HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! – The Greatest Holiday Ever!
Hot For Words explores the origin of “Halloween.” (And look for a cameo by the Flying Spaghetti Monster):
Researchers build “haunted” room –
“Ghostbusters frequently associate those experiences with anomalous electromagnetic fields (EMF) and infrasound. To test out the reported connection, Chris French and colleagues in the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit built a room outfitted with EMF and infrasound generators.”
Ghost seekers hoping to raise spirits – They even have an alleged psychic with them. Oops, I mean “sensitive.” Give me a break! Guys, remember, you can win James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge. The money is yours. All you have to do is prove that you can raise spirits or even just prove that spirits exist under mutually agreed upon, scientifically controlled conditions. What are you waiting for?
As much as I love Hallow-e’en, it is the time when all the crazies and spooks come out –
“After years and years of doing seances and other haunted events, each time I see the season approach and the bowls of candy corn come out, I’m reminded that the doors of the spooky barn are again going to swing wide open and every lunatic fringe paranormal belief will be trotted out once again, without much true history, rational interest or skeptical thought to show what’s really going on.”
WorldNetDaily tears the antivaccinationists a new one –
Much more disturbingly, McCarthy attacked Peet for daring to disagree with her. “She has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side,” Fox quoted [Jenny] McCarthy as saying, “because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong.”
McCarthy delights in the fact that the force of her opinion comes, not from copious amounts of research, not from firm and reproducible medical and technological evidence, and not even from reasonable and logical speculation, but from legions of irrational and rabidly superstitious parents who simply know that they’re right, regardless of what may be true. Question them, and they will shout you down, insult you and condemn you … all because you dared to oppose their ridiculous and dangerous campaign on the grounds that medical science proves exactly the opposite of what they claim.
Wow! Couldn’t agree more.
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
Extinct Sabertooth Cats Were Social Creatures – “The sabertooth cat (Smilodon fatalis), one of the most iconic extinct mammal species, was likely to be a social animal, living and hunting like lions today, according to new scientific research. The species is famous for its extremely long canine teeth, which reached up to seven inches in length and extended below the lower jaw.
Instead of relying on the bones and teeth of the sabertooths to make their findings, scientists from UCLA and the Zoological Society of London concluded that the sabertooth cat was social by using a novel technique: They compared numbers of present-day carnivores competing for kills in Africa with those of mainly extinct species found in a North American fossil deposit.”
Blood-sucking Vampire Moths: Evolution at work – “A previously unknown population of vampire moths has been found in Siberia. And in a twist worthy of a Halloween horror movie, entomologists say the bloodsuckers may have evolved from a purely fruit-eating species.”
Living Fossil’ Tree Has Climate Clues In Genes – “A “living fossil” tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future.”
Clues To Planets’ Birth Found In Meteorites – “Meteorites that are among the oldest rocks ever found have provided new clues about the conditions that existed at the beginning of the solar system, solving a longstanding mystery and overturning some accepted ideas about the way planets form.”
Ultrafast Lasers Show Electrons In Action – “In the quest to slow down and ultimately understand chemistry at the level of atoms and electrons, University of Colorado at Boulder and Canadian scientists have found a new way to peer into a molecule that allows them to see how its electrons rearrange as the molecule changes shape.”
Is A Phoenician Your Direct Male-line Ancestor? – “The Phoenicians gave the world the alphabet and a love of the color purple, and a research study published today by Genographic scientists in the American Journal of Human Genetics shows that they left some people their genes as well. The study finds that as many as one in 17 men in the Mediterranean basin may have a Phoenician as a direct male-line ancestor.”
Seasonal Clock-shifts Affect Heart Attack Risk – “Adjusting the clocks to summer time on the last Sunday in March increases the risk of myocardial infarction in the following week. In return, putting the clocks back in the autumn reduces the risk, albeit to a lesser extent. This according to a new Swedish study.”
Red Meat: Target For Disease-causing Bacteria? – “Offering another reason why eating red meat could be bad for you, an international research team, including University of California, San Diego School of Medicine professor Ajit Varki, M.D., has uncovered the first example of a bacterium that causes food poisoning in humans when it targets a non-human molecule absorbed into the body through red meats such as lamb, pork and beef.”
Searching For Primordial Antimatter – “Scientists are on the hunt for evidence of antimatter – matter’s arch nemesis – left over from the very early Universe. New results using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory suggest the search may have just become even more difficult.”
Skepacabra 