Inside Nature's Giants - Polar Bear

Continuing with their exploration of the anatomy and physiology of the giants of nature, the team travels to the North Pole in search of a polar bear: the largest land mammalian predator in the world. Because of the difficulties of finding polar bears at all, never mind fresh carcasses, this episode requires the collaboration of a local hunting community whose survival depends on using every last scrap of these animals without wasting anything. And because of the weather conditions, every move is a race against the freezing clock.

Now, the first and most obvious question is just how these bears manage to withstand the intense freezing temperatures of their natural habitat. The answer, it turns out, and this should throw you for a loop, is that a polar bear is a black animal with transparent fur that looks (but isn't) white. Yeah, I was floored too.

But that's not the whole story. We also get to understand, among other things, exactly why there are polar bears to begin with and how they manage to cope with diets that would literally kill us.

Did you see the polar bear attacking that walrus that was probably twice its size?!?

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The Ice Finger of Death

So I never knew this before, but apparently when seawater freezes, it forces salt out, thereby making the water surrounding it more saline. That starts a chain reaction with which you may be more familiar: the saline water has a lower freezing point and higher density, so as this super cold water freezes, it starts to sink away from the surface ice, creating an ice stalactite, otherwise known as a brinicle. But as David Attenborough explains, this is just the beginning:

I love how scientists have managed to figure out exactly why this happens...

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Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department

On its surface, the political and economic philosophy of libertarianism sounds very promising because it appeals to values we all esteem highly: individual rights, freedom, personal responsibility, merit, etc.

For all its growing popularity, however, libertarianism is deeply flawed. There are many ways to show this. One is through careful and rigorous conceptual analysis carried out by philosophers such as John Rawls.

Another is to let The Onion do the work in less than a minute:

Also, ma' house was burning :)

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99% v 1% - The Data Behind the Occupy Wall St. Movement

There's been a lot of buzz, support, mocking, complaining, sympathizing, talk, etc. about the We Are the 99 Percent slogan behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The idea is quite simple, and it refers to the incredible disparities concerning political power, income, wealth, access to basic social services, and other differences that separate the vast majority of the American population from a 1 percent elite minority who basically owns the country and manages to exploit the other 99 percent to further their own interests at the expense of the majority.

But are the numbers an accurate representation of the situation? In the following animation from The Guardian, we learn that things are not quite as simple as they seem:

Yeah, it's worse...

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Police Brutality at UC Davis

Agree or disagree with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, there are a few things that no one can really dispute. For one thing, this is a non-violent grass roots movement intent on raising consciousness about corporate greed and corruption. There may be no unified set of goals or specific demands at the time, and that's fine, it is to be expected from a population that, while unsure about how to proceed, realizes that business as usual is no longer an option.

Second, these protesters are engaging in public, non-violent civil disobedience. As such, while they are sometimes publicly breaking the law (without creating any violence), they are fully prepared to live with the consequences of their actions, and when they get arrested, they offer no violent opposition. In all of this, they are to be commended for living up to the principles of non-violent civil disobedience set down, among others, by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

As you may have heard, a shocking pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis last week has gone viral. Defending the thoughtless and heartless actions taken by two police officers who doused a peaceful crowd with pepper spray, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza argued that the protesters posed an imminent threat to police officers because

"there was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

Well, as you can see in the picture above, a bunch of students sitting down and locking arms in solidarity is not exactly what you would call a "volatile situation," but if you need further context to understand what happened, check it out for yourself:

I think the only plausible solution is to force these assholes to inhale a whole canister of pepper spray and then be dragged in handcuffs to jail...

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Cosmos - The Lives of Stars

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, Carl Sagan famously argued, you must first invent the universe, and for that, you're going to need stuff. But where does the matter that make up the cosmos come from? How is it created? If all matter is composed of three tiny particles (protons, neutrons and electrons), how do we explain the diversity of matter all around us?

In this installment of the widely celebrated documentary series Cosmos, Carl Sagan explores the origin of the chemical elements, how these relate to the birth, growth and death of stars, and even a little general relativity for good measure.

For more on the nature and origin of the elements of the periodic table, check out Jim Al-Khalili's wonderful documentary series Atoms (parts 1, 2 and 3), or his history of chemistry (parts 1, 2 and 3).

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GOP Derp

Apart from Mitt Romney (whose success seems predicated on his opponents predictably putting their foots in their own mouths), one Republican who must be thrilled about the lack of intelligence and eloquence among the current GOP candidates is George W. Bush :)

By comparison, these idiots make him seem like an articulate, nuanced, moderate and intelligent scholar...

Let's start with Rick Derp Perry:

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Then we have Herman Cain being a douche, followed by Rick Perry drunk off his ass...

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Then some more of Cain's dickishness, and Perry tripping over his own thoughts:

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But Herman Cain isn't just a douchebag.... he's also an idiot... and a douchebag:

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Of course, the only semi-reasonable candidate, John Huntsman, will never win the nomination... that would just make too much sense for these folks...

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