[QUOTE=kladner;433762]Venice Beach-type muscle boy. This guy had a look, picked up the front end, and set it back on the shoulder. One supposes that hysterical strength was not at play in this case. :smile:[/QUOTE]Not being a Venice (nor Florence, nor Naples) beach type myself... Years ago I did lift the front end of a Baja Bug off the ground (both wheels.) Thefts of the engine from VW type I's have frequently been performed by 2 fellows dropping the engine onto the ground, then lifting the rear of the vehicle up and over the engine, then placing the purloined power-plant into a waiting pick-up.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;433773]Not being a Venice (nor Florence, nor Naples) beach type myself... Years ago I did lift the front end of a Baja Bug off the ground (both wheels.) Thefts of the engine from VW type I's have frequently been performed by 2 fellows dropping the engine onto the ground, then lifting the rear of the vehicle up and over the engine, then placing the purloined power-plant into a waiting pick-up.[/QUOTE]
I think the car in question was a Studebaker Lark, with the jet intake thingy on the grill. Not a big car by any means, though front engine.

[QUOTE=kladner;433790]I think the car in question was a Studebaker Lark, with the jet intake thingy on the grill. Not a big car by any means, though front engine.[/QUOTE]
I must retract the above. I am conflating the car in this family legend, with a car my uncle had in MY memory; when the event happened four years before I was born. :redface:
The Lark only went into production when I was starting grade school.

[url=http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more/?print=true]Dear “Skeptics”…[/url] | John Horgan, for Scientific American
[quote]I hate preaching to the converted. If you were Buddhists, I’d bash Buddhism. But you’re skeptics, so I have to bash skepticism.

I’m a science journalist. I don’t celebrate science, I criticize it, because science needs critics more than cheerleaders. I point out gaps between scientific hype and reality. That keeps me busy, because, as you know, most peer-reviewed scientific claims are wrong.

So I’m a skeptic, but with a small S, not capital S. I don’t belong to skeptical societies. I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists.

When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.

Here’s an example involving two idols of Capital-S Skepticism: biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss. Krauss recently wrote a book, A Universe from Nothing. He claims that physics is answering the old question, Why is there something rather than nothing?

Krauss’s book doesn’t come close to fulfilling the promise of its title, but Dawkins loved it. He writes in the book’s afterword: “If On the Origin of Species was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see A Universe From Nothing as the equivalent from cosmology.”

Just to be clear: Dawkins is comparing Lawrence Krauss to Charles Darwin. Why would Dawkins say something so foolish? Because he hates religion so much that it impairs his scientific judgment. He succumbs to what you might call “The Science Delusion.”

“The Science Delusion” is common among Capital-S Skeptics. You don’t apply your skepticism equally. You are extremely critical of belief in God, ghosts, heaven, ESP, astrology, homeopathy and Bigfoot. You also attack disbelief in global warming, vaccines and genetically modified food.

These beliefs and disbeliefs deserve criticism, but they are what I call “soft targets.” That’s because, for the most part, you’re bashing people outside your tribe, who ignore you. You end up preaching to the converted.

Meanwhile, you neglect what I call hard targets. These are dubious and even harmful claims promoted by major scientists and institutions. In the rest of this talk, I’ll give you examples of hard targets from physics, medicine and biology. I’ll wrap up with a rant about war, the hardest target of all.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;434863][URL="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more/?print=true"]Dear “Skeptics”…[/URL] | John Horgan, for Scientific American[/QUOTE]
What an engaging essay! It will take a while to check out all the links.

