Science Etcetera 2008 Tag Cloud Via TagCrowd

CNN making the boneheaded decision to dump its science unit, the Origin of Blue Eyes fitting another interesting piece of the human origins puzzle into place, and “Dwarf Planets” becoming “Plutoids” earn an honorable mention for science news in 2008, and the Large Hadron Collider will make next year’s top 10 list, when it starts working properly.

Here are my picks for the best science developments in 2008:

1. The Svalbard Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway went into deep freeze, preserving the world’s seed collections against any number of threats, from Global Warming to regional environmental damage. The vault is a monument to prescient thinking, an Ark for weathering our current environmental storms.

Svalbard Seed Vault

2. Once numbered at less than 100,000, a recent census found 125,000 western lowland gorillas found living in the Republic of Congo. Although still listed as “critically endangered,” the numbers show that conservation efforts do work, and that similar actions must be taken for other primates around the world.
3. The Interior Department officially listed the polar bear as a threatened species, acknowledging melting sea ice as the culprit, but without taking any position on Global Warming.
4. The first Photo of an Exoplanet was confirmed from two photographs taken by the Hubble Space telescope in 2004 and 2006, a Jupiter-mass object that orbits the star Fomalhaut every 872 years.

Planet Orbiting the star Fomalhaut Every 872 Years

5. Closer to home an Electron was filmed for the first time, riding on a light wave after being pulled away from an atom.



6. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) was signed into law, which bars discriminating against people based on their genetic information concerning health insurance and employment.
7. The Phoenix Lander proved conclusively the existence of water on Mars, and kept us on the edge of our seats with its electrical problems and issues getting soil samples into its ovens for analysis.

First Images from the Phoenix Mars Lander

8. Craig Venter’s organization synthesized an entire bacterial genome from scratch, the second of three steps toward JCVI’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism.
9. Working models and computer simulations of the Antikythera device revealed the Greeks were using a very sophisticated astronomical calculator, which was also capable of predicting eclipses and the Olympic Games 2,100 years ago.



10. My personal favorite development for this year was Science Debate 2008, which successfully got the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to answer questions about science, and, even more amazingly, brought the scientific community together into its most effective lobby, which is like herding cats.

Science Debate 2008

Other News Sources Take on the Year in Science:

• Discover Top 100 Stories of 2008
• Discovery 10 Stories You May Have Missed in 2008 (But Shouldn’t)
• Science’s Breakthrough of the Year
• CBC News 2008: The Year in Science
• Live Science Top 5 Incredible Science Discoveries of 2008
• Charlotte Examiners Top 10 Science Stories of 2008
• TIME’s Top 10 Scientific Discoveries
• NPR Science Friday The Biggest Science Stories of 2008
• National Geographic TOP TEN NEWS STORIES: Most Viewed of 2008
• New Scientist News review 2008: The year in science
• New Scientist Most extreme news stories of 2008
• Wired Top 10 New Organisms of 2008

Although I have no idea who you are, I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me something. I’m not sure what, but I can’t help but think that shooting my house with a shotgun was some sort of message. I’m sorry if you’ve left me other messages, like peeing on my house to mark your territory or something, but I’m afraid I’m not too familiar with gangster lingo.

You see, I’m a nerd. So your primordial methods of communication are kind of lost on me. It’s a cultural divide thing too. I know that a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to kill someone you know than be used in self defense. So statistically-speaking, you’re more likely to shoot one of your fellow gang members, who probably also owns a gun of some sort. It’s a math thing, something gang members don’t understand too well. You probably buy lottery tickets too.

Buckshot credit: TGAW

You’re probably confused by the fact that we slept through your message, and didn’t get it until morning. You see, being a nerd, I heavily insulated my house with fiberglass that has a high R-Value. In addition to keeping my house really cozy in the winter, it also acts as a sound barrier. So when you drive past my house in your muffler-less car, blasting bass drums on your broken speakers, I continue watching Tron completely undisturbed.

We did hear the second shotgun blast on the following night, and I was very impressed I assure you. I don’t mean that in a condescending way either. Your ability to point your boomstick at the broadside of my house and pull the trigger demonstrates that you know how to point and you know what a house is. Pretty soon, you’ll be ready to for the Special Olympics.

Bedroom Window credit: TGAW

You might be taking some satisfaction in the fact that you ruined a few feet of vinyl siding and a window. This will cause me about 10 minutes of inconvenience, as I will now have to call my home owners insurance and have them fix it. All of us nerds have home-owners insurance. “That’s how we roll.”

