Interesting Stuff Thread

ZorbaTehZ

token56

Interesting Article on current rate of evolution, well at least I think it is interesting

http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Indicates+Human+Chimp+Males+Evolving+Faster+than+Females/article17408.htm

Agonist

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sheep-gives-birth-to-human-faced-lamb/story-e6freuy9-1225819071357

and

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055799728

A SHEEP gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face. The lamb was born in a village not far from the city of Izmir, Turkey. Erhan Elibol, a vet, performed a caesarean on the animal to take the lamb out, but was horrified to see that the features of the lamb's snout bore a striking resemblance to a human face.
The lamb’s head had human features on – the eyes, the nose and the mouth – only the ears were those of a sheep.

Coriolanus

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

Lawlsome.

Dades

Forget the Crocoduck - Presenting MuttonMan

Moved to this thread. Not sure where it's evilness belongs tbh. :pac:

Galvasean

That remind anyone else of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpEy-LYo3vg

Galvasean

Anyone watch the X-men cartoon in the 90s? Towards the end of it's run an episode featured A&A forum favoourite Mr. Charles Darwin.

I tell ya, that show was sstreets ahead of the competition as far as kids' entertainment went.

liamw

I thought this was interesting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Lifespan_variation_over_time

The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829.[22]

Tyler MacDurden

From The Washington Post's 'On Faith' series:

Q: Is there widespread media bias against Christianity? Against evangelicals such as Brit Hume and Sarah Palin? Against public figures who speak openly and directly about their faith? Against people who believe as you do?

There is no media bias against Christianity. If it appears to some people that there is, it is probably because after decades of hyper-diplomacy and a generally accepted mutual understanding that religion was not to be criticized, we have finally begun breaking through that taboo and are beginning to see candid discussions of the varieties of religious folly in American life. Activities that would be condemned by all if they were not cloaked in the protective mantle of religion are beginning to be subjected to proper scrutiny.

Full article.

iUseVi

If you have 3 minutes spare this will put a smile of your face I guarantee it.

http://www.atheistmedia.com/2010/01/orangutan-and-hound.html

Galvasean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoworld

Check out episode 33

Dave!

Terrific short clip of Bertrand Russell being interviewed in 1959:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aPOMUTr1qw

Naz_st

Nice presentation by Michael Shermer on ted.com about the nature of belief (it's a been there a while, so apologies if it's been posted here before!):

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

Turtwig

Galvasean wrote: »

Anyone watch the X-men cartoon in the 90s? Towards the end of it's run an episode featured A&A forum favoourite Mr. Charles Darwin.

I tell ya, that show was sstreets ahead of the competition as far as kids' entertainment went.

The new Wolverine and the X-Men ain't bad either (though it is weird listening to Sam Fisher as the bad guy). Marvel.com have all X-men, X-men Evolution episodes and season 1 of Wolverine available to watch online for free. Unfortunately it can be pain to navigate their video library at times. Loved Scott, Jean and Kitty when I was younger, never was a big fan of auld Wolverine.

Turtwig

This guy URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku"]Michio Kaku[/URL is very good at explaining stuff and applying everyday visuals to them. Video also has some religious relevance to it.

A more detailed blog on the topic.

Dades

Malty_T wrote: »

This guy URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku"]Michio Kaku[/URL is very good at explaining stuff and applying everyday visuals to them. Video also has some religious relevance to it.

I watched a documentary of his on "Time", on BBC4 last week.

Basically went through the development of our sense of time, and how we fit into the universe. Started with creation stories and then went on to show how we got to our current understanding of the age of the universe. Didn't even mention the fruit and nuts that still cling to religious time!

Might be this link here...
Was part 3 I watched it seems.

Dades

Now I've been off watching his videos...

Michio Kaku on God
I like his answer. Not sure where the interviewer was getting her info on theoretical physicists though...

Turtwig

Dades wrote: »

Now I've been off watching his videos...

Michio Kaku on God
I like his answer. Not sure where the interviewer was getting her info on theoretical physicists though...

Many physicists tend to have deistic sorta romantic views of the universe - I know I did, and if it wasn't for ID, I'd probably still have. You see a layer of beauty to it all and, well, you just er don't bother thinking that much about it.

Dades

Malty_T wrote: »

Many physicists tend to have deistic sorta romantic views of the universe - I know I did, and if it wasn't for ID, I'd probably still have. You see a layer of beauty to it all and, well, you just er don't bother thinking that much about it.

