via futurity.org
Interesting article on H1N1 and it's new found resistances. I miss regular forays into microbiology and am glad I can still keep up to date online.
Much has been said about the the errors regarding Himalayan glacier data in the latest UN climate change reports. It’s important to keep in mind that while unfortunate (things should have been double checked to make sure i’s were dotted and t’s crossed) they don’t significantly alter the point. Numbers are boring to look at though, so how about some photographic evidence of receding glaciers in the past century? Whether it’s man-caused or not (cyclical nature of the earth per chance?) can still be up for debate, but change has and is happening.
A big driver of the outbreaks of record cold and snow in many spots around the Northern Hemisphere is the little blue dot at the lower right-hand corner of the graph above, just above the year 2010. The chart (generated by Ignatius Rigor for Dot Earth) shows the state of the Arctic Oscillation, a pattern of atmospheric pressure that has two phases, positive and negative (somewhat like the more familiar cycle of El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific). A strong negative or positive condition can powerfully influence weather around the northern half of the globe and the behavior of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean.
The blue dot shows an extraordinary negative plunge of the index in December, taking it below any such reading since at least 1950. (I ran a preliminary version of the chart in a recent post on sea ice trends, but now it’s been updated with the full month’s readings of atmospheric pressures.)
Good article for those curious about why it's so cold right now across the US. No, global warming isn't likely involved and no, it doesn't invalidate warming data either (see here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/why-yes-it-chilly-out-right-now)
This is a great article on one form of modern idolatry and it doesn’t come from an expected source. The director of CORE (the Center for Origins Research) at Bryan College writes how, in defense of creationism (and other apologetic type activity) we fall prey to idolatry:
I greatly fear that our faith in Christ has been replaced with an idolatry of apologetics. I fear we’ve stopped believing in Christ and started believing in arguments about Christ (or the Bible or creation or what have you). I fear we’ve bowed to the world’s demand that we believe only that which is rational. We’re certainly no longer content with merely saying “I don’t know.” We have to have answers, and endless (and often pointless) argument has become our substitute for simply telling unbelievers what Christ has done for us.
And the further danger of this:
While we thought we were teaching them to believe in Christ, we instead taught them to idolize our arguments about Christ. And when those arguments are shown to be incomplete, inadequate, or just wrong, that idolatry (which we thought was real faith) slips away. That’s why I want my students to know the truth about evolution. It’s not bogus. It’s not a failure. There’s lots of evidence in its favor. But that just doesn’t make it true. Have faith in the risen Christ, and it will not matter what scientists tell you (or anyone else, for that matter).
This is a good article and starts a necessary discussion of how we find ourselves trapped believing in idols rooted in our modernistic drive for reason. I have a lot of respect for this creation scientist and what he is doing.