It is probably a myth that Albert Einstein said:

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

A myth because there is nobody who has ever printed that quote who has provided an original source. Also two people (here and here) have taken it up with actual Einstein historians who have never heard of the quote.

However, even if it is a myth, the quote is quite apt. Recently the Bee has been disappearing. What would happen if the bees disappeared?

So what's happening? It seems to be called CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Many reasons are being researched, from the foods being fed the bees to cell phones. Whatever the reasons this is a real problem.

The universe expanding forever no beginning or no end? Maybe according to this new theory.

Sweet. Scientists have come up with a small device that can take oxygen straight out of the water. Now if only they could figure out how to make a sword out of plasma that I could hold in my hand. Oh and all that Jedi mind strick stuff.

Not withstanding the Presidents efforts in Iraq, I look forward to many of the other objectives the President outlined in his State of the Union. We are indeed addicted to oil, let's find some ways to fix that. He mentioned switch grass, which is perhaps might not at first glance seem like a plausable way to help solve our problem, but apparently it has some great energy potential. Of course there's been tons of talk before about biodiesel which can be made from corn.

Happy 4th of July America. NASA decided to join in the fireworks today by smashing a satalite into a comet.

So I read this interesting article in Wired magazine, which you can now read online here, about the idea of starting up the growth of nuclear power plants here in the States. The article did a good job of pointing out the problems of carbon emissions due to our reliance on coal plants for a majority of our power and the shortcomings of clean energy from wind, solar, water, etc. I urge those who are interested in at least reading ideas about curbing our reliance on coal and oil, and trying to stop pumping out so much carbon. Obviously we should try to conserve energy but realistically that only delays the inevitable need to find more energy. Clean energy costs more and still does not provide for enough energy reliably, per square mile they take up. I'm all for the US building nuclear power plants again. For more info on nuclear powers pros and cons you can visit these sites: FAQ, Economics of, more, wiki.

For those who don't know, I am not a democrat nor am I a bona-fide liberal. I come across that way because I defend passionately what I see as a concerted attack on the liberal ideals I do have. I am both a liberal and a conservative. I am liberal about some things and I am conservative about some things. Take for example abortion, I conservatively (though not based on any religion), am again abortion after 100 days of conception but liberally I both necessarily cannot tell other people what choices to make nor can I exactly say when it is a fertilized egg turns into a human being (the 100 days is a 'feeling' rather than a real scientifically backed up reason for when to ban abortions). Thus I defer most of the time to the judgment of the woman who is pregnant.

Last month the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, made a speech about the lack of woman in science. During the speech he made some remarks that one of the possibilities were the innate or biological differences between men and woman. It caused an uproar during the speech and since then many people have given their opinion about what he said. I myself had a debate with a friend of mine about the subject. I immediately defended the position that woman are no different than men, however over the course of the discussion I became the realize how naive this position is knowing what I do about biology. Putting aside differences there may or may not be between the male brain and female brain, there are definite differences physically between the average male and female. Puberty for instance starts sooner in females than males and often because of the rise in presence of estrogen brought on by puberty the growth spurt lasts a shorter amount of time in females than males. The potential in muscle mass may be no different between males and females but this is only by force of will, the average male has a greater body mass than the average female. As for the brain, this argument is ages old. While I believe each persons brains is fairly unique and thus hard to generalize many people think there is evidence that males and females do have some tendencies in differences in how they use their brains. more and more">more and more

Really what it comes down to for me is two things. One, it's possible that woman are less prone to liking science than men but that this is not a hard rule and does not mean that woman are worse at science than men. It is also possible that men merely feel woman are this way and have thus made woman feel uncomfortable in science, nurture versus nature. Two, woman and men are equal, their potential is equal, they must be treated equal. The merits of a job must always be with the individuals skill not their sex. Period.

As I do nearly every weekend I went and saw a movie, this weekend I saw "What the bleep do we know?", which was an interesting documentary about quantum physics. There were two main parts to it, the story and the documentary, both revolving around the central theme of quantum physics and how we are effected at the very small quanta levels. One of the more interesting things I brought out of the movie was the idea that we can tell ourselves to have positive thoughts but instead what we get is a very thin line or layer of positive thought surrounded with our normal negative thoughts or feelings. Leading us to think we've pushed the negative away when really we have not. Another interesting idea, which Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto experimented with, that water can be affected by human thought, vibration, words, and music by different crystals forming such as with thoughts like love and hate. I leave you to follow the links to research on your own for now.