We get a blizzard, they get plummeting space debris

Check out this video of a meteor impact in Alberta:



Awesome. Meanwhile, all we get in Nova Scotia is 30cm of snow. In fucking November. Not that I'm asking for us to get hit with meteors. But it would be more fun.

Uh, guys? Please don't blow up the world

The European research institute CERN is set to begin their $9 billion science experiment. Using super advanced particle accelerators inside this long tunnel, they hope to smash two atoms together at nearly the speed of light to recreate the conditions that prevailed immediately after the Big Bang (and I mean immediately; we're talking millionths of a second here). They hope to answer some fundamental physics questions that have vexed scientists for decades, revealing the secrets of everything from "dark matter" to "God particles".

Clearly, this is an exciting experiment for physicists. And the practical applications of the knowledge gained could be enormous. There's just one problem:

It could create a black hole which would basically annihilate the Earth and maybe even our entire Solar System. Seriously.

Sure, they tell us there's only a 0.00001% chance of that actually happening, or something, but still. Shouldn't we be a little closer to 0% before gambling with our very existence?

(Photo: CERN/AFP/Getty Images)

What I'm reading, Chapter 2

Today, it's Our Inner Ape, by Frans de Waal, an endlessly fascinating book about the behavior and lifestyles of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, and what they can tell us about ourselves, from violent power struggles to sex.

Most examined are the two species of Chimpanzee, the more common Pan troglodytes, and its cousin, the interesting bonobo.

Chimps are probably easist for us to relate to, with their male dominated social hierarchies and political alliances (and backstabbing), and their more conservative sexual habits. Their propensity for brutal violence and inter-tribal warfare also echoes our own, but their capacity for empathy and kindness reassures us that our roots are not all bad.

Bonobos, on the other hand, while more humanlike in some ways (they often walk upright, and have longer legs than chimps), are strikingly unique in other ways. For one thing, they are incredibly sexually promiscuous (all bonobos seem to be bisexual, with homosexual acts seemingly as common as heterosexual), and females hold power over the males.

Although bonobos are a subspecies of chimpanzee, their temperament couldn't be more different. Violence still occurs, but their egalitarian societies seem to be much more stable than the constantly fueding chimps with their ambitious alpha males (the male-female ratio in most groups of common chimps is 1:2, evidence of frequent killings, while among bonobos it's nearly 1:1). Because sex is so common and casual, infanticide is practically unheard of in bonobo groups (while common among chimps). No bonobo male can be sure which offspring are his, so males must help defend all offspring, while the females band together to assert their authority.

This description only scratches the surface of the book; suffice to say that there are humbling moments throughout as we learn more about our hairy cousins. Much of our behavior, even in this modern age, can be traced to that of the great apes.

On a related note, a census found that there are 125,000 western lowland gorillas living in the Congo, considerably more than had been estimated previously. Good news.

Darwin's legacy, 150 years later

It's a little depressing that nearly 150 years after Origin of Species revolutionized the natural sciences, there are still hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, who remain virulently opposed to Darwin's findings. But in fact, Darwin's legacy could not be more secure, with his theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest virtually unchallenged (and really, unchallengable) by any serious academics. The best that Creationists and neo-Creationists can do is try and promote dishonest pseudo-science like Intelligent Design.

So on this, Origin's sesquicentennial (try saying that five times fast), check out this interesting post at Evolving Thoughts, for some discussion of Darwin's influence on modern biology. Is our understanding of evolution a sine qua non without Darwin? Or would others have done the same work eventually?

(h/t The Panda's Thumb)

Smart octopi?

When one thinks of a smart sea creature, the octopus rarely comes to mind. But there's a fair amount of evidence that they can be quite clever:

Aristotle didn't have a high opinion of the octopus. "The octopus is a stupid creature," he wrote, "for it will approach a man's hand if it be lowered in the water." Twenty-four centuries later, this "stupid" creature is enjoying a much better reputation. YouTube is loaded with evidence of what some might call octopus intelligence. One does an uncanny impression of a flounder. Another mimics coral before darting away from a pushy camera. A third slips its arms around a jar, unscrews it, and dines on the crab inside. Scientific journals publish research papers on octopus learning, octopus personality, octopus memory. Now the octopus has even made it into the pages of the journal Consciousness and Cognition (along with its fellow cephalopods the squid and the cuttlefish). The title: "Cephalopod consciousness: behavioral evidence."

The catch of course, is that while they may be "intelligent", intelligent means different things for species so vastly different. We are intelligent in different ways from an octopus; not surprising once you consider that our closest common ancestor existed some 700 million years ago.

