Will it bring happiness?

This is brilliant...

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

Turns out we're even less important in the time scale...

"Scientists have in the past estimated that the Earth's development, a process known as accretion where gas, dust and other material clumped together to form the planet, happened over just 30 million years. 

But the new research suggests this process may have taken up to 100 million years – more than three times longer than previous estimates."
 

Craziest shit ever...

This parasite enters through the gills, and then attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper’s (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue. It extracts blood through the claws on its front, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish’s tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish.

Badass

Tom Wolfe and Kurt Vonnegut...

Best movie ever...

4th of July coming up...!

Radial Tree of life... awesome!!!

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/DownloadfilesToL.html

Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception

I'm an atheist, in as simple a way as it can be stated...

This can't be expressed how awesome!!!

Why Twilight is Popular

Today in WTF?!! Rachel Maddow: The more spills change- the more they stay the same!

Near-Earth Objects as Future Resources...

The comets and asteroids that are potentially the most hazardous because they can closely approach the Earth are also the objects that could be most easily exploited for their raw materials. It is not presently cost effective to mine these minerals and then bring them back to Earth. However, these raw materials could be used in developing the space structures and in generating the rocket fuel that will be required to explore and colonize our solar system in the twenty-first century. It has been estimated that the mineral wealth resident in the belt of asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter would be equivalent to about 100 billion dollars for every person on Earth today. Whereas asteroids are rich in the mineral raw materials required to build structures in space, the comets are rich resources for the water and carbon-based molecules necessary to sustain life. In addition, an abundant supply of cometary water ice could provide copious quantities of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the two primary ingredients in rocket fuel. It seems likely that in the next century when we begin to colonize the inner solar system, the metals and minerals found on asteroids will provide the raw materials for space structures and comets will become the watering holes and gas stations for interplanetary spacecraft.
Reference: Lewis, John S. Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroid, Comets, and Planets. Addison-Wesley, 1996.

From NASA

Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?

Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?