{via ERV}
Since I'm not, you know, a real scientist, this tool is of limited real use to me... but it's still awfully fun!
Time Tree will allow you to enter the name of two species and you'll get an estimate of when the branches leading to each species split form each other, based on collected molecular data. The more data collected on the two species, the better the estimtes, of course...
How long ago did koalas split from tree sloths? 160 million years ago, give or take.
Chimpanzees and bonobos? A mere 3 million years ago.
Humans and "magic mushrooms"? about 1.3 billion years ago.
I am, of course, somewhat dismayed that none of the results I've found to date are 6000 years. Obviously, science is broken.
Check out the Time Tree!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Newsweek: Not the Antichrist afterall; jury still out on McCarthy and Oprah
[FYI: this post's title is a reference to this post.]
Thank you Newsweek. :)
In case you hadn't heard (And if you only get your news from this blog, you hadn't), Oprah Winfrey recently inked a deal with Jenny McCarthy, giving the latter her own TV show from which to spew the unscientific, harmful and dangerous rhetoric she is so fond of dispensing (which I've blogged about before). In the long and sordid history of horrid ideas, this ranks near the top.
Oprah's show has always mixed its trademark life-affirming stories with some new age pseudoscience, much of it related to beauty and medicine. But with her embracing of Jenny McCarthy (which extends long before the new show deal was inked), Oprah crosses over, as Phil Plait puts it has said, into outright antiscience.
This move has been roundly derided around the blogs, the best and most heartfelt I've seen in this open letter to Oprah. And McCarthy's vaccine/autism nonsense is just the tip of the iceberg. Watch the Oprah show, and nearly every single time that any topic comes up with a vaguely medical aspect to it, you'll see the pseudoscience creep in.
Now, I happen to think Oprah does do some good. Her book club is kind of awesome, getting millions of people to read literature (including a few of my favorite books) they otherwise wouldn't. I'm sure a lot of people get a lot of benefit out of the positive life-affirming stories, too. Some of the new age stuff is fairly innocuous, if ineffective. (The Secret, though, totally works! And I have the fleet of helicopters in my 12-acre back yard to prove it!)
But the moment she starts recommending unscientific treatments as medicine -- when efficacy and evidence are shunted aside in favor of unproven crap -- that crosses the line. It leads to injury, delay of real treatment, exploitation of the credulous by bogus practitioners, and death. Oprah readily jumps on the bandwagon of just about every new nonsense medical treatment out there. Some are ineffective, some are harmful to the person being treated. Some, such perpetuating the vaccine -> autism myth, are harmful to society as a whole.
Somehow, Oprah has had a free pass from most of the mainstream media. But this week, Newsweek entered the fray with a cover story -- A COVER STORY!!! -- on the dangers of taking medical advice from Oprah's media empire, including her show, her magazine and Jenny McCarthy's upcoming fiasco.
Go Newsweek!
And now YOU go: Read the article! Then write Newsweek and thank them for publishing it! I know I will :D
Thank you Newsweek. :)
In case you hadn't heard (And if you only get your news from this blog, you hadn't), Oprah Winfrey recently inked a deal with Jenny McCarthy, giving the latter her own TV show from which to spew the unscientific, harmful and dangerous rhetoric she is so fond of dispensing (which I've blogged about before). In the long and sordid history of horrid ideas, this ranks near the top.
Oprah's show has always mixed its trademark life-affirming stories with some new age pseudoscience, much of it related to beauty and medicine. But with her embracing of Jenny McCarthy (which extends long before the new show deal was inked), Oprah crosses over, as Phil Plait puts it has said, into outright antiscience.
This move has been roundly derided around the blogs, the best and most heartfelt I've seen in this open letter to Oprah. And McCarthy's vaccine/autism nonsense is just the tip of the iceberg. Watch the Oprah show, and nearly every single time that any topic comes up with a vaguely medical aspect to it, you'll see the pseudoscience creep in.
