July 2008
Ten Facts About the Water We Waste
thegreatradsby:
Americans now use 127 percent more water than we did in 1950.
About 95 percent of the water entering our homes goes down the drain.
Running the tap while brushing your teeth can waste 4 gallons of water.
Older toilets can use 3 gallons of clean water with every flush, while new toilets use as little as 1 gallon.
Leaky faucets that drip at the rate of one drop per second can...
Another reason for fair minded Americans to move... →
On August 1st, 2008, there will be a solar eclipse of the Sun visible from Canada.
Ok, it’s also visible form Greenland, Svlbard, the Barents Sea, Russia, Mongolia and China. But you know you’d rather move to Canada.
Liquid found on Titan! →
Scientist have confirmed that Titan, a moon of Saturn, has a liquid lake. In this case it’s not water but liquid hydrocarbons (most likely ethane).
For those keeping track. Titan has hydrocarbons and electrical storms (so amino acids can’t be too far off), and an atmosphere of sorts. Io, moon of Jupiter, has a volcano or two. And Europa, also a moon of Jupiter, is covered in ice with...
Church exorcism protected by First Amendment →
A US woman who was injured during an exorcism by a Texas church is having to take her case to the US Supreme Court after state judges said that the Church was protected under the First Amendment.
Laura Schubert Pearson suffered a two-day exorcism in which she claimed she was held captive for two days. During this time she was pinned to the ground and “pummelled” because the church...
NASA Images →
NASA is in the process of releasing millions of photos, images, videos and audio related to the various programs it has carried out since it’s creation.
The site is well worth a visit, if simply to see some stunning photos. The only downside is that their servers seem to be having problems keeping up with the demand.
Sky map of exoplanets →
To date around 307 exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, have been discovered. This site has a skymap to help you locate the stars which we know have orbiting planets. If you click on one of the stars on the map you can view a simulation of the distant planetary system plus a listing of facts on the system.
Check out the simulation of the system around PSR B1257+12 which has at...
Heat into Electricity →
Researchers at Ohio State University claim to have developed a material which is twice as efficient as anything currently on the market at converting heat into electricity.
The researches claim that this could make cars more efficient by converting waste heat in the car exhaust into electrical energy.
One possible fly in the ointment is that the new material uses thallium which is extremely...
Killing in the name of Islam, OK! →
According to a recent survey almost one third of British Muslim university students think killing in the name of Islam is OK.
A peaceful religion indeed.
JFC: Episode 3 →
Jesus is back! And these are his adventures.
Red hot enlightenment led me to believe in one... →
Chatherine Devey contemplates on what was WYD and her own conversion to atheism.
NZ church provides fuel for soul and car →
In an attempt to get more bums on pews a New Zealand church is offering fuel vouchers to newcomers.
“The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand, the...”
– Barack Obama delivers a call for global unity to tens of thousands of people in Germany’s capital Berlin, but still manages to ignore atheists, Budhists and Pastafarians.
Bricking up CO2 could reduce global warming. →
A Canadian company, Carbon Sense Solutions, claims that it has developed a way to store CO2 in precast concrete products. They do this by exposing the precast concrete products to CO2 rich flue gases during the curing process.
Experts say that the technology is so far unproven but hold great potential if it works.
Moo energy →
Using cow manure to generate electricity could meet up to 3% of North America’s entire consumption needs and lead to a significant reduction in greenhouse gases. No bull!
Christian politicians to eradicate poverty in the... →
An American evangelical minister, The Reverend Jim Wallis, beleives that Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the soon to be president of the US, Barack Obama, should push the world to increase aid and cancel debt for developing countries.
Over the past 3 years the pastor has been a private adviser on spirituality and ethics to Mr Rudd, a job he did...
Low self-esteem? Why not slap on some lippy. →
A program, designed by the Hillsong Church, for young women with low self-esteem, and other issues, teaches them a range of skills to over come their problems. The course includes instruction for the girls on how to put on make-up, do their hair and nails and learn to walk with books balanced on their heads.
The course has found it’s way into New South Wales public schools, community...
Question for my Tumblr friends.
Can anybody recommend a good off-line Tumblr editor?
I’ll be visiting some of the remoter parts of Oz later this year and I need something that will allow me to write Tumblr entries when I don’t have internet access and then upload them when I do.
I have the tumblr api, I have Visual Studio, so I could knock something up, but I’d rather be doing other things on my weekend...
“If god existed, he’d make weekends longer.”
