MandoV/science

Gilgamesh tomb believed found

Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history.

How things have changed...not to long ago it was ridiculous to even speculate of microbial life on mars...petrified they found.

from the page:
As a scientist, I'm both fascinated and astonished by the deluge of questions from people who are genuinely frightened and, apparently, unable to distinguish astronomical fact from fiction. They're watching YouTube videos and visiting slick Web sites with nothing in their skeptical toolkit, or to quote Carl Sagan no "baloney detector." Now a blockbuster disaster film called "2012" is set for release in the summer of 2009, and the commercial enterprise is clearly trying to cash in on people's concern (perhaps contributing to their fear as well).

My guess is that only a tiny fraction of people truly believes that Armageddon is coming in December 2012. But their uncritical acceptance of this story worries me as a warning of the dangers of our current scientific illiteracy.

We're facing monumental problems with global warming and loss of habitat, yet a substantial minority of Americans thinks the world was formed less than 10,000 years ago and deny that evolution is possible. Many Americans seem to prefer coal-fired generators to nuclear power plants without realizing the toll in public health that coal imposes. Billions are spent, including tax-payer dollars, for so-called alternative medicine with no scientific evidence for its efficacy. And legislators often resist efforts to collect the data that could actually demonstrate which government programs are effective and which ones don't work as intended.

In spite of my frustrations, I can always hope that Nibiru will turn into a teaching moment. Its proponents are convinced that it will be visible to the unaided eye this coming spring, and its effects on the rotation and orbit of the Earth will be obvious by summer (just in time for the release of the film "2012"). When none of this happens, I hope they'll realize that they need better tools to distinguish fact from fiction.

But maybe they won't.

One of funniest things about this Nibiru story is that it is a rerun -- there was a big Internet concern that Nibiru would destroy the Earth in May of 2003. Something tells me this didn't happen, yet now the same myth is resurrected. Are we condemned to suffer a Nibiru scare every decade in this century, or will people come to their senses?

From the page: "5. The Fiji Mermaid (aka "Feejee Mermaid") - This artifact in P.T. Barnum's museum was advertised as a gorgeous topless siren, but was actually the mummified corpse of an ape sewn to a fish.

4. Rabbit Mother - In 18th-century England, Mary Toft convinced doctors she had given birth to 16 rabbits. A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets [sic] was written by King George's surgeon about her case. People stopped serving rabbit stew. Once the hoax was discovered, the medical community suffered great embarrassment.

3. El Chupacabra - This savage chicken-eater was actually a hairless wolf."

this is not anti-gravity