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.
... and get ready for the War on Christmas
Here's a few opening remarks that may serve to inspire.
Begin the War on Christmas from NoGodBlog.com
It's "The War on Christmas" Season Once Again... from Crooks and Liars...
Winning the War on Christmas
Check this out:
[from Stoptheaclu, a truly icky…
I am very much looking forward to these papers:
In two papers set to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report that the two largest groups of flowering plants are more closely related to each other than any of the other major lineages.…
From Birdlife International:
Thousands of birds die in Black Sea oil spill
Thousands of birds and fish have been killed as oil spills from a stricken tanker in the northern Black Sea. At least 30,000 birds have died, and thousands more are covered in oil and face death in the coming days. The main…
The green politically correct PC which is ironically on sale at WalMart (which is not a politically correct store unless you are ... oh never mind, if I have to tell you, you won't get it...) has been reviewed here.
From the manufacturer:
Hardware Specifications
1.5GHz, VIA C7®-D Processor, 512MB…
A new study addresses the link betwen omega-3 acidss and brain function, in this case in gerbils.
These studies show that oral supplementation with DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, increases dendritic spine density in adult gerbil hippocampus...). This effect of DHA is approximately doubled when animals…
An international collaboration led by researchers in the US and South Africa announced Nov. 20 the first genome sequence of an extensively drug resistant (XDR) strain of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, one linked to more than 50 deaths in a recent tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in KwaZulu-…
A team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Milan has discovered some unexpected forms of liquid crystals of ultrashort DNA molecules immersed in water, providing a new scenario for a key step in the emergence of life on Earth.
CU-Boulder physics Professor Noel Clark…
If they are so OK with the spiders, why are they all wearing protective face-wear?
Anyway, this is a potentially useful video for teaching genetics. Captivating, good graphics, a balance of the icky and the cute, etc.
Somewhat funny look at what your email would be like if
Microsoft, not Google, had created Gmail? What would be the differences in that web mail client for users today? What if we apply some of the same design rules that brought us Hotmail, for instance?
Here...
A new bunch of math text books slated for implementation in Texas was werefound to have 109,263 errors. Apparently, in Texas, the publishers are fined $5000 per error. That comes out to $546,315,000.
The publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is working hard to correct the errors....
[source]
A handful of cool tricks you can do with the Linux Terminal. If you have a Linux Terminal. If you don't, you should consider getting one.
Everything you always wanted to know about your hardware and for the most part did not even know you could know.
The command dmidecode is " is a tool for…
According to a story in the last issue of Psychological Science:
... for most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both men and women. For men, however, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to only one sex or the other, depending on the…
... has a what!?!?
I don't know how many times I've heard the phrase "Every culture has a story about a flood..." This is very annoying because a) it is not true (I can think of several cultures that do not) and b) it is very Euro-centric, as are most phrases that start with "Every culture has a…
I have had this experience. I've traveled literally hundreds of kilometers by foot together with Efe (Pygmy) hunters in the Ituri Forest. We see very few animals. The few we do see are attacked, killed, and eaten. Well, a lot of them actually get away, but that is the idea.
But I've also…
Bored with your computer? No need to be. As you probably know, there is a whole culture, perhaps even cult, surrounding tricking out your computer. There is even a journal devoted to the topic (the name of which escapes me at the moment). My favorite example (from that journal) is the "PC in a…
Your are typing some text into your FIrefox 2.0 Browser, and you spell something terribly wrong. Like this:
I am so glad I upgreaded to Firefox 2.0, because it has a built in spell checker.
You see the error where you meant to type "upgraded." So you right click on it to pick the correct spelling…
This is the seventh in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
This installment is about sea level rise and fall, in the past. Sea level change that results from the formation and melting of glaciers not only has an enormous impact on the physical nature of the landscape, but it…
Hey, wanna know some cool stuff you can do in a Linux terminal?
First, three keyboard tricks you probably already know.
The up arrow is a "history" key. After you've entered some commands, you can retrieve them with the up arrow. Most terminals will store the last several hundred commands. You…
[hat tip: Geekology]
I've actually done this. It was part of our shop class in Jr. High. We didn't make pencil holders, but rather, some kind of candle holder thingie.
My friend Karl and I supplied the bottles. Hedrick's quarts. (four for a dollar!)
