How old is the earth?

Tiny Frog has a nice, detailed article analyzing the evidence from radionuclides about the age of the earth. The article compares what would be still on earth given its scientific age and if it were 6,000 years old as suggested by Young-Earth Creationists. The decay of radioactive elements is measured in half-lives, the amount that it takes one-half of the atoms to change into another element.

I chose to list all the radionuclides which have half-lifes of 300+ years for one reason: a half-life of 300 years is exactly 20 half-lifes on a planet that is 6,000 years old. Notice that none of the radionuclides between Nb-92 and Cf-249 exist on earth except for the radionuclides we’ve talked about. There are 43 short-lived radionuclides in that group. If any of them had been present on earth 6,000 years ago “when the earth was created”, they would still exist. But, none of them exist.

How much are the Republicans paying her?

Hillary Clinton vows to fight on to the bitter end, even if it tears the Democratic Party apart, “because she thinks it’s time to get a woman in the White House.” If that’s her reason, why doesn’t she concede graciously and throw her political weight behind getting one of the winnable female VP candidates on the Democratic ticket?

more politics and fun!

Nominal virgin offers advice on sex

Over at the Bad Idea Blog, it is noted that an official virgin is once again offering sex advice.

Pope Benedict is back in the news for one of those sparse AP religious news pieces. He’s been praising a 1968 encyclical called Human Vitae which, among other things, definitively reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s ban on the use of artificial contraception. (It also happily makes up for the rather glaring omission of rape from the Bible’s otherwise absurdly comprehensive list of things God hates except when he’s busy ordering them). It would be nice to have the full speech, but it’s yet to appear in the usual places. But the snippets quoted by the AP are bad enough for a little fisking:

“What was true yesterday remains true even today. The truth expressed in ‘Humane vitae’ doesn’t change; on the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries it is ever more up to date,” the pope added.

And which scientific discoveries are those? That there is, after all, no “moment” of conception when a magical homunculus pops into being? That even a non-fertilized egg, or potentially any cell in the human body, can be induced to grow into a new human being? That the creation of a human person is a long complex process resulting, eventually, not instantaneously, in specific functional capacities?

Read more: sex advice from a virgin.

Science comedian Brian Malow

Brian Malow does a skit on science and mentions the law of the Conservation of Family Mass – third video.

You can keep up with Brian Malow at his Web site.