The reality-based community can follow the LCROSS project at NASA's LCROSS website

NASA sure does know how to drag out the kooks. NASA's innovative new project for studying the Moon's chemistry and attempting to detect water involves effectively slamming a projectile into the Moon's surface and analyzing the resulting ejecta. The Register reports on the crazies who are concerned about the US government's latest 'bombing campaign':

He wasn't alone, either, with various observers backing the surrealists' possible belief that NASA might inadvertently cause major havoc with their crater strike. This might seem to be impossible given the bigness of the Moon, the smallness of the LCROSS, and the laws of physics - but there were those who disagreed. Commentard Greenstar perhaps summed up this point of view best:

Think of the planets in terms of forming a sentence. The Earth is a noun. The moon is a verb. Its very existance creates action in the tides, the weather, and possibly human mood. It's perfection of rotation sets into play all the components that make it possible for life here to exist and yet no life exists there. How is that possible? Wouldn't it seem logical for the earth to have a reciprocal effect on the moon - but it doesn't. The laws of symbiosis don't apply. If the moon is nothing more than a big rock then it can be cleaved like a big rock. Laws of mass and density don't apply nor do they offer us protection from the idiots at NASA who have never watched a diamond cutter. They are big boys with BIG toys and brains the size of a TRex AND are running the risk of making us all extinct.



In the meantime. The reality-based community can follow the LCROSS project at NASA's LCROSS website

Larry Moran Ardipithecus ramidus

Larry Moran has a good piece about the newest fossil hominid find, Ardipithecus ramidus. He goes after some of the irresponsible reportage from both the journalists and scientists alike. Having dealt with the sometimes difficult task of explaining the significance of certain new fossils to journalists, I can understand that sometimes things would get lost in translation. However, here we have an example of highly problematic statements coming from both scientists and the media.

I've got a lot on my plate this week, but I would like to write a comment or two about Ardipithecus this week. Hopefully I'll have that up soon.

Dr. Gans

Carl Gans, a giant in the field of comparative and functional morphology, has died at 86.

Dr. Gans has left a profound and lasting impact on vertebrate anatomy and evolution. His work with Glenn Northcutt laid foundations for modern ideas on the role of neural crest in the evolution of the vertebrate head. He was the editor of the 23-volume Biology of the Reptilia, a remarkable source of ideas and data on reptile biology and evolution.

Obituaries: NY Times; CNAH

Tip to Palaeoblog

MacBook Pro

This was a frustrating and disappointing part of my day:



After lunch, I opened my year-old MacBook Pro from its slumber to find a nice set of off-center racing stripes down my screen. Turns out, they go away if I jostle the monitor panel a bit, but that's not going to cut it. The vertical lines will reappear and continue to remind me of the cheap and overrated engineering.

I'm very disappointed by this. My options right now are either to pay to get it fixed or pay to get a new computer. I can't stand the thought of going back to Windows, really. However, the thought of giving Apple another cent of my money is really putting me off. This one forum thread alone can regale you with 12 pages of anecdotes about this same problem with MacBook Pros. Even while under warranty, some folks have gone through three or more new computers—or so the stories say.

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UPDATE: Apple has kindly offered to cover the costs of the repair. It's still rather disappointing though.