Now, I happen to think Oprah does do some good. Her book club is kind of awesome, getting millions of people to read literature (including a few of my favorite books) they otherwise wouldn't. I'm sure a lot of people get a lot of benefit out of the positive life-affirming stories, too. Some of the new age stuff is fairly innocuous, if ineffective. (The Secret, though, totally works! And I have the fleet of helicopters in my 12-acre back yard to prove it!)
But the moment she starts recommending unscientific treatments as medicine -- when efficacy and evidence are shunted aside in favor of unproven crap -- that crosses the line. It leads to injury, delay of real treatment, exploitation of the credulous by bogus practitioners, and death. Oprah readily jumps on the bandwagon of just about every new nonsense medical treatment out there. Some are ineffective, some are harmful to the person being treated. Some, such perpetuating the vaccine -> autism myth, are harmful to society as a whole.
Somehow, Oprah has had a free pass from most of the mainstream media. But this week, Newsweek entered the fray with a cover story -- A COVER STORY!!! -- on the dangers of taking medical advice from Oprah's media empire, including her show, her magazine and Jenny McCarthy's upcoming fiasco.
Go Newsweek!
And now YOU go: Read the article! Then write Newsweek and thank them for publishing it! I know I will :D
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Skeptical at Work: Orbs
[ the "Skeptical at Work" concept was stolen from created by the awesome Skeptigirl blog. This edition's subject is an easy target, but maybe it'll be the start of something continuing. ]
So, among other things, my place of employment hosts some extensive convention space. Since booking was WAY down due to the economy, the suits took the opportunity to do some significant renovation.
Walls are coming down. Ceilings are gone, construction materials are EVERYWHERE. Everything is dirty.
Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk when two of my coworkers, "Tyler" and "Jane," were freaking out about something: "Oh my god! That's so creepy!" (and so forth.)
It turns out Tyler had been going aorund taking pictures of the carnage wrought upon the meeting space with his new camera, and was shocked to discover that the pictures he'd just taken were filled with ghost orbs!
Immediately, my skeptical ears rose up as I overheard the conversation:
Tyler: "You know they're real because they're in a different position in every shot." (Presumably, this was to explain that they weren't due to something on the lens.)
Jane: "Look at this one! He's in ALL of them!"
Tyler: "I'm creeped out now. I didn't know this place was haunted."
HE? We're already assigning gender to these spots of light? Haunted? Because of some spots on his photos? Time for me to put on my skeptic's hat.
So, what are orbs? What are some reasonable explanations for seeing them in photos taken of a darkened room filled with construction debris?
Ghost orbs or spirit orbs, for those unfamiliar with them, are light spots showing up on photographs of varying size, color and intensity.
What causes them?
For a hint at the answer, check out the many, many orbs captured in this photo taken at my New Year's Eve party immediately after midnight, January 1 of this year:
The conditions of this photo were not unlike those in the event space where Tyler found the orbs: it was dark (just blacklight and disco ball, baby), so the camera's flash was on... And there was a lot of debris in the air. In this case, festive, multicolor debris that I'm still vacuuming up to this day.
The International Ghost Hunters Society , who claims to have coined the term in 1994 (probably true, just covering my bases), says spirit orbs "[represent] the soul of a departed person... the essence of who they were in life, complete with their intelligence, their emotions and their personality."
Here's an image from the IGHS claimed to be a "spirit orb":
Here's the interesting bit... Interesting to me, anyway... The IGHS site acknowledges that all orbs are not ghosts or spirits, and that many (some, like myslef, would say "all") are reflections of light from (or occasionally refraction through) dust particles, typically from the camera's flash. The following image, from the same page as that above, is claimed by the IGHS as the result of NON-ghostly dust particles:
These "dust orbs" look nearly identical to the "spirit orbs" above, and yet one is claimed to be a supernatural manifestation of a spirit. In the second image, there are several "orbs," so there was likely a lot of dust or debris in the air... but other than that, what?
In the end, that's all ghost orbs are: Dust. Nearby crap hanging in the air that happens to shoot the flash's light back at the lens. Since the lens is not focused on them, their image is blurry, thus an "orb."
