I'm a firm believer in denying most of the shit my government spews out.  I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything; I just examine everything very, very thoroughly.  In the case of interplanetary discoveries, galaxy exploration and extraterrestrial findings, I'm 100% sure we are not the only form of life in this solar system.  There's just no fucking way that is possible.  To think otherwise is a mark of arrogance and ignorance because life comes in all shapes and sizes.  Just because it isn't bug-eyed, laser shooting human-extermination squads come to rob us off our resources or wipe us out because we have gold doesn't mean it isn't out there. 

I saw a cool story about a Russian scientist that claims to have discovered what he thinks are forms of life from photos relayed off a satellite they launched in 2005 to scan Venus for any signs of life or changes in the overall atmospheric surface of the planet.  dailycaller.com/2012/01/22/russian-scientist-claims-signs-of-life-spotted-on-venus/   

I am listening to hawking's briefer history of time. It was talking about how our understanding of what the milky way was and how we are just on the edge of our galaxy. What is at the center of our galaxy? Are there named stars?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228441.700-scrunch-time-the-peculiar-physics-of-crumpled-paper.html

I have a question that maybe you all can help me with. I am currently banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the meaning of the universe by arguing with someone about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. During the argument an interesting question came up for me. 

In case anyone is interested, The Christian Science Monitor has a 50-question science self-test at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/How-did-you-do

My dumb ass got 41 questions right...so if you do worse, it's your own fault!  (I should mention: as near as I can tell, this test is relying upon *real* science.  For example: the answer the test lists as "correct" on the question of the age of the earth, does seem to in fact be correct, as far as I know.

Full disclosure: I made some right guesses.  Obviously, I also made some wrong ones.  Happy self-testing!

Conor

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

I saw this yesterday while roaming through the news and immediately knew it was hogwash.

Solar panels only produce X amount of output from the sun and this idea was floating around for many years before this kid re-invented the idea for his project. Besides, solar panel companies sell some kits with tracking systems so that you can capture a higher amount of sun light by tracking the sun through the sky.

So where does that leave the media, the judges who gave him an award and any money he gained? No one seemed to follow up on the facts and it took scientists who were in the field to expose the bogus results. Is this a cased where the parents used their influences to promote their son much like Rebecca Black videos?

I'm not surprised, but I don't see any follow up on the story on who the judges were and why they haven't been chastised for being such ignorant fools for not checking up on his facts.

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/18/meet-a-13-year-old-solar-panel-developer/comment-page-1/#comment-9047

And I'll say that I support the kid for trying to make the world a better place, but I think enabling him by heralding his pseudo science based project is really a stupid thing to continue doing.

Here is some debunking info:

While writing an article about Rabbi Moshe Averick's crazy argument during a break from exam revision (a slippery slope fest of immense silliness that links it to beastiality and paedophilia. Atheism... not exam revision that is...), I came up with something a bit sensible.

There have been a lot of theories abound regarding why honeybees are rapidly disappearing, but no one would have guessed anything even close to something this horrifying.  news.yahoo.com/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees-230200867.html

From fungus to parasites attacking every major colony within the past three years, I'd say researchers should probably get on the stick and deal with these issues pronto especially now that they know a few of these theories are staring them right in the face.  It's either that or keep watching this "colony collapse syndrome" continue until there aren't any bees left to pollinate the crops.  Then we'd be in a world of shit...