Kerfuffle

Sure it's satire, but I'd bet SNL actually captures the attitude and ineptitude of BP, Transocean and Halliburton rather accurately

From the cold open...

Later, on Weekend Update, Seth Meyers referred to the executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton who testified before Congress as Hear No Evil, See no Evil and Evil...

Yup. Today's Robber Barons.  They love taking your money, first at the pump... and then again when they want you to pay to clean up their mess and bail out all the people whose lives their carelessness has wrecked.

Still happy with rampant government deregulation?  You shouldn't be.

We're but a speck in the Universe. As if you need to be reminded of that.

Music by Beethoven.  Photography by NASA.  Subject matter by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The shrinkage effect: Men who voted for McCain suffer testosterone drop after election

I'm not sure what's funnier:  the results of this study or the fact that someone actually came up with it in the first place.  It must have been a fun IRB.

From Agence France-Presse via Raw Story...

WASHINGTON — Men who voted for Republican John McCain in last year's US presidential election saw their testosterone levels fall significantly when they learned he had lost to Barack Obama, a study showed Thursday.

Saliva samples collected from 163 men on the evening of the election showed that voters for both McCain and Obama had similar testosterone levels when polling stations closed on the east coast, but the levels in McCain backers fell when Obama was announced as the winner.

By contrast, testosterone levels among men who voted for Obama remained stable. Taking into account the fact that polls shut and results were announced at night -- a time when men's testosterone levels usually decline -- the study said the level was equivalent to a rise.

I guess the other research question I would have wanted to study would have been how high these guys' testosterone levels were spiked every time Sarah Palin shot something, encouraged rally mayhem, or winked at the camera.

There are some things that you should be able to conclude to be hazardous to your health just by looking at them

Fried cheese.  Camel straights.  That carnival ride with the the missing bolts. Your drunk cousin's offer of a ride in her old car with the bald tires and no tail lights.

Tanning beds.

Honestly, how can a person look at one of those glowing UV coffins without thinking, "Are you sure this thing is safe?  I mean really?"  Of course, the reassurance that comes from the teenager working the counter at the local Fake Bake tanning salon is worth at least as much as the buy five sessions, get one free deal the place offers.

Maybe not.  As reported by AP (via MSNBC), there is an article published in the British medical journal Lancet that makes a very convincing case that if you spent some quality time in one of those UV fun-houses before you reached age 30, you earned yourself a 75% greater chance of developing skin cancer...

LONDON - International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.

For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as "probable carcinogens."

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.

Doesn't that suck.  As bad as arsenic and mustard gas.  And this isn't one little study floating around out there.  This is based on the aggregated data from a lot -- around 20 -- studies.

Of course, there are some who disagree... notably the people who make, sell and operate the tanning beds...

The classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic was disputed by Kathy Banks, chief executive of The Sunbed Association, a European trade association of tanning bed makers and operators.

"The fact that is continuously ignored is that there is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer," Banks said in a statement. She said most users of tanning beds use them less than 20 times a year.

No "proven link," you say?  Yes, well, sometimes it's hard to ignore some pretty damning correlations...

But as use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.

Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.

I'm glad I never used one of these things.  I'm also a bit concerned about my many friends who have.  Melanoma is a pretty steep vanity tax to pay for trying to look less pale. 

 

Time for Rush to go after Nancy Reagan for (gasp!) praising President Obama'a lifting of the ban on embryonic stem cell research

OOOOOOOOOOOhh!  Rush has got to be so mad at the Widow Reagan for this...

Under fire from congressional Republicans for lifting restrictions on stem cell research, President Barack Obama got a powerful endorsement for his move Monday from Nancy Reagan, the former president’s wife.

“I’m very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research,” she wrote in a statement released shortly after Obama reversed the Bush administration limits. “These new rules will now make it possible for scientists to move forward. I urge researchers to make use of the opportunities that are available to them and to do all they can to fulfill the promise that stem cell research offers."
:::
Her statement also illustrates how support for the research crosses party lines, even though many in the anti-abortion movement strongly oppose the research on moral and ethical grounds.

[via Politico]

I can't believe she would side with science and research, and go against the head of the Republican party.  Good thing Mrs. Reagan still has Secret Service protection, since I hear Rush packs a mean slap.

Science is cool. The Hubble telescope is still sending back incredible images.

Awesome.

 

From Space.com...

A pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 147 was captured by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. One of the galaxies (left-most galaxy shown) is relatively undisturbed, apart from a smooth ring of starlight. The other galaxy (right-most in image) exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Livio (STScI).

From MSNBC...

Mission officials suggested that the image is a perfect "10." It shows that the observatory's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 is working exactly as it did before going offline.

The blue ring was formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates outwardly moving circular waves, or ripples, an outwardly propagating ring of higher density was generated at the point of impact of the two galaxies, astronomers explained. This excess density collided with outer material that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies. That resulted in shocks that compressed the galaxies' interstellar gas, stimulating star formation.

The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit.

As I noted in a previous post, I may not be religious, but I am spiritual.  This is an example of why,  Simply awesome.

And you thought your new car with the fancy GPS was cool...

At the risk of sounding like a total geek, this is freakin' awesome!

