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Confession can be therapeutic. To that end I confess my contributory actions toward the phenomenon sometimes dubbed global warming or its more politically correct cousin- climate change. Bruuuuuph. Ah, what a relief. See what I mean. Not intentional mind you but akin to manslaughter- the unintentional taking of a planet's life. Here's what convinced me of my need to take responsibility:

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Who would have won if Joe Louis fought Mohammed Ali? Would a tiger whup a lion? How would it do against a bear? How about a hippo. What animals would take on an adult hippo? Not a crocodile in all likelihood. Take a look at this blog. The size of that mouth! That hippo has more in common with Ali than I first thought.

here and open thread and interesting debate

and SRP

In 1908 a mysterious explosion took place in a remote region of Siberia flattening trees over a huge expanse of land while leaving no crater. Does this explain it?

The well-known Tunguska-1908 phenomenon (TP) problems (the fast transfer of the kinetic energy of the meteoroid W~10-50 Mt TNT to air, with its heating to T>10^4 K at an altitude of 5-10 km, the final turn of the smoothly sloping, ~0-20^o to horizon, trajectory of the body through ~10^o to the West, the pattern and area of the tree-fall and trees' scorching by heat radiation, etc.) allow a simple solution within the New Explosive Cosmogony (NEC) of minor bodies, as opposed to other approaches. The NEC considers the short-period (SP) comet nuclei, to which the Tunguska body belonged, to be fragments produced in explosions of massive icy envelopes of Ganymede-type bodies saturated by products of bulk electrolysis of ices to the form of a 2H2+O2 solid solution. The nearly tangent entry into the Earth's atmosphere with V~20 km/s of such a nucleus, ~200-500 m in size and ~(5-50)x10^12 g in mass, also saturated by 2H2+O2, initiated detonation of its part of ~10^12 g at an altitude of 5-10 km. This resulted in deflection of this fraction trajectory by 5^o-10^o, and fast expansion with ~2 km/s of its detonation products brought about their fast slowing down by the air, heating of the latter to T>10^4 K and a phenomenon of high-altitude explosion. On crossing the Earth's atmosphere, the main part of the unexploded nucleus escaped into space, and this body moving presently in an SP orbit should eventually be identified in time. Its impact with W~250-3000 Mt TNT on the Earth's surface (which could occur in 1908) would have produced a crater up to ~3.5-8 km in size, with an ejection of dust that would have brought about a climatic catastrophe. The processes involved in the TP are resembling those accompanying falling P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 onto Jupiter and, possibly, the impact-caused Younger Dryas cooling ~13 ka ago.

At times in the comment sections when I've mentioned that I agree with Mike Gene about such and such, reactions from critics can generally be described as "so what else is new?" I'd like to show that we do not always see eye to eye. I direct your attention to this blog entry at Mike's blog The Design Matrix. Note the title Mike chose for this: Kitty Has a Bad Day. Kitty has a bad day? Look closely at that photo. Which species is having a bad day? The humans look terrified. The cat ecstatic. She's jumping for joy. Never had so much fun. The cat is female by the way. How do we know?

(Super) Modules rule!

Scholar Claims Dead Sea Scrolls 'Authors' Never Existed

Elior's theory has landed like a bombshell in the cloistered world of biblical scholarship. James Charlesworth, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls project at Princeton Theological Seminary and an expert on Josephus, says it is not unusual that the word Essenes does not appear in the scrolls. "It's a foreign label," he tells TIME. "When they refer to themselves, it's as 'men of holiness' or 'sons of light.' " Charlesworth contends that at least eight scholars in antiquity refer to the Essenes. One proof of Essene authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he says, is the large number of inkpots found by archaeologists at Qumran.

