Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. There’s an interesting comparison with epidemiology (the study of how we know): agnotology is the study of why we do not know, recognising that it could be more than ignorance, indeed it could be an “outcome of a cultural and political struggle”.
Astonishing photo of a star breaking out of its umbilical cord of dust and gas.
APOD: 2013 March 24 – Dust Pillar of the Carina Nebula.
Fabulous panoramas to spend a few minutes exploring.
Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 177 in Out of this World
Who knew our London house was so directly underneath Alexandra Palace (when viewed from the BT tower)? Click to view the extraordinary panorama of London.
Some videos to catch up on to remind you quite how astonishing and beautiful our universe is.
You could fit the earth underneath the solar prominence in this video. The whole earth.
Driving on the moon? Done it and got the video.
Landing on another planet’s moon? Yes, you can watch that too.
Watch our own moon at incredible size? Magnificent.
Fecal Matter Transplant is getting stronger and stronger evidence that it can really work to cure problematic infections, in this case Clostridium difficile.
Now what do we call the treatment? FMT is a bit of a nicer name until you hear what it means. The synthetic stool substance Repoopulate is hilariously-named, but couldn’t be taken seriously.
Fecal Transplants: A Clinical Trial Confirms How Well They Work | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Stunning shot of blue gas clouds (the size of Pluto’s orbit) being ejected into the space surrounding Orion.
APOD: 2013 January 10 – The Orion Bullets.
It is a scandal and a potential disaster that we aren’t better at probabilities. Probability is hard and often counter-intuitive, but we have to find some simple ways to nudge people to realise this and deal with it.
If I try to translate from numeracy to literacy, I’d say that the doctors’ failure was the equivalent of being unable to write a decent essay about “The Waste Land”, while the MPs’ failure was more like the inability to read a newspaper.
via Why aren’t we doing the maths? – FT.com.
Evolution of lactose tolerance
Fascinating read: we used to turn off lactose tolerance to avoid sibling rivalry. Then suddenly we didn’t (in Europe, at least).
Brilliant discussion of human athleticism: we evolved for long distance endurance, which is why we can occasionally beat horses in a race and couldn’t even outrun a sheep.
I had no idea about the musculoskeletal adaptations in the head to help gaze fixation while running.
Also has some compelling stats on barefoot running. As a rubbish runner, very new to doing any at all, I certainly find it more comfortable to toe-strike than to heel strike.
Brains Plus Brawn | Conversation | Edge.
Data Wrangler for all of the data geeks out there. Really neat pro-active cleaning and management of messy data sets.