Cavalcade of Mammals

In anticipation of last night’s lunar eclipse several sites were trotting out the folklore that there are more earthquakes around the time of an eclipse. It seems like an easy thing to study–graph earthquake frequency over time, see if there are more during eclipses. Eclipses occur every couple of years, more often if you consider partial eclipses and small/medium earthquakes occur daily, so someone must have doen this. Looking around the web, the Goddard Space Flight Center answered a Science Question on this very topic (here):

Earthlings can view two lunar eclipses and two solar eclipses just about every year
…
It’s known that the tides during a lunar eclipse aren’t significantly different than tides during a full Moon. Each is just another spring tide — the name for tides that occur when the Earth is between the Moon and the Sun. If tides don’t really differ substantially during an eclipse than during regular full Moon or new Moon phases, why should celestial positions effect the Earth’s surface or subsurface features? The answer is that they don’t.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions do indeed occur at times of eclipses. But records show that they occur with no greater frequency or power than on days when full Moons or new Moons occur (without eclipses), when all the planets line up on the same side of the Sun or on days when the Moon is in a crescent or gibbous phase. As special as eclipses are, they simply don’t have a known impact on any geophysical phenomena.

And just how common are earthquakes anyway?
The ASK-AN-EARTH-SCIENTIST page by the U of Hawaii Geology and Geophysics Department says:

Humans point. Pointing is instinctive in humans. Babies instinctively point to things and pay attention to pointing. They know it is communication. I saw this neat stuff on a Nova episode on ape learning. It mentioned that chimps don’t understand pointing. It’s strange to watch. They don’t do it instinctively and don’t understand it.

Also, apparently we have selected dogs to understand pointing.

Have you ever had to push your car around? Very hard when it is possible at all. So let’s make a short distance car mover. Here’s one way to do it:

Put the front wheels on remote control dollies. Have one remote control work both dollies. The remote control would send two sets of signals, one for each dolly. The dollies are basically remote control cars with low speed/high torque motors and gearing.built heavily enough to carry the load.

The down side of this is that jacking each wheel would be required to put the dollies in place. Also, if the carts had roller skate sized wheels it would not be able to climb curbs.

Always fascinating, on the sexual practices of Papua New Guinea:

The Dobo, who live on a small island off the coast of the main island, live in constant fear of sorcery from their wives. Because they believe that they are particularly vulnerable during intercourse, Dobo men have to continually weigh their need for sexual gratification against the possibility of sorcery when they try to satisfy their sexual need (Davenport 1997, 126).

Much of it makes for disturbing reading. Papua New Guinea is a terrible place.

From the Enzyte junk enbiggener ads it was clear the whole thing was a scam. Apparently it has gone to federal court in Cincinnati:

Cincinnati Enquirer article

James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District Court how he and others at the company made up much of the content that appeared in Enzyte ads.

He said employees of the Forest Park company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back up claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

“So all this is a fiction?” Judge S. Arthur Spiegel asked about some of the claims.
“That’s correct, your honor,” Teegarden said.

Here’s the funniest part:

If customers complained, he said, employees were instructed to “make it as difficult as possible” for them to get their money back. In some cases, Teegarden said, Warshak required customers to produce a notarized statement from a doctor certifying Enzyte did not work.

“He said it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small penis,” Teegarden said.

I wonder who will end up with Enzyte’s list of men who think their junk is too small. The article calls it a $100 million fraud which would imply at least hundreds of thousands of customers!

Ran across an interesting blog, Robert Palmer is literate. Smoetimes.. Has some interesting posts and a clean design.

Here’s a video that describes what Republicans mean when they call for bipartisanship:



This is not what all Republicans want from bipartisanship. Grover Norquist, a leader of the conservative movement, thinks of it this way: “Bipartisanship is another name for date rape.” (May, 2003)

Total US university endowments are $411 billion a year and earn very well as investments (17.2% in 2007. So let’s say $40 billion a year is made. There were 10.8 million college students in 2005, let’s estimate 12 million in 2008. The yearly investment earnings of university endowments could pay for college for 1 in 6 college students.

TPMmuckraker had a story on a push-poll company running ads for Huckabee. What caught my eye is the company:

The calls are actually made by a company called ccAdvertising — a favorite company for shadowy third-party groups in the 2006 elections. The company can make at least 3.5 million calls per day.

That’s right, this company can bother 2% of Americans *every day*! Sure, they don’t always run at full capacity. I had never heard of this company but they have been there, in the background, existing only to use annoying, deceptive phone calls to influence elections.

How did the Washington papers cover Presidental candidate Dodd’s threat to filibuster the proposed law giving the telecom companies retroactive immunity for breaking the law and illegally spying on Americans? Dodd was able to get the bill delayed at least until January, one of the biggest victories for civil liberties this year.

The NYT has it on page A29.

Washington Post has a story on page A2, but written so you can’t tell what happened. Dodd is described as fighting the bill, but his crucial role is not described. Reid’s extraordinary effort to pass a bill that included telecom immunity, bypassing normal senate rules, working hand-in-hand with the Bush administration and Dodd’s single-handed stand against it aren’t described.

It’s a scene out of the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”! Updated slightly–there’s no free paper trying to print the news so we are spared the sight of NYT thugs beating kids, and the A29 mention allows the NYT to claim they ‘covered’ the story.

Those old science fiction stories predict the future remarkably well, but the details are always slightly off. :)