Month: March 2008
-
The Sixth Mass Extinction
Artist’s Impression of the Chicxulub Impact Image courtesy of NASA The most famous mass extinction is the Cretaceous-Tertiary, which killed the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. It was most likely caused by a meteorite that left a crater 150 miles in diameter off the Gulf of Mexico and a layer of iridium-rich dust all over…
-
Movie You Should See: Quest for Fire
Rae Dawn Chong in Quest for Fire While 10,000 BC was an over-hyped, glamorized, film that simultaneously gave too much credit to primitive humans and, at the same time, not enough, Quest for Fire takes place in 80,000 BC, at a time when there are scattered tribes of humans all at different levels of cultural…
-
Movies You Can Skip: 10,000 B.C.
10,000 B.C. tells the story of a tribe of people living in what is, to my mother’s best guess, the Himalayas. All year long, the tribe looks forward to when the mammoths come migrating through their land, so they can hold their great hunt. This is actually right about the time Mammoths went extinct due…
-
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Costal North Carolina
The most impressive thing about the Coastal NC Exhibit are all the whale skeletons hanging overhead as you walk through the exhibit, animals larger than anything Earth has ever seen before, descendents of cow-like animals that once lived on land, some of which still have their hip bones still floating inside them, serving no other…
-
The Politics of Fear VS Mathematical Perspective
In 1964 Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran the following ad scaring Americans in to voting for him with the idea that Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war if elected: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/OKs-bTL-pRg] Hillary Clinton’s campaign is spinning their recent primary wins as attributable to their “3a.m. Phone Call” ad, which uses a similar tactic against Obama: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/M70emIFxETs]…
-
Programming Adventures: Revision History Humor
I had a good chuckle while working on a Database Procedure today, when I spotted the following entry in the Revision History notes: Revision History Humor
-
Future Wonder of the World: Three Gorges Dam
Three Gorges Dam Before Filling Reservoir Image Courtesy Wikimedia Click for a Larger Image When Three Gorges Dam goes fully online in China in 2009, after 17 years of construction, it will be 607 feet high and 1.4 miles long. Its reservoir will be 410 miles in length and 3,700 feet in width. It will…
-
EPA Refuses to Protect the Environment
Despite the EPA being ordered by the Supreme Court nearly a year ago to determine whether carbon dioxide poses a danger to public health, which would require them to enforce the Clean Air Act, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson tells Congress they haven’t taken any action on the directive and don’t have any plans to…
-
Hey Everybody! It’s Another Global Cooling Report!
I’m sure this one, unlike the last one and the one before that is for really real this time. Really. This one even made Digg, Drudge, Faux Noise, etc, etc… meaning it’s totally got legs for absolutely certain this time. Right? The article in question openly admits that they’ve had nothing but anecdotal evidence to…
-
New Style
I’ve decided to switch to a more traditional look and feel. After many hours of reading the white text on black background, even I decided it was time to switch up. Hope this is okay.
-
The Declining Environment’s Impact on Humans in Billy Joel Songs
Billy Joel has written two of the most moving environmental songs ever, but they are not easily recognized as such. That’s because we are used to Environmentalism focusing on the non-human elements, such as the decline of other species and changes to the landscape, but environmentalism is ultimately about maintaining our human quality of life.…