Science Etcetera, Moonday 20080512

May 12th, 2008

My mother, who believes in astrology, says that mechanical devices are more likely to go haywire when Mars is in retrograde.

Retrograde Mars
Image by Tunç Tezel (TWAN)

A global hops shortage is forcing brewers to reformulate their beers.

Families are taking on science in court today over their belief that vaccines cause autism, a claim for which science has yet to find a link.

Hydrogen power is an awesome solution as a alternative fuel, but not for global warming as it won’t be viable for another 40 years.

Smarter fruit flies have shorter lifespans.

Dead bodies do not spread disease, and are cleaner in some respects than live ones.

There are lakes the size of the Great Lakes under the Antarctic ice, harboring life that hasn’t touched our atmosphere for millions of years.

Lake Vostok
Image UC Riverside

May 16^th you can start going paperless with store receipts with allEtronic.

I mentioned this sort of thing in my SF book The Spiraling Web, hackers could use a security hole in gmail to spam users.

Many times throughout history several people have had the same big idea at once.

Stephen Hawking has started a project to find Einsteins in Africa.

Before the InterWebs, there were fanzines, Roger Ebert recalls this predecessor which set the format for our modern online dialogues.

Any kind of multitasking, be it cell phone, books on tape, or talking with passengers is dangerous for driving.

Demo of Fold It protein folding game:

ideonexus.com