Scientists have discovered that there is water literally everywhere on the Moon. Incredible:

Three different space probes have gathered evidence that the top layer of the moon's surface contains hidden stores of water.

The moon is generally thought to be a dry place, although scientists have long suspected that ice might be trapped in cold, permanently shadowed craters. A NASA mission will test that theory next month, by smashing a spent rocket part into a dark crater near the moon's south pole and creating a big debris cloud that will be searched for water.

But surprisingly, researchers have now found that there's water on the sunlit surface of the moon, where no one expected it to be.

Molecules of water as well as hydroxyl — that's just one atom of hydrogen with an oxygen atom, instead of the two hydrogen atoms normally found in water — are all over the lunar surface, in the very top layer of dust, according to new reports published online by the journal Science.

What does this mean? Well:

Check out the signals; there's water everywhere, even in areas constantly bathed in sunlight. This could be a huge boon to establishing a Moon base, as with water (or even hydroxyl ions) on the surface, we could possibly generate our own liquid water and breathable O2 gas!

That's right peeps. That moon base that sci-fi enthusiasts have written about for decades, is a distinct possibility now. That's something to get excited about.

Pretty much every time we see an article about some new robotic advancement, my co-bloggers and I e-mail each other in jest about the coming apocalypse and our future robot overlords. The hyperbole and humor is almost certainly the reaction to decades of science fiction portrayals of robots as usurpers and masters of men, juxtaposed against the salient reality that during most of that time, robots have been no more capable of threatening mankind than our kitchen appliances. Nonetheless, we have reached a point where we can-sort of-imagine what it might mean for computers and machines to become autonomous, and begin assuming roles that are presently beyond them (via Boing Boing):

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

The ultimate artificial intelligent/robot nightmare is the apocalyptic scenarios depicted in movies like "Terminator" or "The Matrix", which assume that upon acquiring enough power artificial intelligences will act as somewhat more ruthless humans might, and obliterate all competition for authority over the planet. In fact, artificial intelligences are much more likely to permeate our lives in more subtle fashion, with results that are considerably more gradual, but only somewhat less dramatic. Artificial intelligences capable of far more than our present-day machines (thought perhaps not anything approaching sentience) are likely in the near future. Given human ingenuity, they will be utilized in ways that we cannot yet foresee. What will they do for us? How will we interact with them? What devices shall they complement, or replace? I think those of us who are around long enough will be surprised by the answers to those questions, but that's the only prediction I feel safe making.

1. Iraq is moving ahead with a referendum on the Iraq-US security agreement. Such is the perils of democracy. Though Iraqi leaders would almost certainly prefer American troops stay in the country, they can't afford to oppose the referendum in an election year.

2. The Obama administration signals that they may move away from a policy of isolation with the regime in Burma. Since that hasn't worked to date, I think it's worth trying something new.

3. The Senate is moving ahead with a bill that would give the FDA the power to regulate tobacco products.

4. A profile of the guard killed in yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. It would be interesting to ask the murderer what he thought he might accomplish with his act, though fanatics always seem to have a grander view of their place in the world than most of the rest of us do. I visited the museum when I was at law school in D.C., and was surprised at the heavy security required to enter the museum. Now I understand.

5. Some local news: Dallas County meals on wheels needs help. They don't need your money, so much as they need volunteers to deliver meals so they won't have to pay drivers to do so. If you'd like to help, more information is here. Also, local residents know about the odd series of minor earthquakes the area has experienced in recent months. Scientists at SMU hope to get to the bottom of the mystery.

6. Two mentally disabled men in Texas have (separately) been given ridiculously long sentences for molesting young children. Even the jury in Hart's case was shocked by the 100-year sentence the man, reported to have an IQ of roughly 47, received. The question I would like to ask the prosecutors in this case is, if both men are reported to have IQs themselves that are roughly equivalent to those of young children, why are they sentenced as if they were fully functioning adults? And, the Hart story points out, repeat sex offenders routinely receive shorter sentences than these men did, which raises the question of whether there is some discrimination against the mentally disabled going on here, at least in my mind.

