Excerpt: "And what of the people born on dates that no longer exists in the new calendar, such as 31 January, or during Newton Week? Henry suggests they celebrate on either 30 January or "consider themselves to be born on the fourth of July" (which falls on a Wednesday)."

An it doesn't stop there: "And he is not stopping with dates - Henry says the entire world should operate on Greenwich Mean Time. People in the eastern US, for example, would have to get used to eating their midday meals when the clocks read 1700. "People are adaptable if benefits are there," says Henry."

That'd be a confusing set of changes for a while. -Pk

Novel calendar system creates regular dates

funny and creepy at the same time. the occular cavitiy of a powerpuff girl is the size of a buick.

[ awesome! -k]

What Cartoon Skeletons Look Like

Imagine two people standing about 500 feet from a car that is against wall around a bend. One is holding binoculars, the other a piece of paper. One looks through his binoculars at the car and says, "Someone was driving that car too fast, skidded out, and slammed into the wall."

The other person says, "I don't believe that, the police report says that it was placed there by God."

"I know that the report says that, but I can pretty clearly see skid marks on the road, the car is smashed, the windows shattered, and there is broken glass on the road."

"I don't necessarily agree. I see what you mean about the marks, but they don't look that clear to me. I am also not sure that the stuff on the road is glass. To me it looks like it could be water. Besides, I believe Officer Joe, he is a good man."

"I know that Officer Joe is honest, but I think he is mistaken. Through my binoculars it looks pretty clear that the car was driven into the wall. It looks like a man drove it there, the skid marks are clear, that is definitely say that the stuff on the road is broken glass and not water. I also think I see the man's head leaning against the steering column. It looks to me like an accident."

"That is fine. It is just your opinion though. I believe the report that God put it there. You know, binoculars often produce optical distortions, there is no such thing as a perfectly accurate lens. In addition, you aren't entirely sure about the man's head, it may not be that there is a man in the car, you said that you aren't sure. If there is not a man in the car, then how could it have gotten there? The police report says it was placed there by God, and if no one was driving it..."

"Ok, ok, I know about distortions and all, but I use these binoculars all the time and I know what is and is not a distortion. Besides, to say that the car was put there by God just sounds a little..."

"A little what?"

"I mean, come on. The car was driven into the wall. This is a stupid argument. I can see that..."

"Can you see the driver?"

"Well I can sort of make out..."

"No, you can't say for sure. But you are calling me stupid. Why can't you admit that you have your opinion and that I have mine?"

------------------------------

If you are a scientist, this is what the creationist argument looks like. The scientist isn't smarter or better than the other person, he just has a set of mathematical and instrumental tools, the binoculars, that he is skilled at using with knowledge of their limitations.

With the techniques of modern biology, the evolution argument is about that obvious. The scientist sees an incredible amount of evidence that people descended from primates. Just like in the metaphor, the creationist seems to be lacking binoculars. The only difference is that in reality the toolset is differential equations, statistics, technology, chemistry, and complex instrumentation. Unfortunately, this i... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Evolution in Education

Research under way at ORNL could lead to entirely new, highly energy-efficient ways of lighting buildings using the power of sunlight. In addition to providing light, the technology would convert sunlight to electricity much more efficiently than conventional solar technologies. In commercial buildings, lighting consumes more electric energy than any other building end-use. It accounts for more than a third of all electricity consumed for commercial use in the United States.

--This is kinda cool stuff, it uses fiber optics to distribute light from a collector on top of a building to offices below. There is also a video explaining it here: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/hybridlighting/video/hlvideo1.avi

[ Very cool. -k]

Hybrid Lighting

No model yet proposed explains all observed gully features, the scientists note. However, their data points them toward gully creation due to subsurface water. Carbon dioxide, melting ground ice, dry landslide, and snowmelt models, they explain, "inadequately conform to the MGS observations and are the least likely mechanisms of gully formation proposed to date."

[ Interesting. Am I the only one here who wants to take a vacation to mars someday? -k]

Mars Gullies Likely Formed By Underground Aquifers

] Still, relatively cheap energy costs in the United States
] mean most building owners remain unconcerned with
] efficiency, said Srinivas Katipamula, a research engineer
] at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Of the roughly
] 4.7 million commercial buildings in the United States,
] only 10 percent have energy management systems or time
] clocks that turn lights on or off based on the time of
] day, he said.

[ This is the key issue. Market forces are very good at curbing demand for scarce resources, but the more i read about the world energy infrastructure, the less confident i am that the market can respond in time. In a situation where availability of a resource drops sharply while demand continues to increase due to other factors, the market shocks will be severe. If we're gonna minimize the real cost (much of which is still in the future), it's time to start on this now. In fact, it was probably time to start decades ago. But it's ever so hard to get anyone to spend money on R&D without a short-term financial incentive. It doesn't appear that market forces operate well on long time scales. Efficiencies in existing products and processes will go a long way to reducing our demand for energy, saving money in the long run, not to mention the resulting environmental benefits. -k]

Smart buildings gain momentum

] Astronomers have found a cloud of frozen sugar near the
] centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, it was revealed
] today.

[ The real question is, was it caramel or nougat? -k]

Sweet Discovery at Centre of Milky Way

] If we accept the idea that we are born with a large
] amount of damage, it follows that even small improvements
] to the processes of early human development%u2014ones
] that increase the numbers of initially functional
] elements%u2014could result in a remarkable fall in
] mortality and a significant extension of human life.
] Indeed, there is mounting evidence now in support of the
] idea of fetal origins of adult degenerative diseases and
] early-life programming of aging and longevity.

[ Very interesting article. Good stuff... -k]

Why we break

] "I think we'll see a lot more of this type of technology
] in the future," said O'Connor. "Sustainable development
] and clean production through white biotechnology is the
] way forward. Not only bacteria to clean up the mess we
] make -- as in oil-eating bacteria -- but to prevent the
] mess in the first place."

[ Hear hear. Good stuff, man. -k]

Bacteria turn toxin into plastic

] Asymmetrical subjects were more likely to slam the
] telephone receiver down at the end of a call than
] symmetrical people, indicating that rejection made them
] angrier, the researchers report in the American Journal
] of Human Biology1.

[ I wonder if I'm lopsided... I never noticed, but I've been known to slam the phone down. And punch holes in drywall. -k]

Lop-sided features linked to temper