Brian Junyor » Science

What?!? Pat Robertson & Al Sharpton

Junyor — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:13:40 +0000

My mind is officially blown.

Texas: Wind Energy

Junyor — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:52:12 +0000

Did you know that Texas leads the nation in wind energy production? I didn’t either, even though USA Today reported on it back in 2006.

According to the American Wind Energy Association®, Texas inches out California by 400 MW.

AWEA’s annual rankings provide a standard reference for tracking the growth of wind power in the U.S. The rankings (as of December 31, 2006) are listed below (one megawatt of wind power produces enough electricity on average to serve 250 to 300 homes):
States with most wind energy installed, by capacity (MW)
1. Texas 2,768

2. California 2,361

3. Iowa 936

4. Minnesota 895

5. Washington 818

Texas is firmly established as the leader in wind power development, with over 2,700 MW installed at the end of 2006 and some 1,000 MW currently under construction.

Photo: Some rights reserved. by fieldsbh || Windfarm in Fluvanna with fence

Global Climate Destabilization

Junyor — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:58:19 +0000

Tip to zefrank for bringing this to my attention:

Greg writes: “This ten-minute home video is called “How It All Ends,” and is the result of hundreds of hours of research and production, stemming from an earlier video I produced, titled “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See.” ::
“The Most Terrifying Video”, posted on the web six months ago, made a novel argument for taking action on global climate change, and has garnered over 4 million views on various websites. Reading the 6000+ comments on that video””most of them critical””allowed me to hone my argument, so that now it is””as far as I’ve been able to tell””undeniable. Repackaged in “How It All Ends,” the argument is backed up by over 6 hours of “expansion pack” videos, anticipating and answering every single objection that I’ve been able to elicit from skeptics. Sounds impossible, yes. But then, I’ve been maniacally thorough.”

WPvideo 1.10

You can check out the entire series by visiting: http://www.youtube.com/wonderingmind42

START HERE AFTER WATCHING “How It All Ends.” This is the roadmap to the “Expansion Pack” videos accompanying the video “How It All Ends.” This is how you find your way around the hours of argumentation contained in the almost four dozen “Expansion Pack” videos, including finding the video which has anticipated and already answered your objection or question about the argument given in “How It All Ends.”

For your navigation pleasure, the URLs of the entire “Expansion Pack” are listed below. Just click and enjoy! (Or, have the hairs on the back of your neck raised. . . )

The original video and the entire “Expansion Pack” are also available for download as MP4 files, available for editing, burning, subtitling, mashing up, ripping off, parodying, whatever. Contact wonderingmind42 directly for those.

“How It All Ends” Expansion Pack:

Index
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oCYW4…

Menu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUt4L…

Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twRbGD…

Nature of Science
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A58X7…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls8mYJ…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DagLYW…

Risk Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwuDDZ…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLoO6q…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hpNoB…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx-7j5…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFCS0P…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnLVSD…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2F3bw…

Why There Is Still Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpVWFI…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS65Pw…

The Manpollo Project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7r0dH…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqLzFj…

Mechanics of GCC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqEYLv…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29v4FZ…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUrNBr…

Scare Tactics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0V9Id…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZzlcN…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prtpfA…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PM4Qu…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPW4ZO…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rs-vu…

The Solution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7z6lH…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VEFM…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZVJwC…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xFbgp…

God’s Will
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjCcL…

Get What You Want
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKKd-r…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwPgv_…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIGXK0…

I Hope I’m Wrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q81QZx…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmblpx…

No Holds Barred
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZJzSU…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtR0kZ…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Ko0U…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fF1HF…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6PRr…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLhLpG…

Your Mission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIQZBb…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNoIC7…

Evolutionary Leftovers

Junyor — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:42:25 +0000

Mike Wagner @ Yet Another Blog has put together a great post regarding evolutionary leftovers in humans. It makes for an informing & fascinating read. For instance, did you know that the human appendix was actually used in our plant chewing days. It would aid in the digestion of cellulose.