7. Perhaps you heard about the collapse of the Cowboy's practice facility in Valley Ranch, Irving, last month that paralyzed a Cowboys scouting assistant? It appears the Cowboys knew of a similar incident involving a canopy built by the contractor they hired. While this isn't exactly proof of negligence on the Cowboys part, it sure does make it easier to add the Cowboys to the lawsuit that I'm sure is being contemplated against the contractor.

When stupidity attacks, we do the only thing we can, which is to try to combat it with truth, fact, and raw information. I say this because of Andrew Sullivan's absolutely juvenile and erroneous commentary on the astounding Venus figurine found in Hohle Fels Cave recently. Check out the links above for more in-depth info about Venus figurines and the cave, but here's the substance of the issue:

From the Wikipedia entry:

Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric statuettes of women sharing common attributes (many depicted as apparently obese or pregnant) from the Upper Palaeolithic, mostly found in Europe, but with finds as far east as Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, extending their distribution to much of Eurasia, from the Pyrenees to Lake Baikal. Most of them date to the Gravettian period, but there are a number of early examples from the Aurignacian, including the Venus of Hohle Fels, discovered in 2008, carbon dated to at least 35,000 years ago, and late examples of the Magdalenian, such as the Venus of Monruz, aged about 11,000 years.

From the Science Daily article:

The 2008 excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany recovered a female figurine carved from mammoth ivory from the basal Aurignacian deposit. This figurine, which is the earliest depiction of a human, and one of the oldest known examples of figurative art worldwide, was made at least 35,000 years ago. This discovery radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art.

Sullivan dismisses the figurine by titling his post "The Power of Big Boobs" and limiting his comment to this:

Why does one find the resilience of male horniness, and near-comic sexual objectification of the female form oddly comforting? This may be the first work of sculpture made by modern humans still extant. It was worn as a pendant. And it quite obviously turned someone on.

Sullivan should keep to what he knows, because I (and I'm sure I speak for all anthropologists here) don't appreciate him passing on his interpretation of early human behavior as if he was speaking with some kind of authority. As it is we have far too many Americans who don't know how to tell good science from charlatanism. Sullivan, I'm sure, didn't bother to research the various competing theories of what these figurines are.

From About.com:

Theories about the function of Venus figurines vary widely, and include emblems of a goddess religion, educational materials for children, sex toys for men, and physiological depictions of pregnant women. Intriguingly, one view suggests that they are self-portraits of women, arguing that the body parts are exaggerated because they are seen from a distorted perspective.

If the real scientists are this conflicted, Sullivan, I'd say there's nothing "obvious" about this find at all. Even if you're just being facetious, keep in mind that some readers will see this and dismiss it with no further thought while implicitly accepting your interpretation. No honest and responsible journalist should ever misrepresent science or set the cause of scientific education back by writing so spuriously about something that is deeply meaningful to human knowledge.

Via Cliff Pickover, this is a pretty good summary for the layman of our present understanding of the origin of the universe. The mind reels at the potential vastness of the universe we occupy.

There's a lot of interesting stuff to read this morning.

1. More troubling violence in Iraq, as sixteen Iraqi soldiers die in a suicide attack in Anbar province.

2. This is very interesting; George Mitchell, U.S. Middle East envoy, is in Israel today. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Obama administration will communicate to Israel that they intend to link the issue of Iran's nuclear program to illegal Israeli settlements. As in, if Israel wants help with Iran, they're going to have to make concessions on settlement activity. That message probably won't go over very well.

