Glad you are reading this, dear friend of Science,
Kul att du läser detta, kära vetenskapsvän,
The Bay Area boasts the Swedish American Hall, the Swedish Women’s Educational Association of San Francisco, The Scandinavian School and Cultural Center, the Swedish Society of San Francisco, and more. [I love it that Swedish for “Glad” sounds like “Cool.” ¿Bohemian worldliness?]
The picture above was compiled from over 200 photos taken from satellites. In reality, it’s not all dark. Half of Earth is always in sunlight. But the title of this week’s SciSchmooze also refers to the perspective that regardless of current wars, injustices, natural disasters, authoritarian regimes, and too many instances of man’s inhumanity to man, most of us enjoy the brightness that comes with a decent amount of health, a circle of friends, and natural beauty that can be found not too far away.
Science (or should i say “Reality”) just took a big hit when our current administration accepted an updated assessment of Earth’s climate written by five ‘climate deniers’ hand-picked by a fossil-fuel entrepreneur. Based on this “updated assessment,” the Environmental Protection Agency, E.P.A., plans to rescind the “endangerment finding” of 2009 stating that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. That rescindment will clear legal barriers to halting federal renewable energy projects and to claw back already-allocated funds. It’s no coincidence that 98% of political donations from the fossil fuel sector go to Republicans.
[[The 2009 ‘finding’ was prepared by hundreds of scientists involved in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program/U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. These organizations, in turn, synthesized the findings of thousands of published studies on climate change.]]
Paul Krugman has an almost humorous take on American climate attitudes: “Don’t concern about the environment and advocacy of “clean energy” sound kind of, well, feminine? Real men burn stuff and don’t worry if the process is dirty.” ¿Does this also explain why there is a Moms Clean Air Force and not a Dads?
On the bright side, China installed more wind and solar power in 2024 than the rest of the world combined.
You can help us stand up for science. Just watch this brief video.
ANTHROPOLOGY / ARCHAEOLOGY
By examining the ratio of nitrogen isotopes in Neanderthal bones, archaeologists concluded that they almost exclusively ate meat — on a par with hyenas — since meat has a higher ratio of N-15 to N-14 than plants. Some anthropologists had a different idea. People in many indigenous cultures today eat insect larvae since they are very nutritious and high in fat content. Additionally the N-15 to N-14 ratios of maggots are much higher than in meat which would have boosted the ratios found in Neanderthal bones. Neanderthals feasting on maggots also explains why they apparently did not suffer from protein poisoning which occurs with a diet high in lean meat and an insufficient fat intake. However, there is evidence that some Neanderthals broke open and roasted bones of their prey to extract bone marrow fat. [If i only had a time machine to join them at meals, but i’d insist on good recipes.]
RAFFLE
Nerd out with this James Watt Space Telescope t-shirt. (Women’s style & other colors also available) Those 18 hexagonal segments joined for a mirror that is 6.5 meters across. {Don’t be perturbed if people think you’re a bee keeper.} Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail<dot>com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000. Last time, Suomynona guessed closest to the randomly-generated 378 to win a laboratory beaker coffee mug.
BIOLOGY / ETHOLOGY
Let’s continue with maggots for a bit. Green-bottle flies are raised in laboratories and their larvae, i.e. maggots, are used medicinally to remove necrotic tissue from wounds. The maggots of nearly any fly species are effective in debriding wounds, but a huge exception are the New World Screwworm Fly maggots; they will gleefully chow down on healthy tissue. Annual losses to cattle ranchers in Texas range from 50 to 100 million dollars; and that is for years when the pest is ‘under control.’ A single ‘outbreak’ could cost Texas nearly 2 billion dollars. The U.S. is breeding billions of sterile screwworm fly males that will be dumped from airplanes over southern Texas and northern Mexico in an effort to control the pesky problem.
Let’s continue with more entomophagy, i.e. consumption of insects as food. More precisely, myrmecophagy; the eating of ants and/or termites. Different mammals have separately evolved at least 12 times to become myrmecophagous. That includes the monotremes (echidnas), marsupials (numbat), and placental mammals (anteaters in the suborder Vermilingua (meaning ‘worm tongue’), pangolins, and the aardvark). Becoming myrmecophagous makes sense because termites alone outweigh mammals by a factor of 10.
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK – My Picks
Bay Day at the ExplOratorium Thurs 11am – 4pm, San Francisco, $
Skeptical Inquirer Presents: Misguided Livestream, Thurs 4pm
Building the World’s Largest Digital Camera both Live & Livestream Thurs 7pm
Fungus Among Us – Sat 10:30 – 12:30, Chabot Space & Science Ctr, Oakland, $
Tickets are now on sale for SkeptiCal 2025 in Oakland on August 23nd. Get more information (& tickets & t-shirts) HERE.
ENVIRONMENT
¿Turn cow pies into food containers? [This SciSchmooze ranks high in “yuck!”] Researchers devised a way to recover cellulose from cow dung without harsh chemicals. Back in April, the SciSchmooze told how researchers in Japan came up with a process to make food containers out of cellulose. Good Bossy.
Here’s a tip to save money on your electric bill while going easier on the environment: wash your clothes in cold water.
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
Watch livestream video from the ISS, now with a little globe image to show its location, and a blurb describing that location. Altitude, velocity, and other data are displayed. ¿Altitude? Aren’t they always at the same distance above Earth? Nope. You can watch when the ISS gains a little speed as it loses a little altitude, etc. Here’s the link: Watch Earth Live
Social Media Quakery – Show & Tell – Joe Schwarcz – 3 mins
Interstellar Object Might Be Alien Probe – Sabine Hossenfelder – 5 mins
Platypuses Have No Stomach – Bizarre Beasts – Sarah Suta – 5.5 mins
¿Is a Space Elevator Worth It? – StarTalk – Neil deGrasse Tyson & Chuck Nice – 9 mins
Neanderthal Fat Factory – History with Kayleigh – Kayleigh During – 9 mins
Poop, Barf, & Dinosaur Evolution – PBS Eons – Blake de Pastino – 9 mins
¿Are Breeder Reactors Coming Back? – Deutsche Welle Planet – 13 mins
Visiting the Amazon Rain Forest – Dani Connor Wild – 15.5 mins
¿At a Fundamental Level, Why Do Magnets Attract? – Arvin Ash – 16 mins
The Problem with Gravity Explained in Zero G – Cleo Abram – 20 mins
Recipes for Eating Insects – Epicurious – Joseph Yoon – 22 mins
The Search for Life as We Don’t Know It – Dr. Becky – Becky Smethurst – 22 mins
Americium – Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschmann – 37 mins
Feathered Dinosaurs and Flight – SLICE Full Doc – 50 mins
There is a lot to enjoy on our planet. Treat yourself, but practice your ability to take on another person’s perspective,
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.”
– Stephen Hawking (1942 – 2018) English theoretical physicist
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