The Eighth Harry Potter Book?
Category: Harry Potter
Maybe. Probably, this is more properly thought of as the Zeroth Harry Potter Book.
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:54 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Greg Laden's Blog
Evolution, Life Sciences, Science Education, Human Evolution, and Stuff
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Recent Posts
- Let the War on Christmas Begin. Atheist style.
- Dems Win Senate Vote
- 2012: an actual review
- Make Your Own "Liquid Nitrogen" at Home
- The Science in the Movie 2012
- Who are better conversationalists. Cats or dogs?
- Which is more intense. Cats or Chipmunks?
- Global Warming Alarmist Conspiracy Emails Hacked!!!11!!
- Top Ten Internet Videos Countdown: #9
- Medical Matters: H1N1, Science Ignorance and Cancer Screening
July 31, 2008
Large Dragon Expected To Consume Sun!
Category: Cosmos
A total Solar Eclipse will happen tomorrow, August 1st. Here is the map (click the map for the original version at NASA): More details here....
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Netflix Player: An Irony Wrapped in dark blue plastic.
I like Netflix in Principle. In fact, it is what we do instead of going to movies, most of the time. (Except the other day when we did go see Hancock.) But what they did with their Watch Instantly service was very disturbing to me....
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:09 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Is it possible that the Linux Desktop is going to surpass the Mac in use? And why or why not?
for the children Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols addresses this question. The question itself was recently raised when Mark Shuttleworth (Mr. Ubuntu) discussed the possibility in a recent talk. We can assume that Shuttleworth is being optimistic and pro-Linux because he is so invested in it....
Posted by Greg Laden at 7:00 PM • 68 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
New film of possible interest
Category: Harry Potter
Hat Tip: Grrrrrrrl Scientist who has a lot more on the film, so go visit her site....
Posted by Greg Laden at 5:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Penguins adrift
Category: Environment
I noted earlier that hundreds of baby penguins are being washed, dead, onto beaches thousands of miles away from their native lands. Various causes have been suggested, including the idea that the penguins are swimming into unfamiliar and penguin-hostile waters in search of fish, diminished...
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:45 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Land O' Goshen, Jeezus Kat Is Borned!
A Goshen Family has identified an apparition of Banana Jeezus on their kitten. Here is a closeup: Go HERE for a film of Banana Jeezus. All Hail Banana Jeezus! All Hail Orac for Brinin' Us Dis Newz! All Hail Ceelin' Kat! We ask Ceelin' Kat,...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 30, 2008
Extinct Lemur Brought Back to Life. Virtually.
Austrian Franz Sikora was a fossil hunter and merchant of ancient bones working in the 19th centuyr. In 1899 he found the first known specimen, which was to become the type fossil, of Hadropithecus stenognathus in Madagascar. This is an extinct lemur. To be honest,...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:49 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
code_swarm
Category: Technology
This visualization, called code_swarm, shows the history of commits in a software project. A commit happens when a developer makes changes to the code or documents and transfers them into the central project repository. Both developers and files are represented as moving elements. When a...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:44 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
FDA finds suspect salmonella at second Mexican farm
Category: Health
After months of probable false leads and demonstration of embarrassing ineptitude, the Bush FDA may have finally come to a helpful conclusion regarding the origin of a salmonella outbreak that has harmed more citizens within the borders of the United States than, say, the large...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Blog Carnivals Galore!
Category: Carnivals
The Carnival of the Elitist Bastards #3 is, where else, at the Big Kahuna's blog: Pharyngula. (He's not really an elitist bastard.) All Things Eco carnival is at Focus Organic Travel on a Shoestring Carnival: South America, Africa, Middle East #6 is t Less Than...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:36 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I shall be released.
Category: Technology
Well, not me exactly. But a couple of important Linux items have been released. KDE 4.1 is out and is said to 'rock'. I find this particularly interesting: One of the most controversial announcements during the KDE 4.1 development cycle was the reported removal of...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:56 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Blogospherics: Recommended reads
Category: Blogospherics
From the silly to the sublime. Starting with the silly: You must go HERE to read the punchline. Regarding energy and energy conservation (hey, I watched the Car Talk TV special last night, anybody see it? I mus say that The Car Talk Twins look...
Posted by Greg Laden at 3:57 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
NASAs Phoenix Steps in Puddle
Category: Cosmos
Check this out. NASA Phoenix Mars lander has images of a surface beneath the lander that has changed from mid-June to mid July, They are calling it the "snow queen."...