There's not much point in trying to pin this sort of behavior to some human-based scale of intelligence, because our behavior emerged as apes adapted to life spent on two legs, in groups, and using our hands to make tools. We'd fail pretty badly at an octopus-based test of intelligence, but surely we wouldn't hold it against ourselves.

(h/t Pharyngula)

Renewable Oil?

This sounds really cool:

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

If you can get past the lingo (by "bug" they mean bacteria, and "petrol" is British for crude oil), this amounts to a pretty amazing discovery. Crude oil produced by bacterial consumption of food waste. Not only that, but the process is carbon negative, meaning that burning the stuff puts less CO2 into the atmosphere than the CO2 consumed in producing it.

Don't know how practical it will be to mass-produce, though.

Totalitarian creationists

Remember when the Kansas school board decided to remove evolution from high school biology curricula? It was a proud day for ignorant simpletons and religious fanatics alike (though perhaps not such a proud day for non-ignorant and non-fanatical Kansans). Tom Willis of the "Creation Science Association" (an oxymoron if I ever saw one) helped draft those groundbreaking new educational standards.

And now, he's at it again, with this fairly disturbing proclamation:

The arrogance displayed by the evolutionist class is totally unwarrented (sic). The facts warrent (sic) the violent expulsion of all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously, professor.

Frankly, I think the facts warrant the violent expulsion of Tom Willis from civilized society.

I must say it is deeply ironic that while the ID movement whines and moans about how they are being so terribly repressed, here we have a high-profile creationist talking about disenfranchising and alienating mainstream biologists and academics...oh, I'm sorry, I mean "evolutionists", from society. I wonder what Mr. Willis thinks should be done with these "evolutionists" after they are successfuly violently expelled from "civilized society"? Perhaps they should be rounded up and put into camps so they cannot go on spreading their wicked beliefs to the outside world? And then perhaps some forcible re-education? And if they still fail to embrace God's love, burn them!

And don't you just love the epithets that creationists use to describe people that understand anything about the history of life on this planet? "Evolutionists". "Darwinists". I guess "biologists" sounds too innocuous. Far better to create some scary sounding "ism" with which to scare all those "immature humans". Classic totalitarian methods.

(hat tip Panda's Thumb)

Mars' North Pole

NASA's Phoenix lander touched down without any problems on Mars' north pole yesterday, and it's already sent back some cool pictures:




Apparently, the polygonal patterns are evidence of water freezing and refreezing on the surface, similar to what happens on Earth.

I'm certainly no expert, I just think this stuff is cool. Congrats to NASA and the Phoenix team!

The importance of oil and how to change it

The debate over fossil fuels is often in the context of global warming and alternate energies. But in fact, oil is one of the single most important physical resources that we as a civilization possess.

Just for fun, take a look around where you live. See any plastic? It's probably everywhere, even if you don't realize it, from plastic bags, to bottles, to toys, to compact discs, to rubber, to Goddamn model food replicas. All of that is made from oil. Look outdoors; you see the roads? Guess how they make asphault. I could go on and on; suffice to say that we owe a lot to oil.

It's really a crime that we burn any of it. And it's finite. We have maybe another few decades before it becomes prohibitively expensive. But little changes in our lifestyle make a difference. Ed from ginandtacos makes the point:

I wonder why people like McKibben don’t spend more time presenting these problems in a way that doesn’t overwhelm readers’ feelings that they can do something concrete about it. Not “write your Congressman” or “vote for environmentalists” but actually do something measurable. When he says “The planet is going to die and you have to fix it” there aren’t many people who think that’s a realistic goal. Maybe, for example, he could write a column about how re-usable canvas grocery bags can save 300-500 plastic (made from oil, of course) or paper bags per shopper every year. Even though suburban America is resistant to anything that asks for a lifestyle change or suggests that profligate consumption is not our birthright, most people will read that and think “Well that’s not so fucking hard.” I mean, honestly, how hard is it to use a different bag to carry groceries? It isn’t. At all. It’s so goddamn easy that….people might actually do it.

So we wean ourselves off of plastic grocery bags as a nation. McKibben has a tangible victory. An example toward which to point. “See? We changed something. And it was easy! Now let’s try…..” Because the problem here is not SUVs or lack of public transit or McMansions. Those are symptoms. The problem is that our entire national mindset is fucked up. We simply do not think about conservation, waste, or efficiency at all. We ask only two questions: What do I want? What is easiest/most convenient for me?

I'm not quite as negative as Ed; the environmental movement has come a long way, and most people are at least sympathetic to it. The problem is a lack of information. A lot of people just don't understand how important this is, and our governments need to show some leadership.

For one example, governments all around the world have passed legislation that will phase out or outright ban the use of incandescent lightbulbs in favor of compact fluorescents, which use only a fraction of the power. I think a similar committment is needed to limit the use of plastics and other petroleum products.