On Thursday! Learn more at Atheists of Mexico web site.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
On Thursday! Learn more at Atheists of Mexico web site.
No indictment for Darren Wilson.
He was a white cop who murdered a black teenager. Did you really expect anything else?
Glenn Greenwald has a great long piece tearing Sam Harris’s ideas apart. It was so satisfying to see my own opinions reflected with such clarity and reason — I have to agree with it all. Read it. It is a thing of beauty.
The traditional Minnesota Atheists’ Winter Solstice dinner will take place on 21 December in Minneapolis, with FtB’s own Ed Brayton providing the entertainment. I think I’ll be there. You could be, too! Register now!
Take a look at this paper that was accepted for publication by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (pdf). It’s beautifully clear and simple, and could have been written by non-advanced computer technology.
I have to say one thing for Obama’s announcement of a new immigration policy: it has really smoked out the inhumane and vicious Republicans. There have been so many things said that reveal the core values of the Republican party, but this comment from a Fox News host captures the attitude perfectly.
There’s an ugly turn. The story about a company creating probiotics to make vaginas smell like peaches is wrong, that’s not what the company was trying to do; instead, the “biotech entrepreneurs” who presented it as their own were lying, did not understand the project, and completely mangled the purpose. According to the actual founder of the company,
I’m home at last. It’s a relief; my first random thought about this year’s Skepticon was that the travel was terrible: random delays, screwed up flights, lost luggage, blech. Need to work out teleportation technology for the future. But otherwise…
Brandenburg is a physicist who submitted a paper to the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference a few years ago. It’s way outside my area of expertise, but it postulated an interesting scenario from the ratios of rare isotopes in the atmosphere of Mars: that there was evidence of a natural nuclear reactor, like Oklo on Earth, that had exploded over 180 million years ago. He makes a good case, at least to this biologist’s eyes, and it seems reasonable.
Natural Nuclear Reactors formed and operated on Earth, there is no reason this could not have happened on Mars. Conditions on Mars: lack of plate tectonics, and nearness to the asteroid belt, may have favored such occurrences in larger size and duration than on Earth. Changes in groundwater distribution, due to either climate change of loss of geothermal heat, may have triggered this event. The occurrence of such a large natural reactor may explain some puzzling aspects of Mars data, such as the superabundance of K and Th on the surface and the large inventory of radiogenic isotopes in the Mars atmosphere.