Want to capture some orbs yourself? Go out at night. Take some pictures with the flash on. Maybe you'll get something, maybe not. Try kicking some dirt up at your feet. Now? Great. Now turn your flash off. Go through the same steps. Find any orbs? Nope, didn't think so.
So, among other things, my place of employment hosts some extensive convention space. Since booking was WAY down due to the economy, the suits took the opportunity to do some significant renovation.
Walls are coming down. Ceilings are gone, construction materials are EVERYWHERE. Everything is dirty.
Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk when two of my coworkers, "Tyler" and "Jane," were freaking out about something: "Oh my god! That's so creepy!" (and so forth.)
It turns out Tyler had been going aorund taking pictures of the carnage wrought upon the meeting space with his new camera, and was shocked to discover that the pictures he'd just taken were filled with ghost orbs!
Immediately, my skeptical ears rose up as I overheard the conversation:
Tyler: "You know they're real because they're in a different position in every shot." (Presumably, this was to explain that they weren't due to something on the lens.)
Jane: "Look at this one! He's in ALL of them!"
Tyler: "I'm creeped out now. I didn't know this place was haunted."
HE? We're already assigning gender to these spots of light? Haunted? Because of some spots on his photos? Time for me to put on my skeptic's hat.
So, what are orbs? What are some reasonable explanations for seeing them in photos taken of a darkened room filled with construction debris?
Ghost orbs or spirit orbs, for those unfamiliar with them, are light spots showing up on photographs of varying size, color and intensity.
What causes them?
For a hint at the answer, check out the many, many orbs captured in this photo taken at my New Year's Eve party immediately after midnight, January 1 of this year:
The conditions of this photo were not unlike those in the event space where Tyler found the orbs: it was dark (just blacklight and disco ball, baby), so the camera's flash was on... And there was a lot of debris in the air. In this case, festive, multicolor debris that I'm still vacuuming up to this day.The International Ghost Hunters Society , who claims to have coined the term in 1994 (probably true, just covering my bases), says spirit orbs "[represent] the soul of a departed person... the essence of who they were in life, complete with their intelligence, their emotions and their personality."
Here's an image from the IGHS claimed to be a "spirit orb":
Here's the interesting bit... Interesting to me, anyway... The IGHS site acknowledges that all orbs are not ghosts or spirits, and that many (some, like myslef, would say "all") are reflections of light from (or occasionally refraction through) dust particles, typically from the camera's flash. The following image, from the same page as that above, is claimed by the IGHS as the result of NON-ghostly dust particles:
These "dust orbs" look nearly identical to the "spirit orbs" above, and yet one is claimed to be a supernatural manifestation of a spirit. In the second image, there are several "orbs," so there was likely a lot of dust or debris in the air... but other than that, what?
In the end, that's all ghost orbs are: Dust. Nearby crap hanging in the air that happens to shoot the flash's light back at the lens. Since the lens is not focused on them, their image is blurry, thus an "orb."
Want to capture some orbs yourself? Go out at night. Take some pictures with the flash on. Maybe you'll get something, maybe not. Try kicking some dirt up at your feet. Now? Great. Now turn your flash off. Go through the same steps. Find any orbs? Nope, didn't think so.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Fox News: Star Trek may literally be a gift from God
Taking a short break from dandelion murder, and what do I find? io9 has a link to a story at Fox News asking if the new Star Trek film is a gift from God.
This article would be HILARIOUS, had it been in the Onion... But it's meant with 110% earnestness:
I still laugh at Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan, which appears at the top of this story, which proceeds to assert that the Bible is literally true, that all creative enterprises come directly from Yahweh, and that we need to assist Israel in developing a photon torpedo program. And I swear to god, that last item is meant literally. No tongue, no cheek:
It's truly a surreal article. It starts out with it's question (Is Star Trek a gift from God?), and immediately answers it (Yes it is). Then it goes off on a bizarre rant about how we need to build a mile-high fence around Israel to keep out all of the brown people (a sentiment, it should be noted, that is pretty much antithetical to Trek's vision) and invest $100 billion into missile defense because ZOMG IRAN MAY GET TEH NUKES IN A COUPLE DECADES!
