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gregladen | August 28, 2017Harvey the Invisible Rabbit: Did not exist.
This is a picture of some men.
Since they are men, they have some abilities. They can, for example, knock each other over, and they can play with balls. This is what men do, and this is what these men can do.
This is a picture of some professional NFL foodball players.
They are also men. They can also knock each other over, and they can also play with balls. But the NFL football players are much better at knocking each other over, and you wouldn't believe how great they are at playing with balls.
They are NFL enhanced. They are trained, embiggened…
gregladen | August 24, 2017Many years ago I was working on a project that, if I recall correctly, used the basic idea of the mouse-elephant curve to test out some statistical feature of reality or some such thing. Or the reverse. Either way, the point is I was using the mouse-elephant curve data.
What is the mouse-elephant curve? This:
You take all the mammals from mouse to elephant, and plot their metabolic rate or, if you like, brain volume, or any other metric, against body mass. You may or may not log an axis. The final result is supposed to be a straight line that approximates all the points. Then, you can…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2017The most charitable comment I can come up with for the just-released Department of Energy Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability is the refusal of the authors to use what is surely a candidate for Most Overused Term of the Year: resilience. Not that resilience isn't important, but it's to their credit that the staffers responsible for telling Secretary Rick Perry sort-of what he wanted to hear understand that reliability is really what it's all about.
After all, if there's one thing that defenders of fossil fuels and nuclear power like to remind us more than…
gregladen | August 21, 2017One mean spirited decision intended to end the effort to end slavery led to one million dead and the end of slavery anyway.
I spent some time this weekend comparing prosecutors and other legal eagles, who were all hoping to get the job of Attorney General. They were Candidates General, I guess. Trump was mentioned, and somewhere along the line, Dred Scott was mentioned as well. I turned to a highly placed official sort of dude and said, "Did you know that Dred Scott lived in Minnesota?" He did not know that. So I asked a couple of other people if they knew, and they did not. Finally I…
gregladen | August 15, 2017Not the same.
Muslims must take the blame for all things done by anyone linked to an extreme Islamic group or ideology. Christians have nothing to do with anything, they were just standing there minding their own beeswax.
The video below was fixed by Media Matters for America thusly:
In a notably hypocritical segment on Fox & Friends, the hosts and their guest, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, attacked media outlets that called on Christian leaders to denounce white supremacy and the recent violence in Charlottesville, VA. Fox & Friends highlighted articles that…
cmonforton | August 8, 2017Our colleague Lizzie Grossman, a contributing writer at The Pump Handle, died earlier this month from ovarian cancer. She was a long-time freelance writer who specialized in environmental health topics. Her books included Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry (2011) and High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (2006).
Lizzie began blogging at The Pump Handle in May 2010. She traveled to the Gulf coast to report on the experiences of workers who were cleaning up the disaster left by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig…
gregladen | August 7, 2017Mike Haubrich and I are about to interview John McKay about his new book, Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science, for Ikonokast Podcast.
gregladen | August 5, 2017Is it because it wasn't a very big attack, and no one was killed or injured? The FBI has determined that it was an explosive device that blew up at the Bloomington Islamic Center.
I'm reminded of the attacks on Secretary Clinton, by the likes of Congressman Nunes, about ambiguity in the identification of an attack as "terrorist" during the very throes of the event. Will Nunes hold Trump to the same standard over Bloomington? Will Nunes even give Bloomington a second thought? A first thought?
Speaking of Nunes (who is the guy who tried to derail the House investigation of Trumpskygate), has…
hrynyshyn | August 4, 2017
ILLUSTRATION:
THE CLIMATE PROJECT
Eleven years ago David Guggenheim and Laurie David managed to turn a documentary about a most unlikely subject — a slide show by a man famous for being too dull to be elected president — into an Oscar-winning international hit. The reaction to An Inconvenient Truth convinced the film's star to assemble and train an army of climate-crisis presenters now known as The Climate Reality Project.
Guggenheim and David are gone, replaced by a new editorial team, but the star is back with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Most of the reviews so far are less than…
gregladen | July 29, 2017I did some research on mice, and I thought I'd pass it on. First, though, let me suggest that you get some of this stuff. Use it to paint a symbol on each of your wireless mice that matches a symbol on each of your mice dongles. It will help keep you sane. You'll still find yourself constantly in possession of mice and dongles that do not match, but at least they will have these pretty little symbols you drew all over them.
There is some interesting and exciting stuff going on with mice.
