One of my pet peeves with certain stories I see in mainstream news outlets are those which say "scientists say ..." or "scientists discover ..." in the headline or in the story itself.
Every year is the coldest
It's been really cold this week in the US northeast, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's only cold relative to recent years, and that this chilliness was normal for winter around here decades ago. Despite that, it still feels like it was the coldest week in my life, undoubtedly because I don't really remember how cold it was on colder days!
Getting otakus to donate blood
Only in Akihabara, Japan, the mecca for otaku who are crazy about all things anime and manga, could you see a heavily anime-themed blood donation facility. If I lived around a facility like that, I'd almost be tempted to give blood all the time (which is obviously the point).
This reminds me: I should be donating blood, anyway. Not only as a good deed, but I need to be contributing more than enough blood in case I ever need some blood myself. Now if I can just find the time to donate blood without having to worry about the lack of energy for the rest of the day ...
Splitting fine homosexual hairs
Certain Christians just love citing Leviticus 20:13 from the Bible to justify their homophobia:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Stone tips or not?
I'm a big fan of the MythBusters and have watched every single episode of the myth-busting show. Given the things they are testing all the time, I've always wondered if they ever work with those in academia to publish some of their results in peer-reviewed journals. I also subscribe to Research Blogging for blog posts that talk about papers discussing current research, as part of my effort to find stuff to include in Science Gossip, my "meta-blogging" site for science news.