And .... they're off!

Louisiana Parents Fear Elementary School Cafeteria Scanner Will Implant the Antichrist’s ‘Mark of the Beast’ on Kids’ Hands

Congress: They don't work for you.

Bedbugs in hospitals.

We can blame Chile for deforming the earth.

This PROVES we should let the oil companies build pipelines all over the place and drill and ... oops...

Roundup ... is really really toxic.

Have telemarketing people been calling you more on the phone?

What single gif or picture would you show someone?

Georgie Bush's Great Mulligan.

Teaching Game Theory.

Shake, rock and roll

Seismologists in California were busy this week fighting rumors apparently floating on Twitter that a major earthquake was likely in the next few days.

Officials at Caltech say that rumor is not true -- and that no such prediction can be made.

But researchers say there has been an uptick in earthquakes this year.

The number of earthquakes greater than magnitude 4.0 in Southern California and Baja California has increased significantly in 2010. There have been 70 such quakes so far this year, the most of any year in the last decade. And it's only April. There were 30 in 2009 and 29 in 2008.

Seismologists said they are studying the uptick but cannot fully explain it. Major earthquakes tend to occur in cycles, and experts have said the region in recent years has been in a quiet cycle when it comes to sizable temblors.

I've been watching the USGS map for southern California for some time and have watched swarms of little earthquakes come and go. Fascinating, but I understand how trying to 'predict' an earthquake is nigh impossible. Just look at the 7.2 in Mexico and all the fore and aftershocks. We still don't know much except that the continent is being shoved west over the subduction zone being shoved east, the area is fractured and refractured with faults running across each other. The only thing geologists can predict is that we will get earthquakes constantly. Big and small.

So be prepared.

Maybe that's why nobody takes Canada seriously

They have less gravity then we do:

If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do – but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings.

Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due to the crust there rebounding slowly after the end of the last ice age or a deeper issue involving convection in the Earth's mantle – or some combination of the two.

Now, ultra-precise measurements taken over four years by a pair of satellites known as GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) reveal that each effect is equally responsible for Canada's low gravity. The work could shed light on how continents form and evolve over time.