Stay updated with breaking news from Greg Laden. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Four weeks after a wildfire began in the Canadian province of Alberta, thousands of structures in Fort McMurray have been destroyed, over 100,000 people have been evacuated, and 2200 square miles have gone up in smoke. The fire has also shut down commercial extraction of tar sands, a source of fossil fuel and the reason for Fort McMurray's prosperity.
Gratefulness is an important part of a happy life, but are we right to be thankful for an ill-gotten bounty? In a country of 300 million people, a turkey on every table (or a chicken in every pot) means that many birds live hard and die fast. They are also plucked, gutted, inspected, and packaged as quickly as possible, leaving human workers to pay the price.
The law of superimposition says that stuff found on top is younger than stuff found lower down, in a geological or archaeological column. This is generally true, but there are exceptions, mostly trivial and easily understood. If a cave forms in a rock formation, the stuff that later ends up in that cave is younger in depositional age than the rock underneath which it rests (the rock in the roof of the cave, and above).
In a validation of Albert Einstein's genius, the power of new technology, and the relevance of the scientific method (even if it takes a century), scientists working on a project called LIGO have witnessed ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by gravitational waves. First predicted by Einstein in 1916 on the basis of general relativity, gravitational waves are cosmic shock waves that can result from the interactions of massive objects like black holes and neutron stars. Unlike electromagnetic waves, which pass through space, gravitational waves change the shape of space itself.
DJ Grothe has done some great things and he's taken the James Randi Educational Foundation a long way; he's made an important mark and we should all appreciate him and his prior efforts. Hell, we should create an award named after him and give it to people every year. Thank you DJ Grothe for all you've done for the skeptic movement. Read the rest here.