December 11, 2007
... From conservative Mac Johnson, on Intelligent Design; Student-Run Anchor of Rhode Island College Executive Editor Jessica Albaum on Huckabee the Hate-able ; and the Star Telegram's OpEd by Alan Leshner on science standards in Texas....
Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas
A few short years…
December 11, 2007
Archaeologists know that a "Roncofact" is an artifact that you find, and realize (or speculate) that it had multiple functions.
"It slices, it dices, it makes Julian Fries...."
A recent study claims that humans, in fact, shun Roncofacts. But wait, there's more..
According to a piece in the New…
December 11, 2007
The two most annoying kinds of "hits" from an internet search are:
1) When you find a site with your question rephrased exactly as it should be, and the first few sentences of the answer you need, but to continue ... to be able to read the answer ... you must register, and possibly even pay; and 2…
December 11, 2007
Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users' hands.
Or so opines Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of DesktopLinux.com.…
December 11, 2007
Vger 2 (Voyager) took off in 1977, and over the last 30 years has been working pretty well. Vger is now 12,680,021,376 kilometers away and is traveling at 56 327 km per hour.
Think about it this way: How many instruments in current scientific labs, and how many computers sitting on anyone's…
December 11, 2007
From slashdot:
"I stumbled across this fascinating Microsoft tutorial entitled "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." It's an attempt to coach IT professionals on how to sell Windows desktop upgrades internally. Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent, requiring detailed instructions on…
December 11, 2007
Check this out:
This is the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit. It held five ... count ''em FIVE ... megabytes. That's not bytes, not kilobytes, but MEGA bytes, baby.
[source]
December 11, 2007
There seems to be some interesting things going on with the recently reported study of rates of evolution in humans. We are getting reports of a wide range of rather startling conclusions being touted by the researchers who wrote this paper. These conclusions typically come from press releases,…
December 11, 2007
From an MIT press release:
A missing brain protein may be one of the culprits behind autism and other brain disorders, according to researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
The protein, called CASK, helps in the development of synapses, which neurons use to communicate with…
December 11, 2007
You would be 114 years old today!
December 10, 2007
CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE:
Tough Ceramics at the SeashoreTuesday, December 11, 2007; 6 p.m.Kitty Cat Klub, Dinkytown
What secrets to seashells hold? For University of Minnesota Civil Engineering Professor Roberto Ballarini, the natural strength of materials found in seashells may be the key to improving…
December 10, 2007
And who would have known were it not for my Linux Calendar....
Dec 10
Emily Dickenson born, 1830
Dec 10
Metric system established in France, 1799
Dec 10
Nobel Peace Prize awarded each year
Dec 10
Foundation of Worker's Party in Angola
Dec 10
Human Rights Day
Dec 10
Thai Constitution Day…
December 10, 2007
The blog carnival ... is HERE
December 10, 2007
The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.
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The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-…
December 10, 2007
This is one of those cool views of changes in scales. It runs from pretty large (some distance from the Milky Way) to pretty small (subatomic). One of the things you notice is that there is NOT a consistent fractal theme that operates on all scales. Fractals are not everything. They are just…
December 10, 2007
There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years.
By an increased rate of evolution, the authors mean an increased rate of…
December 10, 2007
Seagate's new "Free Agent" (ha!) drives are all broken, it would seem in an interesting way that makes them partially incompatible with Linux and other *nix based operating systems, including Macs.
Seagate representatives claim that there may be workarounds for this, but they do not intend to…
December 10, 2007
Yes, of course there should. And a large number of prominent scientists have put their shoulders to this idea and are pushing hard.
This is embodied in the "Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology"
You should seriously consider going to this site and adding your name to those…
December 10, 2007
Sort of. The hurricane that the press ignored until it was impossible to ignore is now listed on Time's Top Ten Natural Disasters of 2007.
I don't like the sound of that at all: "Top Ten Natural Disasters." Maybe I'm used to "top ten" being good things. Maybe that's just me.
Packing winds of…
December 10, 2007
Carnival of the Godless for December 9th is HERE!!!!
December 10, 2007
We're Number Five for the Bridge Collapse:
Bridges failed this year in China and in Guinea, killing 64 and 70 people, respectively. But the disaster that really grabbed U.S. headlines was the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis on August 1, where the death toll reached only 9.
I was in the…
December 10, 2007
Chistians, especially Catholics, continue "tizzy" regarding The Golden Compass, based on books by atheist Philip Pullman. I heard a woman from the Catholic League, spitting and furming on MSNBC about how this movie was really really bad because it would ...
Lead to children to reading the books…
December 9, 2007
... but fun on so many levels...
The scene: At a gathering of semi related people, with my daughter, sitting next to two conservative born again Christians (one being a "perfected" Jew). All very nice people in their own way, just don't bring up religion.
Then M comes along very interested in…
December 9, 2007
... the guy who has ants in his hard drive, so he loads it up with insect spray. Kills bugs dead. And data too...
... the woman who's USB stick went through the wash. Whites whiter, brights brighter, data gonner...
... the guys who decided to test a parachute using their fancy digital camera as…
December 9, 2007
Go edit the Creation Wiki.
December 9, 2007
This is a bad one, folks.
In Simle North Dakota, at the Middle school, a
...teacher is under investigation after showing a religious-themed video in health class.
"We acknowledge that a video clip was shown in a classroom that violated School Board policy and that a parent has submitted a letter…
December 9, 2007
Have you seen the Marumushi news map?
Here is an example of the output for the category Health, showing the relative "presence" of different categories of news on Health in the US:
Here is the same topic for Canada:
And here is the national news map. For Britain:
Go here to make your own news…
December 9, 2007
Ebola in Uganda:
New Ebola fatalities push Uganda toll to 25: official from PhysOrg.com
A dreaded Ebola outbreak has killed two people, bringing the toll to 25 in western Uganda, an official said Saturday, as health teams battled to contain the virulent strain in the region.
[...]
With the…
December 8, 2007
I don't know about you, but I always wait until the last minute to get obligatory holiday gifts. And then I hate going to anything like a mall or shopping center. Praise be to Amazon.com and UPS.
His Dark Materials (trilogy)
From the publsiher, on book I:
When Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon…
