Astronomer or Evil Genius?

Read this article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/4839985/Scientists-to-stop-global-warming-with-100000-square-mile-sun-shade.html. It sounds like some crazy idea that a villain in James Bond would come up with, firing trillions of mirrors into space to block out the sun's rays. Someone actually did design this plan only that person isn't an evil genius, he is astronomer, Dr. Roger Angel. The plan is to use a huge cannon to shoot trillions of mirrors that would create a huge sun shield and therefore stop global warming. This plan sounds absolutely ridiculous! NASA, however, is already funding a pilot project, so there must be some belief that it will work. I just think that when the designer says that the scaled down version of the gun "was immensely dangerous" it cant be a good idea. I'm not saying that the idea wont work, it just doesn't sound like something that people will take seriously (a huge cannon that is going to fire trillions of mirrors into space to stop global warming? Really?) until there is proof that it is possible. We wont know for another twenty or thirty years whether it will work, but I am definitely curious about how it will go.

I can't believe its not butter!

About two years ago, New York City banned partially hydrogenated oil. Now some areas are trying to make it illegal for restaurants to cook using trans fats. What will it be next? A ban on fats all together? Then where will it go? Trans fats are a leading cause in heart disease, so banning it will help reduce obesity and the risk of getting the disease. I personally think this whole plan is ridiculous. Its not the governments job to tell the people what they can and cant eat. If I want my food fat free or fat full I should be able to get it. I agree with Joseph Coppola Jr. when he says that “Government has to stay out of our lives. It’s about choice. If people are stupid enough to fill their diet with trans fats, they’re just stupid.” I do think that obesity is a problem in the United States, but I dont think that it is fair for the government to control every aspect of our lives in order to fix that problem. This is an issue that is the responsibility of each individual to control, not the government. If fats are eaten in moderation, they arent detrimental to your health. I dont think that it is necessary to ban them from everyones lives and I dont think that the government should have the power to do that anyway.

Read it for yourself at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/nyregion/long-island/22Rfats.html

"Is there anybody out there?"

The famous line spoken by Pink Floyd has also been wondered by countless people for many years. Is there anybody out there? According to an article on the New Scientist website, a lot of people are thinking that NASA doesn't spend enough time or money on searches to find other forms of life. The article says that the "search for [other life forms of life] is more likely than anything else to maintain public support for space research." I think that NASA is doing the right thing by searching for evidence of life on different planets before spending millions of dollars in huge "flagship missions." The article claims that people would support the search for alien life, but I think that if the search ended without even the slightest discovery of alien evidence, then Americans would be angry that all of their tax dollars were "wasted." The budget for NASA is a huge issue right now, in fact there are many Americans who think that it is too high. The article also argues that "NASA often appears so worried about being seen to be looking for aliens that it seems coy about the whole enterprise." I disaggree with this assertion. In many movies, the people who claim that they have "seen an alien" or "were abducted by aliens" are always portrayed as the crazy people. I think that if NASA were to make it public that they were searching for aliens, then people would be outraged about how much of a waste of money it is. As much as people want Star Trek and Star Wars to happen, I think that deep down we all recognize the fact that if aliens really are out there, we most likely aren't going to discover them in our lifetime.

View the article at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.100-alien-hunt-is-too-exciting-to-ignore.html

Mother always said to get sleep before an exam...

Hello again! You know how in high school your teachers, your principle, and your mother would stress how important it was to get a good nights rest before a test? Well it turns out they weren't just making that up! The Science Daily recently published an article referring to a study performed on animals that tested their "electrophysiological and molecular changes" after being shown some sort of visual stimuli. The article goes into quite a bit of detail about how the brain works and different enzymes and ion channels. Personally, I don't really find all the technical terms that interesting, but what I did find intriguing was that basically in order to form memories, calcium in the brain has to turn on different enzymes. The study showed "that these enzymes never really turned on until the animal had a chance to sleep." This shows that you have a higher chance of remembering most of the information that you just crammed into your head the night before the exam if you just sleep on it. One downfall in the article however, was that they didn't test the animals' ability to recall the information. The scientists said that "It's a mechanism that [they] think underlies the formation of memory," meaning that they are getting closer to understanding not only how memories work, but how the brain functions as a whole. The most important thing to take from this article is that if you really need to retain important information (for midterms perhaps), get a good night's sleep. I know how tempting it is to pull an "all-nighter", but don't! You'll be thankful the next day when you are well rested, and who knows, you might remember a thing or two.

Check out the article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090211161934.htm

Stef's Musings

Hello! My name is Stef and I am a freshman at Texas A&M University in College Station. I have noticed a few things while being in this somewhat small town for a few months. First off, I feel pretty much completely cut off from the outside world (the combination of being a college student and living in the middle of no where can do that to you). I don't have a television in my dorm room, so I don't get to watch the news everyday like I did at home. The only connection I have to finding out what is going on in the world is through the internet and word of mouth. This brings me to the second thing I've noticed which is that the news that I normally hear about is sad or depressing. I don't really have any desire to hear about all the bad things going on. There is bound to be something uplifting or happy happening somewhere in the world, right?
This blog is for those of you who want to know about the other news that you don't normally hear about. I plan on reading the obscure articles off of yahoo or digg.com. I want to talk about the random interesting things that went on within the past week that didn't make the cut for TV. My goal is for people to realize that not all news is bad news and that there is some news out there that is worth reading about.