[url]http://www.ibtimes.com/schrodingers-cat-20-new-thought-experiment-combines-quantum-entanglement-2374972[/url]

[QUOTE]A team of researchers has now come up with a new twist to the experiment — one that proves that not only is the fickle feline both alive and dead until someone observes it, it is also in two places at once.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;434863][URL="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more/?print=true"]Dear “Skeptics”…[/URL] | John Horgan, for Scientific American[/QUOTE]
Like Kieren, I appreciate this lecture. My immediate reaction to the main message is that attacking "soft targets" like blind following of religious dogma is not a bad way of indirectly taking on the "hard targets" (I'd personally put both war and climate change on a roughly equal footing in that last category), because such tribal thinking (which the author rightly highlights as dangerous, even amongst so-called Skeptics) is actually the whole basis for the lack of critical thinking involved in going to war or denying that global warming needs urgent tackling. In short, people need to be encouraged to question their own attitudes on any subject and reject any herd mentality (yes, that includes Skeptics), and that in itself will help tackle the serious world problems.

[url=http://phys.org/news/2016-06-dogs-domesticated-world.html]Dogs were domesticated not once, but twice… in different parts of the world, research shows[/url] | PhysOrg

Which begs the question: How many separate historical domestications of humans by cats have there been? There is overwhelming evidence that the human-civilization-crucial practice of food fishing was [url=http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/cats-waiting-for-fishermen-to-return/]instigated by cats[/url], fir example. Keeping cows and goats for their milk and growing of grain crops so as to yield a rodent-attracting surplus are also both quite possibly cats-training-their-humans inventions. It may be not much of an exaggeration to say that "civilization is the result of humans striving to make themselves worthy of cat ownership." [By which I intend the latter word in the "ownership by" rather than the "ownership of" sense.]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;435570][url=http://phys.org/news/2016-06-dogs-domesticated-world.html]Dogs were domesticated not once, but twice… in different parts of the world, research shows[/url] | PhysOrg

Which begs the question: How many separate historical domestications of humans by cats have there been? There is overwhelming evidence that the human-civilization-crucial practice of food fishing was [url=http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/cats-waiting-for-fishermen-to-return/]instigated by cats[/url], fir example. Keeping cows and goats for their milk and growing of grain crops so as to yield a rodent-attracting surplus are also both quite possibly cats-training-their-humans inventions. It may be not much of an exaggeration to say that "civilization is the result of humans striving to make themselves worthy of cat ownership." [By which I intend the latter word in the "ownership by" rather than the "ownership of" sense.][/QUOTE]

Hmm. I wonder if Douglas Adams missed this obvious possibility that cats are smarter than humans.

[url]http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2016/06/07/electric-eels-jump-water-attack-predators-alexander-von-humboldt-legend/85542740/[/url]

[url]http://time.com/4359453/arctic-tern-bird-migration-record/[/url]

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[URL="http://dataconomy.com/three-unexpected-uses-3d-printing-big-data/"]THREE UNEXPECTED USES FOR 3D PRINTING IN BIG DATA[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/05/19/how-mensa-helped-me-deal-with-schizophrenia/"]How Mensa Helped Me Deal With Schizophrenia And Depressio[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/upshot/what-was-the-greatest-era-for-american-innovation-a-brief-guided-tour.html?_r=1"]What Was the Greatest Era for
Innovation? A Brief Guided Tour[/URL]

[URL="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/14/the-chirp-heard-across-universe/xYC8dFRTnCyl3tT2LNuafN/story.html"]The life’s work that proved Einstein right[/URL]

[URL="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/microsoft-enters-the-super-mario-business-with-new-minecraft-skins/"]Mario makes leap to Minecraft[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/9/11639992/viv-digital-assistant-ai-artificial-intelligence-siri"]The creators of Siri just showed off their next AI assistant, Viv, and it's incredible[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/researchers-find-clue-to-editing-memories/education"]Researchers find clue to editing memories[/URL]

[URL="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160508-rocket-girls-women-moon-mars-nathalia-holt-space-ngbooktalk/"]he Secret History of the Women Who Got Us Beyond the Moon[/URL]

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[URL="http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher-helped-ensure-there-was-no-nobel-for-relativity"]This Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel for Relativity[/URL]