106 billion people are thought to have lived on this planet so far. Here’s a graph with some interesting stats on that. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ww4f/4108672641/sizes/l/
I’m reading a recent book called The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Written by Ray Kurzweil who is a fairly known futurist having predicted things from the Internet as we know it (Back in the early 80s), iPhones (well, basically the iPhone) as well as having developed a number of interesting technologies himself, Kurzweil makes a pretty interesting case that by 2045 (his predictions are very specific to invite comparison when the time comes) humans will have become esse...
If I had more free time (and I hope to acquire this free time in the future as my schedule lightens up in early 2010) I would like to make something that does this: A device that you would connect to your main power box in your house and then sends a wireless signal to your PC telling you how much power your home is using in real-time. This data could then be shared, in real-time with on the net to a friendly website that would display with graphs your monthly power usage and compare it ...
In the Eastern part of the United States bald-faced hornets are pretty common. They make large, spherical nests in trees and elsewhere. The are black with white faces and are quite scary looking. But before you go to try to wipe them out, consider this - they are generally pretty docile, don't harass people, and have cool looking nests. Not enough? Okay, they eat pests, most notably, they eat yellow jackets. A lot of them. Yellow jackets are one of the most annoying bugs out there.&n...
Remember all that data showing how 1998 was the hottest year on record. NASA, which was a major source for this data, quietly updated their stats due to a measuring bug. No press release about it (for obvious reasons) and they haven't bothered to correct most of the graphs on the NASA site. But here is the latest from NASA's site on average temperatures: Yea, the great depression when everyone was driving in those big old SUVs. Meanwhile, temperatures during the boom...
They've built a plant that uses plasma arcs to take sewage and garbage and convert it into energy with the resulting steam being used by another plant and the remaining hardened sludge used for roads. Gotta love that. Read the whole thing.
Steven Den Beste's site seems to be down but I had a copy fo an article he wrote some time ago that talks about the reason why Noah's Arc is a fairy tale. There are many many reasons why Noah's Arc is fiction but this is one of the better arguments I've seen. Steven's site is located here . I just had the distinct displeasure of encountering someone who is a Biblical literalist (and who actually believes that all evidence supports the fairy tale of Noah's Ark). Let's review the s...
Most people are aware that politics can affect how history is recorded. But every scientific endeavor suffers from such things. In biology, zoology has gone through the same sort of thing. When you are dealing with anything subjective (and lots of things in science is subjective) politics come into play. And few things are more subjective than organism classification. With that said, zoologists have a basic classiciation system. It's not perfect, but it is accepted and that'...
Gives me a headache just seeing someone compare evolution to space alien seeding as being "equally plausible". Evolution is a theory. But some people here don't seem to grasp that there is a big difference between a theory and a hypothesis or even a hypothesis and a random guess pulled out of ones rear end. There are a lot of things we don't know "for a fact". We don't know, for a fact, precisely how gravity works. We don't know, for a fact, precisely how magnetism works. ...
Had a great weekend at my uncle's. I took my telescope which is a Mead ETX 125. I can never get the results with it that I see on-line. After a lot of setup, I managed to see Jupiter and its moons. But let me be clear on what that means: Jupiter is a dot and its moons are tiny dots by it. I am using the equipment that came with it which is the 73 magnification lens that came wiht it. I don't have a "Barlow" lens yet which I suspect I need to get that to have any real luck. The pr...
I often talk to people who are convinced that that aliens are visiting our planet. They believe in UFOs. Having thought about it, I've concluded that it's highly unlikely that we're being visited by aliens. It's not that I don't think there is intelligent life in the universe. Space is big. Very big. And there are trillions of worlds in this universe and so statistically it seems pretty likely there are intelligent beings on other planets. But how close would these beings be? ...
"Oh we're getting quite close to cracking the secret to immortality" So we hear anyway from scientists who are exploring the secrets of anti-aging. Basically there are a handful of theories on what causes aging and how we might stop it. One of the more promising ones is gene therapy. Through gene therapy we can restore our tissues to the healthy adult level and hence delay or completely stop the onset of old age. I have a number of books around here that talk about various str...
Today there is a report in the UK concerning the largest test on genetically modified crops done so far there. The "results" show that genetically modified crop fields have fewer butterflies and bees in them than the non-genetically modified ones. Their conclusion: GM foods scare off "good" insects like bees and butterflies. Europe has a "Thing" about Genetically modified foods. They would argue that they are being cautionary. This, from a continent that boasts the most nuclear power plants...
The internet has definitely taken a beating this week. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week the Internet was practically shut down for some people. Particularly Tuesday and Wednesday. The first chart represents how many people are doing stuff on the net. The second two charts represents the lag and packet loss. As you could see, on 9/2 and 9/3 traffic was down yet lag and packet loss were up. That spells doom for dial up users and pain for everyone else as well. I st...
This was taken with the Hubble space telescope. As I mentioned last week , I bought the $300 ETX-70 hoping to see Mars up close. Anyone who is vaguely familiar with astronomy is probably laughing at the "typical newbie" naiveté when it comes to astronomy. The ETX-70 is a 2 inch or so telescope. 2 inches describes the diameter of the lens. Basically it just means that the dot in the sky is a slightly sharper bigger dot. If you want to have a shot at seeing anything of Mars, you...