I was going to post a set of links for the weblogs from ScienceBlogs who have left for new digs, but Skull in the Stars is tracking it. Probably best to check in this weekend if you’re really curious, some people are still in wait-and-see mode.

As I continue to bake today, yearning for just a few minutes in Senator Inhofe’s igloo, I’ve been keeping tabs on a saddening train wreck over at my old haunt, Scienceblogs. Before I brought the Loom to Discover, I blogged at Scienceblogs, which was hosted by the folks behind the now-defunct (?) Seed Magazine. There was a lot I enjoyed about that time, and I still keep tabs on a number of excellent bloggers still at Scienceblogs. Except that, as of today, a lot of them are no longer there.

Here’s the quick story: the powers that be at Scienceblogs thought it would be a good idea to sell Pepsi a blog of its own on the site, where its corporate scientists could tell the world about all the great nutrition science Pepsico is doing.

Yes. Really. I’m totally sober as I type this.

I first heard about this in a post by Peter Lipson, a doctor who writes a blog at SB. He offers a common reaction from a lot of the bloggers there: they don’t like what Pepsi stands for, and they don’t like Scienceblogs giving the company an opportunity to dole out their PR to readers alongside blogs that have built up their reputations for years, for the most part for very little pay.

Here’s a response, of sorts, in the form of an email sent to the bloggers after the story made its way all the way into the newspapers, from the editor, Adam Bly.

Yes. Really. After. I swear, I am still sober.

It’s not an inspiring reply. For one thing, Bly tells us how hard it is these days to make journalism pay. Um, you don’t have to tell bloggers that. For another, Bly seems to justify the Pepsi affair by saying Scienceblogs has hosted blogs from corporations before. Somehow that means this new situation is okay. I can’t stop thinking of the line from As You Like It, “More villain thou.”

Even if you set aside the paradox of Pepsi telling us about eating right (Step 1: maybe put down that 10 liter bottle of Pepsi?), this just doesn’t make editorial sense. If you want to sustain respect and trust in readers, you simply can’t do this sort of thing. John Rennie and Paul Raeburn explain this Journalism 101 lesson.

What I find particularly galling about this whole affair is that bloggers who don’t want to associate themselves with this kind of nonsense have to go through the hassle of leaving Scienceblogs and setting up their blog elsewhere. The technical steps involved may be wonderfully easy now (export files, open account on WordPress, import), but the social steps remain tedious. Take it from me, someone who has moved his blog three times over the past six years: your readers lose your trail, and it takes a long time for Google to start helping them. These folks did nothing to deserve this irritation.

So let me do my small part here. Over the next couple weeks, I plan to build a list of bloggers who refused to drink the Kool Aid Pepsi who left [failed joke!] and tell you where to go to read them now. Please let me know about bloggers not yet on the list in the comment thread. And I will update my blog roll when I have a free minute.

BLOGGERS ON THE MOVE:

Causabon’s Book

David Dobbs

Good Math/Bad Math: Mark Chu-Carroll is definitely leaving. Will post his destination soon.

Highly Autochthonous: On hiatus, trending towards escape.

Jonah Lehrer: Moving to Wired this summer (a plan that was in effect before Pepsi popped on the scene)

The Quantum Pontiff

Scicurious

Science After Sunclipse

Rebecca Skloot: TBA. (You can follow her for now on Twitter)

Brian Switek, Laelaps: TBA. (You can follow him for now on Twitter)

Alex Wild

[Image: Wikipedia]

It makes sense: stay where it’s warm, sunny, and there’s a lot of food. What, then, were prehistoric people doing on the British seashore? New research published today in Nature pushes human arrival in Britain back to about 800,000 years ago, roughly 100,000 years earlier than our previous estimations. The evidence? A trove of 70 flint tools found on the Happisburgh shore in Norfolk.

Dating artifacts that old isn’t easy (for example, carbon dating doesn’t work), so the researchers had to be thorough. Led by Simon A. Parfitt of The Natural History Museum in London and Nick Ashton of the British Museum, London as part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, the team used both biological and physical evidence to date the tools. Looking at insect and plant fossils found with the artifacts, researchers determined that the species dated back to the Early Pleistocence period, between 990,000 and 780,000 years ago. The researchers also tested sediment around the tools, and established that they were buried when the Earth’s magnetic field was flipped. The last time this happened was also about 780,000 years ago.

Researchers suspect that the humans made their way to Britain via a land bridge that once connected the UK to continental Europe. Homo antecessor, known as “Pioneer Man,” has previously been found in northern Spain and is also known to have lived around 800,000 years ago; this early human could be a candidate for the tools’ maker. Unfortunately, since the researchers haven’t yet uncovered any human remains at the site, they can’t know for sure what species lived in Happisburgh.

Whoever they were, they must have been pretty tough to survive the British winters.

“Although we don’t have the evidence for fire or of clothing to get through the winters up here, I think they must have had some extra adaptations,” said [study coauthor Chris Stringer]. “I think the evidence suggests that they were living at the edge of the inhabited world in a really challenging environment and indeed they were real pioneers living here in Britain, nearly a million years ago,” he said. [BBC]

For all the details, including pictures of the flint tools, check out Ed Yong’s post and gallery on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Related Content:
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Norfolk – the home of the earliest known humans in Britain
80beats: The Ur-Sneaker: 5500-Year-Old Shoe Found in Armenian Cave
80beats: How Ancient Beekeepers Made Israel the Land of (Milk and) Honey: Imported Bees
80beats: 4 Days of Laser Scanning Reveals More of Ancient City Than 20 Years of Hoofing
80beats: Is the Mysterious Siberian “X-Woman” a New Hominid Species?

