Plunderbund » Science

If we ever become a third-world country, this is why

Brian — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:02:10 +0000

Sigh.

The more widespread this stuff becomes, the more likely we fall further and further behind the rest of the world technologically.

All your forearms are belong to us!

Brian — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:01:03 +0000

First, the news. Apparently researchers have worked up a prototype subdermal display powered by blood. No, I’m serious.

Jim Mielke’s wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.

The basis of the 2×4-inch “Digital Tattoo Interface” is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, [...]

Everybody get on board the Evolution Omnibus!

Brian — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:12:21 +0000

I’ve been building up a rather long list of interesting science/evolution related pieces, and rather than spam my own blog with a huge list of related posts, I figured it was time for an omnibus! Content in the extended: all aboard!

Ken Miller of Brown University speaks on “Intelligent Design” as a scientific theory at Case Western. Very long, but excellent.

Ken Miller describes how “irreducible complexity” isn’t, using Behe‘s own mousetrap example. He also tackles this is a more rigorous manner in the first video – this example is intended to be more accessible to someone [...]

The vice of prostitution and the animal kingdom

Brian — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:14:55 +0000

No joke – researchers have uncovered a monkey prostitution ring.

According to the paper, “Payment for Sex in a Macaque Mating Market,” published in the December issue of Animal Behavior, males in a group of about 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, traded grooming services for sex with females; researchers, who studied the monkeys for some 20 months, found that males offered their payment up-front, as a kind of pre-sex ritual. It worked. After the females were groomed by male partners, female sexual activity more than doubled, from an average of 1.5 times an hour to 3.5 times. [...]

Human evolution speeding up

Brian — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:56:27 +0000

This is interesting:

Humans have moved into the evolutionary fast lane and are becoming increasing different, a genetic study suggests.

In the past 5,000 years, genetic change has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period, say scientists in the US.

This is in contrast with the widely-held belief that recent human evolution has halted.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Professor Henry Harpending, an author of the study from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US, said: “The dogma has been these [differences] are [...]

A most excellent Venn diagram

Brian — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:22:21 +0000

This is really a very insightful Venn diagram:

If you aren’t familiar with Venn diagrams, they are typically used in set theory to explain relationships between different sets (groups of things).

American Exceptionalism

Brian — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:10:56 +0000

American prominence on the world stage has not been due to some issue of “national character”; our people are not inherently different than people anywhere else in the world. But we have, in the past, had better educational resources, and a greater emphasis on science and engineering. But no longer.

Back in September, I wrote that America is out of touch and behind the times on climate change and economic reform. It is mired in a stagnant war that the rest of the west has abandoned or is abandoning. American global influence is in decline, the country having lost [...]

The Evolution of a Clock

Brian — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:56:24 +0000

Some created a clever little simulation of how a smashed watch could evolve into complicated clocks without a “designer” – if clocks could breed and mutate the same as living organisms.

It’s actually quite clever, and shows why “transitional organisms” wouldn’t necessarily show up in a fossil record. Hat tip to Pharyngula, who points out that, ironically, biological clocks exist in nature. Evolution is an astonishing thing.

Shocking news: Liberals and conservatives are wired differently

Brian — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:19:46 +0000

Science is cool.

The brain neurons of liberals and conservatives fire differently when confronted with tough choices, suggesting that some political divides may be hard-wired, according a study released Sunday.

…

Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.

The affinity between political views and “cognitive style” has also been shown to be heritable, handed down from parents to children, said the study, published in the British journal Nature [...]

Expelled!

Brian — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:53:09 +0000

Terrific little insight in to how Ben Stein is getting his “science is flawed because it excludes God” movie Expelled made. He (or rather, his producers) are lying to people they interviewed, talking to them about other subjects, and then carefully removing quotes from context to say something completely different.

Why were they so dishonest about it? If Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, “bring it on!” We would [...]