– Alan Conradi’s “what are you doing now” statement on Facebook.
“We don’t know if he is still pouting or if there is another mysterious...”
– Jens Peder Tornvig, spokesman of the Santa Claus World Congress, speculates about why the Finnish Father Christmas did not come to their meeting in Denmark.
Woking a way to sustainability. →
When Allan Jones became chief engineer of the Borough of Woking, England, he introduced a plan to replace the town’s electricity and heating systems with cogeneration systems as a way to improve the energy efficiency of the town.
The idea behind cogeneration is to move the energy production to the site and capture and use the heat that normally goes to waste in large power stations....
Great news, no such thing as global warming. →
That’s if you believe Andrew Bolt (affectionately known as Andrew Dolt here in Oz).
Selective data selection, and the usual misrepresentation of facts; the APS hasn’t changed its position on human caused global warming, ice cover hasn’t actually increased and the overall temperature is going up.
Also that petition of 31,000 “scientists” includes non-scientists, and...
Channel 4 to be censured over The Great Warming... →
British TV Channel 4 has be found by the UK’s media regulator to have misrepresented some of the world’s leading climate scientists in it’s documentary The Great Warming Swindle.
The programme has been criticised from many quarters over its misrepresentation of the evidence on global warming.
The ruling upheld claims that the show had attributed comments to the former chief...
Pilgrim arrested in clash with protesters →
A Catholic pilgrim to the Catholic World Youth Day, being held in Sydney,was arrested today after he tried to break through police lines to attack anti-Pope protesters.
The 1,000 or so protesters who took up positions along the route taken by the pilgrims were protesting against the Pope’s opposition to homosexuality and birth control.
Does Car-Mounted Solar Make Sense? →
Recently a Japanese newspaper reported that a new model Toyota Prius to be launched next year will come equipped with solar panels on the roof. A claim that Toyota will neither confirm or deny.
But how useful would solar panels on a hybrid car be? The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have being trying to find out. This article in MIT’s Technology...
Strength of US evangelicals a big myth. →
Michael Duffy argues that the presumed importance and strength of the evangelical church in the US is over stated. While new mega-Churches keep popping up Duffy argues that rather than attracting new people to the church they just cannibalises membership from other churches.
According to research quoted by Duffy evangelical numbers have dropped from 12% in 1991 to just 7% of the US population....
“Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying [and] delighting in the beauty...”
– Bishop Anthony Fisher, co-ordinator of the Catholic World Youth Day week in Sydney.
The old wounds are the rape of two sisters by a Catholic Priest when the girls were in primary school. One of the girls committed suicide six months ago, the other became dependent on alcohol and suffered brain...
Condoms all round! We can annoy! →
The Federal Court in Sydney has struck down a World Youth Day law that made it a crime ($5,500 offence) to annoy participants at the Catholic event.
This came just in time for the Pope’s arrival in Sydney today.
Now if you read the linked story you’ll read about how some kind hearted people handed out condoms to the needy pilgrims. But they in their disdain of scientific evidence...
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (via theministryoftruth) (via brigno)
Beijing the "Open" Olympics. Not! →
Despite assurances to the Olympic committee and the World, China is not easing up on security and media restrictions, if anything things are getting wrose.
Recently a German TV crew were stopped from filming a live-to-air segment on the Great Wall of China - the story was how scenic the area was and the cultural and historic significance of the Wall.
Areas in Beijing, such as Tiananmen Square,...
Russia, China veto UN Zimbabwe sanctions. →
No surprise here but still very disappointing. Just think by the middle of this century China will be the world’s leading super power … even GW’s time in office will look good then.
“The Barna Group also found that those who hold to the worldviews of atheism or...”
– From the Atheist entry in Conserapedia (Wikiepedia for the religious) … well they had to get something right.
“Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
– George Bush saying goodbye at the recent G8 summit
One third of reef-building corals on the verge of... →
If you want to see the Barrier Reef you’d better get here soon. New research show that one third of all reef-building corals are close to extinction. The culprit … global warming.
Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging on by a thread' →
While it’s the middle of winter in Antarctica new satellite photos show that the Wilkins Ice Shelf is even closer to breaking away. Experts say the effect of warming there now look irreversible.
Aussie invention could speed up the internet by... →
Researches at the University of Sydney have developed a new ultrafast optical switch on a chip which they claim could speed up the internet in Australia by more than 6,000 percent.
Finally we’ll be able to load Facebook pages in a reasonable amount of time.