Image: John Sibbick/AHOB

On Saturday, five gallons of tar balls appeared on the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island in Texas. Their arrival means that BP oil has now hit all five gulf states. Researchers don’t believe that ocean currents alone carried the balls, but instead say that the glops of gloop washed off recovery ship hulls.

Specifically, the researchers from a joint BP-Coast Guard response team looked at the tar balls’ “weathering,” which they say was too light for oil that had traveled from the leak site, around 550 miles away.

Galveston’s mayor, Joe Jaworski, said he was hopeful the analysis was correct and that the tar balls were not a sign of more oil to come. “This is good news. The water looks good. We’re cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly,” he said. [BBC]

Greg Pollock, Texas Deputy Commissioner of the Oil Spill Prevention and Response, has worried that this day was coming; he sounded a call in a June Texas Land Office newsletter:

“This ain’t our first rodeo with tar balls. We will be ready.” [NPR]

According to the AFP, the largest are only slightly larger than an inch in diameter and, all combined, cover less than one percent of the beaches where they were spotted: East Beach on Galveston Island and Crystal Beach on Bolivar Peninsula, which both remain open.

Though Texas officials say that the beaches remain safe, they also promise that BP will pay for any damage:

“Any Texas shores impacted by the Deepwater spill will be cleaned up quickly and BP will be picking up the tab,” Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in a news release. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, oil has reached Lake Pontchartrain, known for its seemingly miraculous recovery from the pollution in the 1990s and again after Army Corps of Engineers drained Katrina floodwaters from New Orleans into the lake. The body of water is technically an estuary that is connected to the Gulf of Mexico through several straits.

Recent posts on the Gulf oil spill:
80beats: Gulf Coast Turtle News: No More Fiery Death; Relocating 70,000 Eggs
80beats: Hurricane Alex Held Up Oil Cleanup—And in Some Places, Made Things Worse
80beats: Next from X Prize: An Award for Cleaning up BP’s Oil Spill?
80beats: Obama’s Speech on the Oil Spill: What Do You Think of His “Battle Plan”?
80beats: BP to Kevin Costner: We’ll Take 32 of Your Oil Clean-up Machines

Image: flickr / Geoff Livingston

As far as stars go, it’s one of the largest, the most luminous, brightest, most massive, and one of the best supernova candidates on the list.  Betelgeuse is huge.  If it were in our sun’s place, it would extend out beyond the orbit of Mars, possibly beyond that of Jupiter.  It is the ninth brightest star in the night sky, and the second brightest (behind Rigel) in the constellation Orion.

The constellation Orion - image courtesy of Zwergelstern, released to PD

The origin of the name “Betelgeuse” is an interesting read in itself, if you happen to be interested in etymology (which I am).  There are also many and varied pronunciations floating around, and “beetle juice” is perfectly acceptable.  I was taught to pronounce it “BET el juz”.  You can avoid the whole issue and just call it “alpha ori/orionis”, if that grabs you.

Betelgeuse is a semi-regular variable star, and is believed to be about 8.5 million years old.  While that makes it an infant compared to our sun (actually, it makes it a fetus), Betelgeuse is old for its type.  Scientists believe it will supernova any time in the next 1,000 years; in fact, it could go tonight.  Betelgeuse has been doing some strange things lately, things which many astronomers believe to be a preamble to supernova.

NASA/JPL/ESA - Hubble - This 1999 image was the first direct image of the surface of a star other than the Sun

When Betelgeuse does supernova, it will become the brightest object in the night sky – easily outshining the Moon.  It would even be perfectly visible during the day.  We would see it increase in brightness over a two-week period, hold intensity for about two or three months, then rapidly dim.  What would be left?  It could be a neutron star remnant, a white dwarf, or even a pulsar.  We don’t have to worry about a gamma ray burst from Betelgeuse; its rotational axis is positioned so that the burst won’t be headed our way.  Not that worrying about it would do any good, you know.  If we were looking down the barrel, Betelgeuse is close enough to fry us to a cinder.

Long an object of speculation and study, Betelgeuse has been receiving even more attention with the advent of the new “super telescopes” like Gemini.  It’s fair to say that at any moment, someone… somewhere… is looking at Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse, image by ESO's Very Large Telescope

Many people think it would be really cool to watch Betelgeuse supernova.  Maybe.  If I sound grouchy here it’s because although I would like to see a supernova that close (and we should be perfectly safe at this distance), I don’t want to lose Betelgeuse.  Sure, we wouldn’t really lose Betelgeuse… SOMETHING will still be there… but it won’t be that big, beautiful red star I’m used to seeing.

Keep looking up, Alejandro.

I love me some of the Captain! Captain Disillusion, that is. He’s just created a new skeptical video, this time in 3D!

YouTube doesn’t allow 3D videos to be embedded yet, but here’s the link to it, and you can watch the 2D version below.

I hear that Captain Disillusion will be at TAM 8, but he may be disguised as a mere mortal. I will never give away his secret identity — we superheroes stick together — but if you go, maybe you’ll run into him. He’ll be the one with length, depth, and width.