Yeah that’s right, three straight weeks of Tuesday Morning sciences. If you don’t like it you can shut your trap because I’ve just setup a new “science” category down there on the left hand side. NOW WHATCHA GUNNA DO, HUH?!

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Anywho, It looks like global warming is the hot topic at the water cooler this last month since one of our far-north islands, Ellesmere, had a huge chunk of ice break off of it for the first time in 3000 years. I mean huge. Like, 90% of it’s ice. Normally it was this little rock with a sheet of ice splayed around it but scientists noticed that the warmest-on-record arctic temperatures was sufficient to melt through the ice.

WELL FINALLY! Those poor polar bears couldn’t get at the taunting penguins through the ice.

Oh wait, and What’s this? The Ellesmere Island Ice Sheets have been dissapearing since well before the industrial revolution? HOW INTERESTING!

I won’t argue that global warming isn’t happening, because I’m fairly certain it has gotten a little warmer. The lake I used to skate on every year as a kid hasn’t frozen over … well, since the last time I skated there. That’s all the proof I need. Well, sure, it could be caused by something other than mankinds dire disregard for the environment, but could it not also be that my heart is ice cold and my mere presence at said lake froze the ice? It would explain why it hasn’t frozen since I’ve been there. SCIENTIFIC!

However, people are failing to see the flip side of the coin - the planet’s oceans are the #1 absorber of CO2 and other harmful substances released into the atmosphere.

By bravely melting our ice caps, we have exposed more water to the air and the oceans are now capable of absorbing THREE TIMES MORE CO2 THAN PREVIOUSLY POSSIBLE. That’s right, ice melting due to global warming is helping to reverse global warming.

I don’t care what frickin’ side of the argument you’re on. You can be a corporate oil tycoon or a dirty-haired hippie. But I expect you to CHEER and clap each other on the back the next time you hear the ice is melting. That shit is nothing but good news.

Except maybe people that live in cities built below sea level. Instead of clapping each other on the back and cheering, how about you all take turns passing a pistol around and shooting the person on your left because YOU’RE SO FRICKIN’ STUPID. In my opinion, as soon as you grow old enough to realize you live below the waterline you MOVE. When there’s one of you left just give me a ring and I’ll sort something out.

PS: Those of you not yet regretting my subscription to New Scientist magazine can confirm all of my above stated arguments in the scientific publication Geophysical Research Letters, DOI:10.1029/2006GLO27028

STEM CELLS. Now that I have you reeling in terror, I thought I’d clear a few things up. I’m sick of all you nancies prancing about and getting your knickers in knot. That’s right, I’m talkin’ to you, and I’m not even capitalizing “nancies” so you know I’m dead serious.

So what are Stem Cells? In a basic, layman nutshell so you (yes you) can understand, a Stem Cell is a little itty bitty thing that naturally occurs in human bodies; the younger the body the more stem cells. Down to the point where you can practically suck pure stem cells out of an embryo.

A single cell is usually capable of building an entire organ, limb, or whatever.

I know what you’re thinking right now. Same as me, you’re standing there with your jaw agape and going “murdering baby fetuses to get stem cells so we can all grow fourteen boobs? HELL YES.”

Well all those that try to oppose our fourteen-boobed good time just tried to deal us a lethal blow. Turns out some recent “scientific” study, Stem Cells are one of the primary causes of cancer, and a lot of stem cell research is being blown because of it. That’s right, no more growing extra frog legs, just cancerous tumors everywhere! OH GODS EVERYTHING IS RUINED!

Wait, wait, let’s take a step back and think about this. What just happened here? It’s one of the following:

#1: We have definitively proved that stem cells are evil and all work on them must stop
#2: We just found the elusive cause for cancer and can begin researching direct cures

HMMMM WHICH ONE WILL FOX NEWS TALK ABOUT… HMMMMMM

PS: Do you doubt my words because of my unprofessional presentation? SUCK IT, BITCHES: Cited source: Nature Genetics, DOI:10.1038ng1941 and 1950.

I’ve always been a big supporter of AI and think it brings an extra challenge to any game… Mainly because AI is sub-par when it comes to comparison between humans. AI excels in reaction times and memorization, but lacks in things like improvisation, path-mapping, environmental analysis, and dealing with various human factors such as vengeance and irrationality. One of the biggest detriments to AI is a lack of personality… a lack of finnesse.

