“Almost all the varieties of banana grown today are cuttings – clones, in effect – of naturally mutant wild bananas discovered by early farmers as much as 10,000 years ago. The rare mutation caused wild bananas to grow sterile, without seeds. Those ancient farmers took cuttings of the mutants, then cuttings of the cuttings.” James…
“The main conclusion by DCSD [Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty] finds that my book is ‘clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice’ because of systematically biased selection of data and arguments. But since the DCSD has neglected to take their position on the technical scientific disputes their conclusions are completely unfounded. The DCSD…
Bjorn Lomborg – the director of Denmark’s Environmental Assessment Institute and a leading would-be debunker of mainstream scientific opinion on issues like global warming and overuse of natural resources – has been found guilty by a Danish government committee of ‘scientific dishonesty’. —Paul Brown —Anti-green Author Dishonest, Says Scientific Panel (Guardian) This is the peer-review process…
“It was in August 1958 in Humboldt County, Calif., that Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator for Wallace Construction, saw prints of huge naked feet circling and walking away from his rig. The Humboldt Times in Eureka, Calif., ran a front-page story on the prints and coined the term ‘Bigfoot.’ According to family members, Mr. Wallace…
“It was there we all huddled in the concrete-block laundromat while the storm passed overhead, with lightning so continuous, the ground was lit up like high noon. What we didn’t know then was that there was a tornado passing directly above us, one that had touched down just a few miles away, then lifted up…
“[T]he story remains a contest between Moby Dick, the thinking man’s whale, in his ‘pyramidal silence’, and Captain Ahab, the thinking whale’s man. For Melville, as for Chase, malice is the authentic mark of the whale’s intelligence.” Jeremy Harding reviews four recent books that reflect on Melville’s Moby Dick —Call Me Ahab (London Review of…
“Not only was there a halo around the Sun–the so-called ’22° halo,’ which sky watchers often see–but also there was an enormous ring of light running parallel to the horizon at the same altitude as the sun. It was like a giant angel’s halo suspended above my town, interrupted every 120° by a brighter splash…
“The purpose of NASA’s Visible Earth is to provide a consistently updated, central point of access to the superset of NASA’s Earth science-related images, animations, and data visualizations. These images are considered to be public domain and, as such, are freely available to the interested public-at-large, the media, scientists, and educators for re-use and/or re-publication.”…
A goose fitted with a £3,000 electronic transmitter to chart its migration has been tracked 4,500 miles (7,245 kilometres) by satellite – to an Eskimo hunter’s freezer. —Satellite Tracker Finds Goose in Freezer (BBC) Similar:Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo programWhy Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can…
“Why does the developed world worry so much about sustainability? Because we constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor shape. Natural resources are running out. Population is growing, leaving less and less to eat. Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers. ….There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported…
“But what of the world’s water crisis? Currently the UN identifies approximately six ‘hot stains,’ places where water is so scarce that human life may not be sustainable and conflict over dwindling resources is an ever present threat. ” Ginger Adams Otis —A World Without WaterVillage Voice) Similar:York Corpus Christ Pageant, Toronto, June 7Waiting for…
Do you remember learning that black moths gained an evolutionary advantage in soot-covered woods? “Once it had been cited enough times, it became an irrefutable article of faith. Hooper’s meticulous research provides a fascinating insight into the fallibility of scientists – after all, as she points out, they are only human.” —Darwinism in a FlutterGuardian)…
: Is environmentalism a science or a political movement? “The world’s ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent. We know the Litany and have heard it so often that yet another repetition is, well, almost reassuring. There is just one problem:…