But Elior claims says these ancient historians, namely Philo and Pliny the Elder, either borrowed from each other or retailed second-hand stories as fact. "Pliny the Elder describes the Essenes as 'choosing the company of date palms' beside the Dead Sea. We know Pliny was a great reader, but he probably never visited Israel," she says.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Andrew Sibley posted Theos / Comres report – Intelligent Design supporters ‘highest educated’ at Uncommon Descent. This quote appears in the blog entry:

"Elsewhere, on pages 18-19, it gave a profile of a typical intelligent design supporter."

“[He is typically] 25 has just completed a master’s degree, believes that the complexity of life on earth can only be explained by Intelligent Design. He believes there is a God or higher power of some sort, though is unwilling to be drawn on whether that is the God his grandmother believes in or some other force. Evolution, he says, is still just a theory that is waiting to be proved or disproved by the evidence. It doesn’t offer a serious challenge to the question of ultimate purpose in life, and does not contradict his view that humans have unique value and significance. He thinks science challenges religious faith, but is happy to live with this tension and remains open-minded about how evolutionary theory and Christianity relate to each other. Unlike his father, he thinks children should be introduced to Intelligent Design in school, but while his grandmother would like to see it taught in science lessons as an alternative to evolution, he agrees with his mother that it is a more appropriate subject for discussion in subjects such as RE.”

Are you young, virile, intelligent, well-educated and looking for a worthy challenge? If so you might be a candidate for the ID Movement. There is no guarantee of acceptance but if you are tired of conformity and want to shed the shackles of groupthink then submit your application here.

The “puddle analogy”, or "the sentient puddle" is an oft quoted parable by the brilliant Douglas Adams. So elegant and powerful is the puddle analogy that it is commonly used as a clear refutation of the Anthropic Principle by some of today’s top figures in popular science. But naturally, when the likes of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins heap praise upon a logical argument, my instinct is to whack it with a stick and see if anything falls off.

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[h/t to PZ]

Seems Ken Miller has a guest post on a Discover Magazine blog, entitled Smoke and Mirrors, Whales and Lampreys that pretends to re-live Kitzmiller and foretell exactly where those ever-evil IDists will be going in the future with their brilliant plot to enslave the world. Mwahahahaha!!!!

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Saw a story yesterday from BBC (or maybe Telegraph) about a 'hole' in planet Earth's magnetosphere. Then today I found a compilation of recent stories (since the year 2000) about further interesting magnetic events in our close solar neighborhood -

Meanwhile, Some Chaos in the Neighborhood

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I named this "Open Polls" because I had to come up with a unique Open Thread title, and because America is positively swimming in good news today, for a change! Though polls here in my neighborhood close in just an hour. They're still open out west!!!

Posts here can be about anything, but voting stories, inspirational political encounters, and expressions of hope or fear for the future based on this election are encouraged! Even in the context of the bad ol' Culture War…

…for the Candidates to answer

Thought Provoker is a little ruffled that there's a non-science specific thread on the front page [Lying to Advance a Cause], so I thought I'd post something genuinely scientifical that some here might be interested in.

This is, right on time following the political minutiae of hammering platform planks into a sturdy stage and getting nomination formalities out of the way, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama's Answers to the Top 14 Science Questions as winnowed by ScienceDebate2008 and leading science organizations from more than 3400 questions submitted by more than 38,000 scientists, engineers and other concerned Americans.

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CHARLES DARWIN has been hailed as the greatest scientist of the 19th century for his discovery of the secrets of evolution.

Is that true? My favorite is James Clerk Maxwell.

In the early nineteenth century, despite many individual advances in knowledge, there was no inkling of a comprehensive theory of electricity and magnetism. In developing this, Maxwell pointed the way to the existence of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Defining fields as a tension in the medium, he stated his belief in a new concept – that energies resides in fields as well as bodies. This pointed the way to the application of electromagnetic radiation for such present-day uses as radio, television, radar, microwaves and thermal imaging.

Who is your candidate? The scientist must have performed the major body of his work during the 19th century. So, for example, Einstein and others would not be considered even though they were born in the 1800s.