Archives for April, 2008
Alas, poor blog.
Posted by Greg Laden on April 30, 2008 I hate it when people go on and on about why they didn’t blog today. I’d rather hear what someone had for breakfast ….
Academic Freedom Bills on Talk Radio
Posted by Greg Laden on April 30, 2008 This Sunday, on KTNF AM 950 Minneapolis Atheist Talk Radio, Host Mike Haubrich will host the 9:00 AM talk show. His special guest, speaking about Academic “Freedom” bills and related matters, will be Me. Details here.
Finally. A remake worth re making
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 Installing Ubuntu vs Installing Microsoft Vista
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 I recommend partitioning your hard drive so that you have a small partition for the system and a large partition for the /home directory. Now, for a point of comparison, how to install Windows Vista… … how well this goes will depend on the machine you want to install Vista in:
Orangutans Are Amazing
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 This is a photograph of a male orangutan attempting to spear a fish.
Poll Expelled! By Ben Stein
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 Expelled!, the so called documentary, has a web site on MySpace. Recently they ran a poll asking if Intelligent Design should be taught in schools or not. The results of that poll overwhelming indicate “no” … with 420 thousand “nay” votes and fewer than one thousand in favor of violating the tenets of the Constitution…
Carnival
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 The Dessert Course of the (second) Soup To Nuts Progressive Dinner Blog Carnival is Here at Fear and Loathing…
Francisco Ayala Proflied in NYT
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 An evolutionary biologist and geneticist at the University of California, Irvine, he speaks often at universities, in churches, for social groups and elsewhere, usually in defense of the theory of evolution and against the arguments of creationism and its ideological cousin, intelligent design. Usually he preaches to the converted. But not always. … Read the…
The Homeschooler Mind Set
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 Home schooling is probably a really good idea for a lot of people, but only for a certain (unknown) percentage of people who actually do it. And, among those who do manage to home school, I would guess that the effectiveness of home schooling varies from pretty good to dismal because homeschoolers are doing it…
Hans Reiser Convicted of First Degree Murder
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 Hans Reiser, who developed the Reiser File System, was convicted yesterday of First Degree Murder. He was accused of killing his wife, who’s body was never recovered. The Reiser Filesystem is thought to be one of the best journaling file systems available for Linux computers. However, since Reiser’s incarceration under suspicion of murder, the usual…
Louisiana Moves Towards Creationism Law
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 The Louisiana Senate Bill SB 561 has been renamed as SB 733 and HB 1168 are the Academic Freedom Act bills in the Louisiana State Legislature. The Louisiana Senate appears to have passed their version of the bill with 35 votes in favor, zero opposed and 4 absent.
Florida House Academic “Freedom” Bill
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 The Florida House yesterday voted to require teachers to criticize evolution when teaching the subject in Florida public schools. The house version of the bill will now, most likely, travel back to the Senate (where a similar bill, was recently passed). Governor Charlie Crist is not talking about whether or not he will sign the…
The First Commandment of Scientific Investigation: Being Honest Matters
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2008 Second commandment: Try not to be a moron. (FYI: observed instances of speciation) Hat Tip: TUIBG and Julia
How To Escape Flashing Ad Annoyance
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Maybe you have an ad blocker. There are reasons, though, to NOT use an ad blocker. One reason might be that they don’t work for you, for some reason. Another is that you use Windoze, and every now and then you have to totally wipe your hard drive and reinstall your system and all your…
Cambrian Food Webs
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Food webs — the network of trophic (eating) interaction among the many species sharing a habitat or biome — is a much studied aspect of ecology. Food web and other similar phenomena such as dispersal syndromes are epiphenomena of evolution, resulting from the negotiation of competitive and cooperative interactions among many individuals. Indeed, the food…
Darwin’s Flower Experiments
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Darwin did a LOT of stuff. It is amazing how often one can trace some basic bit of modern scientific knowledge to an observation or experiment Darwin while travelling on the Beagle, later on in his bathtub, or in his back yard. The NYT has a nice piece on one example of this.
Nature and Conservation News
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Canadian panel: Climate change is threat to polar bears from PhysOrg.com (AP) — A scientific committee that advises Canada’s government on endangered species said Friday that climate change is a threat to the survival of the polar bear, but the species does not face extinction. [...] Narwhals more at risk to Arctic warming than polar…
Ubuntu Hardy Heron: The Movie
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 From Linux Journal
Philippines Rat Returns From Century of Being Extinct
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 It is always nice when an extinct animal shows up and announces that rumors of its extinction were exaggerated. In this case, we have the dwarf cloud rat just discovered by an international research team.
Cyclone Nargis, Bay of Bengal
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 … is expected to reach Cat-4 status before making landfall somewhere. Watch The Intersection for details.
What is the most compelling science movie?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 … and why. The Page 3.14 readers poll asks this question, with a selected number of choices. The choices given in the poll are interesting, but I think one could add quite a few more. In part, this would depend on why one thinks a certain film is compelling. Is a film compelling because it…
New Scienceblogs.com Blogger!
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Please welcome our newest blogger, ERV, who is … …a graduate student studying the molecular and biochemical evolution of HIV within patients and within populations. I also study epigenetic control of ERVs
Unsurprising link between anti-gay and anti-science education policies emerges in Florida’s academic freedom frey
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 This is described in UDreamOfJanie: Ronda R. Storms is a Florida sate senator (Republican) who has spearheaded efforts against Planned Parenthood, against her local LGBTA community, and so on, is now linked to the Discovery Institute in regards to her latest project, the Florida “Academic Freedom” bill. In regards to Academic Freedom, Storms … …took…
I understand they are building one of these beneath downtown Minneapolis as we speak.
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 [hat tip: Geekologie]
Pile on!!!
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 Don’t miss your chance to join the Pile On over at “Ethics and Science” … Greg Laden, it turns out, is not only not funny but he is a sexist bastard with no credentials.
The Big Picture
Posted by Greg Laden on April 28, 2008 And by this, I mean really, really big… This was sent to me by my colleague Christian Reinboth in Germany. This video was created by Mike (Metafis), a retired PC support guy, who has also been kind enough to comment below. …. It shows a massive zoom (315 times) into the famous Mandelbrot set. The…
Flock of Dodos
Posted by Greg Laden on April 27, 2008 With all this talk about Expelled!, the creationist movie, I thought it was about time to resurrect the review I wrote many moons ago of Flock of Dodos by Randy Olson, along with some updated information. Flock of Dodos is a much better film than Expelled!, and explores the same issue, with somewhat different conclusions.…
, which is now available for the 
