Ahoy Captain Kirk! This just in from The Sun (no pun intended) – “A star primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday. It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.”

“It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.”

One wonders – how far, exactly, is “half way across the universe”?

Beam me up, Scotty!

posted by Mudd

What’s the poor sustainable wind-farm industry to do? Now an Indian tribe is on the case against the gigantic turbines.

BOSTON — “In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project.”

“The park service decision came in response to a request from two Massachusetts Indian tribes, who said the 130 proposed wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise, which requires unobstructed views across the sound, and disturb ancestral burial grounds.” [New York Times]

Pow wow highway! This is good stuff. Political correctness stands poised to enter an entirely new phase of craziness, pitting the Renewables against the Spirituals against the Sustainables against the Nimbies against the Growth Klubbers Anonymous.

So far none of the players have asked the proverbial question – “Doesn’t the Emperor look kinda naked?”

Of course he does.

posted by Mudd

Good news for Ted Nugent fans – “The oft-cited credo that more guns equal more crime is being tested by facts on the ground this year: Even as gun ownership has surged in the US in the past year, violent crime, including murder and robbery, has dropped steeply.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Word of advice for would-be burglars in my neighborhood: Can you say Mossberg 12-gauge?

posted by Mudd

Good news for Bed Hoppers Anonymous – the BC News reports that “A team from the University of Pisa in Italy found the bodily chemistry which makes people sexually attractive to new partners lasts, at most, two years.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel much better having an excuse for the wandering eye syndrome.

posted by Mudd

They smirked when Dave Foreman said as much. Now it’s cool. “Evolutionary psychologists who echo Chomsky say we are stuck with the same brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, with just a little tinkering around the edges.” [New York Times]

Kinda sums up the modern plight of Homo erectus asphaltus.

posted by Mudd

Two weeks behind the rest of the media, Fox News has suddenly taken an interest in – solar power? “On a strip of California’s Mojave Desert, two dozen rare tortoises could stand in the way of a sprawling solar-energy complex in a case that highlights mounting tensions between wilderness conservation and the nation’s quest for cleaner power.”

At least they got the most salient point – “The construction would come with a cost: Government scientists have concluded that more than 6 square miles of habitat for the federally threatened desert tortoise would be permanently lost.”

Before it’s over, the American Southwest is liable to resemble a scene out of Blade Runner. Or more likely, Road Warrior.

What would Hayduke do?

posted by Mudd

This is good – a real brain infarction. As reported in the BBC News, “Scientists have shown for the first time that ‘lifeless’ prion proteins, devoid of all genetic material, can evolve just like higher forms of life.”

Imagine the bio-ethical questions the White Lab Coat Guys are now quibbling over:

If it contains no DNA, how can it be considered alive?
If prions are alive, do we have a duty to protect the little buggers?

And, of course the Pope has a few questions brewing in his noggin as well.

Leave it to Science to keep things popping. The last thing we need in the new decade is boredom!

posted by Mudd

From the BBC News – “The Supreme Court in Montana has ruled that nothing in the state’s law prevents patients from seeking medical assistance to commit suicide. The ruling paves the way for Montana to become the third US state alongside Washington and Oregon to allow patients to seek the procedure.”

Hey – isn’t Montana one of those states with no sales tax? Now we know where to take that final geriatric vacation.

posted by Mudd

Breaking news from Science Daily – To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data. In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

posted by Mudd

As reported by The BBC News – “We should be under no illusion as to the effects of global warming, natural or man-made. It will change the face of the planet even though we don’t really know where, when or how, in any kind of detail.

But natural climate change has altered the face of the planet many times before, and in far more dramatic ways. Even the rate of change expected today is not outside the limits of natural change.” Or so says the erudite (Professor Clive Finlayson, Director, Gibraltar Museum)

Good stuff ; except for the multitude of “environmental groups” currently basing their entire fund raising campaigns on climate change mojo.

Here’s the kicker – “So, in terms of the well-being of our planet, little of what is coming will scare it. It has seen extreme global warming, as when tropical forests covered the poles, and extreme deep freezes, as when icebergs reached the latitude of Lisbon, Portugal – with strays drifting into the Mediterranean. The difference with this one, and we should be open and honest about it, is that it will affect millions of people. Our own history, and that of our Neanderthal cousins and our predecessors, has been shaped by climate change and luck. Our population was so small that being in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, really mattered.”

Small populations adapt; mega populations can’t. Ring a bell? It should – 6.5 billion and counting.

It’s about time the Big Eco-Groups quit whining, pooled their resources, and invested in free condoms for all comers (no pun). Their new slogan – Saving a planet near you, one condom at a time.

posted by Mudd