3. More on the "truce" with the Taliban in Swat: unsurprisingly, militants who pledged to surrender their arms...aren't.

4. Science news: researchers report setbacks in their explorations of the genetic underpinnings of many inherited diseases. Apparently, it's impossible to link some common conditions (like Schizophrenia) to one or two genetic markers. Scientists suspect that interactions between a countless number of genes can produce or make people vulnerable to disease, making it considerably more difficult to predict the possibility of disease in certain individuals, as well as fashion targeted treatments. Also, Nicholas Kristof (who's had some great columns recently) writes about recent research showing that the IQ's of poor children living in chaotic households suffers, and has suggestions for what we can do about that. And lastly, the "last voyage" of an astronaut whose job has been to tend the Hubble Space telescope, a scientific achievement that has made incalculable contributions to our understanding of the universe.

5. Jonathan Capehart dismisses the tired arguments for intolerance that underpin opposition to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

6. Legislation that would create a new University of North Texas law school in Dallas passes the Texas Senate, but could face stiff opposition in the House. Despite the downturn in the legal market, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea. North Texas could use a less expensive public law school, and unless we really are in the Great Depression II, the economy should improve in time for the first graduates of the school. Still, it seems like a difficult time to ask for money to produce lawyers who right now couldn't find jobs.

7. John Madden to retire after thirty years in the booth. Madden's an easy target for ridicule, but I've always liked his earnestness and his understanding of the game. Clearly the guy loves football, and has always done a good job of explaining the game to football amateurs like myself. He'll be missed.

8. Bonus music review: the new Metric album "Fantasies" came out on Tuesday. It's good. The hooks are catchier, the themes are gloomier, and song structure is tighter. I especially like the darker and fuzzier synth sounds, which give the album a somewhat more ambient feel. On other Metric albums I've found there's usually 2-3 good songs and a lot of filler. Not so here; all the songs are keepers. Anyway buy it, or listen to it here.

Science Fiction author David Brin is guest-blogging at the mind-blowing blog Sentient Developments. Here he suggests that if our technology permits us to radically transform ourselves, we are obligated to "uplift" animals to sapience. And here he argues that we should be having more of a conversation about plans to broadcast our presence to the stars. Fascinating stuff.

A federal judge in New York has ordered the FDA to make the morning-after pill available without a prescription to women as young as seventeen, and assailed the FDAs bowing to political pressure from the Bush administration. But don't forget; it's the Obama administration that's undermining democracy by not making science secondary to the political desires of the ignoramuses of our nation.

Via John Scalzi, the entirety of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" is online. Cosmos was the most wonderful show I ever saw as a child, and Carl Sagan (along with Isacc Asimov) helped to inspire in me a love of science and the universe that remains with me to this day. Nothing else has ever captured for me the feeling of the numinous I feel gazing at the stars as Cosmos did, and I imagine nothing else ever will. 

I wish I could remember where I found the link to this, so I could give that blogger proper credit. Alas, I cannot, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying this Bill Moyers interview with Isaac Asimov from 1988. I would say that Isaac Asimov is the man I most credit with introducing me to the love of science and science fiction, and second only to my mom in imbuing me with the love of reading and learning. I especially enjoyed his prediction that someday children would learn by computers hooked up to libraries that would give them access to the vast store of human knowledge. If only he had lived long to see that already, half of that prediction has come true.

Of Obama's decision to reverse Bush's ban on federal funding for stem cell research, Yuval Levin has this to say:

...legitimate dispute underlies the stem cell debate. But that is not the ground on which the president made his case yesterday. He argued that to deny free rein to stem cell science is to ignore and reject the promise of science as such. In a barely concealed swipe at his predecessor, he pledged that his administration would "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

The executive order Obama signed omits any mention of ethical debate. The entirety of the case it makes for itself is that "advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by Federal funds." And while Obama promised that his policy would be bound by ethical guidelines, he left it to the scientists of the National Institutes of Health to define the rules. The issue, he suggested, is a matter of science, not politics.

But science policy is not just a matter of science. Like all policy, it calls for a balancing of priorities and concerns, and it requires a judgment of needs and values that in a democracy we trust to our elected officials. In science policy, science informs, but politics governs, and rightly so.

