Everybody’s experienced it. Well, everyone that wears big boy shoes.
You spend the time tying your shoelaces, making sure they’re good and secure, but later in the day, there you are looking like some four-year-old or a rapper walking around with your shoelaces undone.
Why? Why does this happen? Well, now we know.
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So, you think men and women are different?
Well, there’s a neuroscientist in Birmingham (the one on England, not the one in Alabama) that says there are no difference between the brains of men and women.
“The bottom line is that saying there are differences in male and female brains is just not true. There is pretty compelling evidence that any differences are tiny and are the result of environment not biology,” said Prof Rippon.
Oh, that’s Professor Gina Rippon.
Sounds just like a woman, doesn’t it. She says that it’s environment, not biology that makes the sexes different.
That’s right. She says sex doesn’t make a difference.
I’m thinking she’s not doing it right. Or nearly enough.
Twenty years ago this summer, in July 1994, a comet known as Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter. That was a big deal with scientists because they got to see just how big of a deal getting hit by a comet or asteroid was. I suppose if the dinosaurs were still around, they could have just asked them.
Last week, word came out that a meteorite had recently smashed into Mars. They’re not sure just when it hit. They think some time between July 2010 and May 2012. They don’t really know because they weren’t watching for it. NASA has been busy with Muslim outreach, and other scientists are too busy trying to prove that cold weather is a result of Global Warming.
Oh, and, in case you forgot about it, the Moon was hit last March.
So, what do these events, spanning 20 years, have in common?
Well, let’s look at them.
In 1994, Shoemaker-Levy 9 missed Earth by 400 million miles.
In 2010 or so, an asteroid missed Earth by 40 million miles.
In 2013, an asteroid missed Earth by a quarter-million miles.
Those of us that have decided the best thing would be to rooting for an asteroid strike? Take heart. The aim is getting better.
Have you noticed the change in the sun lately? It’s upside down!
No, really.
According to a report in The Independent, NASA says the sun has flipped upside down.
What they don’t go into a lot of details on is: why did the sun flip?
Well, I’ll tell you why. Global WarmingTM.
That’s right, Global WarmingTM is so bad, it flipped the sun upside down.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. There were more record low temperatures in 2013 than record high temps, so that means Global WarmingTM is on the decline. Well, no. And yes.
It got so hot here on the earth that the heat had to go somewhere. And where did it go? To the sun, of course. There’s heat there already, and heat attracts heat. So, all the Global WarmingTM jumped off the earth and headed to the sun at an estimated 300,000 miles per second. So fast, it hit the sun so hard it flipped it upside down. And, with all the Global WarmingTM running off in space, it got cold and we got all those record cold temperatures.
So there you go. Proof that Global WarmingTM is real.
Now, go buy yourself some carbon credits, because they keep temperatures down. Because if you don’t, it’ll get so hot that, within 20-25 years, Global WarmingTM will get so bad, it’ll flip the sun upside down again. And who knows what could happen then.
So, what’s the Word of the Year?
Depends on who you ask. Is it “selfie,” “tweaking,” or some other silly word?
Well, if you ask Merriam-Webster — I think she used to appear on Happy Days — it’s “Science!”
How did they pick that word?
This year’s list was compiled by analyzing the top lookups in the online dictionary at Merriam-Webster.com and focusing on the words that showed the greatest increase in lookups this year as compared to last year. The results, based on approximately 100 million lookups a month, show that the words that prompted the most increased interest in 2013 were not new words or words used in headlines, but rather they were the words behind the stories in this year’s news.
So, “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation” is what people wanted to know.
That had to be a shock to the people that thought that “science” meant “Al Gore said it.”
Other words on the list?
There are more. You should learn these words. Because words are good things. We use words every day. In fact, this whole things I’m writing uses words. And no words were harmed in the creation of this blog post.
Well, not permanently harmed.
You ever watch those Discovery Channel shows where they talk about the Chicxulub asteroid or the Tunguska event? There’s always Neil deGrasse Tyson or somebody talking about how some big asteroid event will happen again… eventually.
They really don’t know how likely something like that is. But, even though they don’t know, they’ve just increased the chance around six times. One report from Space.com — who knew that space had its own Website? — says it’s 10 times more likely. The Weather Channel says 4-5 times more likely than previous thought.
What does this really mean?
Well, apparently, asteroids are now weather phenomena, like rain and snow.
But, it also means that, while the likelihood of a major meteor strike is unknown, new studies show that it’s even more unknown. And more in a bad way. As in I don’t know how big the spider that crawled out from underneath the dash of the car is, but there’s four of them. And I’m in traffic. So, that’s not good.
So what do we do about it?
Well, if we’re eventually gonna get hit by an asteroid, maybe we can make it less painful for everyone.
Remember Christo? The guy that used to wrap stuff in plastic? Not the guy on TV selling you a food vacuum packer, but the guy that took big pieces of plastic and surrounded islands and such with it.