I'm just surprised to hear it described as "spiritual", tbh. I agree about ID - it's a crying shame creationists hijacked a very workable, non-theistic term. :mad:

pljudge321

A good read, especially if you've seen the ubiquitous video.

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana#more-971

Agonist

Dave! wrote: »

This is a great and rather extensive interview with Michael Shermer (Skeptic magazine) about all sorts of paranormal and supernatural issues

broken link

It's in 12 parts, each 10 mins long... so rather extensive

I'm only on part 2 but they've covered out of body experiences, angels, god, evolution...

Give it a listen

Michael Shermer

Anyone know where I can find this video now?

pts

Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true&print=true

Turtwig

Just saw this on Bad Astronomy (excellent blog btw. Highly Recommended.)

Decoy flares are infrared countermeasures used to protect aircraft from being detected by infrared homing missiles, i.e. those that detect heat sources like a jet engine. Like a plane’s guardian angels, the flares create false heat targets that confuse the guidance system of an enemy aircraft’s infrared missiles. Apart from being a simple and effective defense mechanism, they’re also surprisingly beautiful. No wonder they have been nicknamed angel wings.

The FSM is a guardian angel.

Turtwig

Agonist wrote: »

Anyone know where I can find this video now?

Not sure if this is/was the original video but it is quite good.

Quality could have been better though.

Turtwig

Now this is what I called golden, gave me right a auld chuckle.:)


Anthony Watts, the person behind the anti-science site "www.wattsupwiththat.com" and the brains behind the surfacestations.org project. Commissioned hundreds of painstaking volunteers to analyse the accuracy of local weather stations and temperature measurements. His argument was that many stations were in dubious locations (true) and that these erroneous measurements would greatly exaggerate the effects of Global Warming.
Let's ignore for a second the insignificance of these "errors" to the global picture and that data is usually adjusted to account for this sort of stuff. Scientist are pedantic so they like to eliminate as many sources of errors as possible. So, Menne et Al set about quantifying the error produced by the raw data of these stations. Turns out there was a bias acting on the temperature records, only that it was cooling bias.

Turtwig

Nature recently published an excellent article entitled "The Real Holes in Climate Science". Well Worth a read for anyone interested in knowing exactly where the climate science stands.:)

Edit : Editorial is good too.

iUseVi

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/01/what_colours_were_dinosaur_feathers.php

Birds really are dinosaurs!

cavedave

Religious people are more altruistic then non religious people after reading a religious passage. But much the same otherwise
Altruism on Amazon Mechanical Turk

GLaDOS

Pagan Gods and legends which bear similarities (a lot in some cases!) to the birth of Jesus

http://www.atheists.org/Pre-Christian_Christmas_Stories_with_Other_Gods

Turtwig

Just got a email linking this video. Think its good for providing perspective.:)
(Not the biggest fan of the music, though.)

Blank_

Discussion between Thunderf00t (active atheist youtuber) and Ray Comfort (banana man !).
It just hurt when every answer from Comfort is "We dont know so God created it"

Flamed Diving

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIGCWyXL7VE

To post to YouTube video copy what comes after the '=' (but before the '?') and paste it inbetween a YouTube tag:

Blank_

I fixed it, thanks!

robindch

To embed the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIGCWyXL7VE, post as follows:

[HTML]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIGCWyXL7VE

[/HTML]

robindch

In Lausanne, Switzerland, computer scientists have been building a system which simulates evolution within robots. Last year the little fellas figured out how to send misleading signals to each other, effectively "lying", to help horde resources to themselves.

This month, they showed that predator bots were able to learn how to hide against walls and then approach prey bots from the latter's blind side, while the prey bots learned to avoid walls and retreat backwards from approaching predators. The most interesting thing was that they managed to do this over 125 generations, and with the equivalent of only 15 working neurons. More on this here -- with video goodness:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/robots-display-predator-prey-co-evolution-evolve-better-homing-techniques

The full peer-reviewed article is here.

Dades

How long before they invent a religion?

Turtwig

Dades wrote: »

How long before they invent a religion?

Now that would be fricking awesome!!

robindch

Dades wrote: »

How long before they invent a religion?

Well, they've already figured out how to lie to each other to gain preferential treatment.

If that's not the start of a religion, then I'm the pope.

Pompey Magnus

Homeopathy sceptics have staged a mass "overdose" of homeopathic remedies, in a bid to prove they have no effect.

Protesters ate whole bottles of tablets at branches of Boots in places such as Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, London, Leicester, Edinburgh and Birmingham.

