Category Archives: Science

Vatican to Creationists: Suck it!

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Cardinal and GalileoVia BoingBoing.

The Vatican never actually abandoned the practice of keeping pet scientists, a fact which I welcome with equal parts relief and shock, for they have been very quiet lo these last four centuries. I didn't think they'd ever recovered from the Galileo PR disaster.

But there are scientists at the Vatican, and one, Brother Consolmagno, is in fact an astronomer, and not only is he over that Galileo thing, he's also over that Copernicus thing, and he's right out there giving interviews to The Scotsman in which he says…

Copernican View

"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

He also had a few pithy points to make about Papal PR as well.

Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a Pope checks out the eclipsespeech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled "Why the Pope has an Astronomer", said the idea of papal infallibility had been a "PR disaster". What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept "somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority".

"It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear," he said.

Streaming Eagle Cam 3.0: Swartz Bay

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Well, the original eagle cam is done for the year; no hatching eggs means a lot of disappointed readers (and not a few conspiracy theorists, I might add) so the Hornby Island team has found a new nest, with chicks, near the Swartz Bay ferry terminal on Vancouver Island. FYI This is the ferry that takes people to Vancouver from Victoria…only it's not really very close to Victoria…it's complicated.

Anyway, the link is the same: Streaming Eagle Cam Swartz Bay this time.

And here's a pair of Peregrine Falcons in Harrisburg, with chicks.

And my previous posts on eagles:

Streaming Eagle Cam RIP

Streaming Eagle Cam 2.0 Baby Eagles in Colorado

Eagle Chick on Santa Cruz Island, California

and

My Original article on the Eagle Cam; perhaps these new eagles are the ones Christi and I spotted in the story here.

Streaming Eagle Cam: Eggs, RIP

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dark side upWell, this is the end of hopes for eaglets from the famed Hornby Island pair of baldies.

A week ago, one of the eggs went missing without a trace, and this Thursday morning the last remaining egg was found crushed, with no sign of a chick within.

Scientists think the pair may be simply too old to raise a pair of viable eggs to chick stage, although they allow it could just be bad luck. Theories as to what happened to the other egg include predators such as ravens, or the parents inadvertently or deliberately pushing it out of the nest. Apparently, on occasion eagles will decide a certain egg is not viable and will delete it. No traces of eggshell were found on the ground, but another predator or scavenger could have made off with the egg-coated snacks.

"At 11:24 a.m. the eagle got up and the egg was completely broken. I looked as closely as I could but could see no evidence of a chick hatched successfully or of a dead chick," wrote Carrick in an e-mail.

"The parent [female, I believe] looked at this central area for a while and then sat back down just like any other time. We'll have to wait for a while longer."

And here's the eagle cam, for what it's worth now. Just a plain ol' pair of empty nesters.

We Like the Moon!

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God, do we love it! Working through my YouTube obsession, here is my very favoritiest music video ever, from RatherGood, the Spongmonkeys (note spelling!) performing their hit We Like the Moon.

They’re Made out of Meat. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, meat…

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Another from BoingBoing today. This is the single best thing I've ever seen on YouTube; this is Art. And this is the whole short story by Terry Bisson on which it is based.

“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”

“Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?And by the way, unless my memory very much deceives me, which it does not in cases of esoteric trivia such as this, the diner is exactly the same one used for the Twilight Zone episode Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up, and the backup players correspond more or less directly with the bit players in that ep. Written, as all the best ones were, by Rod Serling.

Narrator: "Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out you've just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You've heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you'll be a part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle, no, their task is even harder. They've got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you'll search with them, because you've just landed in the Twilight Zone."