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gregladen | March 16, 2017The fun raising letter that's gone around asks for 10 bucks to "enter to win." But, of course, it is legally required that any such contest not require a payment, so you can enter for free!
But hurry, the contest ends in just a matter of hours! SPREAD THE WORD!
Here's how:
...you may enter without contributing here. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN A PRIZE. No contribution or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win this Promotion. Making a contribution does not increase your chances of winning. ...Void where prohibited. The Promotion begins on Monday, February 27, 2017 at 12:…
gregladen | March 15, 2017A potpourri of miscellany:
Human Caused Climate Change and the Oceans
It is great to see our local political non-print non-TV news agency, MNPost, covering an important climate change story with local connections. I'll be writing John Abraham's research up myself shortly.
An intriguing and important-sounding new research paper caught my eye on Sunday, with its finding that the world’s oceans have been warming at a much faster pace than is generally recognized.
Because seawater holds more than 90 percent of the excess heat that arrives from the sun but, thanks to greenhouse gases, isn’t…
gregladen | March 15, 2017Mark Steyn is well known to readers of this blog as the intentionally obnoxious Canadian version of Rush Limbaugh who is being sued by our friend and colleague Michael Mann, author of the recent "The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy," for defamation. Steyn is also the author of a terrible book attacking all the climate scientists. Steyn has gone after a lot of pro-science people, including me, and I heard a rumor that he likes to crush kittens. OK, maybe he doesn't crush kittens, but he is explicitly and…
jdupuis | March 14, 2017OK, I admit, Friday Fun a few days late...
In any case, last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, March 10, 1997 marked the very first episode of one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and certainly my personal favourite. Although I didn't start watching until the mid-2000s (I had two young kids in 1997 and was not watching much TV. We heard a lot about how great it was, but weren't in any space to be adding new shows to what little we were watching), once I did start with the DVDs, I was hooked. I've watched the whole thing through twice and…
gregladen | March 13, 2017I had a bunch of quarters in my pocket. About six dollars worth, along with a couple of one dollar coins.
I pulled all the change out of my pocket and placed it on a desktop. I walked away.
A few minutes later, I went to grab the coins so I could bring them to my office and toss them in the coin jar.
One of the coins, quarter or dollar I can not say, was standing on its edge.
My hand was faster than my brain, so I grabbed all the quarters up, thus knocking down the standing coin. I was therefore unable to test the hypothesis that if you drop some coins somewhere and one stands on edge,…
pgleick | March 7, 2017In late February 2017, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted a workshop on the human right to water organized by the Cátedra del Diálogo y la Cultura del Encuentro of Argentina with several other organizations. With many colleagues from science, law, human rights, history, and religion, this workshop offered the opportunity to debate and discuss how to integrate the human right to water with public policies in water and sanitation management globally and regionally. Two days of intense discussion culminated in a declaration by Pope Francis and a formal statement (below) signed by the Pope…
gregladen | March 6, 2017When I was a little, there was this older kid that lived down the street, and he was shunned by all the other kids.
He was shunned because he went to a special school for smart kids. Most everyone else went to either the local Catholic school (as did I) or the public school several blocks away. The school for smart kids was in the public school. A disproportionate number of kids who went to the regular public school were in one of two groups. They were either Catholics from my neighborhood who had been thrown out of Catholic school for being ruffians, or they were local protestants. I would…
jdupuis | February 24, 2017My library's Hackfest was yesterday so I'm feeling kind of burnt out today. Today's linked post cheers me immensely, in a side-eye, gallows humour kind of way.
This recent Retraction Watch post is funny and you should read the whole thing: Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing.
Significosis
Neophilia
Theorrhea
Arigorium
Disjunctivitis is a disease that is about a collective proclivity to produce large quantities of redundant, trivial, and incoherent works. This happens because of several reasons, but primarily because quantity of publications is usually…
gregladen | February 24, 2017Last night, I went to an event, apparently organized by an indivisible group, in Plymouth Mass.
Plymouth is in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District, and is represented by Congressman Erik Paulsen. Paulsen took over, years ago, from a "reasonable Republican" that even Democrats in CD03 remember fondly. But Paulsen has quietly and without fanfare served as a Tea Party Republican since being elected. During the time that he and Michele Bachmann served in the same Congress, in physically adjoining districts, Paulsen and Bachmann voted the same way on almost every bill, and the few…
gregladen | February 23, 2017Which one are you for? I'll take either. At first I didn't want Ellison to leave MN05, but if he does, and he should if he is DNC chair, we have some excellent replacements lined up, and since MN05 is the most left leaning congressional district in the country, we don't have to worry about it going blue.
BernieDems hate Perez because he supported Clinton, and their vitriol is greater than the hatred of Ellison, who supported Sanders in the primary and then Clinton in the general. But, if we react to BernieDem whinging and temper tantrums, we might as well get out of the game now. These…
jdupuis | February 21, 2017US president Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, is a terrible idea for many different reasons and has been widely condemned. Banning people due to their refugee status, religion or national origin has no place in a civilized society. while it has been overturned in court, it appears that Trump is going to try again with a new Order.
The purpose of this post isn't to go into the details of the Executive order or to analyse the myriad reasons why it's a terrible idea, but rather to share a detailed cross section of…
gregladen | February 21, 2017Biologist and author Bill Schutt has a new book out: Cannibalism: A perfectly natural history.
He and I talked about cannibalism on Ikonokast: Click here to check it out! It is was a fun interview, and Bill's book is excellent.
See also:
You Come From CannibalsAmong CannibalsCannibal, Native, IndigenousOn Cannibalism and Jameson
So, what do you think, are all mammals cannibals, or is it mainly the Sicilians? Check out the podcast.
gregladen | February 18, 2017Animal farm: A Fairy Story
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear…
gregladen | February 17, 20171984
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...
A startling and haunting vision of the world, 1984 is so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one…
gregladen | February 16, 2017Below is a nice video from Move On Dot Org, as well as a link to a petition of theirs.
I would like to take this opportunity to caution everyone who is trying to figure out what is going on in the White House to avoid being misled by confusion, ignorance, or intentional misdirection. I have five points.
1) Be prepared to hold multiple competing hypothesis in mind at once. I promise you this: Whatever you think now, or come to realize over the coming months, is not a good historical description of what happened (or is happening). We can look back to Watergate to understand this. For…
gregladen | February 16, 2017This is not the April 22 March for Science, but something more local and timed to occur with the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings in Boston.
From the press release:
Scientists Take to the Streets to “Stand up for Science”
Scientists and impacted communities respond to attacks by anti-science forces and climate deniers in government
BOSTON – On Sunday, February 19, scientists, science advocates, community members, and frontline communities will rally at Boston’s Copley Square to call for increased vigilance to defend science against the barrage of attacks mounted…
gregladen | February 16, 2017No, not that Huxley, the other Huxley. No, not that one either, the OTHER Huxley. OK, yeah, this one:
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man…
gregladen | February 15, 2017I get a lot of "infographics" and many are quite good. But this medium has become a vehicle for commercial advertising. So, some company comes up with an info graphics, maybe makes a good one, sends it around to the bloggers and such, and thier name, somewhere down there near the bottom, gets around. I don't mind the commercial aspect too much, but unless I'm able to vet the graphic, I can't post it, I don't generally have time or resources to do that, so I therefore ignore them.
But this one I'll post because it looks interesting and is produced by a university. Also, we often discuss GMOs…
gregladen | February 15, 2017Paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
So does civilization.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland…