brainwagon

I’ve been interested in the world of pseudo-science for a long time, ever since reading Chariots of the Gods as a young boy, and then realizing what a load of bullocks the whole thing was. What’s amazing to me is that by age twelve or so, I managed to figure it out, but that some […]

The Intelligent Designer’s Prayer, courtesy of the Panda’s Thumb. Our Intelligent Designer, Who art in the unspecified-good-place, Unknown be Thy name. Thy flagella spin, Thy mousetraps snap, On Earth, as it is in the Unspecified-good-place. Give us each day our unchecked apologetic. And forgive us our invidious comparisons, As we smite those iniquitous Darwinists With […]

New Scientist is running an article which suggests that stray stem cells from a growing fetus may colonize in the mother and repair damage to the mother’s brain. This seems only fair, given the amount of brain damage that a child will inflict on his or her parents over their lifetime. 🙂 It is all […]

My tagline for this blog is “there is much pleasure in useless knowledge”. What knowledge could be more useless than trying to understand why spaghetti breaks into more than two pieces when bent? Apparently this problem has been considered interesting by no greater physics luminary than Richard Feynman. Cool.

I’m watching the live feed on NASA TV. They are in a pre-programmed hold at 9:00 till launch, which should go on for another twelve minutes, and then they should launch. Best wishes to all those aboard. Addendum: Looks like there are no constraints for launch. Countdown is about to resume. Countdown has resumed. Eight […]

Discovery Channel Canada has a cool video about Wally Wallington, a gentlemen from Michigan whose hobby is trying to duplicate the construction efforts of the ancient Egyptians. He believes that the Pyramids at Giza could have been constructed with a much smaller crew than previously imagined. Check out the very cool video at the bottom […]

While sorting through some books that I had stacked on my floor, I found ::amazon(“0071373233”, “Homemade Lightning”):: on my shelf. Building a Wimhurst static machine would be a cool project. Searching around the web, I found this great page on Electrostatic Machines which has lots of cool information.

The brain is a bizarre little meat computer. As proof witness this current article from nature.com: Quian Quiroga also found that a lone neuron in one subject responded selectively to various pictures of the actress Halle Berry – as well as drawings of her and her name written down. Other cells were found to respond […]

NASA does churn out some fairly interesting snapshots from their Mars missions, and this is no exception. The Mars Orbiter Camera onboard the Mars Global Surveyor snapped a picture of the Mars Odyssey as it went zipping by in orbit. Because the camera acquires images line by line, it actually appears twice in a single […]

As Tom says, very spooky. Motion Induced Blindness

Estimates are varied, but it seems clear that over a million people saw the pope’s body before he was finally buried over the weekend. Keeping with the spirit of brainwagon, let’s not dwell on the greater impact this man’s life had on the world, but rather just concentrate on the trivial aspects. Assume that each […]

I’ll admit it: I love to argue about evolution and creationism. Actually, it’s not so much an argument, as no real rational argument in favor of creationism can be made. It’s really more of a desire to hitch creationism to the bumper of my car, and drag it through the mud. Call it a personal […]

Run, Bat, Run! The natural world still has many surprises left for us.

Space.com reports that the Spirit rover caught these photos of Mars’ moon Deimos crossing the solar disk: in other words, a Martian solar eclipse. Very cool. You can get a version of the loop here as an mpeg or here as an animated gif. Compare these to my crude transit of Mercury that I recorded […]

Want to own a tiny bit of telescope making history? Check out the Porter Garden Telescope, which according to an email from the owner will be up for sale shortly. There is one currently on display at the Chabot Science Center as well, in case you don’t have the means to pick one up. It […]