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:11 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Evolution of Cats: Sabertooth vs. Regular
Sabertooth Cat, Megantereon nihowanensisl There are two kinds of "true cats." Cat experts call one type feline or "modern" partly because they are the ones that did not go extinct. If you have a pet cat, it's a modern/feine cat. This also includes the...
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:49 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 29, 2008
OMG. Ben Stein: Obama = Hitler. OMG.
Category: Politics
No, wait, they meant Mussolini. Whoa.. Hat Tip, Amused Muse....
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:47 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The seductive siren of soft tissue preservation: Ancient dinosaur flesh wasn't ancient. Or dinosaur flesh.
An ugly fact killing a beautiful hypothesis I'm not mentioning any names, and don't ask me any details. In fact, don't repeat this story. Some years ago, when I was a mere graduate student, a fellow student working in an unnamed country in Africa...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:00 PM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Is Linux currently at a fundamental disadvantage owing to how computers are set up?
A gingerbread computer can be complicated. When you, Joe or Mary user, buy a computer at Best Buy or Computer Village or order a computer from Dell or Gateway, you get a computer with a system already installed. Do you think they had any...
Posted by Greg Laden at 7:00 PM • 73 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Re-examining the cause of speciation and species diversity in the tropics
Category: South America
Did Past Climate Changes Promote Speciation in the Amazon? Any time you've got a whopping big river like the Amazon (or a mountain chain like the Andes, or an ocean, or whatever), you've gotta figure that it will be a biogeographical barrier. Depending on the...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:00 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
More speed on your box.
Category: Technology
Do you want your Linux box to go faster? Throw it out the window!!! No, seriously ..... Here is a trick that is already implemented automatically in some Linux distros. It is also found in Macs and Windows, but the Windows version of it is...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:06 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Variety Reviews Olson's Sizzle
Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy was reviewed by Variety. This is not going to be pretty.
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 28, 2008
Say no more....
Steve Jobs in 1994: 1) If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago. In 2003 regarding iTunes: 2)...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:05 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nigerian Attack Threat Comes to Fruition
Category: Politics
As predicted, there was an attack on oil fields in Nigeria. This involved an attack on two pipelines in the Delta Region. Shell has stoped ppumping through one of the pipelines....
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:45 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Science-Humanities asymmetry has an obvious explanation
Category: Anthropology
I second Chad Orzel's well stated concern of our colleagues in the humanities' inability to add two numbers together. Well, actually, I'm seeing Chad's critique and raising one rant....
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:00 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Are Gnome and Ubuntu Ruining ... bla bla bla .... MetaPost
Why write a thousand comments when I can write one post? My recent post, Are Gnome and Ubuntu ruining the Linux Desktop? has garnered a lot of interesting comments, including some with useful information, some thoughtful commentary, the scratchings of a couple of wet hens...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:31 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Conservative Attacks On Liberals Increase in Violence, Frequency
It turns out that the violent and deadly attack on Liberal Unitarian Universalists who supported Gay Rights was yet another Right Wing Gun Toting Conservative attack. So, yesterday's violence can be added to another suspected case of a similar nature, the murder several days ago...
Posted by Greg Laden at 7:55 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Spread of Disease from Domestic to Wild Bees
Category: Evolutionary Biology
A recent article in PLoS examines the possibility that disease is spreading from domestic to wild bees. Osmia ribifloris...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:00 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sizzle on Here and Now
Category: Film
Here and Now is a Boston-based (WBUR) public radio production. Randy Olson and his movie Sizzle were featured on the show recently. This link should get you there. (You can use the list on the right of the video plugin thingie to locate specific segments...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:43 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A compilation of interesting photos
Category: Blogging
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:34 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Carnivals!
Category: Carnivals
Tangled Bank #110 is at Pharyngula. The strangest and most creative carnival EVAH, the seventh edition of Berry Go Round, is up at A Blog Around the Clock. I CAN HAZ LINK LUV! Philosophers' Carnival at Beyond Borders. The Carnival Of Education: Week 181 at...
Posted by Greg Laden at 7:52 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Operating Systems Can Be Funny. Sort Of
Category: Technology
How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?...