Maybe you knew this about nerds, and wanted to make sure you really really inconvenienced us. So that’s why you shot TGAW’s car. How clever of you to make us call her auto insurance to have that repaired too. You made us make two phone calls, and all for the price of three shotgun shells. That comes out to $4.50 a phone call (there’s that math thing again).

Bullet Hole in the Xterra credit: TGAW

The nice police officer noticed TGAW had a blue bandana in the back of her car, and explained to us that you are most likely a “Blood” who feels threatened by a rival breed of gangster known as “Crypts,” who wear blue bandanas. So it’s possible that seeing the blue bandana incited you to attack TGAW’s car the way a bull is prone to charge a red cape or a monkey prone to fling poop at rival monkeys. Next time we’ll know to call a zookeeper or Jane Goodall instead of the ECPD.

In my research about gangsters, I came across the concept of bling. Apparently gangsters are attracted to bright shiny things. I can relate to this. We nerds are really into our cell phones (I get internet and Microsoft Word on mine), and we are all about our computer systems too (I roll with a 2.66GHz 8MB cache and 3GB DDR3 RAM (The other nerds hate on me.)).

Now I can’t wait to start playing with my new home security system and the cameras I’m having installed around the house, which I can afford because nerds make way more money than gangsters. The neighbors are happy about the cameras too. Imagine that, they prefer a nerd for a neighbor, someone who props up the community, to a gangster, someone who can shoot things.

Note: I don’t get the whole wearing blood diamonds thing. How is wearing jewelry that funds genocides in Africa a good thing?

There are some very cool subway stops in New York. One stop has tiny bronze cartoon-like characters doing comedic thinks like sawing through support columns, others have beautiful tile work, but the 81^st street subway stop in New York is the absolute coolest. It has casts of dinosaur bones and tile-work murals of sea life and insects throughout it.

This tiny set was just a catchall for photos taken in unnamed hallways and other items I didn’t have enough of to put into other sets.

81st Street Subway Stop in New York

Check out the complete flickr set here.

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat. – Jacques Yves Cousteau

Blue Whale Balaenoptera musculus

You can check out the complete flickr set here.

Is up at 365Tomorrows.

An orangutan and a brain in a vat were playing chess across the room from me.

It was a joke I hadn’t figured out the punch line to in five years of working here. The disembodied brain was Philo, and, lacking eyes, I had no idea how it understood the game. One of the psychologists who stopped in once a week to check on Philo was also stumped on this, explaining to me that Philo also lacked spatial reasoning. Philo’s understanding of chess, therefore, was purely as an abstract mathematical concept.

The orangutan was Odo. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he leaned over the board. When I first started working here, Odo would spend hours signing to me. He gave up long ago, and Philo told me the orangutan had decided I was incapable of learning. He was probably right.

Wee-Beep! Wee-Beep! Wee-Beep! A petri dish set atop a remote-control car thudded into my foot and my cell phone began chirping in response to it, which set the petri dish off chirping back.

This was Meep, a network of mouse neurons that had learned to drive around without bumping into things, except when it wanted attention. Meep just barely qualified to reside here, but I couldn’t explain how it met the intelligence requirements.

“Hello Meepster,” I said to the living toy, and stooped to pluck the rubber ball from its pincers. “Go play with Lug,” I tossed the ball so that it bounced off our resident Neanderthal’s forehead.

“Lug,” wasn’t his real name, Lazarus was, but the botched attempt at genetically engineering our distant relative just drooled and pooed himself all day. Meep was more sentient, and until Lazarus can wipe his own butt, my name for him is Lug.

“Pardon me…” Philo’s artificial voice drew my attention.

“I’m sorry Philo,” I had the injection ready in a few moments and quickly administered enough serotonin to get the brain through the afternoon. Without a steady cocktail of anti-depressants, being a brain in a vat pretty much sucks.

Think about that… When your house greets you at the door, when your refrigerator makes dinner suggestions, or when your car swerves to keep you out of an accident because you were preoccupied with your PDAI, remember that the road to all those conveniences was paved with the residents of this asylum, experiments that made AI possible and inventions that crossed the line into sentience, preventing them from making it to the market.

We have a responsibility to them. After all, they didn’t ask to exist.

“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Does the economy have you down? The stress of the holidays getting to you? Tired of getting off work at 5pm to find its dark outside and you missed the daylight?

