Space travel makes that perspective a bit easier to soak in:
[Click to enphaoronate.]
That, my friends, is the Nile delta as seen by the International Space Station on October 28. The station was well south of that area, about 800 km (500 miles) south if I’ve done the math correctly. ...read more
