ITN asks a really important question. Oil holds us hostage in the Mid-East. The new electric vehicles need lithium for battery manufacture.

Who is likely to hold us hostage this time around?

Bolivia. “All our lithium belong to them.”

I’m going outside to look for a really good wall to bang my head against.

Somebody actually studied this.

It seems some people think Stephen Colbert is being serious. God help us all.

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

Trying to cut through the noise trying to separate real reporting from nonsense on swine flu and other illnesses.

This website (non-profit) appears useful.

Healthmap.

Results from a new set of observations are causing quite a stir. No idea where this will lead, but I’ll be following this one quite closely.

The high speed of stars and apparent presence of ‘dark matter’ in the satellite galaxies that orbit our Milky Way Galaxy presents a direct challenge to Newton’s theory of gravitation, according to physicists from Germany, Austria and Australia.

[...]

The team of scientists looked at the distribution of these satellite dwarf galaxies and discovered they were not where they should be. “There is something odd about their distribution”, explains Professor Kroupa. “They should be uniformly arranged around the Milky Way, but this is not what we found.” The astronomers discovered that the eleven brightest of the dwarf galaxies lie more or less in the same plane – in a kind of disk shape – and that they revolve in the same direction around the Milky Way (in the same way as planets in the Solar System revolve around the Sun).

[...]

Dr Metz continues, “The only solution is to reject Newton’s theory. If we live in a Universe where a modified law of gravitation applies, then our observations would be explainable without dark matter.”
With this evidence, the team share the convictions of a number of groups around the world who believe that some of the fundamental principles of physics have been incorrectly understood. If their ideas are correct, it will not be the first time that Newton’s theory of gravitation has been modified. In the 20th century it happened when Einstein introduced his Special and General Theories of Relativity and again when quantum mechanics was developed to explain physics on sub-atomic scales. The anomalies detected by Dr. Metz and Professor Kroupa and their collaborators imply that where weak accelerations predominate, a ‘modified Newtonian dynamic’ may have to be used. If the scientists are right then this has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the Universe we live in.