Then cheer up! As of today (in the Northern Hemisphere) at 12:04 UTC (8:04AM EST) the days will grow longer and the nights shorter until the summer solstice, when the trend reverses.

The Winter Solstice

Lots of cultures around the world have celebrations this week, and have been doing so since humans started keeping track of the seasons.

Apparently Dr. Frank Lynn Meshberger hypothesizes the “Creation of Man” mural painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel actually depicts god bestowing intellect on man, arguing that Adam’s eyes are open in the painting, god and the angels take on the distinct shape of a brain, and that Michelangelo was well aware of human anatomy from the many cadavers he dissected in his study of the human form for his art.

Can you see the brain in this painting?

Creation of Man Credit: Michelangelo

There are lots of drawings from anatomy texts with the brain in the painting highlighted in this article. A discussion on physicsforums turned up this insightful comment:

Upon reading the title and seeing the painting, I can definitely see the “brain” in the image. Of course this is coming from a neuroscientist who also knows that the brain “likes” to make associations between recognizable images and the abstract. But I have seen a lot of brain in my time and that shape is pretty “brainy”.

This is wayyyyyy cooler than anything found in The DaVinci Code.

He would be 91 today:

Of all the creatures who had yet walked on Earth, the man-apes were the first to look steadfastly at the Moon. And though he could not remember it, when he was very young Moon-Watcher would sometimes reach out and try to touch that ghostly face rising above the hills.

He had never succeeded, and now he was old enough to understand why. For first, of course, he must find a high enough tree to climb.

Arthur C. Clark, 2001

A sad thought from the AMNH’s website:

since many of the environments represented have been exploited or degraded, some dioramas preserve places and animals as they no longer exist. The viewer of a habitat group diorama is able to travel not only across continents, but also, in some cases, through time.

Sambar and Swamp Deer

View the complete flickr set here.

So being the nerd that I am, I had to see TDTESS opening night. Understand, though, that I went into the film completely biased against it. The trailer had me pretty upset when I first saw it months ago. It was clear that the original 1951 film’s thoughtfulness was being replaced with flashy swarms of nanobots, explosions, and gratuitous CGI, but the main reason I disliked this new version before even seeing it was the question, Why remake a great film?

Gort 2008

I have previously reviewed the original DTESS as one of the great, must-see classic films for being ahead of its time. Baby Boomers often tell me about how much the original film scared them as kids, but when I see it, I only see a positive, redeeming film.

Klaatu and Gort 1951

TDESS is a cult favorite among geeks. Announcing “Klaatu Barada Nikto” is a surefire way to gauge how hip another nerd is (bonus points for knowing what other films the saying has appeared in). I believe the quote makes an appearance in the 2008 version, but it’s so distorted and alien as to be unrecognizable. Unfortunately, this is also how the rest of the film pays tribute to the original.

1951’s Klaatu comes to Earth to deliver an important message about the human race’s place in the cosmos. 2008’s Klaatu has simply come to kill us all. His reasoning is that planets capable of supporting life are too rare to let the human race kill this one; however, Roger Ebert best articulates why this is faulty logic:

The aliens are advanced enough to zip through the galaxy, yet have never discovered evolution, which should have reassured them life on earth would survive the death of mankind. Their space spheres have landed all over the planet, and a multitude of species have raced up and thrown themselves inside… the aliens plan to save all forms of life except the intelligent one.

Both the 1951 and 2008 versions cleverly acknowledge that teachers and academics are the true leaders of the human race, but in the 2008 version it is the humans who must teach Klaatu this rather than 1951’s Klaatu having to teach us this fact by refusing to meet with world leaders, instead choosing to assemble an audience of professors to deliver his climactic speech.

And what’s wrong with having some dialogue? The best segment in the 2008 DTESS is when Klaatu debates a Nobel Laureate played by John Cleese about the future, or lack thereof, of the human race. The vastly superior extraterrestrial who has traveled light years to exterminate the human race gets completely schooled by the Earthling Professor. Klaatu, for all his powers, isn’t very bright in this remake.

He’s also a hypocrite, judging us for being violent and destructive, and then proceeding to use violent and destructive methods against us. 1951’s Klaatu was far more powerful than this new kid on the block. He had an unstoppable robot that he preferred not to use, could make the Earth stand still just as a demonstration, and never had to kill or harm anyone, because the truly powerful know that, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

When you remake a great film, try to do it with a little more competence.