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Moment of ovulation accidentally photographed during a hysterectomy.
(Source: New Scientist, 2008)
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“ The larger a shoal is, the smaller is the proportion of it that needs to know what is actually going on for it to feed and avoid predation effectively. Indeed, having too many leaders with conflicting opinions results in confusion. At least, that is true in the model.”
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Ce qui commande l’adhésion à une théorie du complot, c’est l’idée que les autorités veulent étouffer l’affaire. On ne se rallie pas à ces thèses alternatives pour leur logique interne mais par opposition à la version officielle des faits, parce que l’on croit que les puissants s’évertuent à nous tromper. L’article suggère donc de prendre les théories du complot non pas comme un amalgame de thèses paranoïaques mais comme une véritable idéologie, une vision du monde et de l’histoire.
~ Ben Laden et Lady Di sont morts-vivants… | Passeur de sciences -
pour mettre son âme en paix et résoudre le paradoxe de la viande, le carnivore humain “démentalise” les animaux de boucherie (alors même qu’il “anthropomorphise” les animaux de compagnie). Ce déni d’esprit, disent les auteurs, n’est probablement pas le seul outil dont il dispose dans ce but : le poids de la tradition culturelle est sans doute aussi présent, ainsi qu’une faculté à occulter le lien viande-animal. Ces psychologues suggèrent également de reproduire ce genre de tests dans les pays où l’on mange les animaux, tabous chez nous, que sont le chien et le chat.
~ Comment concilier goût pour la viande et amour des animaux ? | Passeur de sciences -
What is revealing is the extent to which many of the these apparently disparate campaigns all seem to have connections to each other and to figures on the far right of the US Republican Party. In the case of the climate change “deniers” a significant number seem to be funded by the US oil giant ExonMobile.
~ THE MAGONIA BLOG: DENYING SCIENCE -
Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have made a puzzling finding: people born without a corpus callosum (which links the two hemispheres of the brain) — a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum, or AgCC — still show remarkably normal communication across the gap between the two halves of their brains.
~ Unexplained communication between brain hemispheres without corpus callosum | KurzweilAI -
~ Largest study on cellphones, cancer finds no link - Yahoo! NewsThe Danish study of more than 350,000 people concluded there was no difference in cancer rates between people who had used a cellphone for about a decade and those who did not.
Last year, a separate large study found no clear connection between cellphones and cancer. But it showed a hint of a possible association between very heavy phone use and glioma, a rare but often deadly form of brain tumor. However, the numbers of heavy users was not sufficient to make the case.
That study of more than 14,000 people in multiple countries, in addition to animal experiments, led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to classify electromagnetic energy from cellphones as “possibly carcinogenic,” adding it to a list that also includes things such as coffee and gasoline engine exhaust.
But that designation does not mean the phones necessarily pose a risk. Cellphones do not emit the same kind of radiation as that used in some medical tests or found in other sources such as radon in soil.
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Le pouvoir de la gamme pentatonique, illustration par Bobby McFerrin.
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale (par worldsciencefestival)
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~ The UFO Iconoclast(s): UFOs: Why Science Isn’t InterestedScientists need specimens to study, or hypotheses based upon observation(s). Witness testimony, regardless of the support of such by some UFO buffs, is useless, for scientific purposes. Sure, a credible witness might provide a clue that helps a scientist see an avenue for study, but witness testimony, all by itself, is generally useless.
UFO sightings nowadays are even more transitory that flying saucer reports of the past, those that supposedly left indentations (Socorro again) or radiation traces (the Desvergers, Florida tale), so science is even less inclined to get involved with sightings.
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I. The best type of orgasm (types I and II were lumped together and described as “good sex” orgasms). This one ranked high on both pleasure and physical sensation, with lots of throbbing and euphora.
II. This was the other type of “good sex” orgasm, which ranked very high on pleasure, but lower on physical sensation.
III. The third and the fourth types were classified as “not so good sex” orgasms, I guess because they were too polite to say “bad sex”. This was classified as medium pleasure, but low physical sensation.
IV. The lowest of the low, this one was low pleasure and sensation. Generally not great.
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We now have discovered a gene that makes you go see Nicolas Cage movies.
John Cleese - The Scientists - 2008 (by homovegetus0)
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The waxing obsession with Nibiru, which conspiracy theorists say is a planet swinging in from the outskirts of our solar system that is going to crash into Earth and wipe out humanity in 2012 — or, in some opinions, 2011 — shows that an astonishing number of people “are watching YouTube videos and visiting slick websites with nothing in their skeptical toolkit,” in the words of David Morrison, a planetary astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Morrison estimates that there are 2 million websites discussing the impending Nibiru-Earth collision. He receives, on average, five email inquiries about Nibiru every day.
~ Believers In Mysterious Planet Nibiru Await Earth’s End | 2012 Apocalypse and the Rogue Planet Nibiru | Doomsday Myths Debunked | Space.com
