Miniblog

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  Prehistoric yeast lead to new beer
  

  California Polytechnic State University scientist Raul Cano will go to almost any length to brew the perfect beer, and in this case he’s gone back in time. Well, not quite. Actually, he’s using a strain of yeast out of time. 45 million years out of time to be precise.

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  Over half of Americans believe in guardian angels
  

  Reporting on the newest Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion poll, Time Magazine notes that 55% of respondents believe they were personally protected from harm by a guardian angel. Scary.

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  Phoenix's Facebook page disabled
  

  If you were friends with the Phoenix Mars Lander on Facebook, you'll likely have noticed by now that Phoenix's Facebook profile was disabled a couple of weeks back. Today Phoenix wrote to inform us that her profile is permanently gone, but all of her friends have been transferred by the Facebook admins to the new Phoenix Mars Lander Facebook Page. Become a fan of Phoenix on Facebook, or follow her tweets on Twitter to stay uptodate on all the news from the artic plains of Mars.

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  George Takei Ties The Knot
  

  George Takei who played Lt. Sulu on Star Trek married Brad Altman, his partner of twenty-one years, in what sounds like a lovely Buddhist ceremony which included a kimono-wearing koto player and bagpipes. Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) and Walter Koenig (Ensign Chekov) were maid of honor and best man respectively. California is only the second state, after Massachusetts, to approve same-sex marriages.

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  Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain
  

  "A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton." They claim it fills them with an, "overwhelming feeling of logic."

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  New Humanist Symposium
  

  The latest retro text e-zine styled edition of the Humanist Symposium is out now at The Uncredible Hallq. Next edition is at FreeThought Fort Wayne.

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  Biden will be Obama's Veep
  

  It's official. Joe Biden is Obama's pick for the Vice President spot on the Democratic ticket. CNN says the text messages went out about an hour ago. I admit to be being a little miffed 'cause I never got mine. Actually, I signed up for the e-mail alert. I guess the tubes must be more clogged than usual tonight.

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  Want to break into the White House?
  

  Apparently all you need are a photocopier, spare credit card and a paperclip. Security researchers at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas demonstrated Friday Friday how to easily duplicate the keys to Medeco "high security" locks. Medeco's locks protect the White House, Pentagon, embasies and other sensitive locations. Marc Weber Tobias, one of the researchers, said, "Virtually all conventional pin-tumbler locks are vulnerable to this method of attack, and frankly nobody has really considered it or looked at it before."

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  Amtrak can't handle increasing ridership
  

  It's what could be considered a best of times, worst of times scenario for Amtrak. Rising fuel costs mean that Amtrak ridership is steadily increasing. Yet Amtrak can't keep up after decades of slashed budgets and neglect. Actually, it sounds downright dismal if Amtrak doesn't get needed funding. According to Amtrak CEO Alex Kummaut, it'll take upwards of a decade and $3 billion to replace Amtrak's current rolling stock, including the 20 Acela trains. Yet later on in the article he dismisses out of hand the idea of creating high speed rail. Depressing.

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  About perchlorate on Mars
  

  A teleconference was held today at JPL to discuss the recent intermediate findings by the Phoenix Mars Lander's science team of perchlorate on Mars. JPL has posted the MP3 audio of the telecon, and you can find the referenced images here. You can also subscribe to JPL's podcast feed to keep up-to-date on the science as it evolves. What does it all mean though? Well, not much. The science team seems pretty confident the perchlorate wasn't from contamination of Phoenix's instruments by the third stage rocket booster, but it's still an intermediate result and needs to be confirmed. Perchlorate doesn't mean Mars couldn't support life, but it would be different from the way everyone was looking at it before. For instance, in the Atacama desert of chile, organic matter and microorganisms coexist with perchlorate.

  For more about the Phoenix Mars Lander, please read our exclusive interview with Phoenix (Part 1 and Part II).