As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough to live in Illinois

Apparently the Illinois State Senate has been hard at work for the people of Illinois.  Throwing caution, science, and common sense to the wind, they have passed a resolution stating that Pluto is now again a planet.  (If you recall, in 2006, the scientific community declared that Pluto was not actually a planet.)  It just [...]

The frowny face in the sky

I’ve been looking forward to the frowny face in the sky for about a week (since I found out there was going to be one).  What stinks is that it’s now cloudy on the night I’d actually be able to see it.  If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, Venus, Jupiter, and a crescent moon [...]

Are these the same Catholics I used to know?

It took the Catholic church about 300+ years or so to officially acknowledge Galileo was right about the Earth not being the center of the universe. I guess the Catholic church is stepping up that science timetable by only taking 150 years this time to do the same for Darwin.   (Check [...]

Orienteering with cattle

I saw an article yesterday about cattle generally pointing north when they were grazing or resting.  I guess I never noticed any cows standing or laying down in a specific direction.  Anyway, I just thought the article was kind of funny.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2623809/Cows-point-north-thanks-to-in-built-compasses.html

“Hearts and kidneys are TINKER TOYS!”

Be sure to read the title of this entry in the voice of a crazed Gene Wilder. (Go get a copy of Young Frankenstein if you didn’t get the movie reference.)
So anyway, this article is unbelievable. Apparently some scientists were able to take dead hearts from a rat and a [...]

Still working on that regeneration ability

Hey, according to this article I’m more highly evolved than all those brown-eyed people out there!
“Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes,” Hawks notes, because that gene—OCA2—had not yet developed. “We are different from people who lived only 400 generations ago in ways that are very obvious; that you can [...]

Complex Life – Just Add Poo

I just found a very interesting post on Wired.com about a new theory on how complex life evolved. It appears to boil down to saying that evolution of life on earth was pretty stagnate for a very long time. As soon as feces producing organisms appeared, this changed the ecosystem of the ocean [...]

Robot roaches

You can file this story under strange but amusing. I just thought I would share it in case you happen to read my blog but not the science news stories.
From the article:
Many a mother has said, with a sigh, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?” The [...]