The Phoenix Mars Mission has officially landed near the northern polar region of Mars! You can check out the mission site to catch up on everything that has happened so far. Or I can just sum things up: they have landed successfully and a few preliminary images have been returned. Suh-weet!

I don’t know why, but this mission has really piqued my interest. Maybe it was the very detailed “real time” video describing the rover’s entry and landing onto the red planet (I love to know the details). Or maybe it’s because the purpose of Phoenix is to study the history of water and habitability potential in the ice-rich Martian soil (i.e. could Mars have supported life at some point in it’s past).

I was awoken this morning at 5:37am by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in southern Illinois. Nothing appears to be broken and everyone is ok.

This was the first time I have every been able to feel an earthquake and it was very cool (because no one was hurt). The bed vibrated rhythmically with enough force to wake me up (though oddly not enough to disturb Libby). It was as if the house was on top of a clothes dryer. I could hear a constant grumbling sound, like a mellow clap of thunder lasting for about 20 seconds. Then it was over and everything was silent again.

UPDATE: Early this afternoon I (and my co-workers) felt another aftershock. It was milder and shorter than the initial tremor, but still surprisingly strong for how far away the epicenter was.

There is a smallish Creationist movie coming out called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed“, which by all accounts I can find is a thinly veiled propaganda piece that deliberately misled the scientists it interviewed, creates straw man arguments which it burns down with glee, and distorts history on a level rarely seen outside of George W. Bush’s administration.

… I guess you can see what I think of the film and it’s subject matter.

Anyway, a funny thing happened at a screening of the film last night. PZ Meyers, one of the scientists “interviewed” for the movie, was not allowed to enter the theater:

Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

You gotta laugh, though, because PZ was just one of a large group of scientists who were invited to the screening (including Richard Dawkins, a rather famous anti-creationist scientist) and all of these other people were able to get in just fine.

If it wasn’t a private screening I would be up-in-arms over a police officer preventing a person from entering a theater because of their beliefs. But since it is well within the law for them to dictate who attends their private gatherings I can only laugh and wonder: was it a brilliant publicity stunt, or petty and hypocritical?

Given the film producer’s history, I am assuming it was the latter.

You can read more from PZ about last night’s incident.

Check out this video of “other” Mike’s vocal cords:

See how the vocal cords begin to resonate rhythmically after a short while? Isn’t that awesome! It’s strangely hypnotic to watch the actual vocal cords vibrate - I wish we could watch it as he spoke words or sang a song.

Additionally, I was surprised that our vocal cords look so much like female privates. In light of this new insight I’m thinking we need to call it something more appropriate… my vote is for “voice box vagina”. Or perhaps “vocal va-jay-jay,” for those who shy away from the medically correct “V” word.

My previous post on Creationism sparked some interesting discussions, both in the comments and over e-mail. I recently came across a very well done video concerning Creationism vs. Evolution (click on the “watch” menu at the top).

The animations and imagery in all of their videos are fantastic;incredibly beautiful no matter what you believe. I suggest you watch then in order - creationism, evolution, then duality. Let me know if you notice anything familiar.

PBS aired a special Tuesday evening on the recent Intelligent Design trial that took place in Pennsylvania. I have been watching segments of the program and they did a spectacular job of explaining both sides of the trial; it is one of the best summaries of the trial I have seen.

Personally I don’t really think this was a trial at all. Intelligent design is creationism, and creationism isn’t science. It’s really that simple.

Someone who argues for intelligent design is equivalent to standing in front of a stone wall and, noticing a stone missing in the wall, proclaiming that the entire wall does not exist. Just because we do not (yet) completely understand something does not mean that all that we do know is rubbish.

If you want to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old or that God just went *poof* and we appeared, be my guest. But if you try to teach my kid that crap it would be best if you sit down and keep quiet - and while you’re sitting there being quiet, try reading a book.

If there is one thing that history will judge our generation on it is how we address (or don’t address) global climate change. Please, watch this video:

We only get to play this game once. Think it won’t happen? Maybe. How lucky do you feel?

On a side note, it makes me want to pull my eardrums through my nose when people say they don’t “believe” in human-caused global climate change. You can argue about the validity of the facts, you can cite studies that have found counter evidence, but for Christ sake don’t bring belief into the equation. Your personal beliefs might mean the world to you, but if they don’t hold up under the harsh sun of reality then they mean jack squat to the rest of us.

Laugh and the world laughs with you - and so will your baby. At least that’s what a recent study out of Japan found:

Breastfed babies with eczema experienced milder symptoms if their mothers laughed hours before feeding them, according to a study by Hajime Kimata at the Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital in Osaka, Japan.
…
Kimata also found significantly higher levels of melatonin in the laughing mothers’ milk. The hormone is associated with relaxation, and levels are reduced in people with eczema.

Ladies, I have some great news for you: Oprah thinks you should have sex around 200 times a year. That’s about once every 1.8 days. Here’s what Dr. Oz had to say about it:

“If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years,” Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. “They looked at what happened to folks that are having a lot of intercourse over time, and the fact is, it correlated.”

That’s SIX YEARS of physiologic age (i.e. your physical body). So throw away those silly “age-defying” makeups and lotions (actually, maybe you should keep the lotions ) and spend a fun evening with a loved one!

If you are interested you can find more questions/answers from Dr. Oz’s quiz starting here.

On January 26th people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch some amazing natural and man-made fireworks:

You can see more pictures at NASA’s Astronomy pic of the day.