Well, he could wrap Washington DC with a big plastic red ring. Then a little ways further out, a bigger ring. Then a little ways further, an even bigger ring.
Yes, like a target.
Who knows? Maybe some big honkin’ asteroid will fly by, see it, and head to it like moths to a flame.
Then, we’d be clear for another 30-100 years from a decent size asteroid. And clear from those idiots in Washington.
I don’t see a down side.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but robots are taking over the world. In 2013 alone, we’ve seen reports of vomiting robots, Killer Robot Surgeons, Giant German Robot Apes, Giant Mutant Radioactive Robot Snakes, Pizza-Delivering Underwater Robot Killer Whales, and Vampire Robots.
Well, if that’s not enough robots running around causing mayhem and chaos, there’s now a robot that’s … wait for it … running around. It’s called WildCat, and it’s from those wacky kids at Boston Dynamics.
[YouTube]
The little gasoline engine is a little odd, but once they figure out how to get it to run on an iPhone or Droid Maxx battery, you best watch out.
They found Han Solo. He’s right where they left him, apparently, on Mercury.
Now, I don’t remember Han being in our solar system. He was in a galaxy far, far away. And, it was a long time ago. Still, NASA has found what looks like Han Solo on Mercury, still frozen in carbonite.
A portion of the terrain surrounding the northern margin of the Caloris basin hosts an elevated block in the shape of a certain carbonite-encased smuggler who can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.
NASA took time out from its Muslim outreach to actually look at photos a space probe took of the closest planet to the sun, and discovered that rock formation, or lava formation, or whatever it is.
Trick of the terrain and shadows, is what it is. That makes you see things that don’t really exist. Thing like that face on Mars.
Anyway, since NASA no longer knows how to send men into space, at least they can see characters from space movies that think parsecs are a measurement of time.
I’m wondering what other science fiction staples NASA will run across next. Maybe the benefits of Obamacare?
A report out of Hawaii says that scientists in Turkey have made glowing bunny rabbits. No, really. Bunnies that glow in the dark.
Okay, maybe not in the dark, but under ultraviolet light.
You’re probably thinking, “That’s nuts.” And you wouldn’t be wrong, but it’s worse than that.
I mean, didn’t they ever see Night of the Lepus? Or heard about the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog? Scientists are taking a risk there.
Or are they?
The widdle bunnies were supposedly engineered in Turkey, a Muslim country. And using technology from Hawaii.
What other Muslim-Hawaiian connection might there be? Can you say Obama?
Is this part of some larger plan that Obama and the Moslems have hatched to destroy America? He’s tried blowing up the economy for five years, and has done a marvelous job of bringing on financial collapse, but the U.S. just refused to fall. Perhaps the glowing Moslem killer bunny rabbits is the final piece of the plan.
So, be ever vigilant. If you see any glowing giant killer bunny rabbits wearing suicide bomber vests saying “Eh… (chomp chomp chomp) Allahu Akbar, Doc” sound the alarm.
I know this sounds like I’m suggesting that we profile glowing bunny rabbits. But better safe than sorry.
When I first heard there were vampire robots, I thought, “Great, another Twilight movie.”
But, no, it’s a real thing. Some company called Veebot is building machines to suck your blood.
It’s for medical reasons, they say:
- 20-25% of all venipuncture procedures fail to draw blood on the first stick.
- Approximately 2 million needlestick injuries are reported every year. Meanwhile, 40-75% of needlestick injuries go unreported.
- Mislabeled blood samples from venipuncture lead to about 170,000 adverse events in hospitals a year, ultimately costing hospitals $200-400 million annually.
The downside? Imagine what’ll happen if a robot gets a taste for blood.
The upside? They don’t sparkle.
Maybe they aren’t robot whales, but now they’re building underwater robots. I suppose robot subs would be accurate, but they are large mechanical things that travel under the sea. So, robot whales it is.
I mean, they are based on how fish sense their environment, according to the report I sorta read. And, they have to perform some tasks.
Demonstrating agility and control, the submarines will need to bump two buoys in response to colors emitted every few seconds. The vehicles will also need to show mastery of a speed trap and fire foam torpedoes through holes in a hexagonal wheel.
Finally, the submarines will also need to deliver a pizza: They must bring two mock pizza boxes (made from PVC pipe) to a specified location.
Yep. Robots that performs tasks underwater, fire torpedoes, and deliver pizza.
It’s not Robot Monkeys on the Moon, but it’s something.
But, I gotta ask: is pizza delivery the best use of robot killer whales? What would you have an underwater killer robot do?
NPR, that thing your tax money is financing, has a report that a giant virus may have come from Mars.
No, I’m not making this up.
Of course, it’s a bunch of French scientists that say this.
Let me explain.
Scientists found some big ole virus they’ve named Pandoravirus. Like Pandora. The girl that opened the box, not the radio thing. Go Google her if you have to.
