no shit, einstein.

The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology figures out what some of us have known all along: you can’t get rid of everything on airplanes that can possibly be used as a weapon.
(They stabbed a few dead pigs with various everyday items, such as pens and broken glasses. Shockingly, all of them can inflict [...]

who says science isn’t cool?

Hear me now and believe me later:
This little cell size animation from the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah is most likely the coolest thing you’ll see today.
(Via @StevenGould on Twitter.)

on global warmenings.

I’m probably the last person on these Interwebz to link to this, but LabRat at Atomic Nerds has a fabulous post up on the subject of environmentalism, Global Warming Climate Change, and all that good stuff.
Science starts with a question and tries to find the answer.  Dogma starts with an answer, and then tries to [...]

you can’t ban ingenuity.

I don’t shy away from debates on gun control, and the merits and drawbacks of legislative attempts to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
However, there’s one argument that immediately makes me disengage from the debate, because it shows that the person putting it forth has a.) not thought their own argument through, and b.) [...]

my ambiguous opinion on vaccinations.

Breaking news: Jenny McCarthy is still an idiot. 
Cliff Notes: Her kid has been diagnosed with autism.  She maintains that a.) he got it from the preservative in his MMR shots (called thimerol), and b.) she cured him of his autism with a herbal-based mercury detox diet.
Our kids got the full vaccination battery as recommended [...]

put *that* into perspective.

Our universe contains billions of stars.  Even if every one of the estimated 10^24 stars in the universe only has three planets on average, that makes for a billion times a billion planets.  To put it in relative dimensions: even if the chance for Earth-like conditions for a planet (and corresponding life on it) are [...]

shut up, and let the grownups bust some particles.

Here’s how I know that the Chicken Little types predicting the end of the world by Large Hadron Collider don’t believe their own bullshit:
If you were convinced that some scientists were about to destroy the planet with their experiment, wouldn’t you buy a ticket to Switzerland and try to physically stop them by any means [...]

will there be an earth-shattering kaboom?

Yes!  Evil secular science finally gets to blow up the planet this week, when the Large Hadron Collider goes live for the first time.  Expect dimensional portals, spectral dragons, time-traveling demons, and Earth-consuming Black Holes, all working together to realize the hidden agenda of science once and for all: the destruction of the planet! 
*sigh*
China [...]

the trouble with rigid ideology.

LabRat recently posted some observations about the short-sightedness of Nazi Germany, which expelled and expatriated the world’s most important physicist because he was a Jew, and dismissed his work as “Jewish physics”.  The physicist in question emigrated to the United States, and convinced Roosevelt to spring for a Really Big Science Fair Project that would [...]

smart is cool.

I’m not a huge fan of rap, but this one carries the Seal of Approval:
The (Scientifically Accurate) Large Hadron Collider Rap.
Science is the bomb-diggity shiznit, yo.