BUMPER: Alexa Chipman (from Maudelayne and more!)
PROMO: Tuning In To Sci Fi
PROMO: PodCulture
CQ: When we humans develop the ability to completely remodel our solar system — say, into a Dyson sphere — should we do it? Why or why not?
On the show this week:
- Front Page
- Failiens
- Flee Your Mind (And The Jest Will Follow)
- Animastication
- Extras
Full list of 84 articles after the jump!
- Front Page:
- It must have been invisible. Or virtual. Or they really need to clean their monitors..: The UK Daily Mail – Remember that ash cloud? It didn’t exist, says new evidence
- I’d rather see a merit badge for *making* games..: Fox News – Boy Scouts Offer New Merit Pin — for Video Gaming
- Notice to the world: NEVER make a joke. Especially in an official forum.: BBC – Foreign Office apologises for Pope ‘condom’ memo
- A truly uplifiting part of history. It probably caused mirthquakes.: The UK Daily Mail – The first ever push-up bra: So, bust-boosting dates back to the 1800s
- Turns out, salt will kill you. A lot.: New Scientist – There’s no doubt about the health dangers of salt
- The real story here is a famous person with Morgellon’s (and not apparently also with Tourrette’s)..: The Guardian – Bob Dylan is ‘a plagiarist’, claims Joni Mitchell
- Ignore your instinctual reaction, ignore your age-ist bias, then consider this intellectually: what actually is wrong here?: New Zealand Yahoo! Xtra Lifestyle – ‘I’m in love with my grandson and we’re having a baby’
- And yet: are those offspring considered “unnatural” or “freaks”?: New Scientist – Virgin birth: sharks’ secret survival trick
- Real evidence supporting biblical fiction, or fictional evidence supporting biblical factions?: Discovery Online/AFP – Turkish and Chinese explorers claim to have found Noah’s Ark
- Failiens:
- Nimoy also apparently put forth Bill Shatner’s name for Governer General of Canada. Nimoy is even more awesome.: ABC Australia – Nimoy visit sends town out of its Vulcan mind
- Is there anything wrong with this? Can’t we all just live long and prosper?: STV – Alex Salmond reveals Star Trek obsession
- Again, I point out the fallacy that just because crop circles *can* be created by mankind does not definitively mean they were all created by mankind..: Boing Boing – Of Flattened Flora and Expulsion Cavities: The crop circle controversy continues
- When Fermi said “WTF? If aliens are so abundant, where the heck are they?” he wasn’t being sarcastic: he was being concerned..: forgetomori – Fermi believed in aliens? What a paradox!
- As we learn how to do things (like not bleed radio signals into outer space), we suddenly realize that we should probably think of aliens (not) doing them as well..: Science News – Can you hear me now?
- Should we shift the search from finding communications to finding structures?: Centauri Dreams – An Archaeological Approach to SETI
- For a brief moment, there is a chance we may have found our cousins..: The Sun – Nasa: Evidence of life on Mars
- Oh wait: I guess it was a rock. 😉: Space.com – NASA: Claims of Life on Mars ‘Positively False’
- Or maybe we just planted our own evidence on the scene. Crapbuckets!: Phenomenica/IANS – Microbes from Earth likely to contaminate Mars
- Hawking seems to have a black hole in his heart for aliens.: The UK Telegraph – Stephen Hawking: alien life is out there, scientist warns
- What did this grandmaster of long-view science fiction have to say about this whole alien thing?: Examiner – Was Isaac Asimov right about contacting extraterrestrial civilizations?
- Asimov’s original article, reproduced (resurrected!).: Examiner – Is it wise to contact advanced civilizations?
- Hawking reaction: he’s right: we should exercise caution.: The Big Study blog – Are “They” Friendly?: Hawking says Watch Out!
- Hawking reaction: “maybe he’s onto something; we should think about it”.: Goblin’s Nest blog – Katie Bar the Door
- Hawking reaction: aliens might not be so bad — or at least, not as bad as we are.: Paranormal Experiencer – A Response to Stephen Hawking’s Alien Statement
- Hawking reaction: are we talking science yet?: Paranormal Experiencer – Stephen Hawking’s Alien Statement: A Response to the Responses
- Hawking reaction: A lyrical reaction to fear in the physics world..: Intangible Materiality – A Tale of Two Physicists: Be Afraid
- Flee Your Mind (And The Jest Will Follow):
- For one thing, they will continually point out all your little flaws.. 😉: Chris Holly’s Paranormal World – Why Skeptics are the Most Boring People on Earth!
- In the race to “publish or perish”, are we evolving better publishers rather than thinkers?: Science Daily – Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists’ Bias?
