Yes, the US had a major biological weapons program for many years. So did the Soviet Union and so did the United Kingdom. Numerous other countries dabbled in biological weapons research at one time or another. Some programs did experiment with various exotic viruses and bacterial conditions. In general, pathogenic bacteria have been preferred for weapons use, as they can be easily cultured in mass and will grow in the environment, not requiring direct contact between hosts to transmit the infection. The ability to sequence and combine genetic material existed in only the most rudimentary forms prior to the 1990’s, but biological weapons programs did use the genetic engineering technologies and hybridization methods available to some extent.

However, AIDS didn’t come from any of these programs. It came from non-human primates and made the jump to humans some time in the 19th or early 20th century – although it is remotely possible that it existed in humans even earlier. The most likely explanation for the transmission to humans is the consumption of bushmeat. It existed in isolated populations in Africa for some time before entering the industrial world and rapidly spreading worldwide in the 1970’s.

Lets stop and consider something. If HIV was actually created as a biological weapon, it’s arguably the worst, most ineffective, most poorly chosen biological weapon ever created. It has none of the traits that an effective biological weapon should have and nearly all the traits that make an organism a very very poor choice of biological weapon.

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Not sure if all readers will feel the same, but recently I’ve come across a few news items that really just made me feel like tearing my hair out.   They’re so dead wrong, misleading and ridiculous and yet are reported in otherwise credible news outlets as if they were meaningful.
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Via the New York Times:

Rise of the Superweeds
DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.

On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn.

The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.

What we have here is yet another tired attack on genetically modified crops in general because just one of them has some minor secondary issues. Genetically modified crops come with numerous engineered traits. Some are modified to absorb nutrients more efficiently, others are modified to resist fungus or attacks by insects while others are modified to better withstand drought. The particular kind of genetically modified crop that this applies to are so-called “Roundup Ready” crops. These are crops which are resistant to the herbicide known as Roundup (Glyphosate).

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Jose Ayala claims to have an amazing ability, an unexplainable ability that borders on the paranormal.   Jose can conduct electrical current through his body to light bulbs and even burn paper with its discharge.  In the following video he demonstrates this amazing power.   Note that this is not limited to high voltage, low amperage sources like electrostatic generators or small Tesla coils.  The electricity is coming from powerful high voltage fly-back transformers and even directly from an electrical outlet.

Jose also does not isolate his body from the ground or the current.   While one can safely come into contact with high voltage sources while isolated from a return path (the “bird on a wire effect”), Jose is not doing this either.   Rather, he is clearly providing a path for the electricity to travel through his body.  In one scene he stands on a plastic bucket, but he still uses his hand to provide the return path.

So is this a super power?

Note:  It seems embedding is disabled for this video.  Click to go to the full Youtube player.

Now the explanation of what is happening:

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I received a question today from someone who asked me if I “believe in” earth batteries and whether an earth battery can actually produce energy.  Apparently they had read about it online or seen some of the Youtube videos out there.   They may have also read the Wikipedia article, which is totally wrong.

An earth battery is pretty simple in principle.   Two metal rods are driven into the ground, ideally in soil that is reasonably wet or at least moist and has a slightly acidic pH.   The rods are made of dissimilar material, for example iron and zinc or carbon and zinc or copper and iron.   If the rods are connected to a voltage meter, you will find that there is a small amount of electricity being produced.  The voltage is generally low and the potential amperage is low as well, but if the conditions are descent you can use this current to drive a small load such as an LED or a digital watch.

In theory you could produce a lot more voltage and electrical power if you simply added more and more rods and connected them together.   Just like any battery, when connected in series, multiple battery units will produce higher voltages.  When connected in parallel, the voltage will remain the same, but the potential maximum amperage will be increased.   Therefore, it would be possible to power your house with enough rods stuck in the ground.