There are, of course, different ways for politics to exert authority over science. To distort or hide unwelcome facts is surely illegitimate. But to weigh facts against societal priorities -- economic, political and ethical -- in making decisions is the very definition of policymakers' duty. And to govern the practice of scientific techniques that threaten to violate important moral boundaries is not only legitimate but in some cases essential.

Levin focuses on Obama's stem cell announcement, but what he says he's most upset about is this idea that science alone will dictate policy-making in the Obama administration. But where is the evidence for this? That Obama entirely avoids engaging in an ethical debate over the morality of stem cell research; Levin offers us this quote from when Obama was still serving in the Senate: "...the promise that stem cells hold does not come from any particular ideology; it is the judgment of science, and we deserve a president who will put that judgment first." To Levin this is succumbing to the "technocratic temptation", to let scientific experts make decisions that ought properly to be made via the democratic process.

I'm trying not to split hairs too finely here, but it seems to me that Obama has made an ethical determination, as indicated by that prior statement, and with this decision, to drop the ban on stem cell research; the decision being that there is no ethical debate to be had about the morality of funding such research. Levin says: "Science is a glorious thing, but it is no substitute for wisdom, prudence or democracy." But how is it not democratic for Obama to express this opinion prior to his election, be elected, and then enact his expressed opinion into law? Science has not over-ruled that democratic process; science has been affirmed by the democratic process. And I do not see how referring the determination of ethical guidelines for this research to a scientific organization like the National Institutes for Health is a subversion of the democratic process either. Scientists and ethicists draw up research guidelines all of the time, and if people object they may-in the form of Congress-rewrite those guidelines. But society has spoken broadly that this funding is acceptable.

Robert George and Eric Cohen are more direct, if also more disingenuous. They think that stem cell research will result in the deliberate creation and destruction of embryos that are the equivalent of living persons, and they're not happy about it:

First, the Obama policy is itself blatantly political. It is red meat to his Bush-hating base, yet pays no more than lip service to recent scientific breakthroughs that make possible the production of cells that are biologically equivalent to embryonic stem cells without the need to create or kill human embryos. Inexplicably -- apart from political motivations -- Mr. Obama revoked not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells.

At least they give Obama credit for making a "political" and not merely scientific and technocratic decision (at least at first.) That said, the idea that this is "red meat" for the base is absurd. In a Gallup Poll conducted at the end of last month, 52% of respondents said that the government should either ease restrictions on funding for stem cell research, or lift restrictions altogether. 52% of the country is hardly a "base"; rather, it demonstrates that a lifting of the ban has broad support. But following all that, they do attack the decision for being "anti-democratic":

Second and more fundamentally, the claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.

For those who believe in the highest ideals of deliberative democracy, and those who believe we mistreat the most vulnerable human lives at our own moral peril, Mr. Obama's claim of "taking politics out of science" should be lamented, not celebrated.

Now obviously, what Obama was referring to with his desire to take the politics out of science, was the Bush administration's well known penchant for making even scientific decisions political. If federal agencies produced information indicating that global warming was both real and man-made, that information was to be suppressed to one extent or another. Abstinence-only sex education was held paramount, even though research indicates that it is less effective than sex education that teaches about safe sex. This is the sort of thing that Cohen and George seem to favor; the suppression of legitimate scientific inquiry and the politicization of scientific data to meet already agreed upon policy goals. But how is it more democratic to keep Americans ignorant, or unaware, or to hide scientific data that is unfavorable to powerful political interests even if it would be useful to Americans as a whole?

This argument is of course disingenuous and ridiculous. Cohen and George want the blatant politicization of science; they want stem cell research to be unfunded by the federal government even though most people desire it to some extent because they disagree with it, and their moral disapproval should be good enough for you because they're right about embryos and you're not. To offer some token and vacuous appreciation for the "stem-cell debate" at the end of their column, a debate they would continue to short-circuit if they were at all able to do so, is absurd.

