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gregladen | March 19, 2010When stupid belief systems collide:
Amnesty International is calling on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to stop the execution of a Lebanese man sentenced to death for "sorcery."
In a statement released Thursday, the international rights group condemned the verdict and demanded the immediate release of Ali Hussain Sibat, former host of a popular call-in show that aired on Sheherazade, a Beirut based satellite TV channel.
Source, more.
gregladen | March 19, 2010This is it: The fate of health care reform will be decided in the next 48 hours.
It could come down to a vote or two. And that means that right now, every last message to Congress makes a difference.
It's an all-hands-on-deck moment. Even if you've already called and written your representative, it's time to send one last message. If you haven't yet weighed in, now's the time. And please send this on to friends, neighbors, colleagues, former roommates, and anyone who cares about health care reform.
A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to your representative.…
mspringer | March 19, 2010GrrlScientist sends a link to this rather wild stunt from India:
How is it possible? What kind of friction is necessary, and is it any more difficult for the cars to do the stunt than it is for the motorcycles?
Before we do any math, I want to think about the problem qualitatively. Let's tally up the forces acting on the vehicles. First, there's gravity. It points vertically downward, straight toward the center of the earth. Second, there's the normal force. "Normal force" means the force normal (in this context a physics technical term meaning perpendicular) to the surface. It's the…
grrlscientist | March 19, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…
gregladen | March 19, 2010Jessica Palmer (of bioephemera) has an entry at Collective Imagination Blog about the role of "small talk" in maintaining good health. Check it out.
gregladen | March 18, 2010The Lese of the Ituri Forest raise food in gardens, and they exchange various things for wild animal meat hunted by the Efe (Pygmy) foragers with whom they live in close economic and social association. But the Lese also hunt and gather, to varying degrees, with some individuals never doing it, others often engaged in the process, and among those who are, some degree of speciality. One Lese man I knew hunted only elephants, another mainly fished, and one of the men I most often worked with trapped small forest antelopes using snares. I will call him Marque.
As part of my research I "…
gregladen | March 18, 2010We shared this planet for fifty years. We lived through cold below freezing, and we lived through heat and mosquitoes. We saw Mexico together. He gave me rides on his motorcycle and let me drive his Jeep when I was far too young. He let me know that Bob Dylan is just a poet and not a singer and wondered why people spend good money on records and tapes when FM radio is just fine and free.
Click to continue reading "Hey, Dad"
gregladen | March 18, 2010I'm writing some things that are more unruly than usual. I'm also sleeping 12 hours a day for very good medical reasons. Rumors that I am addicted to Hulu are completely incorrect, although I did enjoy watching the maiden voyage of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea last night.
You must watch this at some time. It is in black and white (I think the second season may have gone to color). The "enemy" is a Sino-Russian mix where some individuals have Lenin hair/beards and others look like the bad guy in Manchurian Candidate. We are learning to fear this unnamed enemy which has certain…
gregladen | March 17, 2010The Four Field Anthropology Blog Carnival, Four Stone Heath, is up at the blog Ad Hominin. Here.
The next Four Stone Hearth will be hosted by Moi.
gregladen | March 17, 2010It is my understanding that Camp Quest of Minnesota is seeking volunteers and other assistance. This is your chance to do what you've always wanted to do!!!!!! Click here for the Camp Quest web site.
gregladen | March 17, 2010There's almost no on answering the Collective Imagination Question today, so this is your chance! Click here.
And while you are over there, have a look at my latest post on Japanese Ring Tone Therapy.
cortex | March 17, 2010The world is a confusing place. Correlation looks like causation; the signal sounds like the noise; randomness is everywhere. This raises the obvious question: How does the human brain cope with such an epistemic mess? How do we deal with the helter-skelter of reality? One approach would be to ground all of our beliefs in modesty and uncertainty, to recognize that we know so little and understand even less.
Needless to say, that's not what we do. Instead of grappling with the problem of induction, we believe in God. Instead of applying Bayesian logic, we slip into rigid ideologies, which…
ddobbs | March 17, 2010
Research paper on returning veterans.
"There are about 1 million veterans of the two current wars in the Veterans Affairs system so far, said Jim McGuire, a health care administrator at the agency. He cited statistics suggesting that 27 percent of active-duty veterans returning to civilian life âwere at risk for mental health problemsâ including post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Judges have recognized that many of those returning from war are carrying a heavy burden of damage that might not be physically visible. As one federal district judge in Denver, John L. Kane, wrote in an order giving…
grrlscientist | March 17, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than three weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days targeted specifically to…
gregladen | March 16, 2010The following is from a classified US intelligence document regarding Wikileaks:
(S//NF) Wikileaks.org, a publicly accessible Internet Web site, represents a potential force
protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security
(INFOSEC) threat to the US Army. The intentional or unintentional leaking and posting of US
Army sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org could result in increased threats to
DoD personnel, equipment, facilities, or installations. The leakage of sensitive and classified
DoD information also calls attention to the insider…
gregladen | March 16, 2010I knew a guy who who was a highly placed person at Harvard College, and had gone to the College for his undergraduate education. I'll call him "Dean." Prior to his attending Harvard, he had already become a major fan of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, of course, went to Harvard. So when Dean was accepted to Harvard, being a major Thoreau fan, he endeavored to find out what room in the Freshmen Halls (at Harvard, "Hall" = "Dorm" for Freshmen, "House" = "Dorm" for Sophomores and beyond), was Thoreau's. I am not sure what records or resources he used to try to figure this out, but he managed…
gregladen | March 16, 2010I am avoiding commenting on the recent paper "Science blogs and public engagement with science: practices, challenges, and opportunities" by Inna Kouper (here). Bora has made extensive comments on the paper that I recommend (here) and as usual, Bora has done an excellent job linking to all the other stuff on the blogosphere about it.
The reason I avoided commenting on the paper is that I didn't like it a whole lot, but did not want to get into a huge blog fight about it. I have mixed feelings about the communications field as it is, and I'm not sure sometimes if what I'm looking at is…