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:14 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 27, 2008
McCain Might Tap The Governor of the Falling Bridges for Veep Slot
Category: Politics
On August 1st, 2007, the I35W Bridge over the Mississippi collapsed, probably because the Minnesota DOT, run by a crony of the Republican no-taxes (and thus no spending on essential services) governor Tim Pawlenty failed in the areas of inspection and/or engineering. It was a...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:42 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The "Dumbo Octopus"
Category: Organisms
Strangest thing I've seen all weekend:...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:13 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Patch your OS now
Category: Technology
In early July it was made public that Dan Kaminsky, internet security guru, had figured out (several months earlier) a way to use DNS (the internet name server thingie) to do bad things. It is called "cashe poisoning." DNS uses a cache to remember typically...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:13 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yet Another Shooting Rampage
Category: Gun Ownership
Jim Adkisson entered the Unitarian Church for a children's play earlier today, carrying a guitar case. But instead of taking out a guitar and singing Kumbaya, he pulled out a shotgun, killed two adults, and wounded seven others before being overpowered. This was in Knoxville...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:45 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sushi and Canaries
The end is near, if you are a tuna fish. "The rage for sushi and sashimi, Japan's raw fish dishes that overtook the West and have now spread to increasingly prosperous China, risks wiping out one of the Mediterranean's most emblematic residents: the bluefin tuna."...
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:38 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Amphibian Immune Systems and Survival
Frog The Major Histocampatibility Complex (MHC) is an adaptive feature of the immune system that probably evolved in basal tetrapods. The MHC is genetically diverse in most populations, so the pattern of genetic variation of the MHC is probably behind the pattern of morbidity...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Live blogging PZ Myers on Atheist Talk Radio
PZ Myers' appearance on Atheist Talk Radio was positively Orwellian. Host Mike the Madman Haubrich actually asked PZ about developmental biology (evodevo). Fish embryos? What about crackers!!!! I wanted crackers!!!! And I get Zebrafish! The interview was actually very interesting, in which PZ discussed homologous...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:25 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This photograph needs a caption
Category: Caption Needed
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:09 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Blogospherics: Recommended reads
Category: Blogospherics
This looks like something I would do. Flying through the tropics (in a plane) is worse than other flying, environmentally speaking. Or so it says here. "Zhongornis haoae is an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny juvenile bird from the Early Cretaceous of China. At just over 10 centimeters...
Posted by Greg Laden at 5:22 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 26, 2008
Blog Roll
Category: Blogging
Corpus Callosum ~ The Field Negro ~ The Flying Trilobite ~ Reasic (global warming) ~ Angry Toxicologist ~ Bad Astronomy ~ Shes such a geek ~ The Island of Doubt ~ lunartalks ~ An Inconvenient Truth ~ Egyptology News ~ Life Before Death ~ Neurophilosophy...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
CO2 Emissions Graph
Category: Environment
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:38 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Video Editing with Eff Eff Em Peg
Category: Computer Tricks
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:06 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The shit is hitting the fan in Nigeria
Nigeria is where Western graduate students in political science who study corruption go to do their fieldwork. There appears to be an ensconced elite and externally connected ruling body and a down trodden underclass organized into various resistance groups. The discovery of abundant petroleum reserves in the Niger Delta and vicinity meant that the elite ruling group and external forces (including but not limited to Big Oil) have conspired to extract this resource at maximum profit largely setting aside the possibility of in situ development and long term improvement in areas of education, health care, infrastructure, and so on for actual Nigerians.
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:53 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Wrong Way to Approach the Evolution-Creationism Debate
Category: Creationism
Amy Binder and John H. Evans, associate professors of Sociology at the University of California at San Diego, have written a piece on efforts to force religion in the guise of Intelligent Design and Creationism down the throats of children in Texas. A proposal before...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:31 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sunday Atheist Talk Radio: PZ Myers and CL Hanson
Minnesota Atheists' "Atheists Talk" radio show Sunday, July 27, 2008, 9-10 a.m. Central Time P.Z. Myers discusses "Evo-Devo: What do a mouse's leg and a bat's wing have in common?" Also, atheist blogger C.L. Hanson discusses her book "Ex-Mormon." "Atheists Talk" airs live on AM...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:03 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
He's Al Franken and He's OK.
Hat Tip: TUIBG But wait, there's more:...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:00 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 25, 2008
Blog Roll
Category: Blogging
This Modern World ~ Fragments From Floyd ~ Richard Dawkins Net ~ Bert's Blog ~ Bore Me To Tears ~ Dead Racists Society ~ Spanish Inquisitor ~ Survival Machine ~ Rosetta Rants ~ Overscope ~ Science After Sunclipse ~ Science To Life ~ digiphile ~...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:48 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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