Obama has announced a decision that will hopefully lead to scientific advances that will improve the lives of countless millions or billions the world over. He has announced that scientific inquiry will no longer be suppressed or perverted to meet moralistic policy goals. Americans are broadly supportive of this approach. This isn't anti-democratic; it's democracy at work.

You've probably all heard by now that President Obama plans to lift the Bush-ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but he is also indicating a new committment to science that goes beyond just that action:

When President Obama lifts restrictions on funding for human embryonic stem cell research today, he will also issue a presidential memorandum aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence, officials said yesterday.

"The president believes that it's particularly important to sign this memorandum so that we can put science and technology back at the heart of pursuing a broad range of national goals," Melody C. Barnes, director of Obama's Domestic Policy Council, told reporters during a telephone briefing yesterday.

Although officials would not go into details, the memorandum will order the Office of Science and Technology Policy to "assure a number of effective standards and practices that will help our society feel that we have the highest-quality individuals carrying out scientific jobs and that information is shared with the public," said Harold Varmus, who co-chairs Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Removing this ideologically-motivated roadblock is a good start, and some members of Congress are looking at codifying into law so that a future administration can't just change it back. But most exciting is that we have an administration that is going to be driven by science not just on stem cells, but climate change and other issues, instead of politics. After the Bush years, this couldn't be more welcome.

This is fantastic; a "secret" club for those in love with science. I only hope more of these pop up across the nation.

The discovery of planets outside of our own solar system has become almost routine. But for the first time, a satellite will search for Earth-like planets that inhabit the narrow band around other stars which are neither too hot nor too cold to permit life to exist in theory. The discovery of such planets would be truly extraordinary, and a grand step forward in the search for life in the cosmos, but the odds are in our favor.

Sometimes, science is truly incredible. Doctors performed the first face transplant in the United States last year, and now a pair of American researchers is proposing artificial muscles for patients who've suffered severe facial paralysis. The muscles, crafted out of artificial polymers, would respond to electrical signals just as human muscles would. 

Today we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark achievement "The Origin of Species." In the book Darwin propagated the theory of natural selection as the basis of evolution of species over time, and this has proven to be one of the greatest scientific achievements in the modern history of mankind, easily as significant as Newton's theory of gravity and Einstein's general theory of relativity. While it's true that the scientific progress of mankind is the result of the work of countless men and women of greater or lesser or no fame at all, today it is worth remembering the stunning and almost unbelievable feats that can be accomplished by a single creative, focused and disciplined mind.

UPDATED: Apparently, 150 years has not been long enough for this wacky new evolution thing to settle in American minds.

Reason prevails:

Without debate, the State Board of Education today tentatively approved new science curriculum standards that scrap a longstanding requirement that students be taught the “weaknesses” in the theory of evolution.

The action followed a meeting Thursday in which members who are aligned with social conservatives failed to muster enough votes on the 15-member board to retain the rule. Only seven Republican members backed the requirement.

All three Dallas-area board members – Republicans Geraldine Miller of Dallas and Pat Hardy of Weatherford, and Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas – opposed the rule. They cited the recommendations of a science review committee of teachers and academics, who contended that talking about "weaknesses" would undermine the proper teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of how humans evolved from lower life forms.

The board will take a final vote in March, but it is expected to ratify the actions taken today.

With that, Texas science education steps into the 20th century.

In what will hopefully open a new era of science and medicine, the FDA has approved of a study that will test embryonic stem cells on adults with severe spinal cord injuries, in the hopes of regrowing damaged or destroyed nerve cells.

Apparently it's "left-wing" to demand that science be taught rigorously in Texas schools. 

NASA researchers have apparently discovered the most powerful source of radio emissions in the known universe:

...the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.

"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

Emphasis mine. This is a stunning find. Quasars are the most powerful source or electromagnetic emissions in the universe, and this is six times more powerful than all of those lumped together with the every other sources of radio waves in the known universe. Speculation is that the source is from the formation of stars early in the universe, or their collapse into black holes, but so far researchers haven't pinpointed exactly where the signal is coming from so there's no way of telling how old it is yes.