A ‘Blue Moon’ for New Year’s Eve
“Anyone hoping for something special in 2010 will get started on the right foot: a rare blue moon will grace the skies New Year’s Eve, an event that happens only once every 19 years.
Blue moons aren’t really blue. They’re second full moons that fall within a single calendar month. At 29.5 days, the lunar cycle is slightly shorter than the typical month, which puts a second full moon on a monthly calendar every 2.5 years.
The double full moon can occur in any month, except February, which is too short. The last time it happened on New Year’s Eve was in 1990. The next one won’t be until 2028.”
Read more at Discovery News
At 13,000 Years, Tree Is World’s Oldest Organism
It began life during the last ice age, long before man turned to agriculture and built the first cities in the fertile crescent of the Middle East. It was already thousands of years old when the Egyptians built their pyramids and the ancient Britons erected Stonehenge.
The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today.
Independent (thanks, Tammy)
James Randi on parapsychology
As Randi clearly details, parapsychology is complete bunkum. Absolutely no replicable results, in fact very few actual results at all. And yet Randi has a respect for two men he met who have been practicing for over 30 years – he tells you why here.
Happy Birthday Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE is a Welsh film, stage and television actor. Considered by many to be one of film’s greatest living actors, he is arguably best known for his portrayal of cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 blockbuster The Silence of the Lambs, its sequel Hannibal and prequel, Red Dragon. His other notable film credits include The Elephant Man, Dracula, The Remains of the Day, The Mask of Zorro, The World’s Fastest Indian, Hearts in Atlantis, Nixon and Fracture.
Hopkins was born and raised in Wales, and also became a U.S. citizen on 12 April 2000. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003 and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008.
The above print is the third in a series of 3 painted by Derren over the last 4 years. It is available in the art shop now.
Lotto Vultures Resort To Bird-Brained Scheme
The traditional medicinal practice of smoking dried vulture brains to induce a vision of winning lotto numbers is killing off the bird’s population in South Africa, researchers say.
Scelo, a young healer in downturn Johannesburg’s market for muti, or traditional medicine, says the birds are becoming more scarce.
“I only have one every three or four months,” he said.
“Everybody asks for the brain. You see things that people can’t see. For lotto, you dream the numbers.”
ABC News (thanks, Tammy)
Tory party proposal to use The Wisdom of Crowds
A £1million prize is being offered by the Tories for a computer system which would help shape public policy.
The party’s culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt risked ridicule yesterday by saying he wanted to harness the theory known as the Wisdom of Crowds in the manner of television illusionist Derren Brown.
It was this theory, apparently, that Brown used when he claimed to have predicted the winning National Lottery numbers live on TV.
LibDem spokesman Jenny Willott said: ‘There are already a multitude of ways to communicate with large numbers of people online.
‘They shouldn’t waste £1million of public money reinventing the wheel.’
How the Brain Encodes Memories at a Cellular Level
“Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a major discovery in how the brain encodes memories. The finding, published in the December 24 issue of the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to the development of new drugs to aid memory.
The team of scientists is the first to uncover a central process in encoding memories that occurs at the level of the synapse, where neurons connect with each other.
“When we learn new things, when we store memories, there are a number of things that have to happen,” said senior author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director and Harriman Chair in Neuroscience Research, at UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute. Kosik is a leading researcher in the area of Alzheimer’s disease.
“One of the most important processes is that the synapses — which cement those memories into place — have to be strengthened,” said Kosik. “In strengthening a synapse you build a connection, and certain synapses are encoding a memory. Those synapses have to be strengthened so that memory is in place and stays there. Strengthening synapses is a very important part of learning. What we have found appears to be one part of how that happens.”"
Read more at Science Daily
Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About
David Disalvo offers up his top 10 psychology studies of 2009. Looks a little bit like a rapid regurgitation of 59 seconds by Richard Wiseman. There’s the “money illusion”, the habituation blues and the moral self-regulation see saw.
Also rather excellent is Wiseman’s 59 seconds in 59 seconds - essential stuff. For those of you with Amazon xmas vouchers left over you might want to grab a copy here – it’s now reduced to just £6.
Why homeopathy dosen’t understand the pharmaceutical industry
Despite representing a multi-billion dollar industry, alt med practitioners don’t seem to understand the basic principles of business and management as they defend their remedies from skeptics asking them to provide clinical evidence for their claims. According to them, Big Pharma is unable to buy up patents to homeopathy or treatments made by other alt med disciplines and could never make a profit by reducing their R&D costs and yet, be able to buy rights to promising conventional treatments and aim to make their drug pipelines cheaper to maintain. It’s as if the principles of finance and strategic management cease to apply when pharmaceutical companies are even mentioned in the same sentence as homeopathic potions and alternative regimens.
The argument that Big Pharma is on the warpath against alternative medicine is trotted out on a regular basis by the faithful defenders of naturists, homeopaths and biomedical quacks who feel free to administer all sorts of highly speculative treatments without going through the proper clinical trials and approvals by the FDA. For the latest example, let’s consider an article by homeopath Amy Lansky, who tries to defend her craft against a pharmaceutical conspiracy by terrified corporations which want to suppress her mystical cures.
“What if an expensive drug could be potentized to create billions of effective doses at essentially no cost? It would destroy big pharma entirely. Medicines that cost essentially nothing? Nontoxic ultra- diluted medicines that cause fewer side effects? How could [big pharma's coffers] be sustained? Forget about the Law of Similars. It’s potentization – the process of creating effective ultradilutions – that big pharma is scared of! No wonder Baum and Ernst got the word “potentization” wrong. This one word is the small stone that could take Goliath down.”
Really? Medicines that cost essentially nothing would cripple the pharmaceutical industry? Big Pharma can’t buy the rights to mass produce homeopathic cures, then close down plants it would no longer need, saving a few billion dollars worth of expenses on an annual basis? If making products cheaper was the death knell for companues, big box retailers and electronics companies would’ve been dead in the water long ago. So what Lansky is basically telling us, is that cost cutting is the first step towards bankruptcy. If there was clinical proof that homeopathy works, Big Pharma would be buying their cures and saving countless billions in getting them to market. Far from being the stone that could take down a goliath, legitimate, empirically proven potentization would be a cash cow of epic proportions, eagerly embraced by CEOs and investors.
Read more at World of weird things
29% of Americans say religion ‘out of date’
“A Gallup poll of Americans’ attitudes towards religion released on Christmas Eve found significant recent increases in those responding either that they have no religious preference, that religion is not very important in their lives, or that they believe religion “is largely old-fashioned or out of date.”
Only 78% of Americans now identify as Christian, while 22% describe their religious preference as either “other” or “none.”
Most of these changes have occurred since 2000 and represent the first significant shift since a sharp decline in religious adherence during the 1970s. Over the last nine years, the number with no religious preference has grown from a level of around 8% to 13%. The number for whom religion is not very important has climbed from just over 10% to 19%. And the number who believe religion is out of date and has no answers for today’s problems has jumped from slightly more than 20% to 29%.”
Read more at Raw story