Some French fellow named Jean-Michel Claverie, who works or otherwise occupies space at Aix Marseille Université (it’s French, too) discovered the virus, but says we’re safe from it. It lives deep in water. And everyone knows that humans don’t go near water. Maybe that’s just French humans, though, which could be the source of the confusion.
Anyway, not only is this virus really really big (for a virus), but it’s got some other properties that make them think it’s not of this earth. At least, that the conclusion he and his wife, Chantal Abergel, came up with.
When Abergel and Claverie sequenced the genome of the new virus, they were in for a shock. Its genetic code is roughly twice the size of the record-holding Megavirus. And it seems almost completely unlike anything else on the planet. Only 6 percent of its genes resembled the genes other organisms. Claverie says he thinks the Pandoraviruses may come from a different origin – perhaps radically different.
“We believe that those new Pandoraviruses have emerged from a new ancestral cellular type that no longer exists,” he says. That life could have even come from another planet, like Mars. “At this point we cannot actually disprove or disregard this type of extreme scenario,” he says.
So, it’s from Mars. At least, that’s their conclusion because it’s something they’ve never seen before.
I suppose if they had never seen a kitten, they’d think kittens are from Mars.
Anyway, I’m trying to decide if H.G. Wells got it backwards — go read the book
Probably both.
NASA says the sun has fired a shot at the earth. Since the sun is so far away, it’ll take a couple of days for the coronal mass ejection to reach the planet, and we don’t know for sure what damage it’ll do, if anything. Probably nothing more than screw up a satellite or two.
And that’s the problem. The NSA uses satellites as part of its tracking of Americans, and if the sun is screwing with that, it means the sun must hate Obama. And that makes the sun racist.
There could also be aurora when the charged particles hit the upper atmosphere. And who’ll see that? People way up north. Eskimos, Canadians, and other snow-dwellers. Not a lot of black people. So, the pretty lights in the sky? Not for blacks. Because the sun is racist.
That storm that flooded New Orleans a while back? You remember Hurricane Katrina, right? Well, you know what started that storm? Besides George Bush and Karl Rove? The sun. It heated up the water and then did some science stuff and then a Hurricane started and killed a bunch of black people. Because the sun is racist.
We need to take action against the sun and make it stop being racist. How do we do that?
Twitter.
Or maybe Facebook.
I think if we use social media to bring attention to the sun’s racism, we can make it stop being racist. Or at least get Obama to raise the sun tax so it isn’t able to afford to be racist.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.
We’ve all heard stories about mythical creatures running around. The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, chupacabra, mermaids… creatures that don’t exist.
Or do they?
Every time you turn around, there’s another article about how the Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster has been solved. Or the Chupacabra Mystery has been settled. Or something.
Well, over the years, some of the imaginary creatures turned out to be real, and some didn’t. The Giant Squid, is real. And, 200 years ago, white folk didn’t think the gorilla was real. Stupid white folk.
Anyway, here is a list of some of the creatures that some people claim to exist, but which existence is yet to be proven.
If you have sighted any of these creatures, report them. A few of them, the government wants you to report to DHS, so do your duty, Citizen.
If there are any other creatures about which you’ve heard reports, but can’t confirm or are certain aren’t real, let us know. Because, well, Science!
There are three planets surrounding a star some 22 light-years away that might be habitable.
In Scorpio, right around the tip of the tail, there is a cluster of three stars. Now, it looks to the naked eye like a very faint star, but it’s really three stars. Stars are sneaky that way, so be careful.
Anyway, those three stars are called Gliese 667. We call them that. I don’t know what the people there call them. Probably “Star” if they speak English. Or “Bright Sky Thingy.” Around Gliese 667C, the smallest star of that group, are five planets that we know of. And — here’s the kicker — three those planets may be habitable.
Why is that important? Well, our Earth has is threatened by coal, and those doggone conservatives are determined to destroy the Earth with it.
Now, as a conservative, I want to apologize for our vile evil plans to destroy the planet with coal and Bible-thumping and gun-clinging and all those dangerous things we conservatives do. And, every since Bush used Karl Rove’s time machine to go back in time and start Global Warming all those centuries ago, the Earth has been doomed.
So, how do we make it right? Well, there are three planets around Gliese 667C that could support life. And, I say we let the liberals have them. All three of them.
NASA is just sitting around, outreaching to the Moslems, and not doing space stuff anymore, but there’s no reason they couldn’t built three big arks to hold the best of the human race. Let’s load up the B-Ark with Barack Obama (we even call it the “B” Ark, after “Barack”) and all his supporters (it’ll be a really big Ark) and send them off to Gliese 667C. They’ll pick the best of the three planets and settle there, then, once they’re settled in, having set up a super awesome socialist planetary government like they all want, we’ll send off the other two Arks.
I’ll stay here amongst the coal and the thumped Bibles and the clung-to guns and just be miserable. I deserve it.