While you were grilling brats or doing other holiday weekend stuff, this contraption just dropped in on Mars to see if anyone was home.  From the looks of the pictures, it looks like everyone there is out of town.  That said, the landscape does bear a bit of a resemblance to the spacecraft's namesake city of Phoenix, and looks hot enough for the mythical bird of the same name to rise up from the dust.

But wow.  Incredible pictures are flowing is just minutes after the thing set its parking brake.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — NASA's Phoenix spacecraft successfully landed on Mars' frigid north pole region in a risk-fraught mission to search for signs the planet could have supported life, the US space agency said.

"Phoenix has landed," a NASA official said as the safe touchdown was confirmed.

The Mars Phoenix Lander successfully deployed a parachute and then thrusters to brake in a tense seven minutes from 20,400 kilometers per hour (12,700 miles per hour) to manage a soft landing on its three legs.

Mission officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, were seen on television cheering and giving each other hugs and high-fives after signals sent back from the craft confirmed the arrival of the first spacecraft ever to land on the Martian arctic.

The 420-million-dollar spacecraft is designed to help scientists assess whether the Martian arctic has ever had conditions favorable to microbial life.

I am old enough to remember getting up early to watch Gemini launches (Mercury was too far back even for me), but it is just amazing to think we can actually do this.  iPod, scmiPod, this is what technology is really all about.

Now if only Typepad, the hosting service for Kerfuffle, can just get their new and "improved" user interface to work properly (or just let me use the old one that actually worked first time/every time) I'll be a happy geek.

Science, Logic and Gaydar

David France authored an interesting article in New York Magazine. The piece, entitled The Science of Gaydar, is a good survey of the current state of research into the genetic research about the origin/cause/driver of homosexuality.

A few paragraphs into the article, we read this...

The late psychologist and sexologist John Money famously called these the details of our “gendermaps,” which he believed are drawn primarily by life’s experience and social conditioning. Money planted some of the earliest flags in the nature-versus-nurture war by claiming that dysfunctional parents, not inborn biology, is what produced “sissy boys,” tomboys, and other gender variants. But today, the pendulum has swung just about as far in the other direction as possible. A small constellation of researchers is specifically analyzing the traits and characteristics that, though more pronounced in some than in others, not only make us gay but also make us appear gay.

At first read, their findings seem like a string of unlinked, esoteric observations. Statistically, for instance, gay men and lesbians have about a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than straight men or women. The relative lengths of our fingers offer another hint: The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, while for most women they are closer in length, or even reversed in ratio. But some researchers have noted that gay men are likely to have finger-length ratios more in line with those of straight women, and a study of self-described “butch” lesbians showed significantly masculinized ratios. The same goes for the way we hear, the way we process spatial reasoning, and even the ring of our voices. One study, involving tape-recordings of gay and straight men, found that 75 percent of gay men sounded gay to a general audience. It’s unclear what the listeners responded to, whether there is a recognized gay “accent” or vocal quality. And there is no hint as to whether this idiosyncrasy is owed to biology or cultural influences—only that it’s unmistakable. What is there in Rufus Wainwright’s “uninhibited, yearning, ugly-duckling voice,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote a few weeks ago, that we recognize as uniquely gay? Does biology account for Rosie O’Donnell’s crisp trumpet and Charles Nelson Reilly’s gnyuck-gnyuck-gnyuck?

Read the whole thing here.

Live in Florida? Umm, I'll pass.

Remember when, like maybe 30 years ago, the Cuyahoga River was so toxic it actually caught fire? I seem to recall Lake Erie also suffered from the same affliction. Randy Newman wrote a song about it called "Burn On."

Deja vu. Lake Okeechobee is on fire. Sort of. To be more precise, the dead vegetation on the dried out lake bed is on fire. That would be the lake bed that normally is below 12+ feet of water. A 12,000 acre fire. Uh oh.

From the AP via the HeraldTribune.com...

MIAMI -- Water levels in dried-out Lake Okeechobee dropped Wednesday to match a historic low set in 2001, while firefighters battled a blaze burning on part of the exposed lake bottom.

The South Florida Water Management District expected the record of 8.97 feet from May 24, 2001, to evaporate by Thursday as the region's worst known drought continues. The average water level for this time of year should be around 13 feet in the second-largest freshwater lake in the contiguous United States.

The 12,000-acre fire started Monday in the vegetation left to dry in the sun as the lake waters receded from its northwest rim, said Melissa Yunas, a spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Forestry.

(Read the whole thing here.)

On a good year, it looks like this:

Right now, when not on fire, it looks like this:

So about that whole global warming bull shit... maybe there's something to it. Just sayin'.

I'm liking the Hybrid again

Sure, my Ford Escape Hybrid lacks a little giddy-up when you punch it compared to the Explorer it replaced. But there is this to consider:

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Gasoline prices, already above $3 a gallon in some states, could charge higher this summer and hit $4 a gallon in some locations, according to one industry expert.

Pump prices were supposed to peak below $3 a gallon this May, then drop off before the summer driving season got into full swing, according to the Energy Department's price forecast.

Well, we're not even out of April yet, and the nationwide average price for a gallon of unleaded regular has hit $2.87.

The old Explorer used to get about 18 MPG on a good day. With a tail wind. Downhill. The Escape Hybrid get about 32 MPG if I drive like my 80-year-old dad. Or 28 MPG if I drive like my mom in her prime. And it will still accommodate a pair of Newfoundlands. Works for me