No More Fear

Junyor — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:31:37 +0000

MIT biochemists identified the molecular mechanism that creates fear and successfully cured it in mice. Give it a few years and you can kiss that nagging fear of public speaking goodbye! [via lifehacker.com]

Some scientists upset with Gore

Junyor — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:33:26 +0000

Scientists “there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

“Ocean” Found Beneath Asia

Junyor — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:11:04 +0000

Richard A. Lovett
for National Geographic News

February 27, 2007
A giant blob of water the size of the Arctic Ocean has been discovered hundreds of miles beneath eastern Asia, scientists report.

Researchers found the underground “ocean” while scanning seismic waves as they passed through Earth’s interior.

5,100lb Fish

Junyor — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:09:01 +0000

Pics and Videos – The ocean sunfish (mola mola) is the largest bony fish in the world. It is a unique pelagic fish, and specimens of ocean sunfish have been observed up to 3.3 m (11 ft) in length and weighing up to 2,300 kg (5,100 lb).
read more | digg story

WPvideo 1.10

Pluto, not very big

Junyor — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:40:31 +0000

Who knew people thought a dog was a planet?

Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 24 August 2006
09:35 am ET
Capping years of intense debate, astronomers resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.
Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.
“Pluto is dead,” said Caltech researcher Mike Brown, who spoke with reporters via a teleconference while monitoring the vote. The decision also means a Pluto-sized object that Brown discovered will not be called a planet.
“Pluto is not a planet,” Brown said. “There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system.”
The vote involved just 424 astronomers who remained for the last day of a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague.
“I’m embarassed for astornomy,” said Alan Stern, leader of NASA’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. “Less than 5 percent of the world’s astronomers voted.”
“This definition stinks, for technical reasons,” Stern told SPACE.com. He expects the astronomy community to overturn the decision. Other astronomers criticized the definition as ambiguous.

Naturalists

Junyor — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:34:02 +0000

Heard this on the radio during the morning commute. Great commentary.

—–

Commentary: Naturalists
By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 Commentator

DALLAS, TX (2006-08-24)We are so divorced from nature most of the time that it’s startling to meet what once was called a naturalist. John James Audubon was a great naturalist. So were Teddy Roosevelt and Charles Darwin. And so is San Antonio lawyer Luke Kellogg who is more than an expert at hunting and fishing. He is a student of wildlife, weather and crops. He is an astute respecter of nature as well as the laws that govern the natural world. He does not play around with lightning. Nor does he allow anyone to wave a gun to the right or to the left. Straight ahead, he says, is the only way to shoot. Kellogg has the poise and confidence of somebody deeply rooted in the earth. Not for him the anxiety of those who flit about the land, never alighting in a place that truly feels like home.

This makes Luke Kellogg reliable in the air. He knows when it’s foolish to fly in a six-seat plane. People of science, he said, sometimes make bad pilots. That’s because they believe they can overcome nature. Isn’t that what medicine teaches? How to use the science of nature to counteract or neutralize natural effects? It causes some, he explained, to understand the science, but not the art, of flying.

They are not the only ones who think they can have their way with the natural world. John McPhee wrote a book about some of the others called “The Control of Nature.” In it he described how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mounted a Herculean campaign to keep the Mississippi from changing its course by a hundred miles, as it was wont to do. As this work explained, if the river moved its mouth by going down a tributary, the Atchafalaya, that would cut off New Orleans and Baton Rouge from river commerce. The Corps succeeded for the moment in saving the bayou city, but not forever, since Nature, as we now know, had other devastation in store.

I realized as I talked to Luke Kellogg that naturalists are different from environmentalists. Environmentalists are essential to our survival, but they may be entirely urban people who never see a sunset outside a city. They may deplore contaminated air and water, the extinction of species, the destruction of rain forests and global warming, but these can be intellectual or political interests, uninvolved with the passions of the heart.

Environmentalists seek to preserve things as they are, said Kellogg, and that’s impossible. Naturalists, he explained, know they cannot “stop all encroachment and go back to the Garden of Eden,” so they practice a “practical acceptance of change.” They do not embrace the solution sometimes advanced by environmentalists to “get people off the land.” Kellogg stresses that he and his compatriots want to conserve natural spaces, but “they can only manage them around the edges.”

We need more naturalists in the world, more students of nature, including human nature, who understand the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. The thing is to match experience to the moment, and not mistake one’s own force for a force of nature itself. It could be called knowing when to fish and when to cut bait.