HOWTO ask good skeptical questions - Boing Boing

In this Richard Dawkins Foundation video, Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer explains the ten criteria we can use when confronted with claims about how the world works that serve as a “baloney detection kit.”

Source: Boing Boing

 

Sight restored in less than a month using stem cell contact lenses

The humble contact lens has long been used to improve people’s vision, but now researchers have restored sight in patients suffering corneal damage using a technique where contact lenses are cultured with stem cells. Fast, cheap and non-invasive, the groundbreaking technique even has the potential for regrowing skin and other organs…

Source: Gizmo Emerging Technology Magazine

 

Sony’s Profits Down 95%

Sony just reported that through the fourth quarter of 2008, their profits plummeted a staggering 95%, losing $1.67 billion. The reported down profits were taken from last year’s Christmas season, usually the time of the year that all companies including Sony sell the most products. This is the first loss that Sony has reported since 1995 when they produced several box-office flops. In lieu of the situation, Sony is reportedly cutting 8,000 jobs and going to shut down five or six of the 57 worldwide factories. Will the headless chicken that is the economy ever recover?

Source: OSNews

 

Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) — Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.
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Source: Washington Post

 

Harper’s Index - The Bush years in numbers

Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400

Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser: 1

Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

And this list goes on…

Source: Harper’s

 

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) on Vimeo

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my voice recorder and asked her to start from the top.

I then created some very basic animation in Final Cut to go along with her narration.

Source: Vimo

 

Stuck ‘agent’ tells cops of secret bomb mission

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — It wasn’t the preferred way to enter the Knoxville Museum of Art, but Richard Anthony Smith told police he was on a mission. The 25-year-old Knoxville man called 911 from his cell phone before dawn Wednesday saying he was trapped in an air conditioning duct leading from the museum roof, Knoxville police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said.

Police and firefighters reached the roof, found a rope and cable and followed them to a vent shaft. Peering inside, they spotted Smith about 45 feet down.

“Mission failed,” he told them.

Hoisted up and read his rights, Smith told police he was a “special agent from the United States Illuminati, badge number 0931″ and had rappelled onto the museum from a helicopter, a police report said.

He said he was following orders to “defuse and confiscate” a Soviet-made nuclear warhead, specifically a “MERV6SS-22AN” warhead, according to the report. The bomb supposedly was hidden in a blue, plastic cow sculpture in the museum basement, he said.

Source: Stuck ‘agent’ tells cops of secret bomb mission

 

Monsanto Owns Your Food

The controversial Monsanto company owns over 11,000 patents on (genetically engineered) crops. This corporation actually owns almost all the food you are eating. A short video about them is posted here.

Via HaHa

 

Hypocrite GOP House Leader Boehner wants wiretapping protection — but only for himself

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Tim Jones sez, “If you’ve been following the fight to hold phone companies accountable for illegal wiretapping, you probably thought the level of hypocrisy on display in the Republican leadership couldn’t get any more blatant. Well, you thought wrong.

Politico reports today that Republican Leader John Boehner has been fighting hard for his own right to protection from illegal wiretapping, even though he’s simultaneously trying to to deny ordinary Americans the same rights. Oh, and he’s earned himself $1.1 million in the process.”

When ordinary Americans were being wiretapped, Boehner’s attacked them and their right to privacy, claiming “I believe (phone companies) deserve immunity” from the law. But when Boehner himself was being wiretapped, he had no hesitation to claim his own right to privacy, claiming “no one is above the law.”

When ordinary Americans are victimized, Boehner’s taken every opportunity to caricature their representatives at EFF and ACLU as “unscrupulous trial lawyers” who are “trying to find a way to get into the pockets of the American companies.” But when Boehner himself is the victim, suddenly defense attorneys don’t seem so unscrupulous to him, and he has no problem employing his own litigators to receive a $1.1 million reward.

Link

Source: Boing Boing - Hypocrite GOP House Leader Boehner wants wiretapping protection — but only for himself.

 

Flying RC penis violates chessmaster’s airspace

A speech by famed chess player Garry Kasparov was interrupted Saturday by a remote controlled flying penis. Since many of you are at work or school we’ll leave all the pictures, videos, and tasteless jokes after the break.

Source: hack a day - Flying RC penis violates chessmaster’s airspace.

 

Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper’s parachute found

36 years after he jumped from a hijacked plane with a bag containing $200,000 in ransom, D.B. Cooper’s whereabouts remain unknown. But his parachute was discovered yesterday.

If it is Cooper’s parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper’s money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there’s no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.

“If this is D.B. Cooper’s parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means,” Carr said. “That whole theory is out the window.”

