August 18, 2008

Monday Mustelid #26

Category: Monday Mustelid

Stone or Beech marten, Martes foina Erxleben 1777

[source]

Posted by John Lynch at 4:49 AM • 2 Comments

Reaping what you sow

Category: Politics

Juan Cole on the world Bush made:

The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build.

Posted by John Lynch at 1:34 AM • 2 Comments

August 17, 2008

Bornean clouded leopard

Category: Carnivores

Bornean clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) ... now with mounted headlights.

See here for previous story on the species.

(click for larger version / image source)

Posted by John Lynch at 9:26 PM • 0 Comments

“Bad priest! Stupid women!”

Category: History and Philosophy (often of Science)

Mike Price has a nice piece over at Smithsonian.com on how the rediscovery of Galilaeus Galilaeus His Life: In Five Books, by Thomas Salusbury, a biography of Galileo written just twenty years after his death is causing some to reinterpret the cause of Galileo's trial. In short, Salusbury proposed that Galileo was raked over the coals because Urban VIII wanted to punish the Duke of Medici.

Posted by John Lynch at 8:39 PM • 1 Comments

The most awesome obit notice ever?

Category: Bits and Pieces

From here:

Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart.

(via fark.com)

Posted by John Lynch at 3:30 PM • 5 Comments

August 16, 2008

Self-awareness is a virtue that McCain doesn’t have

Category: Politics

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain attended an economic forum in Aspen Thursday where he chastised Congress for going on recess "while people are paying $3.75 a gallon for gas." (source)

This from a man that has missed 407 votes (63.8%) during the current Congress, including one to "increase the supply and lower the cost of petroleum by temporarily suspending the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" (S 2284). He's been "on recess" for the majority of his term. (In fairness, of course, Obama has missed 45.5%, though the 20% difference is notable).

Both McCain and I are paid by the tax-payers of Arizona. We are both public servants. I can only imagine what would happen to me if I missed 64% of my classes.

As an aside, the average missed vote percentage is 5.2%. If we ignore McCain, Obama, Clinton and Tim Johnson (who suffered a stroke in 2006), we see that nearly twice as many Republicans (11) have above average rates as Democrats (6, and one of those was Ted Kennedy who suffered a stroke).

As another aside, I'll note that Bush has gone on vacation again - this a mere three days after returning from watching the Olympics (and the beach volley ball squad) on the public dime.

Posted by John Lynch at 1:09 AM • 3 Comments

August 15, 2008

Mmmmmm …. roadkill *drool*

Category: Blog Memes and Such

Via Chad, a list of 100 food items. You are supposed to bold the ones you have eaten (55) and strike-through those you'd never try (4).

Read on »

Posted by John Lynch at 8:12 PM • 3 Comments

Poem (0815)

Category: Poetry

Like a desert flower waiting for rain,
like a river-bank thirsting for the touch of pitchers,
like the dawn
longing for light;
and like a house,
like a house in ruins for want of a woman -
the exhausted ones of our times
need a moment to breathe,
need a moment to sleep,
in the arms of peace, in the arms of peace.

Like a Desert Flower / Parween Faiz Zadah Malaal

Posted by John Lynch at 2:45 AM • 0 Comments

August 14, 2008

Why does iTunes suck so bad?

Category: Technology

I have a large digital music collection. Every file is correctly tagged and album art is both embedded in the file and available as a jpg in the album folder. All of that took about four straight days to do over the summer using MediaMonkey (which I now also use to sync my collection with my iPod Classic). Unfortunately, I have some DRMed music bought from the iTunes store and have to use iTunes to get them onto the iPod. But here's what gets me - every time I transfer the DRMed tracks over, iTunes not only screws up the album art on the DRMed tracks, but also screws with the album art of other non-DRMed music. I then have to get MediaMonkey to repair the database on the iPod, a process that takes close to an hour.

Seriously Apple ... iTunes has to be the worse media-management program ever. Its memory footprint is obnoxious, it is prone to seizing up, and it buggers up album art.

If you haven't tried MediaMonkey, do so. It's made my life a heck of a lot easier.

Posted by John Lynch at 12:10 AM • 15 Comments

August 12, 2008

A brief message from our founder

Category: Bits and Pieces

Dear Reader,

We launched Seed and ScienceBlogs because we believe that science can change the world and science literacy is how we get there. In the pages of our magazine we've tried to capture the ideas and issues fueling this cultural shift. Online we've aimed to foster a lively and spirited conversation about where it's all heading.

Now, we invite you to share with us directly your perspective on the state of science, and your opinion on how we can improve our own efforts to raise science literacy. The survey should take about 20 minutes to complete.

As a special "thank you" for participating you will be eligible to enter for a chance to win a suite of Apple products: an iPhone 3G, a MacBook Air and a 40GB Apple TV.

On behalf of our writers, bloggers, correspondents, designers, photographers, producers, and editors around the world, thank you for your impassioned support and for making the time to complete this survey.

