Plain Broun Wrapper (or, What’s Really In That Bag?)

I thought I might write about something other than politics this morning, but some things are just too there to ignore.  But perhaps this isn’t strictly about politics. Representative Paul Broun of Georgia recently said the following.  I’m pulling the quote from news sources so I don’t get it wrong. “God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. [More . . . ]

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The oldest living things in the world

At TED, Rachel Sussman describes her travels in search of the oldest living things in the world. They include lichen that grown only 1 centimeter every 100 years. They also include a clonal colony of quaking aspen trees, which is 80,000 years old. You'll see a photo of a 9,550 year old Swedish spruce, the location of which is kept secret in order to protect it. I had never before heard of the "underground forests" of South Africa (up to 13,000 years old). In the U.S. we have clonal creosote bushes and Yucca plants (both of these up to 12,000 years old) in the Mojave Desert. Spoiler alert: Th eoldest living thing seems to be Siberian actinobacteria (between 400,000 and 600,000) years old. I really enjoyed this talk, though it was distressing how often Sussman mentioned that human activity is threatening these ancient living life forms.

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The lowest note ever played

It is "played" by the Perseus Cluster, and it is a Bb 57 octaves below middle c.

In 2003, astronomers detected the deepest note ever detected by mankind in the cosmos, a B♭, after 53 hours of Chandra observations.[6] No human will actually hear the note, because its time period between oscillations is 9.6 million years, which is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano.[6] The radio waves appear to be generated by the inflation of bubbles of relativistic plasma by the central active galactic nucleus in NGC 1275.

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Paul Ryan’s Unsuspected Latent Darwinism

Paul Ryan, in a little-noticed interview, said the other day—talking about abortion—that rape is simply another “method of conception.” This is very much in line with Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remark, although it contradicts Akin’s point—which was, somehow, that the reproductive system of a woman being raped (really raped, not…

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