- Presumably, not by staring directly at them, but rather by letting them light up your mind.: The Chronicle of Higher Education – How Light Bulbs Make You Smarter
- (EXTRA) I suppose if these get popular we’ll get better at not letting our minds wander.. Furthermore, we’ll — OOH! SHINY!: The UK Telegraph – Japanese scientists develop thought-controlled machines
- (EXTRA) If you live in a land under such turmoil, aren’t you allowed a little mental anxiety? And shouldn’t it be treated almost as seriously as a real attack?: The UK Daily Mail – Poisoned… or victims of mass hysteria? Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls mysteriously fall ill after ‘strange odour’
- (EXTRA) Has the effect now become the cause? It’s like inverted peanut-butter cups..: BBC – Chocolate lovers ‘are more depressive’, say experts
- (EXTRA) And all these years, we thought it was simply peer pressure, media representation and chemical addiction..: BBC – If you smoke too much ‘blame your genes’, say experts
- Drat! I rarely dream properly, and most of those don’t seem to have a real useful subject curve..: BBC – Dreams ‘can help with learning’
- (EXTRA) Hey, take the money, laugh, and then go solve the world’s problems, I say..: ABC Australia – US offers milk-moustache scholarships
- Can you be a “proper” scientist and investigate the paranormal? Not everyone agrees, and it exposes the underside of dogmatic established science.: Entangled Minds – The Psi Taboo in Action
- (EXTRA) I think that the more you seek to unfairly control people, the more you are demonstrating a lack of control within your own heart..: The UK Telegraph – Suntanned women to be arrested under Islamic dress code
- (EXTRA) Beyond the propoganda saying they’re more susceptable, is there something sterile about our society that we *don’t* have these reactions?: True Slant – Gaza facing genie hysteria
- So: do we really *need* to believe?: New Scientist – Brain shuts off in response to healer’s prayer
- (EXTRA) Are they just Godwining the argument, or can 70-year-old propoganda be that effective over modern propoganda?: The UK Telegraph – Roots of Islamic fundamentalism lie in Nazi propaganda for Arab world, book claims
- (EXTRA) We, you can’t say he’s full of crap, either, because he apparently hasn’t done that in 70 years either..: The UK Telegraph – Man claims to have had no food or drink for 70 years
- (EXTRA) Are we too busy making plans for the future from the experience of the past, that we don’t even really see the present? Is the universe really that separate from us?: Paranormal Experiencer – The Great Church of Lies: The Objectification of Evidences
- (EXTRA) A contemplation on the universe as contemplator of self-awareness through contemplating component awareness.. Or something like that. Bears re-reading.: Intangible Materiality – The Superimposition of States of Energy As Information
- (EXTRA) An attempt to unseat objective thinking. Objectively, I’m not sure I’m subject to understand this soon..: Paranormal Experience – The Undoing of Science in Ultimate Subjectivity
- (EXTRA) Understanding will probably come not from trying to see the whole detailed picture at once, but from levels of abstraction. Any good computer scientist should be able to fix their problem..: The UK Daily Mail – ‘When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war:’ US generals given baffling PowerPoint presentation to try to explain Afghanistan mess
- (EXTRA) Examining the many sides to the scene in an article I need to go back and finish..: Investigating Discarnate Intelligence – Too Many Questions and Too Many Answers: The Paranormal Scene
- (EXTRA) A criticism of current models of the paranormal and thinking and.. I have no idea. I read half of it so far and understood less. Worth studying more.: Intangible Materiality – A Lost Expedition and The Third State of These Matters
- Animastication:
- (EXTRA) Besides: does it hurt to declare something that may not exist as “protected”?: STV – Police believed Loch Ness Monster’s existence ‘beyond doubt’
- (EXTRA) Oh noes! It’s “My Little Pony” LARPing!: The Guardian – The smallest horse in the world?
- (EXTRA) I knew it! They’d eat YOU if given half a chance!: Mother Nature Network/AP – Larger pens breed chicken ‘cannibalism’ on egg farms
- (EXTRA) We did it! We created a monster! We await the B-KAWK of ultimate doom!: ScienceDaily – Research Reveals Genetic Secrets Underlying Remarkable Development of the Domestic Chicken
- (EXTRA) They might be the only chance we have against the rampaging, crazed, cannibalistic, ravenous monsters we’ve created! Otherwise: we’re clucked!: The UK Telegraph – Bird whisperer cures angry swan Mr Asbo
- (EXTRA) Nature abhors a vacuum. Yeah, it kinda sucks.: The UK Telegraph – Island which spent £600,000 getting rid of rats over-run with rabbits
- (EXTRA) Well, more like “bad fences” rather than “traps”..: Discovery News – Mysterious Desert Lines Were Animal Traps
- (EXTRA) There’s just no way for this to ever be right, is there?: Adelaide Now/Sunday Mail/SA – Gay dogs not welcome, diner told
- (EXTRA) You’d think it wouldn’t matter..: ScienceDaily – ‘Ancestral Eve’ Crystal May Explain Origin of Life’s Left-Handedness
- (EXTRA) Worms that live on the whiskers of lobsters and have 3.5 sexes? Yeah, that’s pretty bizarre..: New Scientist – Zoologger: The most bizarre life story on Earth?
