Category: Science

SDG here (not Jimmy) with a (slanted) story from Scientific American that nevertheless offers some encouraging evidence regarding acceptance of the effectiveness of natural family planning among secular researchers.

Here’s their (slanted) headline:

Modified Rhythm Method Shown to Be as Effective as the Pill—But Who Has That Kind of Self-Control?

The slant is also evident through the story, from the "Vatican roulette" reference in the lede (opening paragraph) to one researcher’s disparaging remarks about the term "natural family planning":

"For many couples this is highly unnatural. ‘Natural’ is methods that you don’t have to think about, that allow you to be spontaneous…"

Sorry, but there’s nothing "natural" about latex barriers (which you certainly do "have to think about") or barrages of hormones specifically designed to short-circuit the natural functioning of a major bodily system (which you ought to be thinking about).

NFP, meanwhile, is entirely "natural" in the most meaningful and relevant sense: It accords with natural law, with the truth about human nature. It may or may not come “naturally” to couples raised in a sex-obsessed immediate-gratification contraceptive culture, but then neither do things like fidelity and lifelong commitment. Unsurprisingly, couples who do have "that kind of self-control" also turn out to be a lot better than their contracepting peers at the latter things too.

GET THE (SLANTED) STORY.

A reader writes:

Any thought on THIS?

I was re-reading Lovecraft’s “A Shadow out of Time” yesterday and later in the day this odd image makes the news.

Maybe it’s an inter-planetary elder sign or maybe the “stars are right” for you know who’s return.  I think Lovecraft would have found it amusing to make it into a part of his Mythos. 

I think you’re right that Lovecraft definitely would have worked it into his mythos, if he’d known about it.

Clark Ashton Smith would have had fun with it, too, if he’d known about it when writing The Door to Saturn.

My own thoughts are these:

1) It’s very, very strange that Saturn would have a hexagonal storm at it’s north pole.

2) Maybe the Saturnian Santa Claus has a thing for geometry.

3) I expect Kara Thrace to fly out of it as part of her destiny to lead the rag-tag fleet to Earth.

MORE HERE.

(CHT to the second reader, who also spotted the Kara Thrace connection!)

The first reader also asks:

By the way,  several months ago you blogged about “the Mound” story.  It’s been many years since I’ve read it and I was wondering how you knew the exact location to have found it by the satellite images?

I discovered that the story The Mound was based on a real geological formation known as Ghost Mound, between Hydro and Binger, Oklahoma and found its latitude and longitude recorded in a list of GPS coordinates for people wanting to visit various mound formations in the area. (Here’s another source listing them.)

MORE HERE.

AND HERE.

AND HERE.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING STORY ABOUT DOING CPR ON SOMEONE SUFFERING FROM CARDIAC FAILURE.

It turns out that the use of mouth-to-mouth respiration as part of keeping someone alive may actually decrease their chance fo survival. The more important thing is doing chest comrpessions to keep their blood moving. Taking time away from doing chest compressions to try to force air into their lungs may do more harm than good. It also may deter people from helping them in the first place, since many have an aversion to mouth-to-mouth.

Something to think about in case you’re ever in an emergency situation in which someone needs CPR.

Okay, you won’t be able to do it any time soon.

I mean, Virgin Galactic and its competitors haven’t gotten off the groundplanet yet, and there’s all that terraforming that would have to be done, but it looks like the raw materials are there for a totally tubular Martian vacation.

We’ve known for some time that Mars has water on it, but until recently we haven’t known how much.

Now there are reports that Mars’ polar caps–if melted–would provide enough liquid water to cover the planet with an ocean 36 feet deep.

That would be if the planet’s surface were totally smooth, which it isn’t, of course, so what you’d get is patches of land poking up through the water–islands and stuff (Olympus Mons would probably be a continent)–and that means just one thing . . .

BEACHES!

Lots and lots of red sand beaches.

Oh, and there’s one other thing you’ll need for really good surfing on a terraformed Mars: a big moon to cause tidal forces. Phobos and Deimos just won’t cut it. So we’ll need to tow into orbit a really big hunk o’rock that some other planet isn’t using. Maybe one of the Jovian sattelites or something.

Just think of the interesting wave dynamics that would be possible with Mars’ lower gravity. I’m imagining really big curls or something.

In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

P.S. The story also says that they’ve detected traces of possible liquid water on Mars right now–a possible habitat for microbial life, so be sure and get your shots before you go.

The following documentary was produced by BBC4. It’s called The Great Global Warming Swindle. And it’s devastating.

It’s also an hour and thirteen minutes long, but well worth it.

HERE’S A SUMMARY FROMTHOMAS SOWELL.

Sowell’s summary is good, but no substitute for watching the whole thing.

And now for our feature presentation . . .

I’m sure that’s what his private brain care specialist would say about Br. Guy Consolmagno, who’s part of the Vatican’s crack astronomy team or "Astro Force."

CHT to the reader who e-mailed THIS STORY from the Concord Monitor about Br. Guy.

EXCERPTS:

"Science is a way of praising God," he said in an interview yesterday afternoon.

