2012... A Hollywood Hoax?

Remember the 2012 movie we talked about a few weeks ago? Well Joel Achenbach, of the Washington Post, has suggested that December 21st, 2012 is all just one big hoax.

Some quotes from his piece:

"The world is coming to an end.
In, like, 4 or 5 billion years. The sun will get old and cranky and eventually immolate the entire planet.
The world, however, is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, contrary to the viral Internet rumor propounded by pseudo-scientists, hoaxers, Hollywood movie promoters and assorted void-between-the-ears people who wouldn't recognize a scientific fact if it tried to abduct them."

Excuse me Mr. Achenbach, but I am not a pseudo scientist, a hoaxer, and I certainly do not work for Hollywood (yet). And trust me, I know science when I see it. I am certainly not void between the ears. If you'd like, I can go dig up my 1600 SAT scores and you can meet my beautiful wife. (Tinfoil hatters don't usually score perfect 10s). Perhaps you just need to open your eyes a little bit wider and accept that some things are outside the realm of your understanding.

"As with all pseudo-science, the real science provides a platform from which the human imagination soars to great heights of irrationality."

And as with any Style story at the Washington Post the paper soars to new heights of uselessness.


[image via the2012countdown.com]

Large Hadron Terrorist

*

Holy Shit! Scary news out of France.

A researcher working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider was arrested last week with suspected ties to terrorist group al-Qaeda.

According to the BBC:

"The 32-year-old man of Algerian descent was one of two brothers detained in the south-east town of Vienne on Thursday.

Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France.

Cern's Large Hadron Collider is aiming to recreate conditions of the Big Bang.

The organisation confirmed that a physicist working at its site had been arrested "under suspicion of links to terrorist organisations", and said it was helping the French police with their investigation." (bbc)

Who knows what this (alleged) monster would have been capable of. The fact that the LHC is going to destroy us all without any terrorists--except for those loony scientists at CERN--working there is scary enough. Time to duck and cover. Thank you France for arresting this guy before he powered up the collider and fired two dirty quarks** together to create a super-duper black hole that would destroy the universe.


*Tram driver image not likely to actually be the alleged terrorist, but you never know.

**I have been told by our science correspondent that "dirty quarks" do not (yet) exist, even though there are tons of other weird quark types. But when scientists find the next type of quark they totally should call them "dirty."

Robotic Bees at Harvard -- Watch Out Yale!

We talk about bees a lot here at EIGN. But we think this story may be the scariest of all.

"Harvard researchers recently got a $10 million grant to create a colony of flying robotic bees." (network world)

ROBOTIC BEES?? Here's the reasoning, according to a network world magazine blog...

"The 5-year, National Science Foundation-funded RoboBee project could lead to a better understanding of how to artificially mimic the unique collective behavior and intelligence of a bee colony; foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to deftly sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices, according to the Harvard RoboBee Web site."

"Apparently though the RoboBees will lack one thing regular bees are known for, a stinger." Okay so maybe the first generation won't have stingers but what happens after they start reproducing--then we are really screwed. RUN!

Does anyone else think it is useless to create robotic bees if they are not going to help with the pollination problem we are starting to face?

[image via freaking news]

The Great, Late, Pumpkin

Global warming (cough) has apparently struck again. This time with the pumpkin. Looks like in some parts of the country there are not going to be enough pumpkins to go around.

"The jack-o'-lantern outlook in New England and parts of the Midwest looks a fright. A combination of wet and cold ruined a bunch of the pumpkin crop, and what's left in some fields is taking its own sweet time to ripen." (msnmoney)

In related news, apparently wearing a condom can help save the planet. Maybe you should try just keeping it in your pants, for once.

[thanks to eign reader j. for the heads up on this story]

Facebook Status: Busy Robbing House.

Let us meet the stupidest of the stupid criminals ever: Jonathan G. Parker, a 19 year old in West Virginia, decided to stop and update his facebook page on the computer in the house he was robbing.

Everyone, please proceed to find this guy on facebook, friend him and write on his "wall": "You are a stupid moron."