Please press the "Start Survey" button to begin the survey.

Very truly yours,

Adam Bly
Founder

Nothing to add. Go make Adam happy.

Update: Apparently the survey is back online now.

Posted by John Lynch at 2:42 PM • 2 Comments

August 11, 2008

Behe, Intelligent Design, and “Folk Science” (Part IIa)

Category: Intelligent Design

In a follow-up to his post on Behe's conduct as a scientist (which I discuss here), Steve Matheson has now posted the second part of his critique, this time examining Behe's "scientific" arguments regarding malaria. There will be a part IIb in the future.

Posted by John Lynch at 11:59 PM • 1 Comments

Sarkar v Fuller? No contest.

Category: History and Philosophy (often of Science)

We've mentioned Steve Fuller before on this blog both when he was giving "expert" testimony in Kitzmiller and when he went and produced a book (Dissent Over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism) on his thoughts regarding intelligent design. Now, John Wilkins brings to our attention a review of Fuller's book by philosopher of science Sahotra Sarkar. John has got his own favorite quote (which I will admit is wonderful), but I like this short, sharp, summation:

Fuller's analysis of the intellectual disputes over contemporary ID creationism is almost vacuous.

Do read the whole review, by the way, if only to see the difference between Fuller and someone who actually understands science, it's history, and the nature of the ID movement.

Posted by John Lynch at 11:15 PM • 1 Comments

History of Science and American Science Policy

Category: Earth and Planetary Sciences • History and Philosophy (often of Science) • Politics

Tim @ Deltoid beat me to posting about the new (online at least) Naomi Oreskes talk in which she discusses the tactics of the Western Fuels Association (go here), so instead I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight a paper she and Zuoyue Wang contributed to the Isis Focus section on the value of history of science. The abstract reads:

Historians of science have participated actively in debates over American science policy in the post-World War II period in a variety of ways, but their impact has been more to elucidate general concepts than to effect specific policy changes. Personal experiences, in the case of the debate over global warming, have demonstrated both the value and the limits of such involvement for the making of public policy. To be effective, historians of science need to strive for clarity in public expression, to accept the importance of engaging with the public at all levels and through diverse media, and, above all, to recognize that the nature of such debates will make normal scholarly nuance hard to achieve. Moreover, in the current political climate, historians may be surprised to find themselves defending sciences, when the usual stance of historians is to be critical.

The full paper is available for free online and Will Thomas has already commented on the Wang & Oreskes piece.

Posted by John Lynch at 4:07 PM • 0 Comments

A precious historical find

Category: History and Philosophy (often of Science)

Amazing letter from Charles Darwin to Klara Pölzl, one that likely to change Darwin scholarship for the future. Written in 1881, a year before his death, Darwin could clearly see the vast implications of his life's work for Twentieth century thought. I'm going to have to take some time to digest this before I comment.

Posted by John Lynch at 2:35 PM • 5 Comments

Monday Mustelid #25

Category: Monday Mustelid

Yellow-throated marten Martes flavigula Bodaert 1785.

(source)

Posted by John Lynch at 9:33 AM • 0 Comments

August 10, 2008

On “exotic vacations” and politicians

Category: Politics

Cokie Roberts in full concern troll mode:

I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be at Myrtle Beach and if he's going to take a vacation at this time. I just think this is not the time to do that.

People, let's get this straight, Hawaii is one of the 50 states and Obama has family there. It's a farking vacation ... one that remains within the United States. Not to mention that McCain took nearly every weekend off at residences in Arlington and Phoenix or vacation homes near Sedona and San Diego while Obama was still campaigning. Obama deserves a week off with family before the final march on Election Day. So he's not vacationing in Wichita or Norman ... who would want to?

But let's take the example of someone who should be working hard at the moment, what with a the Middle East being, well, the Middle East. Our sitting President is hard at work in Washington, earning the money he makes from the US taxpayer, trying to bring peace to that troubled region. 

Well, no, of course not, he and his wife are enjoying "some sort of foreign, exotic place," to use Roberts' phrase - an all-expenses paid, tax-payer funded, vacation in China to watch the beginning of the Olympics. Why the hell are we paying for this total and utter waste of money? (It is of note, that Bush is the first US president to ever attend the opening ceremonies for a foreign Olympic Games. There must have been some vital decidering to be done in Beijing).

Here is Bush decidering with the US women's beach volleyball squad. You can imagine what the media would be making of this if it was Bill Clinton doing this.

The good news is that today was the last day of Bush's little junket. Discussing the real world that he will have to return to, he had this to say to NBC Sports:

"I was very firm with Vladimir Putin ... I expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia. We strongly condemn bombing outside of South Ossetia."

In other words, bomb the crap out of Ossetia, we don't care. Leave Georgia alone ... it is only a coincidence that the latter sits on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian to Europe.

Posted by John Lynch at 11:53 PM • 4 Comments