Hello, this blog will consist of things that I find thought provoking. It will include videos, articles, and other things revolving around scientific topics.

I will start with one of the things that fascinate me the most, Consciousness. The ability to experience life and perceive senses. The wikipedia article linked here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness can be a brief intro if you have not read much.

My first post will be a very thought provoking video featuring Michio Kaku. It's on youtube, and it talks about things like Parallel Universes and String theory.

Presented by the QUT Faculty of Law, Professors Peter Grace and Douglas Fisher will give a free public lecture entitled "CLIMATE CHANGE: THE SCIENCE AND THE LAW"

When: Wednesday 8 October 2008

5.30 pm Refreshments
6.00 pm Lecture commences
7.00 pm Lecture concludes

Where: The Gibson Room, Level 10, Z Block, QUT Gardens Point Campus

Professor Grace will open the lecture with an overview of the science of climate change, covering topics such as the complexity of the issues surrounding climate change, the effect of climate change on various sectors and possible responses to contemporary issues.

Professor Fisher will discuss the contribution of the law to the climate change debate, including the potential problems to be faced without adequate legal structures to deal with the effects of climate change, and an outline of possible legal structures.

London Independent science editor Steve Conner reports a theory from the UK Atomic Energy Authority as indisputable fact, and pronounces the 9/11 case closed:

The discovery that unusual magnetic forces within the girders made them weak at temperatures of about 500C explains away the conspiracy theories that have spread like wildfire since the disaster.

Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, found that steel loses its strength above 500C because its molecules undergo a physical transition from one state to another due to magnetic fluctuations.

Sergei Dudarev takes his paycheck from the financier Lady Barbara Judge (right), chairman of the UKAEA.

Moving right along from our painfully tedious little election to more cheerful subjects such as the hypothetical death of the universe, consider if you will a little ancient Hindu cosmology as interpreted by Carl Sagan from his 1980 PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

One of the misconceptions about evolution has to do with "survival of the fittest". The misconception is based on the idea that survival of the fittest means that only biggest, strongest and meanest survive.

Survival of the fittest was not coined by Darwin, it was coined by philosopher Herbert Spencer before Darwin published Origin of Species.

I was going to post about all the lies from M-P about how you, Joe and Jane American, will be paying higher taxes on damn near everything...which is bullshit.

But really, you're not going to change your mind, are you? You conservatives just want any anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-anyone-not-a-conservative candidate that you don't give a shit that M-P will continue to ship your jobs overseas and leave you with even less earning power.

So I won't write about it. At least, not now.

MH on the Climate Sceptics group has posted a link to the report of a 1922 expedition in the Svalbards reaching 81°29' North.

It's another example of what makes the recent kayaking expedition by Lewis Gordon Pugh a load of human waste.

First warming had been noted in 1918, apparently. {sarcasm}All due to that soot from First World War, no doubt{/sarcasm}

Interestingly, the report mentions newly-available resources to mine, and the disappearance of previously-abundant wildlife.

Some things really really never change...

David Stove, Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001)

Scientists have discovered the relics of a 650 million year-old reef in the Australian Outback. The reef is 10 times higher than the modern Great Barrier Reef and predates the evolution of animal life by at least 40 million years.

The reef is located in the Flinders Ranges of southeastern Australia. When the reef was submerged, these mountains formed Australia’s eastern seaboard. Since then, tectonic and natural forces have combined to expose a section of the reef around 20 km wide. Despite its size and relative proximity to Melbourne the reef remained hidden to science until this week. Read more here.

[caption id="attachment_442" align="alignnone" width="180" caption="© CERN"][/caption]

CERN SAYS HADRON COLLIDER HALTED FOR A FEW MONTHS

from—http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7626944.stm

A part broke on the CERN Collider this past week delaying the full ramp up of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

A Cern spokesman said damage to the particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.
The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.