I'm pretty confident that pacificistic lefty Gene Roddenberry has been rolling over in his grave at about 165 RPM since the moment this sentence was committed to a computer screen:
To be honest, it seems to me that this article was likely written before all of the Star Trek hullabaloo, and merely recommended that we, you know, follow God's commands and built a freaking 1-mile high wall around Israel. Then, later, the author (or an editor) decided that more people would read it if it had Star Trek in it... So in went a couple references to phasers and tricorders, and BAM! Instant success, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing about it now.
But STILL. Sheesh.
This article would be HILARIOUS, had it been in the Onion... But it's meant with 110% earnestness:
The signs are everywhere, folks. And I believe that “Star Trek,” and similar shows, are some of these signs.Signs of what, you ask? Oh, of the coming nuclear holocaust between Iran and Israel.
I still laugh at Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan, which appears at the top of this story, which proceeds to assert that the Bible is literally true, that all creative enterprises come directly from Yahweh, and that we need to assist Israel in developing a photon torpedo program. And I swear to god, that last item is meant literally. No tongue, no cheek:
Would Israel be safer if it could shoot down enemy missiles and rockets with such photon torpedoes, or block them altogether with a force field? Of course it would.Now, like everyone and their dog, I loved the new Star Trek movie. My inner nerd is experiencing a renaissance, and I've even let him off his leash a little bit to get out and get some fresh air... but seriously?
It's truly a surreal article. It starts out with it's question (Is Star Trek a gift from God?), and immediately answers it (Yes it is). Then it goes off on a bizarre rant about how we need to build a mile-high fence around Israel to keep out all of the brown people (a sentiment, it should be noted, that is pretty much antithetical to Trek's vision) and invest $100 billion into missile defense because ZOMG IRAN MAY GET TEH NUKES IN A COUPLE DECADES!
I'm pretty confident that pacificistic lefty Gene Roddenberry has been rolling over in his grave at about 165 RPM since the moment this sentence was committed to a computer screen:
What we need today are leaders who have the vision to see a film such as “Star Trek,” and say, “Why not? Why not have such weapons and protections, as soon as possible? Let’s do what it takes to make it so.”(Actually, I think Roddenberry's ashes were shot into space, so I'm not sure he's capable of rolling over like that... I digress.)
To be honest, it seems to me that this article was likely written before all of the Star Trek hullabaloo, and merely recommended that we, you know, follow God's commands and built a freaking 1-mile high wall around Israel. Then, later, the author (or an editor) decided that more people would read it if it had Star Trek in it... So in went a couple references to phasers and tricorders, and BAM! Instant success, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing about it now.
But STILL. Sheesh.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Miscellany
So, I haven't been doing the whole blogging thing very successfully lately. Me reasons are threefold:
1) Work work work. Phew! I've In the last three weeks, I've had two week-long trips. And it looks like I may be off to Omaha next week. Sigh...
2) Horrible, awful, terrible people in my house that wouldn't leave. (Note: they are FINNALLY out of my house. And now I'm still dealing with the aftermath... Just discovered a new issue tonight that makes me FURIOUS. For those of who who haven't already heard the story, I'll have to share it soon.)
3) Twitter. Yep. I've become one of THOSE people. 140-character posts are a LOT less effort than a proper and thorough screed. But good god, Twitter can be a weird place. Yesterday, while Wil Wheaton was discussing the finer points of genital euphemisms, Trent Reznor was asking for romantic comedy recommendations. Also, today, my love for Colin Meloy, already one of my favorite musicians (seriously, I've been listening to the Hazards of Love in its entirety, over and over again more or less nonstop since it came out a month ago) grew even stronger when he declared on Twitter that "Jenny McCarthy is a crackpot." Which, of course she is...
On the topic of Jenny McCarthy, the news that she's just been given her own TV talk show to hawk her anti-science, anti-health, anti-rational nonsense is beyond disheartening.