Best but most expensive small mouse for general mobile use
The Logitech MX Anywhere 2 Wireless Mobile…
aardvarchaeology | July 22, 2017Yesterday we had a guest entry from Lars Amréus, the Director General of the National Heritage Board about the signage with fringe theories at a much-visited archaeological site in southern Sweden. As I read it, the main take-away message is ”Sorry, I know this used to be our job but it isn't any more”. So if you want to be charitable, you might say that N. Heritage has not strictly speaking abdicated from its responsibility. It was dethroned and had to hand the crown to N. Property. I haven't heard that N. Heritage fought the decision, but I don't know everything. Maybe they did. Or maybe…
hrynyshyn | July 20, 2017In what New York Magazine is calling the most-read article in the publication's history, David Wallace-Wells writes about what will happen if we don't stop burning fossil fuels soon. In a nutshell: the climate "will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us."
This has made more than a few climatologists rather cross. The argument is that because "The Uninhabitable Earth" focuses on an unlikely worst-case scenario, and therefore might needless scare the public into inaction.
There are a few questionable statements regarding the science of climate change. You can…
aardvarchaeology | July 20, 2017Bob Lind has yet again managed to get the National Heritage Board to abdicate its responsibility at Ales Stenar, a beautiful 7th century AD burial monument near Ystad in southern Sweden. Bob has self-published odd interpretations of the site that have found no traction among professional archaeologists. He has kept vigil at Ales stenar for decades, lecturing to visitors, ranting at the municipal guides and occasionally attacking them. He has a very large sign on site, next to the National Heritage Board's, with permission from the County Archaeologist. My colleague Björn Wallebom has…
hrynyshyn | July 19, 2017How many kids should you have? Used to be the answer was "none of anyone's damn business." But that's not the approach a pair of sustainability experts took in a new paper that concludes the single-most powerful thing anyone can do about climate change is having fewer offspring.
In "The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions" (Environmental Research Letters, 12 July 2017) Seth Wynes of Sweden's Lund University the University of British Columbia and Kimerbley Nicholas of UBC find that the greenhouse gas emissions associated…
hrynyshyn | July 18, 2017A study published in Science at the end of June should have found its way onto the front pages and screens of every community newspaper and local news program in the country. But it didn't. At least, not around these parts. Which is a shame, because it's precisely the kind of story we've been waiting for all these years. (Apologies to the spirit of Douglas Adams). I'll do my best to rectify the oversight.
In "Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States," a team of researchers led by Solomon Hsiang, who specializes in public policy at the University of California,…
gregladen | July 16, 2017John McCain has a good heath care plan, and if has his way, you won't.
The Senator most often accredited for thinking for himself (that's a lie) will vote with Russian agent Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans to take away Obama care. The moment he gets a chance.
However, he can't right now because he is indisposed, recovering form surgery.
We at Greg Laden's Blog wish Senator McCain a speedy recovery and hope he is well. But we also urge him to think about his privilege and not take access to the sort of health care he has from other Americans.
Speaking of the Russians, The Looking…
gregladen | July 8, 2017At the moment, all these are anywhere from free to two bucks. The Darwin books are always cheap, the others are probably temporarily cheap.
If you've not read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, you should. It is always avaialable for next to nothing on the kindle, currently this version is 99 cents.
Concerning his autobiography--written when Darwin was 59 and originally published as the first part of “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” (1887)--Darwin explained: “A German editor [wrote] to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my…
gregladen | July 8, 2017You've seen this horrid person in this horrid video calling for white people to take up arms and kill black people (and maybe Jews).
In this video, the NRA calls white supremacists to arms against everyone. In so many words.
The ad uses mostly dog whistles, so if your head is stuck deep in the sand, or up some orifice or another, you may be able to block out the message.
But anyone with 2+ neurons to rub together and who has not been living in a cave for the last 30 years knows the exact meaning of "clenched fist" and "I'm freedom's safest place [gasp]" against the propaganda spread by…
gregladen | July 7, 2017People talk about resurrecting the Mammoth, the Dodo, the Quagga, or the Tasmanian devil, or any number of extinct (or mostly extinct) creatures. I'm all for that. I suggest removing cattle farming in Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and adjoining areas of Canada, and repopulating the region with extinct megafauna. That would just be cool.
There are difficulties with this, including figuring out exactly how to piece together the genome for the extinct animal, how to get a good level of genetic diversity in the neo-founding population, and how to raise the critter up from a zygote. For all these…
gregladen | July 4, 2017Science and The American Experiment
Click here to find out how attacking science is attacking the Declaration of Independence.
Read this book to discover the link between science and democracy.
We have Three Years to safeguard our climate, and the world probably needs America to take part in that.
From the Striving to Kill Civilization Department
Let's maintain all those racist symbols in America's national parks!
A few hundred armed militia group members, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Ku Klux Klaners, supporters of President Donald Trump, and other self-described patriots descended upon…