A recent article in Guardian.co.uk laid out an interesting take on much of the psychology behind some feminine behaviors that otherwise may look a little strange. Since I’ll use any old excuse to post a picture of Dayana Mendoza, this seems like as good a time as any to post a few of my own reflections.

There’s a big hubbub this week about the potential missing link – a lemur-like fossil of some creature that existed some 47 million years ago.
James T. Harris has this to say:
OK, check it out. So according scientists, “Ida is linked to humans by the talus bone in her ankle which is the same shape.” They also said, “her opposable big toes and nails, not claws, confirmed she was a primate.”
Eureka! Cousin Ida! Missing link found. Man evolved from apes around 75 million years ago because it’s really hard to pinpoint …

You know it’s a weird day when The Sun (UK) features the headline:  Success!  The world hasn’t ended
At 2:30 BPN time this morning, scientists in Geneva steered the first beam of the Large Hadron Collider, widely considered to be one of the biggest, most expensive scientific experiments in human history.
In other words, the “on” button has been switched.  They won’t start colliding particles for a little while yet.
How important is this machine?  We don’t totally know yet, but the implications are potentially groundbreaking.  Even Google.com’s homepage features a special …

Slowly, mainstream pop science is beginning to catch up with evolutionary theory. This time, it’s a Vanity Fair article entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”
Gasp! Something based in scientific study suggesting the genders aren’t equal?! How dare they!
Of course, most of us are blind to the inequalities of the genders because said inequalities are instilled in our brains from Aladdin to Finding Nemo to…anything else you can buy or has commercials.
In other words, why haven’t you ever noticed that women really aren’t that funny? Boldness added by …

GM conducted a study recently that shows women have become more interested in guys with environment-friendly cars than guys driving sports cars.
Pointless studies, ho!
According to a study conducted by GM as part of this year’s Challenge X competition:

Nearly 9 in 10 women (88 percent) say they’d rather chat up someone who owns the latest fuel-efficient car versus the latest sports car.
Eighty percent of American car buyers would find someone with the latest fuel-efficient car more interesting to talk to at a party than someone with the latest sports car.
More than …

British scientists are going to be allowed to research diseases using “human-animal” embryos, leading many to wonder what kind of path British medicine is going down: the way of Dr. Jonas Salk or Dr. Frankenstein.
They’re called “admixed” embryos, and feature putting human cell nuclei into animal eggs. The theoretical embryos wouldn’t be allowed to live for more than two weeks.
Like most of this kind of embryo-level research, critics are saying that not only does this kind of research cross some weird and immoral boundaries, but that the benefits …

I hate it when species are threatened.  Once I went crabbing in Georgia and pretty easily caught a stone crab on about my first try, only to have the native Georgians tell me that they’re a protected species.
Nevermind that we caught so much of them they seemed to be as common as squirrels – they were PROTECTED.  Apparently we crabbed right by the Great Stone Crab Nest of North America.
Well, another booming, prospering species has been given special status by the American government  – squirrels.  No, actually polar bears.  But …

It’s been my longstanding opinion that people aren’t born gay, at least not in the sense that most people would understand it.  As far as I see it, though, when I debate this topic with other people, there are three possibilities in the world of “gay formation”:
1.  Gay people are born like the rest of us, but consciously make a decision to become gay.
2.  Gay people are born like the rest of us, and unconsciously make a decision to become gay.
3.  Gay people are born gay and have no choice, …

What do you think about this? Life on Mars or a rock?
The picture is part of a bigger one:

Here’s the full image.
Remember the “Face” on Mars that ended up being just a rock formation? According to Rare Earth hypothesis, this would probably just be another coincidence. People are making jokes about it – saying it looks like a Tuscan raider from Star Wars or just another version of Bigfoot. One British person said “It’s Osama bin Laden!”

Within the last 36 hours, the stocks plunged, Heath Ledger died, the Oscars were announced and Hillary moved on to California.
The media has been all over these stories this week – you’ll get plenty of coverage from them.  In fact, you’ll get too much.
What better time to talk about space?
Next month, 50 space exploration experts are going to Stanford University to meet and talk about the future of manned space exploration.
The participants planning to attend the invitation-only brainstorming session — dubbed Examining the Vision: Balancing Science and Exploration — said …