La science, c’est moi

This solar storm effectively knocked radio and television technology, which were just beginning to gain a foothold in the seventh century BC, back into the Stone Age:

“One of the strongest known solar storms blasted Earth in 660 B.C.: Traces left in ice cores and tree rings allowed researchers to estimate the storm’s power”

Unless you count the pioneer work in telegraphy done by Samuel F. B. Morse, Joseph Henry, and Albert Vail back in the 1830s, broadcasting didn’t really get underway again until the early part of the twentieth century — and then it culminated, tragically, in Barney & Friends, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, O. J. Simpson’s If I Did It, and The Apprentice.

***

“The ‘roof of the world’ was raised more recently than once thought: A fossil of an ancient palm tree is helping rewrite the history of the Tibetan Plateau”

Just think.  We might have had “Club Tib” instead of “Club Med.”

***

“A Popular Benefit of Houseplants Is a Myth: The science is clear: Indoor vegetation doesn’t significantly remove pollutants from the air.”

I don’t think, though, that the study looked at the manifold benefits of indoor marijuana farms.

***

“Scientists Spot Mysterious Unknown Breed of Killer Whales: The Type D whale might be a whole new type of orca. Finding them was hard.”

“‘Type D killer whales could be the largest undescribed animal left on the planet and a clear indication of how little we know about life in our oceans,’ says Bob Pitman, a researcher from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, in a press statement.”

***

It has been suggested, incidentally, that my notes on science are those of a pretender, and that I’m not really a scientist myself at all.  This is wholly untrue.

I read nothing about science, and I never depend upon the research of others.  I don’t learn about the cutting edge of science at second hand.  The notes I post here are wholly original.  When I write about a potentially new species of killer whales, it’s because I myself was braving the harsh winds off the coast of Chile near Cape Horn in order to discover them.  When I mention the finding of a fossilized palm frond on the high Tibetan plateau, I’m the scientist who found it.  (I spend a great deal of time in and around Tibet, pickaxe at the ready)  And when I tell you about a seventh-century BC solar storm?  I was there.  (In my spare moments, when not in Tibet, I experiment with time travel.)

So yes, I’m a scientist.  In fact, my scientific achievements are huge, and many people are saying that I’m the greatest scientist of all time.  Probably nobody has ever been more scientific than I am.