Ever wonder how it must have looked as clouds of space dust combined to form the Earth. National Geographic offers this awesome animation: Also from National Geographic, here's a theory of how some species of animals, but not large dinosaurs, survived the the aftermath of an enormous asteroid crashing into Earth. And here is a theory regarding the formation of the moon.
According to the Bible, Noah was ordered to take one male and one female of each species. This part of loading the ark seems easy, at least conceptually. Just gather up one male and one female of each of the many thousands of species of critters before beginning the journey.
7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.But there is a problem: many critters don't mate in the "traditional" way, using one male and one female. Luckily, there's help on the way: a reenactment of the boarding of ark. This delightful and informative "Green Porno" video features Isabella Rosellini.
Couldn't resist reading about human "jello" at Discover.
Neil deGrasse Tyson bemoans that "no one is dreaming about tomorrow anymore." At some point, "you gotta look up." He reminds us that NASA enables our dreams: "The most powerful agency on the dreams of a nation is currently underfunded to do what it needs to do. . . . How much would you pay for the universe?” NASA now runs off of .58% of the national budget. Compare this to the 1960s, when a full 5% of the national budget was allocated to NASA. Compare the NASA budget to the money we are wasting on our military adventures and it's intensely depressing.
I'm in London on vacation, enjoying many of the museums, including London's National Gallery. Today I spotted the following painting, which is part of the National Gallery's collection:
This is a painting by Palma Vecchio (painted around 1520). The art gallery is open to all ages, including small children, and there were plenty of young children in the vicinity of this painting today. The description next to this painting announces that the woman displays a "sensuous beauty" characteristic of Roman courtesans.
Frankly, I find the woman in Vecchio's painting to be quite fetching, and I find the painting itself to be most excellent. To my eye, it is not in the least obscene. But seeing it today made me think of Janet Jackson's "nipple" incident at the Superbowl XXXVIII. What an incident that was, ending up with a fine of more than 1/2 million dollars for the TV network, and America ending all up bent out of shape because somehow . . . somehow . . . the sight of Ms. Jackson's nipple harmed children. I strongly disagree with the attitude that the naked human body should be seen as perverse. I have never seen any evidence that any child has ever been harmed by seeing a nipple; I've never seen any scientific evidence suggesting that it is harmful to view a nipple, despite millions of protests to the contrary (As to why so many Americans are so terrified about the public viewing of female nipples, I have a theory).
Seeing this painting reminded me of Dan Dennett's comment that people in American don't believe in God, but they believe in belief. Likewise, we don't really believe that children are harmed by mere nakedness, but we believe in the belief that children are harmed by mere nakedness.
If we Americans really believed that mere images of nakedness and sexuality harmed children, we'd pass a law to remove quite a bit of art from our own museums, and we'd also take down quite a bit of our suggestive advertisements currently on billboards and storefronts.
It's incidents like Jackson's that make me think that we Americans are not even capable of having meaningful conversations anymore, unless the topic is sports, TV, movies, or consumer electronics. On important issues we'd rather yell at each other in tribal ways.