Link

(Via Reason)

Source: Boing Boing - Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper’s parachute found.

 

Google and Your Health Record

Concerns loom as Google begins testing health records system: I can’t decide if this is scary or not. Dangerous? How do you manage security for something like this?

The pilot will involve transferring the health information of between 1,500 and 10,000 patients who have records at the Cleveland Clinic, which already has over 100,000 records stored in its own digital database. Patients will then be able to have access to their own records online, wherever they go (with an Internet connection), which Google thinks will help reduce conflicts in diagnoses and prescriptions between doctors.

(Via Gadgetopia.)

 

Microsoft Wants to Purchase Yahoo

Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for USD 44.6bn in cash and shares. The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo’s board, is 62% above Yahoo’s closing share price on Thursday. Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional USD 300m this year trying to revive the company. It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft.

(Via OSNews.)

 

Fox helps itself to photo of blogger’s dog

Sweetney blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez and her husband were surprised to see a photo of their dog, Truman, appear in Fox’s “Happy Holiday” ticker during a football game. According to Gaughran-Perez, someone from Fox yanked a photo (far left) of Truman in a Santa suit from her blog or Flickr stream, Photoshopped in a hat, and inserted the image (left) into their holiday promotion graphic rotation. Gaughgran-Perez is quite peeved. Truman couldn’t be reached for comment. From Gaughran-Perez’s post on the matter:

What really, REALLY sticks in my craw is that following all this I was forced not only to sit through several more hours of football just to make certain they didn’t show the image again (yes, please shower me with your pity), but I also had to endure the endless tape-loop of FOX’s NFL copyright warnings, which seemed to repeat every five minutes or so. Hilariously enough, FOX Broadcasting and the NFL are apparently very, very concerned about legal rights to their telecasts and rebroadcasts of their telecasts. They’re concerned about — ho ho, it’s rich — PEOPLE STEALING THEIR SHIT. But as far as them stealing other people’s shit goes? Errm, not so much.

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)

 

Ireland Moves to Ban Icandescent Light Bulbs

Gormley lights the way with ban on bulbs: This sounds a little harsh, but it needs to happen.

Ireland yesterday became the first country in the world to ban the traditional lightbulb.

Householders will be forced to switch to new long-life low-energy bulbs in 12 months’ time.

New legislation is being introduced banning the sale of the normal incandescent lightbulb from January, 2009.

The incandescent lightbulb must die. Yes, I know the light from CFLs looks a little different. Tough. Saving the world takes sacrifice. Get over it.

(Via Gadgetopia.)

 

Climate change goal ‘unreachable’

In public, climate scientists and European politicians are generally optimistic that rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures can be curbed.

In private, some are less sanguine; but there has been a widespread unwritten code of optimism to avoid being accused of scaremongering or creating despair.

Now, science advisors to two governments with claims to leadership in global climate politics, Germany and the UK, have told BBC News it is unlikely that levels of greenhouse gases can be kept low enough to avoid a projected temperature rise of 2C (3.6F).

Via BBC

 

Dinosaur “mummy” discovered

Several years ago, paleontology graduate student Tyler Lyson, then a teenager, found an incredibly well-preserved duck-billed dinosaur on his North Dakota property. Now, a team of researchers, including Lyson, have announced details of the discovery and excavation. Amazingly, the hadrosaur, roughly 35 feet long and weighing 35 tons, was naturally “mummified.” Mineralization left much of its soft tissue, bones, tendons, ligaments, and skin intact. Seen here, a bit of its scaly skin. The scientists have named the 67 million-year-old creature Dakota. From National Geographic:

“This specimen exceeds the jackpot,” said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain’s University of Manchester and a National Geographic Expeditions Council grantee.

Most dinosaurs are known only from their bones, which are seldom found joined together as they would be in real life.

But “we’re looking at a three-dimensional skin envelope,” Manning said. “In many places it’s complete and intact—around the tail, arms, and legs and part of the body.”

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)

 

Monkies

 

iPhone price cut generates 200% sales increase

When Steve first announced the iPhone price cut, the nay-sayers were vocal: “It’s selling so poorly,” they said, “Apple has had to reduce the price significantly.”

By Piper Jaffray’s estimations, Apple and AT&T was selling an average of 9,000 iPhones per day before the price cut, resulting in 594,000 units sold by September 5th.

Combined with the 270,000 phones sold in the previous quarter, customers would have had to buy an additional 136,000 iPhones to reach 1 million units by September 9th - an increase of 200% in sales volume.

Steve was right: They’re selling boatloads of these things, and wanted to quickly sell boatloads more…and that’s what’s happening.

[Via My iTablet]

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

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