However, here’s the big party killer:  The electricity is not limitless, it’s not free (although some websites that sell the supplies claim it is) and it’s not even really coming from the ground, but rather from the metal rods.   When the rods are placed in ground they undergo a simple chemical reaction – they begin to corrode.   If the ground is fairly dry and composed of inert material like sand, then they will corrode slowly, but if it’s moist and composed of more reactive organic matter, they will corrode faster.    As they corrode, they an electrical potential is produced.  Because the two rods are made of different materials, they corrode at different rates and produce dissimilar electrical potential.   When connected, voltage flows between the two.   This is why more corrosive soil conditions lead to more electricity being produced.
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One week ago today I attended NECSS, the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism. The event was held in New York City and attracted several hundred local science and skepticism enthusiasts. All in all it was a great event, both for the presentations and for the general crowd and socialization which occurs between lectures and panels and after the formal event.   This was the second NECSS conference, the first one being held back in October of 2009.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe did a live podcast to kick off the event and were followed by a number of different panels and speakers.   I was happy to see James Randi was able to make it to the event.  Mr. Randi is one of the most outspoken and iconic members of the skeptical movement.  Randi helped found what is currently the modern skeptical community back in the 1970’s, a time when a lot of questionable research was beginning to come back into vogue.

Randi is the type whose always ready and willing to attend any event that can help increase education and awareness.  Last year he had planned on attending NECSS but had to cancel and appeared only in a pre-taped video due to his health problems.   At the time Mr. Randi had just been diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have a section of his large intestine removed.   This was followed by chemotherapy for several months.   Thankfully, Mr. Randi was looking perfectly at NECSS last week and it appears that the cancer was taken care of before it could spread and become a bigger problem.

As with last year, the event was MC’ed by Jamy Ian Swiss and featured the talent of George Hrab.  D.J. Gorthe, the program director of the Center for Inquiry and president of the JREF also contributed as did Steve Mirsky of Scientific American.

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If there’s anything that can be said in favor of this idiotic procedure, it’s that at least it usually tends to be self-inflicted by those who actively seek it and is not normally something that quacks convince people, who would otherwise not do such an act, to do.   However, this is not always the case.   In 2000, at least two men were arrested in Utah for practicing medicine without a license after preforming trepanations on several individuals. The practitioners claimed that they could provide relief for a variety of conditions ranging from depression to addictions.  There is, of course, no scientific evidence of this being the case.

Warning: The following video contains some slightly graphic scenes of an actual medical trepanation. It’s only brief and relatively clinical, but if you’re really squeamish you may not want to watch. However, the second of the two videos is not graphic at all.

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There are literally thousands of studies that have been done on the effects of RF radiation, such as from mobile phones or other consumer wireless devices. Here are a few of the best, largest studies that have been conducted by objective groups, respected researchers and published in peer reviewed journals. While some very narrow and fringe studies have slipped through and been published, the following represent the largest, longest term and most highly regarded studies to date.

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Radiometric dating is a pretty awesome area of science that involves dating materials by using isotopic ratios and the decay rates of radioisotopes found in various samples.   It’s the most accurate means of dating the earth and based on radiometric dating, scientists have concluded that the earth is 4.54 billion years old.   So called “young earth” creationists hate this, because they insist the earth is actually six thousand years old.   Thus they love to attack radiometric dating.  Here’s a great video that explains the issue and how radiometric dating really works

I’d like to add that it’s not as if radiometric dating needs to stand on its own on this one.   Yes, it is the gold standard for dating of geological material, but there are many other observations that can be made which indicate that the earth must be on the order of billions of years old.   The fact that there is room for discourse in refining the accuracy of the calculated dates does not mean that the data is completely wrong by many orders of magnitude.
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The topic of Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd has come up here before.   While I don’t personally like whaling, his tactics are by no means acceptable.  They are illegal, dangerous and totally ineffective at actually bringing about any meaningful change or reducing whaling.

His organization has gotten a free ride in much of the western press, and many seem to think he’s a hero for harassing Japanese whalers.   His motives are not necessarily so pure.  Watson has a history of dishonesty and outright criminal behavior.

This may be changing, however.   This excellent video was brought to my attention by the commenter “curtains.” It clearly deserves its own post.