The Fount of Useless Information
Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
at least when there isn’t fraud involved…
Arsenic-based life finding fails follow-up
Tests see no evidence that microbe uses element in cellular machinery
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338090/title/Arsenic-based_life_finding_fails_follow-up
It was really interesting when it was first reported that an organism could thrive in an …
Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?
A fascinating new film about one small-town political fight takes on the pseudo-green wind industry
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/01/wind_power_renewable_resource_or_another_corporate_scam/singleton/
I did a lot of research into wind energy a decade or so ago and it …
UCSF scientists declare war on sugar in food
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/01/BA891N1PQS.DTL
I have read a lot about this topic over the last decade or so (maybe closer to 2 decades now that I think about it) and I am mostly convinced that …
I am not feeling very well and might go home after I make this post, so sorry for the anemic output.
When I wrote a recent post on the cost of colonizing the moon I commented that sometimes the government …
Birth Control Matters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nita-chaudhary/kathleen-sebelius-plan-b_b_1241653.html
This is a big deal, but the topic has been hijacked by people who have no stake in the matter and want to revert us to a reproductive stone age. I recently read an article in …
How doctors do harm
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/30/health/how-we-do-harm-brawley/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Astounding:
…American medicine is big business. It is about 18% of the U.S. economy and growing. The average cost of a health insurance policy for a family of four is $19,400 per year. The expense
I couldn’t say it better than they did, so left off the cute title:
A moon colony is a waste of money
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/30/opinion/frum-moon-colony/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
I put this here because I want my reader(s) to know that while I am intensely personally …
Self as Symbol
The loopy nature of consciousness trips up scientists studying themselves
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/337947/title/Self_as_Symbol
I used to subscribe to Science News and had been receiving it for decades (my parents started getting it for me when I was a teenager). …
Deep Life
Teeming masses of organisms thrive beneath the seafloor
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/337918/title/Deep_Life
I love this sort of stuff. Sometimes (often) scientists in mature (or thought to be mature) disciplines get all cocking thinking they know everything (or at least know what …
Prions more mobile than thought
Disease agents can jump from one species to another
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337970/title/Prions_more_mobile_than_thought
For those of you who don’t know what prions are, they are protein molecules in the brain (they are in other parts of the body, …