261 - with Links!

1. The Varieties of Scientific Experience If you had to pick a list of books you'd expect to see Kirsten Dunst reading while sitting on the beach wearing a bikini and smoking a cigarette, would anything by Carl Sagan be on that list?

2. Meteorite Another big rock fell from the sky and smashed through a house. I recently saw a television program about searching for meteorites. It seems they are quite valuable. A meteorite that was actually witnessed as it hit, is worth even more. I hope it is worth enough to fix the damage and buy a new desk.

3. Red Tape in a Green World David Wetzel, a proponent of alternate energies, is being fined for using used vegetable oil to run his 1985 Volkswagen Golf. Some believe the fine is intended to make up for the loss of revenue from gasoline taxes. I think it is a basic bureaucratic error, caused because someone along the line doesn't understand the biodiesel concept.

4. Stoopid Test Here's a short test supposedly designed to tell you how stupid you are. It is a series of trick and basic logic questions. It turns out I'm only 4% stupid. I suspect I'm a little less stupid than that because I doubt they've updated the test since Pluto was deemed to be less than a planet.

5. Recipe for Box Office Disaster Making a movie about Charles Darwin, the developer of the concept of Natural Selection, will automatically cut from your audience all of those that think creationism is a sound theory. The lack of car chases, explosions, gun fights, naked women, and super heroes probably isn't going to help much either. I hope I'm wrong though, I'd love to see this movie.