Sigh...
Now I'm depressed. And so are you... So to cheer you up, here's what is perhaps the most entertainingly disturbing family portrait ever taken (possibly NSFW).
1) Work work work. Phew! I've In the last three weeks, I've had two week-long trips. And it looks like I may be off to Omaha next week. Sigh...
2) Horrible, awful, terrible people in my house that wouldn't leave. (Note: they are FINNALLY out of my house. And now I'm still dealing with the aftermath... Just discovered a new issue tonight that makes me FURIOUS. For those of who who haven't already heard the story, I'll have to share it soon.)
3) Twitter. Yep. I've become one of THOSE people. 140-character posts are a LOT less effort than a proper and thorough screed. But good god, Twitter can be a weird place. Yesterday, while Wil Wheaton was discussing the finer points of genital euphemisms, Trent Reznor was asking for romantic comedy recommendations. Also, today, my love for Colin Meloy, already one of my favorite musicians (seriously, I've been listening to the Hazards of Love in its entirety, over and over again more or less nonstop since it came out a month ago) grew even stronger when he declared on Twitter that "Jenny McCarthy is a crackpot." Which, of course she is...
On the topic of Jenny McCarthy, the news that she's just been given her own TV talk show to hawk her anti-science, anti-health, anti-rational nonsense is beyond disheartening.
Sigh...
Now I'm depressed. And so are you... So to cheer you up, here's what is perhaps the most entertainingly disturbing family portrait ever taken (possibly NSFW).
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Jon Stewart - Baracknophobia
[Stolen from Saganist]
Jon Stewart does what he does best here: deconstruct right-wing talking points, showing them to be utter absurdities. Watch this.
Jon Stewart does what he does best here: deconstruct right-wing talking points, showing them to be utter absurdities. Watch this.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Baracknophobia - Obey | ||||
| ||||
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Twilirony
[via Latter-Day Main Street]
I am here in a hotel room in Madison, Alabama literally laughing out loud:
Deseret Book, the LDS-church owned book store chain, has banned Twilight from their shelves.
Yep. A book that in many ways is LDS-church propaganda, or at least propaganda for the worst aspects of the sorts of relationships encouraged by the LDS-church authority (e.g., woman giving up on their personal development to get married as soon after high school as possible; women being completely subservient to their overbearing husband; sex only after marriage and ideally only for propogation; reproducing as efficiently as possible regardless of it effects on a woman's well-being) has been removed from Deseret Book stores.
The church and the bookstore have declined comment, but it's honestly not hard to imagine why: aside from the fact that all that stuff above is completely abhorrent, the books ARE a vaguely sadomasochistic fantasy aimed at teenage girls, as I've noted before. I haven't read the last book (or, to be honest, ANY of them), but I understand things get a little hot and heavy once rings are on fingers.
So, I understand why they've done this, and it's perhaps not all that surprising... It's just a little bit ironic given the criticism the books have received from many non-Mormons.
I am here in a hotel room in Madison, Alabama literally laughing out loud:
Deseret Book, the LDS-church owned book store chain, has banned Twilight from their shelves.
Yep. A book that in many ways is LDS-church propaganda, or at least propaganda for the worst aspects of the sorts of relationships encouraged by the LDS-church authority (e.g., woman giving up on their personal development to get married as soon after high school as possible; women being completely subservient to their overbearing husband; sex only after marriage and ideally only for propogation; reproducing as efficiently as possible regardless of it effects on a woman's well-being) has been removed from Deseret Book stores.
The church and the bookstore have declined comment, but it's honestly not hard to imagine why: aside from the fact that all that stuff above is completely abhorrent, the books ARE a vaguely sadomasochistic fantasy aimed at teenage girls, as I've noted before. I haven't read the last book (or, to be honest, ANY of them), but I understand things get a little hot and heavy once rings are on fingers.
So, I understand why they've done this, and it's perhaps not all that surprising... It's just a little bit ironic given the criticism the books have received from many non-Mormons.
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