- (EXTRA) The question is: are the structures similar because they mean something, or because we made them mean something?: Science Daily – Brains, Worms and Computer Chips Have Striking Similarities
- (EXTRA) Maybe it was nicked for science! (Probably not. I suspect rival carnies or something..): Ken5 – Vanished: ‘Chupacabra’ walks away from Fiesta booth
- (EXTRA) If we can’t laugh good-spiritedly at the weird, what *can* we laugh at?: TVNZ – The Cryptid Factor: Comedy Festival Review
- (EXTRA) Did we kill the bees? Turns out: it’s… complicated.: Freakonomics/The New York Times – What’s Behind the Honeybee Decline? Perhaps Not What You’ve Heard
- (EXTRA) How about this? Did we do this? (Probably not.): Fox News/Reuters – Deadly Airborne Fungus Spreading in Northwest
- (EXTRA) We are losing the war against… Wait! Who are we fighting this one against?: New Scientist – Biodiversity: try as we might, things just keep dying
- (EXTRA) Maybe it was in a larval state, and used the can as a shell.. Or maybe *all* cans are like that.. Maybe spaghetti in a can is really like an egg, a proto-creature captured and stunted in growth — normally! (Or maybe it was just fungus from contamination.: World Around Us blog/QNI – Rodent in spaghetti can was just mould
- (EXTRA) It’s all delicious irony — until you realize that the students have to sweat through their exams all over again!: Weird Asia News – Hungry Rats Eat Ungraded University Exams
- Extras:
- (EXTRA) Just about every mother I know has this problem. Granted, their kids are older than 14 months…: BBC – Baby son outgrowing smallest mother
- (EXTRA) So much for “youth is wasted on the young”..: The UK Daily Mail – Schoolboy, 11, ageing at five times the normal speed after becoming only boy in the world with genetic condition
- (EXTRA) You are either prepared to win, or unprepared to fail..: The UK Telegraph – Aspiring sailor trying to sail round the UK circles the Isle of Sheppey instead
- (EXTRA) Ok, knock it off! You’ve been creating all these micro-whatsis for a while now, and yet, still no decent eReader?: Popular Science – IBM Scientists Create Tiniest 3-D World Map
- (EXTRA) Ouch! Feel the burn!: Adelaide Now/The Advertiser – Millionaire socialite Valmai Roche leaves daughters $4.50 ‘blood money’
- (EXTRA) If you get long, you won’t get a long — with each other, at the police..: Reuters – Police barred from penis enlargement
- (EXTRA) Normally, they should be *anti-* crazy pills..: NWF Daily News/Florid Freedom Newspapers – Man charged with disturbing gravesite
- (EXTRA) It’s like somthing out of an Ocean’s Eleven movie..: The UK Telegraph – Elderly ‘Geezer bandit’ bank robber strikes again
- (EXTRA) Maybe it was just a stroke..: The UK Telegraph – Kings Cross: Busy London train station ‘closed by burning toast fire alert’
- (EXTRA) Graffitti arts seems rather likely to be termporary anyway..: ABC Australia – Clean-up crew don’t give a rat’s about Banksy
- (EXTRA) Nothing but the purist masochism here. : WEAU/AP – Woman goes on blow gun spree in Stevens Point
- (EXTRA) So much for modern rationality dismissing supernatural phenomenon..: The UK Telegraph – Ghost sightings highest in 25 years
- (EXTRA) Using a stereo vision camera to determine that orbs appear to be dust.: Charles Fort Institute – Orbs – it’s all a load of erm orbs – and now there’s proof.
- (EXTRA) Most odd or weird things are really just challenges to conventional thinking. This is pretty challenging.: AutoBlog – Puerto Rican funeral home presents shooting victim on his motorcycle [w/video]
- (EXTRA) After looking into it, the conclusion is: Um, not sure. Need more information.: The Other Side Of Truth – Ghost Cases – conclusions
- (EXTRA) Not far from me, there lurks a haunted cell..: The Other Side Of Truth – The Case of the Haunted Cell
- (EXTRA) A little less close to me, but practically in my extended backyard.: The Other Side Of Truth – The Case of the Baby in the Basement
- (EXTRA) This seems like the perfect thing to remove the very last amount of credibility from the show. (I think they already have action figures.): Ghost Hunters News – Syfy To Create Ghost Hunters Academy Video Game
- (EXTRA) Maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s just because I haven’t seen it in person or stared at it, but it seems a bit.. simple.: Art Daily – Picture Bought by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Surfaces at Bonhams
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