Scientists vs. Laymen

Click the link and mouse-over for a few seconds for even more chuckles.

I want their Science/COBE T-shirt.

Don't try this at home.

A kid followed directions found online to make an alcohol and chlorine bomb in a 2-liter bottle, as featured in many YouTube videos. The result? Scars on hands and face, eyelashes burned off, and temporarily blinded for the next 6 months (give or take).

The lesson? Don't try this at home if you don't know what you're doing. IF you have access to a full face shield, goggles (don't wear contact lenses), body armor, thick protective gloves, and so on, you might be able to get away with it, but I wouldn't suggest trying. As for me... there's a reason I went into a math-heavy observational science field: I don't like things that can kill me.

Endangered Species Act

The Dolitter's got a good rant up about the latest attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act. Go gander!

Astrology: Intro

I haven't done a post on astrology in a long time - too long. And it's going to take me forever to cover all of what I find wrong with it, and the few things that are good about it. To start off with, I'd like to solicit questions that you may have, and list a few topics that I will want to cover in a series on astrology - most are things that are wrong, a couple actually ARE right (though this begs the question of why they couldn't fix other related things).

1. Horoscopes' daily predictive value


2. Birth signs' personality predictive value


3. Ophiuchus


4. Precession of your sign


5. First point in Ares


6. Age of Aquarius


7. Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn


8. Planets and minor planets

I have to admit that I am only knowledgable about horoscopes and how birth signs work in general; I do not know the details about the planets, or exact birth times. If you wish to attempt to enlighten me, feel free, but do expect criticism as I am a self-proclaimed "skeptic" about astrology. And if there are topics you'd like to see me cover, lemmie know in the comments.

I'm famous!

My name's in a book! Along with a few hundred other past employees of NRAO Tucson. :-P

Oh, Arizona

Former AZ governor "comes out" that he believes a famous "sighting" in in 1997 called the Phoenix Lights was an alien spacecraft, and says the burden of proof otherwise is on the DOD. *rolls eyes*

Crackpot of the day - CMB not cosmic

One of the benefits of being a science faculty member is that crackpots think you're their key to fame. Take this paper for example. It's only two pages, and I only skimmed the article, but some of the flaws I find are...

1. Only at the position of the COBE satellite has a nearly perfect thermal spectrum been recorded. Not true, it's also been detected by WMAP (satellite) more recently, and previously by Penzias and Wilson (New Jersey), BOOMERanG (Antarctic baloon), Cosmic Background Imager (Andes, Chile), and many others. It's worth noting that the CMB has essentially won two Nobel prizes at this point in time - one for Penzias and Wilson, and one for COBE.


2. Given sufficient scattering at all frequencies, at the position of COBE, the signal examined must be isotropic. But it isn't. The very largest effect found in the CMB is a dipole signal due to the Earth's and Sun's velocity through space. It is easily removed with models based upon our known velocity in space. If the CMB were from some source tied to the Earth (such as the Earth's atmosphere or the Earth's oceans), this dipole would not exist at all.


3. Although the article discusses the possibilities of microwave scattering in the atmosphere and an oceanic source, it does not present models or other tangible evidence linking either hypothesis to reality. This is essentially the same flaw as IDers have.

Feel free to pile on and offer your own criticisms.