I have veins as wide as an Interstate. The Red Cross blood donor ladies loved me before I got on the Mad Cow list (15 gallons including 100 pheresis donations). So I took a combat lifesaver course in the Army Reserve. Got to the part about inserting IV's. The CO was paired up with a lady officer with tiny veins and he…

Looks like a site for dredge spoils to me. The fact that it's taken a decade and it's still not filled suggests there's no rush. On the other hand, those shifting color patterns on the land are clearly signals to aliens.

Gonna be a bazillionaire. Sell asparagus dipped in chocolate and floating in yogurt. With strawberries.

Well, they finally won. The people with no lives. The people who complain how useless college courses are but care which college football team is "best." They've been complaining for years how we "need" a college football playoff system. On most planets with intelligent life, "need" is reserved for things like cures…

"Destroy themselves" conjures up images of eco-catastrophe or nuclear war. There's another way. They satisfy all their physical needs and lose interest in exploration and intellectual endeavors in general. Or they satisfy all their needs, grow complacent and begin viewing satisfaction as an entitlement. They lose any…

At $5000 a gallon for printer ink, these are "free" all right.

This happens so often it's a genre of its own - HCIM - High Caloric Intake Monster. Like anacondas that snarf people like popcorn when real snakes can go days without eating. Things with cold blood have slower metabolisms and don't eat as much as warm blooded organisms. And warm blooded creatures consume less in…

I came to this expecting another rehash of pop pseudo-philosophy of science, but it's really a very good job.

1. Were the Milgrim experiments actually done? Milgrim told his subjects that the "victims" were getting electroshock therapy, that is, a beneficial action. If he lied to his subjects, why wouldn't he lie to a journal? And do the experiments measure conformity or a desire to help? After all, nobody (sane) considers it…

Instead of Star Trek or War of the Worlds, I think the most likely alien contact scenario is Watership Down, the novel about a rabbit warren forced to relocate after humans destroy their home. The humans don't hate the bunnies or want to exploit them, they're simply in the way. So the aliens come here. If we attack,…

Photo #6 is about the only pretty girl I've ever seen in an old-time photo. Usually they're grim with square jaws.

I am firmly convinced the average American does not believe in cause and effect. They think a molecule from a plant and a molecule from a test tube are "different" even if they're atom for atom identical. They think if they manipulate the evidence enough, they can make evolution or climate change false. They think…

An episode of the old Maverick TV show showed one of the brothers winning a sucker bet. Deal 25 cards and use them to make 5 pat poker hands (flush, straight, full house, etc.) Sounds hard but you can do it almost every time.

It's a fun book, but WWZ has a host of scientific absurdities. The zombies don't need food, water, or oxygen. So what exactly powers their chemical reactions? A footnote in the book says that even then (ten years after a ten year long war) it's still not known what role sight plays in zombies. This isn't a CDC level…

I can't think of many things humans have that don't have at least a potential or vestigial use. Culturally, though, arbitrariness rules. In fact, it almost seems like arbitrariness itself is the attractant. It says "I have the resources to squander on frills, and I am so horny I will do whatever it takes, no matter…

There are several "body farms" where corpses are allowed to decompose naturally for forensic research. That might be an opportunity to track stem cell viability on longer time scales.

Back in the Bad Old Days, Westerns didn't use authentic Indian dialog. The used what was called "hugga mugga talk" - nonsense syllables that "sounded Indian."

For D.C. to become a State, we'd have to amend the Constitution, since Article I, Section 8 calls for a District governed by Congress. Cuba is a reach, the UK is hallucinatory. What about some long established secession movements in the US, like splitting Michigan or California?

It's astonishing how many people are repeating the same tired mantra: get people to live in tighter quarters. That's why they left for the suburbs in the first place. If we wanted to live in crowded cities, we'd already be doing it.

Complete rubbish. We have AN early primate on our line from Myanmar, which is similar to one known from Libya, which, last time I checked, is in Africa. As Kanan below notes, the earliest primates are from North America (cue Vinnie DeLoria in 3...2...1...)