Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator. His research has covered North American prehistoric and historic archaeology and African archaeology and human ecology. He is an OpenSource and OpenAccess advocate. Greg's wife, Amanda, is a High School biology teacher, his daughter Julia is a world traveler and his son Huxley is 2.
I hope these stories are not related to each other
Great beasts peppered from space
There is fairly convincing evidence that the explosion of an object not of this earth hit mammoths and other Pleistocene Mega Beasts with shrapnel up in Siberia and Alaska.
Boeing's 12,000lb chemical laser set to…
Planet Hazard produces Google Maps with major polluters. This allows you to look up your own location if you are in the US, by county, state, etc., and to access the data in various ways.
Learn about the unknown hazards around you - the toxins you may be breathing. PlanetHazard uses information…
KDE 4.0 is upon us. I believe it is essentially out there, being tested and messed with, with the final launch etc. happening in a few weeks (mid January).
KDE is a Window Manager (no "s" in that Window, please note) for Linux. I'm not big on KDE myself, but my daughter uses it.
KDE 4.0,…
... agreement was finally reached in Bali. After an hours-long public standoff Saturday in which the unthinkable happened -- boos and hisses at a treaty conference -- the world's nations adopted a common two-year "road map" leading to the first comprehensive update to the ailing 1992 Framework…
From the NCSE:
Over two weeks after it was first reported that Christine Comer was forced to resign from her post at the Texas Education Agency, apparently because she forwarded a brief e-mail announcing a lecture on "intelligent design" by Barbara Forrest, the state's newspapers continue to…
The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research would offer an online degree in Science Education. Approved by a State Advisory Board yesterday, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will consider the degree in January.
Could this be why there has been a shakeup at the Texas Higher…
Saturn's rings probably date back billions of years and could likely be around forever although they are continually changing, according to a new study published this week.
Data collected by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s and later the Hubble telescope originally led scientists to think the…
REPOST from gregladen.com
"Everyone needs to understand the basic facts of evolution as well as the essentials of the scientific method... When people are deprived of a scientific approach to reality as a whole, they are robbed of both a full appreciation of the beauty and richness of the natural…
Or maybe even PCP...
If religion was merely an opiate, that would be cool. There would be a lot of stoned people waking around. But it could be argued that religion is a harder drug, one that makes people do harder, more unsavory things than just sitting around bleary eyed and happy. Like…
From a UC Santa Cruz Press Release:
The infamous Indian Ocean tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004, caused tragically high mortality--from 10 to 90 percent of the population at various locations. Yet in 1930 a tsunami of similar size, generated by an earthquake near the Ninigo Islands, struck…
Given the latest efforts in Texas and Florida (and elsewhere) to push religious views into the science classroom, I thought it might be helpful to remind everyone of this blood curdling story.
Dover gets a million-dollar bill
That's $1M less than what law firm says it's owed
CHRISTINA KAUFFMAN The…
... Nine Yahoos Dancing...
Flushed with Victory, Bill The Moron O'Reilly Adds One Day to Jewish Holiday:
Despite declaring "victory" in the "War on Christmas" this week, Bill O'Reilly continued to harp on his favorite subject last night with Focus on the Family's Carrie Gordon Earll. Discussing…
And others who may wear mascara and other cosmetics. We've banned cosmetics with mercury. This makes Minnesota stricter in this regard than the Federal Government or any other state.
What I find amazing is that Mercury was not already banned from substances that you rub on yourself.
[source]
Global Warming Deniers Find Comfort in Geophysical Meetings PaperA paper presented at the American Geophysical Union is one of the few papers, if any, you will see mentioned on Fox News. The story claims that volcanoes under the ice sheet in Greenland are melting the ice cap. This could be an…
Egads!
I was so excited about Mark Borrello's editorial at the MNCSE site, that I totally overlooked This Editorial by MNCSE executive director Jim Curtsinger!
This is bad, because it was Jim who told me about Mark's editorial. What you have to understand is that Mark is a little guy. He's…
Despite the best efforts of the American and Chinese representatives, the Bali Climate conference may end up being something more than a huge waste of time.
The U.S. and Europe headed toward a compromise solution Friday at the U.N. climate conference, breaking a deadlock over how ambitious the…
You will remember our blogospheric reactions to John West's talk at UMN (John West can Play the Violin But Not the Fiddle on my blog, and John West at the McLaurin Institute on Pharyngula for Scienceblogs.com, as well as In Which I Meet John West at Tangled Up in Blue Guy and here at Amused Muse).…
I must say, that when I was asked to be a Scibling, one of the "cons" was switching from an open source platform that I was very familiar with (WordPress) to a non-Open Source platform (Movable Type). But when I looked into it, I found out that there was a plan to switch Movable Type to open…
Dec 14
George Washington dies, 1799
Dec 14
Bonne fête aux Odile !
Dec 15
Argo Merchant oil spill, 1976
Dec 15
Bill of Rights adopted, 1791
Dec 15
James Naismith invents basketball, Canada, 1891
Dec 15
Sitting Bull shot in head while submitting to arrest, 1890
Dec 15
Statue Day in the…
... and so on and so on people argue. But they are both right, it is a snake, and it is a programming language. I want to talk about the programming language now. We'll deal with the snake another time. (and boy, do I have snake stories....)
Python is an interpreted computer language, also…
Yesterday, in an Australian Court, Englishman Alexander Christian York was sentenced to Five Years max for the stabbing death of Scottish biochemist Rudi Boa during an argument over evolution. The argument happened in January of Last Year. York, traveling alone, and Boa, with his girlfriend,…
