Science Etcetera, Saturnday 20080823

August 23rd, 2008

A delightful collection Julius Sumner Miller’s Why is It So? programs.

Professor Julius Sumner Miller

A court order has prevented researchers from showing how they hacked the Boston Subway to get free rides.

Nervous tissue in beef is linked to the human version of Mad Cow Disease, researchers may be close to a test for identifying it in our food.

The Saharan desert was once green, as these photos of skeletons found there indicate.

Microbes that could hypothetically live in Venus’ clouds could ride solar winds to Earth.

Artists Rendition of Venus in Solar Wind
Credit: ESA

Declining environments and political strife are putting field scientists at risk.

People feel more comfortable voting for candidates with strongly-held extreme positions, as opposed to moderate ones.

Cooking our food allowed humans to spend less energy digesting it, and commit more energy to our big brains.

How to reduce Lab Waste:

Funny that Venus’s next alignment is 2012. Damn the Mayans.

So by cooking we gave more energy to our brain — but less energy to burning calories. Uncooked food burns more calories, right? Because your body has to break it down more. so it’s interesting: to get a brain, you have to burn fewer calories with your body. I suppose if faced with the choice of “burn fewer calories, or be stupid”, America (and me) would be a lot thinner now.

[P.S. This spam plugin is lots of work. It's the one value that wont autocomplete/remember either. Can't I just register or something?]
by ClintJCL August 23rd, 2008 at 5:06 am
I’ve disabled the spam plugin for the one Sour Swinger suggested. Hopefully that will do the trick since the validation method didn’t do anything.
by ideonexus August 25th, 2008 at 11:06 pm