They have asked the pharmacy chain to stop

Link

James Randi would be proud :pac:

Turtwig

The Scale of the universe.

sionnach

States ranked by religiousness with accompanying statistics:

http://i.imgur.com/kpb5A.png

Dades

sionnach wrote: »

States ranked by religiousness with accompanying statistics:

Very interesting.

Certainly appears to show a vague red to green gradient as the religiosity gets lower.

Cape Cod ftw!
LOL at the Nevada divorce rate.

Agonist

A very interesting article on the thirst for spirituality by a very erudite man, George E. Vaillant. It's not pro or anti religion - it's more scholarly than that, although with his opinions he could not be a believer.

http://www.msmonographs.org/article.asp?issn=0973-1229;year=2008;volume=6;issue=1;spage=48;epage=62;aulast=Vaillant

Positive Emotions, Spirituality and the Practice of Psychiatry

Introduction

As the 21st century begins, a great many people - especially in the English-speaking world - are in search of some kind of common spiritual ground. On the one hand, science, increasing education and intolerance for patriarchal dogma has led to a steady erosion of the membership in mainstream churches and temples. On the other hand, this shift toward secularism has created an equally steady increase in evangelical, Pentecostal and unabashedly emotional New Age religions. Many of the best sellers of the last five years in America have been based either on the popular search for the spiritual or the rejection of the religious in a secular world.

In an effort to scientifically validate this thirst for spirituality, I wish to build on the relatively new scientific disciplines of cultural anthropology, ethology (animal behaviour) and neuroscience - all of which study the so-called positive emotions such as awe, love, joy, hope, faith/trust, forgiveness, gratitude and compassion. Positive emotions, per se , are present in most mammals and have been experimentally shown to help humans behave communally and to learn more quickly (Lyubomirsky et al ., 2005). Surprisingly, spirituality is virtually indistinguishable from these positive emotions and is, thus, rooted in our evolutionary biology. Because these emotions are also the same ones for which most religions strive, spirituality is a common denominator for all faiths.

Galvasean

Here's one for you the next time someone tries to say that the 'Cambrian explosion' was an act of God:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055818728

Basically evidence of complex locomotion in animals has been found dating before the Cambrian period, meaning that relatively coplex animals are older than previously assumed.

Turtwig

Sometimes when you learn something new you feel a tinge of guilt. Pascal was an awesome genius. I never knew that and I had just assumed that because of the sh1ttyness of his wager that he couldn't have been that bright. (This from someone who has written code in Pascal and not even realised who it was named after )

Coriolanus

My God. That's brilliant.

darjeeling

On Radio 4's 'Great Lives' this week Richard Dawkins paid tribute to evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton. Hamilton was hugely influential in his field, pioneering the gene-centred view of evolution that Dawkins would go on to bring to a wider public and scientific audience. Listen here for a few more days.

robindch

...and while we're on Radio 4, the website for Melvyn Bragg's excellent 'In Our Time' series had a facelift this week and the full archives back to 1998 have been made available. The website is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/

It's well worth a look.

MrPudding

Saw this yesterday, thought it was interesting and could spark some heated debate in medical circles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8497148.stm

I would like to see more research on this topic.

MrP

Turtwig

An independent researcher recently tested the assumption that a stronger level of religious faith meant a safe and peaceful society.

It concludes :
:eek:
(Well I cherry picked this bit:) Eitherway it's the opposite of what religious folk would have assumed. )
Conservative religious ideology is a probable contributing causal factor of societal dysfunction.

Naturally this guy is getting alot of slander and attacks. This requires alot more research. What'll be interesting to see is that if other impartial researchers can replicate these results. That's when we'll know just how rigorous and accurate this research was. I've no doubt though that some religious group will try to get their own biased study published first. Interesting times ahead...

And in other religious related news, faith schools have a 25% higher abortion rate. The researcher postulated that this was because of the increased potential for additional shame that students would feel in a faith school environment. Due to the strict ethos of the schools. Note though that the authors think it has little if anything to do with the level of religiosity of the students
themselves.
*Note : I cannot find the paper yet, so I can't honestly say whether above article is accurately representing the scientists finding. Take it with a pinch of salt as we all know how bad the media can sometimes be.*
**Note Note : I found one that dates back to June 2009, surely that can't be the one the journalist is referring to?

Finally tonight, a paper recently published in Nature describes a discovery regarding converting skins cell of a mouse into neurons : no need for stem cells!