As the Vatican’s curator of meteorites, Consolmagno sends meteorites where requested for exhibits or experiments. The crown jewel, he said, is a fist-sized meteorite that landed on and killed a dog in Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. It was once a part of Mars. [FLASH! MARS ATTACKES EARTH DOG!] He also conducts his own research, has traversed Antarctica collecting meteorites and takes daily walks in the [Castel Gandolfo] palace gardens. [MARS ATTACKS ANTARCTICA! ARE PALACE GARDENS NEXT?]

Consolmagno said every physical scientist starts with three inherently "religious assumptions": The universe exists and is not a figment of the imagination. The universe is dictated by discoverable rules. And discovering those rules is something that’s worth doing.

That third tenant is tied to intuition. When a scientist, even without data, pursues a hypothesis based on intuition, he blends faith and science.

"You say, ‘That is so elegant that I’m willing to bet two years of my life following this up,’ " he said. "That is something that comes from the soul. That’s not something that a computer can work out."

The second tenant may be a statement of fact today. But hundreds of years ago, the basic laws of science had not yet been discovered.

"It’s interesting to note that those people, the first scientists, were all monks, they were all clerics," he said. "And their sense that the universe makes sense came from, first of all, their belief that God created the universe in a logical way."

Consolmagno said many Catholics have been taught that Catholicism and science don’t mix, though they always have. The Big Bang theory that the Earthuniverse originated in an extremely dense and hot space and expanded was developed by a Belgian priest. Though many people believe that Galileo was shunned by the Church for saying the sun was the center of the universe, he was close to many church leaders. Consolmagno said church officials don’t advocate for a strict interpretation of the book of Genesis, which includes the Christian creation story.

"The cosmology of Genesis is not only not the cosmology of the 21st century. It wasn’t even the cosmology of the second century," he said. "The Romans knew that the world looked different from a flat plane with a bowl over it and water above and below. And that didn’t seem to bother them."

The conflict between evolutionary science and creationism in the United States comes from the Protestant tradition, not the Catholic one, he said.

"American Catholicism is in a Protestant culture," he said. "We borrow a lot of our attitudes, along with a lot of our hymns, and not always the best of either."

"The Heavens proclaim the greatness of God," he said. "That’s why we study the heavens."

GET THE STORY.

CHT to the reader who sent THIS MOVIE of the moon passing in front of the sun. The film is taken in extreme ultra violet light, and it’s really quite striking to watch it in motion–striking enough to make it NASA’s astronomy picture of the day on Saturday.

MORE INFO.

CHT to the reader who sent in

THIS STORY ABOUT WHAT MAY BE THE BIGGEST SQUID EVER BROUGHT ASHORE.

It’s a colossal squid that is 39 feet long and weighs 990 pounds. (That’s 15 kilometers and 852 grams, for those of you who use metric.)

It was caught in Antarctic waters off New Zealand and weighs 50% more than the previous biggest catch (which was 660 lbs. or 428 grams).

This one was so big that

If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, one expert said.

Now, this is a colossal squid, not a giant one. There’s a difference. Colossal squid are gianter than giant squid.

Giant squid get almost as long as colossal squid, but they don’t weigh as much. Both of them apparently have severe tussles with whales, given the scars we find on whales who lived to tell the tale. (In the whale community, they probably have entire ballads about fighting giant and colossal squids.)

I find these creatures fascinating because we know so little about them. They’re just down there in the water, skulking about, doing their sinister business, and rarely coming up to where we can get a good look at them. I mean, they never come over and visit or anything.

We only just recently got video of a live giant squid.

HERE’S THE VIDEO.

HERE’S MORE INFO ON COLOSSAL SQUID.

AND ON GIANT SQUID.

AND ON THE VAMPIRE SQUID FROM HELL.

Here’s what Cardinal Pell of Sydney had to say:

Global warming doomsdayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in Central Queensland and then here in Sydney.  January also was unusually cool.

We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters as some zealots have been painting extreme scenarios to frighten us.   They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, that there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight story building, the Amazon basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and in Greenland melts.

An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics while a U.S.A. television correspondent compared skeptics to “holocaust deniers”.

A local newspaper editorial’s complaint about the doomsdayers’ religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity.  Christians don’t go against reason although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace probabilities.  What we were seeing from the doomsdayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.

I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence.  I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all.  But enough is enough.

A few fixed points might provide some light.  We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible.   Neither should it be too surprising to learn that the media during the last 100 years has alternated between promoting fears of a coming Ice Age and fear of global warming!

Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years, as with the Federation Drought and in the 1930s.  One drought lasted fourteen years.

We all know that a cool January does not mean much in the long run, but neither does evidence from a few years only.  Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations in limited periods and places to misrepresent longer patterns.

The evidence on warming is mixed, often exaggerated, but often reassuring.  Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one fifth of a degree centigrade per decade.  The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer and especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.

The East Anglia university climate research unit found that global temperatures did not increase between 1998 – 2005 and a recent NASA satellite found that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years.  Is mild global warming a Northern phenomenon?

While we might have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg off Dunedin as large as an aircraft carrier we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.

The science is more complicated than the propaganda!

SOURCE.

Actually,

THIS AIN’T A BAD IDEA.

Neither is the idea of donating cord blood, as long as donor privacy is protected.