What am I talking about? Well, let’s take a CounterStrike bot (I know, I know, not the best model of AI out there) named Bob. He won’t realize you hate his guts, and will stop at nothing to destroy him, and only him. Bob will never be found cowering behind a box; he’ll never advance slowly; he’ll never select a sub-par weapon against a weaker opponent just to show off. He doesn’t do little twirls in the air as he jumps off of boxes. He won’t be able to figure out how to carefully navigate a random hallway. Worst of all, Bob won’t teabag your corpse in CounterStrike after a particularly amazing knife kill. Hell, he probably won’t even take out a knife unless he’s forced to - not even if you’re 5 feet away and just started reloading.

Enter the ScrabbleBot. As far as I can see, it doesn’t actually have a name yet. It is in it’s polishing-up code phase, and is being demonstrated all over the place. This bot doesn’t teabag your scrabble-playing corpse with long triple-word-scores, but it does count cards… It predicts what letters you have on your rack based on what words you could have played given the letters you used in your last turn, and cross-referencing it with what letters are currently in play. Then the bastard uses that information to block your potential words while maximizing it’s own points.

It’s the literary equivalent of the knife kill. This bot is badass. I claw my own eyes out when I have a perfect word and my Scrabble opponent sneaks in and steals my kill.. And this bot would do it regularly and consistently. Like a jerk.

Up until now ScrabbleBots just maximize their own score and ignore whatever you’re doing - so this is quite the step up in the AI world. I’ll expect the next-gen video games to have bots with a rich vocabularly and to pwn me both verbally and physically. Don’t let me down, industry!

A few recent surveys in the United States of the Americas have shown that 45% of the population believe that cloned meats are “bad for you,” and that 22% of the population thought they were “safe.” This struck me as particularly shocking; I mean sure, long term consequences are arguable, but wouldn’t cloned meats be even safer than normal? Oh wait, this is the same country that ranks #2… Out of the entire planet… For disbeleif of evolution. (And they thought they were #1 at everything)

Years ago, Dolly became the first successfully cloned mammal (a sheep). In that time, companies have not been resting on their laurels, waiting for some new whiz-bang scientific discovery. Hundreds of companies have sprung up, and there are ranches with acres upon acres of cloned cattle just waiting to be in your next McDonald’s bun. The American FDA is slated to pass approval on the sale of cloned meats in April, 2007.

Yep, the “cloned meats” industry is a lumbering beast of massive proportions, and it has one giant momentum going right now. The FDA is going to have a tough time telling a few million cattle that they’ll never be put into human stomachs and all those investment dollars get flushed down the toilet.

I can see why cloning seems “evil” in the minds of many. Other than the religious aspects and the nefariousness of “playing god” and seeming like a Bond villain, one of the biggest concerns with cloning is the homogenization of the gene pool. People are afraid we’ll end up with one cow covering the entire planet. Sure it will be a supercow that passes loaves of bread as defecation, but folks are concerned a single new virus or infection would wipe out the entire population, and we’ll be up the creek with a million paddles made out of cow bones, but they won’t work because cow bones aren’t the best paddles.

Me? I welcome our new homogenized bovine overlords. I’m a smart guy and I’m sure the multi-billion dollar industries and investors out there have thought of that problem. The best thing about cloning is that they’re clones; they can be grown in test tubes. The best investment for any cloning company to make, is to run out and collect as many cow eggs as possible, and deep freeze ‘em. Load them into some computer databank. Map out the genes. You’ll start out with SuperCow Beta 1 and work your way up to SuperCow XVXCCIII Mark II. You’ll have huge databases and experiments and backlogs and data to work off of.

Before the entire planet puts all the (cow) eggs in one basket and settles on a single cloned animal for the majority of our food, I’m sure we’ll have enough templates and technology to simply re-manufacture the state of cows today, complete with non-homogenized diversity. Better to let the supervirus wipe them all out and start from scratch. Take notes, learn, and move on.

Besides, with the homogenization of the human gene pool, don’t we think it would be a good idea to test out a supervillainous virus on our bovine bretheren first?

I’ve just talked about long term stuff so far. The benefits of homogenized meat products? Every steak will be the most delicious steak ever. Every cup of milk will taste fantastic and last in your fridge longer. No more mad cow’s disease. Severely reduced chances of bacterial poisoning. Hell, someone could invent a chocolate cow and you could even get chocolate milk out of the damned things. They’re frickin’ SAFE. They’re DELICIOUS. They’re CLONED AWESOME IN A CAN.

And just think - with an abundance of working cloning operations for human consumption, now you can have that “other white meat” and not feel bad!