Archives for February, 2008
And the WTF of the Week Award goes to …
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Bablab blog…. We have a confession. You have all been part of an experiment in social engineering. This has been in the planning for a while now. But let me step back and explain the purpose of our experiment before we analyze the results. ….. bla bla bla… Then they go on to explain how…
Life After Darwin Part 07
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 More Life After Darwin
Happy Birthday Janet D. Stemwedel
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 I have like 50 friends on facebook (I just joined). Facebook tells me who’s birthday it is. So, two days ago it was Brian, today it’s Janet. They both happen to be Scienceblogs.com bloggers. Janet blogs here. So happy birthday Janet! Two scienceblogger’s birthdays in a row. Coincidence?
Linux and Instant Messaging
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 I don’t do much instant messaging, although I have found it useful for communicating with colleagues overseas for free. But, in the ongoing quest for the answer to the question “Right, but can I do that in Linux?” I offer the following link on Three alternative Linux instant messaging applications. Do I need to point…
Another Absurd Patent
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 OH, and this… “If all goes IBM’s way, it’ll soon constitute patent infringement if Bennigan’s gives you a free lunch for being inconvenienced by a long wait for your meal. Big Blue is seeking a patent for its Method and Structure for Automated Crediting to Customers for Waiting, the purported ‘invention’ of three IBM researchers,…
Nature News
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Polluted prey causes wild birds to change their tune from PhysOrg.com Considerable attention has been paid to the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals in aquatic environments, but rather less attention has been given to routes of contamination on land. A new study, published in PLoS ONE on February 27 by researchers at Cardiff University, reveals…
Most Annoying Man Evah, W.F. Buckley, Dead at 82
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 William F. Buckley has died. William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right’s post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82. His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley…
Utne Blogs Har Mar Home School Creationist Science Fair
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Bennett Gordon has a post on the Har Mar Science Fair: …Every diorama in the Home School Science Fair, which took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, had a biblical quote attached to it. A young woman whose project involved teaching her dog how to run circles between her legs decorated the words:…
Microsoft Will Pay Big Bucks to EU
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 The European Commission has fined US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft must now pay 899 million euros … after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it took part in monopolistic practices. [Source: BBC]
Why is there a big huge pile of trucks in Secaucus, New Jersey?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Because the Garmin GPS system … … is leading some drivers … straight into a dead end. … The electronic maps don’t show a gate that separates residential and industrial areas. It’s only opened for a couple hours on weekdays in the northern New Jersey city. Mayor Dennis Elwell says residents on Fifth Street started…
New-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 In this open access publication in PLoS it is …suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients. The findings also show that the effect for…
Patents Patently Absurd: The End of Innovation in Education Will Come at the Hands of The Corporate Business Model
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 I’ve been avoiding discussion of the patent issue. This is partly because I don’t know enough about it, and partly because I am terribly annoyed by it. Yes, yes, I blog about stuff that annoys me all the time, but these are topics that I’m professionally engaged in, so the annoyance is not personally as…
The Google Summer of Code is Up and Running
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. We look forward to welcoming more new contributors and projects this year. We’ll begin accepting applications from mentoring organizations on Monday, March…
Killer military robots pose latest threat to humanity
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Professor Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University is issuing warnings about the threat to humanity by robots. From this urgent press release:
Science Blogging is Not Blogging on Peer Reviewed Research
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 I hate when people tell me what to blog (and not blog). I blog what I want, you read what you want. When the two coincide, wonderful. Bayblab, which is apparently some kind of science blog mostly written by anonymous bloggers, has a post critical of certain areas of science blogging. Mostly it is whining…
Robots Gone Wild
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 Robots, in a bald-faced effort to induce warm feelings in humans, are now offering the Robotic Breast Massager.
Evolution vs. Creationism Blogospherics
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Wilberforce vs. Darwin; A disgusting Display; Pew Report on Religion; Science in the schools.
“Every Sperm is Sacred” is Sexist
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 … And Mike Huckabee is not standing for it…
New Englanders and Others: Check out the Massachusetts Archaeological Society
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 MAS has played a key role in regional archaeology since its formation, and is one of the oldest and most established avocational and professional groups in archaeology in the US: Since 1939, the MAS has studied the people whose cultural legacy is within the lands we walk upon today. MAS stimulates the study of archaeology…
UC Berkeley Hyena Colony Faces Funding Crisis
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Go here, to the Behavioral Ecology Blog to learn about this problem. I’ll bed you didn’t know that Berkeley even had a hyena colony. But it is world famous among people who are interested in such things.
Teachers Gone Wild
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 My wife, a biology teacher, gets crazy in the biology classroom. She is famous for her interpretive dance renditions of numerous cellular processes. The students in the first class of the day reportedly stare in disbelief and roll their eyes, but the students in the other classes throughout the day seem to love it. Several…
Life After Darwin Part 06
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 More Life After Darwin
Obamagram: Polls changing fast
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Despite McCain and Clinton’s best efforts to turn voters away from Barack Obama, he is surging in the polls.
Evolutionary Blogospherics
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Intermediate Forms among the Girded Lizards is a post at Tetrapod Zoology: Girdled lizards are endemic to Africa and include about 50 species in four genera: flat-bodied flat lizards Platysaurus, the flattish crag lizards Pseudocordylus, the deeper-bodied, often spiny girdled lizards, zonures or sungazers Cordylus and the serpentiform grass lizards or ground lizards Chamaesaura. Molecular…
Jarvick … Lipitor … Something did not seem right…
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 So a few weeks ago, we were over at Amy and Danny’s for dinner, and somehow Lipitor came up (no, it had nothing to do with the dinner Amy was cooking!). Anyway, Amy said “Why is Jarvick a good person to promote a drug. I mean, that heart didn’t work, right?” Hmm…. Good point, I…
Nature News
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Hunting Wolves; Killing Elephants
Texas Governor Rick Perry on How to Stop Being Gay … or, how I shook off my homosexuality and learned to love boy scouts….
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Rick Perry, Eagle Scout, has written a book about the boy scouts, defending their homophobic and anti humanist activism. An Eagle Scout and the father of an Eagle Scout, Perry stresses the importance of Scout values such as being “courteous and kind.” (He is fond of phrases like “gosh” and “jiminy cricket.”) He has received…
Space, the Final (political) Frontier…
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 According to the New York Times, “An Errant Satellite Is Gone, but Questions Linger” … Should the people of the world be breathing a sigh of relief that the risk of a half-ton of frozen, toxic rocket fuel landing who knows where has passed? Or should they be worried about the latest display of the…
Movable Type Bloggers: A Neat Tip
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 This is for Linux users, but there are ways to implement it on Windows and Mac boxes (but you are on your own.) If you use the movable type interface, you will know that when you generate a “Create New Entry” page, the current date is placed in the “Entry Date” filed. But, as time…
Heath News
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2008 Angst-ridden teens have different brain structures: study from PhysOrg.com It turns out your mother was right: angst-ridden teens really do have something wrong with their heads. [...] Who benefits from antidepressants? from PhysOrg.com A new study published today in PLoS Medicine suggests that antidepressants only benefit some, very severely depressed patients. [...] A Quick Comparison…
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