We all better be on our best behavior. Because between a good vibrator, a Roomba with a lawnmower blade, and this, we're fuckin' useless.

I, for one, welcome our new female overlords.

Okay, maybe not these ants, but real ants are cool. I've been building an artificial ant colony simulator off and on for a while, and it gets great results from some very simple rules. They are:

• Wander around like a git until you run into food or "smell" something.
• If you run into food, take a piece home and squirt a pheromone. Once home, go back to wandering.
• If you smell the pheromone, head in the direction where the smell is the greatest. Once there, go back to wandering until you wander off too far (and thus go back).

Cool stuff. Surprisingly different results can be obtained as far as colony "intelligence" by tweaking the distance they will tend to walk before turning randomly, the staying power of the pheromone (longer is not necessarily better), and the number of ants vs. the distance to food. Note that none of the rules stipulate where the food is. There's no directionality on the trail. Putting enough wandering ants on the problem creates one, though.

This is pretty simple stuff and has been done many times before. In fact, as with any simulation of sufficient awesomeness, Maxis has done it already years ago. But one question bugged me: With "real" ants, how does the going home bit work? Assuming that individual ants are stupid in just about every other regard, are they just extra smart with this or using some trick or what?

Well, hurray, science! Turns out they're counting steps. Sort of. Ants can't count, at least not consciously. That part is still up in the air. But at least there's a mechanism to model that doesn't require the critters to be smarter than they are (at least on the level of the individual--colonies are wicked smart.)

There's a useful list of quotes often misused by creationists trying to assert that scientists don't actually agree with Darwin or find evolutionary theory to be false or somehow deficient. Very handy for providing context to these statements. Not surprisingly, once in context, the scientists' quotes support evolution (unless the person is question is actually a creationist that the quoters falsely asserted were otherwise.)

It's not often that science gets ups from religion, so it's worth noting that the Vatican's astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno, says that creationism is a form of paganism or nature worship and should not be accepted by Catholics. He goes on to say that the mutually exclusive division some people are trying to create between science and faith is dangerous. Now if only the church can get right with contraception and homosexuality, they might be looking pretty close to entering the 21st century.

It's entitled "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" and was written by a clearly disgruntled physics major. Truly awesome--I know I had Orgo Chem papers that should have been done like this.

My fascination with robots and AI extends pretty much directly from their ability to simulate life in surprising ways. If you're anything like me, you must check out the NetLogo model repository. They have amazingly well-illustrated simulations of flocking, ants, and termites, plus dozens of others. Most poignant is their AIDS model, which illustrates the unbelievable importance of HIV testing.

Update: The CDC just sent out a strong recommendation for widespread AIDS testing after I posted that model link. Clearly, this is no bullshit. Oh yeah, and this also means that abstinence-only Sex Ed kills people. So there.

You've got to check out the weirdly beautiful movie NASA put together showing Huygens approach to Saturn's moon of Titan. The various sounds in the movie represent different conditions for the craft and various instruments recording data. I don't think I ever seen anything quite like it--it's oddly hypnotic.

There are interesting new data on hurricane strength from the journal Science. Since 1970, stronger storms, categories 4 and 5, have increased by 57 percent, though the number of tropical cyclones has not. Also, the power of storms and ocean temperature have very, very close correlations. While it's important not to mistake correlation for causation, even non-climatologists like me can see what's happening here--increased energy in the oceans powers the storms. I previously touched on this a few months ago as it relates to global warming. The increase in city-killing storms, like Katrina, is an inevitable consequence of the changes in our climate. Do we have to lose Miami, Charleston, Savannah, and Houston before our leaders see what is happening here?

Kind of dumb, but I got a passing grade of 67 percent on the atheist test. I probably could have scored higher if I'd denounced theists more, but I just think they're wrong, not stupid. Plus, I don't want to say that there is certain proof that God doesn't exist, just as there isn't certain proof that there's not an invisible pink unicorn in my backyard. It's only that the current evidence points to the provisionally true conclusion that both supernatural creatures have not appeared in my backyard or elsewhere. That's as close to "absolute truth" as science is willing to go on any subject, so that's where I am.

It's sad that pundits and propagandists have seized on this most valuable, remarkable aspect of the scientific method. Science never, ever says that anything is absolutely true beyond all refuation--in fact, refutation is built in to the method. That's a strength, not a weakness. Nevertheless, clever liars and thieves seize on this to cast public doubt on issues ranging from global warming to evolution to birth control. The very existence of any uncertainty, even intentional uncertainty, gives them an angle to create a "controversy" where none exists or to pose "another side" to a "debate" that is pretty well settled theory in the actual scientific community. They abuse the American people's poor understanding of science to do irreparable harm to our planet, our bodies, and our minds. And that's the truth (as far as I can tell.)

Couple of good links worth mentioning here. One is an older PZ Myers bit about anti-science libertarians who think the market will magically save us. Really, really funny stuff. I'm going to start calling industry flacks posing as pundits Socky.

In news that would be just as funny if it weren't so damn depressing, FDA officials justified keeping Plan B from going over the counter because it would cause teenagers to form sex cults. I'm not even fucking kidding. And this wasn't just anybody saying this, but a doctor that the FDA announced in a press release had been honored for her work by the Personalized Medicine Coalition. Naturally enough, the PMC is a drug-industry front. So, pimpin' for big pharma is okay, but don't let those kids start up any sex cults.

I think my brain deflated.