November 2007

Arguably, submarines are the greatest threat to a modern carrier battle group. Aircraft can be detected at long range using over the horizon RADAR and picket ships. Subs generally need to be located using SONAR, though magnetic anomaly detection can sometimes locate them as well.
Warm surface waters are separated from the chilly bulk of the [...]

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It astonishes me that anyone takes homeopathy seriously as a kind of healing. Essentially, the idea is to take a substance that causes symptoms similar to those a person has (hot pepper for fever, etc) and then dilute it to an enormous extent, producing a solution that is essentially water. The dilution can be so [...]

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It’s a sad day when a Canadian school board pulls your favourite children’s book from the shelves in dozens of libraries because it is allegedly ‘anti-religious.’ To be fair, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass does take a critical stance on dogma and on hierarchical organizations. Elements can be taken as specific criticisms of the Inquisition [...]

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Essentially a form of ice infused with methane, clathrates may seem an obscure topic for discussion. They exist only under extreme conditions: such as underneath oceanic sediment. What makes them significant is the sheer volume of methane they contain. While it is unclear what degree of warming would be required to induce methane release from [...]

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Sorry to post a bunch of links from one source, but this week’s Economist is unusually dense with worthwhile articles about climate change:
There is one on federal legislative efforts in the United States - focusing on the Lieberman Warner bill that has been dominating attention in the Senate. It isn’t as tough as a superior [...]

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