Archives for June, 2008
Environment News
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 This summer may see first ice-free North Pole from PhysOrg.com (AP) — There’s a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says. [...] Climate change causing significant shift in the species composition of coastal fish communities from PhysOrg.com A…
Waiting For Carl
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 HEADLINE: ZIMMER DENIES DISCOVERY OF NEW ELEMENT The world must wait until Tuesday to find out details….
I never believed it was tomatoes
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 I am not entirely sure that the FDA has actually identified a tomato with Salmonella on it. The tomato hypothesis was based on recall data, which is notoriously iffy. Not totally useless, but iffy. The FDA, gutted by years of uncaring neglect by evil Republicans, today finds itself incapable of addressing the food safety issue,…
Delay of childbirth and cesarean section: There may be a link.
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 A study just out in PLoS Medicine suggests that an increasing trend of delaying childbirth is associated wiht a rising rate of the use of cesarean delivery. The explanation appears to be impared uterine function. From the editor’s summary: Though it was not studied here, the researchers hypothesize that impaired uterine contractility may be a…
Stoned Nation: International study of drug use places US in the lead.
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 A study released today in PLoS Medicine compares alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use across seventeen different countries participating in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative. Alcohol seems to be widely used in the studied countries, tobacco less so but fairly evenly used. Major variation was found with marijuana and cocaine use,…
Those Zany Fundamentalists!
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 This is cute…. A number of right-wing website, such as that of the AFA(American Family Association) have been using auto-correction filters to automatically change words of various articles they post from various news organizations, such as the AP. For example, “the Democratic Party” becomes “the Democrat Party”. But they got theirs. As they always will.…
US Government Says No to Solar
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 I find it hard to believe that the government has ignored the need for solar energy to the extent that it seems surprised that anyone wants to build new solar plants. From the New York Times: Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium…
Sb Rocks! Sb is da blawg!!!
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 Seed media group has just issued the following press relese: SCIENCEBLOGS ACHIEVES RECORD GROWTH NEW YORK (July 1) – ScienceBlogs (www.scienceblogs.com), the web’s largest science community, announced today that traffic for the first six months of 2008 increased by more than 60% over the same period last year, with total visits through June 30 reaching…
The Water Wars an’ Woes: Bottled vs. Tap?
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 Do you drink bottled water or tap water? Water from a cooler (which is a big giant bottle) or from a filter built into a refrigerator or sink? Or do you Britta? (Yes, let me be the first to verb that noun …. ) Increasingly we see resistance to bottled water. The Britta ads (one…
Keep an eye on Carl Zimmer AND Phil Plait…
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 Both have gone dark. Both are making announcements today at 5:00 EST. This could be big. A BloggoBlockbuster of some kind in the making. Maybe they have been having a secret affair all along and are moving to CA to get married!?!?!? Maybe they are starting their own blog, what with Phil being cosmic and…
Technology News and Stuff
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 Microsoft to stop selling Windows XP on Monday from PhysOrg.com (AP) — Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to stop selling its Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer makers Monday, despite protests from a slice of PC users who don’t want to be forced into using XP’s successor, Vista. [...] Synchronize directories with Komparator…
Keep an Eye on Carl Zimmer
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 First of all, he has posted this enigmatic item on his blog: Some News … … at 5 today While you’re waiting for 5:00 PM (eastern time? I’m guessing?) you can watch this several time: Carl Zimmer interviewing Paul Ehrlich.
Blog Roll
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 Archaeoporn archy Armchair Dissident Astrocreep’s Science Astrocreeps Science A Very Remote Period Indeed A world gone mad Bad Astronomy Behavioral Ecology Blog Bench Marks Beyond Reasonable Doubt Biocurious Biological Ramblings Biology in Science Fiction Biosingularity Bitch, PhD. Blog Around the Clock blogfish blogSci
Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
This photograph needs a caption
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 Steven Gould Coopted Into Teleological Demonstration of Evolution!!!!!
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 Proto Stephen Jay Gould OMFSM you are not going to believe this. Over at the University of Chicago, someone is making a terrible fool of themselves. It is hard to say if this is Shankar Vedantam, the Washing Post Staff Writer, or Patterson Clark of the Washington Post or someone else. The title of the…
Gedit With It.
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 I find myself using a basic text editor more and more often. Even the relatively well behaved openoffice.or Writer had a tendency to do stuff I don’t necessarily want to do with a simple text file, and certainly, something like Word is the work of Satan. For instance, have you ever noticed strange goofy characters…
Darwin’s Bulldog
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 On this day in 1895, T. H. Huxley died at the age of 70. Huxley was known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” because of his defense of Darwin’s important work in evolution. He debated Samuel Wilberforce in 1860, and people have been debating creationists since. Huxley invented the term “agnostic” and described himself as one.
Blog Roll
Posted by Greg Laden on June 29, 2008 10,000 Birds Aardvarchaeology A Blog Around The Clock A Blog from Hell Abnormal Interests About Darwin A Cat Nap A Constrained Vision Aetiology Afarensis A Few Things Ill Considered All-Too-Common Dissent Almost Diamonds A Load of Bright Analyze Everything Ancora Imparo Angry Toxicologist An Inconvenient Truth ArchaeoBlog
Calling All Evolution Loving Rational People
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 Our local paper, the Star Tribune is re-printing a New York Times story on the Philidelphia “Year of Evolution” …. Which is just fine. But the story has a comment section and it would sure be nice to have a few more pro-evolution comments on it. Please consider contributing to it, here. Hope you get…
Nicholas Negroponte
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 Nicholas Negroponte talks about how One Laptop per Child is doing, two years in. Speaking at the EG conference while the first XO laptops roll off the production line, he recaps the controversies and recommits to the goals of this far-reaching project.
Be assured: George Carlin believes in hell now…
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 according to this wackaloon: hat tip: atheist media
Science News
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 NEWLY IDENTIFIED ROLE FOR ‘POWER PLANTS’ IN HUMAN CELLS COULD LEAD TO TARGETED THERAPIES COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have determined that human cells are able to shift important gene products into their own mitochondria, considered the power plants of cells. The finding could eventually lead to therapies for dozens of diseases. The gene products, known…
Morning Sickness is an Adaptation, not a … Sickness
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 There is new information from an older idea (from about 2000) by Paul Sherman and colleagues. The idea underlying this research is simple: Symptoms of illnesses may be adaptive. Indeed, this may be true to the extent that we should not call certain things illnesses. Like “morning sickness.” Broadly speaking, there are two different kinds…
A Blogoversary Of Note
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 Happy Second Blogoversary Janie!
NASA on your iPhone Touch
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 For your iPod Touch: The Phoenix Mars Mission thingie. Gives you two RSS feeds (one for news one for blog) and the weather report on mars. A widget displays the elapsed mission time on mars. I’d like to see this application give us more. Like real time images and possibly the ability to control the…
, which is now available for the 
