Archives for February, 2011
How to get your car out of the snow
Posted by Greg Laden on February 21, 2011 Is your car stuck in the snow? There are two ways to get it out. The wrong way and the right way. Here’s the wrong way: Ignore the snarky comment at the beginning of the video. According to sources with the SPFD and the News, this car caught on fire for the same reason about…
Faith Healing Deaths in Oregon: New Law will Lift Protection of Religious Child Abusers
Posted by Greg Laden on February 21, 2011 A child who is killed by an abusive parent is, in a sense, avenged by the law which seeks to identify, charge, try, convict, sentence and punish such a parent. Abuse might include something obvious like striking a child with a weapon, but it can also include starving the child to death or other forms…
Things are not going well in Libya (and: Where is Libya?)
Posted by Greg Laden on February 21, 2011 The son of Libyan leader Gadhafi/kadafi claims that the “government” (which is not really true but its complicated) will fight to the last bullet against people engaged there in an uprising. Even as Seif al-Islam Gadhafi spoke Sunday night, clashes were raging in and around Tripoli’s central Green Square, lasting until dawn Monday, witnesses said.…
Libya and Muammar al-Gaddafi (Qaddafi)
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2011 As Libya and Gaddafi move to a more prominent place in the news, I thought I’d point to a few posts on the topic. As an Africanist Archaeologist, I’ve got a special interest in Libya (though I’ve never worked there or visited). Haua Fteah is there. Haua Fteah is a cave facing north and overlooking…
“Why is my poop green?”
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2011 As a science blogger, I hear a lot of interesting questions, and this is one of the more interesting questions I’ve heard in a while. It is, I’m sure, rather disconcerting to notice that your feces are the color of a corroded penny, and not know why. Or, if your feces are the usual brown…
PZ Myers on Minnesota Atheist Talk Radio
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2011 Today’s interview with PZ Myers was pretty much Dick Cavett meets David Susskind. OK, maybe more like Jerry Springer meets The View. Well, not really, more like … Oh I don’t know. Let’s just say you don’t want to miss it. And, since you already did miss it you need to listen to the podcast,…
Please Help LaVerne Knight-West
Posted by Greg Laden on February 20, 2011 The Skeptics Community is asking for people to help LaVerne. Bad things happened to her and her family. A few bucks from everybody would be nice. Please click here and make a small contribution.
Behold the Nimravids
Posted by Greg Laden on February 19, 2011 Dinosaurs aren’t the only source of fascination for paleontologists. Paleontology is a descriptive science that uses a variety of sources for information on how evolution has shaped life to what it currently currently consists of, and paleontologists look to the past through fossilized bones, mineralized records of the tracks and trails of botany, genetic records…
Fear, Loathing and Misogyny in the Upper Midwest
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2011 Two local stories you might be interested in from my neighborhood. First, a girl high school wrestler advanced yesterday but was beaten today in the state tournament in Iowa. Why is this interesting? Well, first, this is not a girl wrestling on a girl’s team. It is a girl wrestling on the regular team which…
How evolution works, sometimes.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2011 A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing – trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and…
Skeptically Speaking: Quacks and Scams
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2011 Don’t Miss Skeptically Speaking #99 Quacks and Scams, with Dr. Stephen Barrett of QuackWatch , James Randi and Jamie Williams. Details here
Libyan Dictator Warns Against Facebook, Microsoft Bans OpenSource
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2011 These stories are closely related at a philosophical level: Both stalwart entities have similar philosophies about what they think they can tell other people to do, how they do things, and what they fear: Libyan dictator warns against use of Facebook, 40 protesters injured Many Libyan Internet activists have declared their support for the pro-democracy…
Are you my Facebook friend?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 18, 2011 Are you? If not, you can click here and be my Facebook friend. I don’t need you to do that but it would be better if you did, just in case. It’s good for you, it’s good for me, really, you should do it. You need to do it. I don’t really need it but…
I and the Bird # 144: The Bird Vocalization Edition
Posted by Greg Laden on February 17, 2011 Birders in every hemisphere spend this time of year preparing for the Great Migrations. It does not matter where you live, several species of birds are going arrive at your location, pass through, or simply come out of or flee to the woods or marshes as Spring or Fall approaches. This means it is time…
The Egyptian Revolution, Tweeted
Posted by Greg Laden on February 17, 2011 “Zebrafish and Dictionary Atheism,” PZ Myers and Greg Laden on Atheists Talk, Sunday
Posted by Greg Laden on February 17, 2011 From Mn Atheists: Drs PZ Myers and Greg Laden will be our guests on today’s show. PZ is in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro for a pair of talks this weekend. First he will be presenting “The Evolution of Cooperativity” to the Humanists of Minnesota on February 19th, and on the 20th he will be explaining…
The Palin/Bachmann Ticket Moves Into Position
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 Did anyone notice the straw poll results from the CPAC convention? CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. With all this talk about Palin and Bachmann and Palin/Bachmann and Bachmann/Palin and so on and so forth, one would be surprised if they didn’t come in at or near the top of the poll. Here were…
The linguistic genius of babies
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.
Josh Rosenau reports on the latest anti-evolution activity
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 Olive Skinned? Republican Rep Connie O’Brien has your number!
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 Wanna know what tabagging racism sounds like? Go to about 2 minutes, listen through 4 minutes or so. Back story at Think Progress
Religion crossing the line: “God is not so silly to allow people to perish” from floods and storms
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 How do you separate harmless belief in religion or superstition and … well, harmful belief in religion or superstition? We have been having a bit of a go-round* between some of my regular blog readers, including my Catholic but not anti-Evolution niece whose daughter recently acted in a commercial for the Creation Museum in Kentucky.…
Is social networking for political action just a covert form of …. Community Organizing?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 Youth for Tolerance, Invisible Children, Save Darfur coalition, Million votes against farc … Who are these organizations connected to? There is a long list of them. Who is the US State Department working with? MTV? NBC? We need to keep an eye on them. We can’t tell if they are right or clean or left…
What am I going to ask PZ Myers on Sunday?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 I’ll be interviewing PZ Myers on Sunday on Atheist Talk Radio in the Twin Cities. I can’t think of a thing to ask him about … what would YOU suggest? Write your proposed questions or topics in the comments below.
NASA shoots comet, looks at hole it made
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2011 On the left is the comet minding its own business. On the right is a blobish roundish area where NASA’s impactor probe hit the comet. I know, I know, it looks mainly like they just unfocused the image. It turns out that many of the images in the “after” sequence have a crappy focus, but…
The Teabaggers New Health Plan: Cut Medical Research by $1.6 Billion!
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2011 But you won’t stand for it. Later this week the House will vote on HR 1, a “continuing resolution” (CR) to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY 2011. HR 1 would cut NIH funding by $1.6 billion (5.2%) BELOW the current level – reducing the nation’s medical research budget to $29.4 billion!…
Close Up Picture of a Comet
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2011 NASA’s Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:39 p.m. PST (11:39 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011. The comet was first visited by NASA’s Deep Impact mission in 2005. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
South Dakota: Just Like Mississippi but Up North
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2011 South Dakota would make the killing of abortion providers legal. A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus–a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has…
Tiger Woods has gone too far.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2011 I did not get on the Tiger Hating bandwagon when it was revealed that he had a wife and 19 girlfriends. First, I’m sure they were all having a great time at some point. Second, I can see where his wife would be pissed off but she did marry a golfer after all. What else…
Don’t have a baby. Have a robot.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2011 Affetto the toddler robot does not get you the tax break but you can probably teach it to get your beer from the fridge a lot easier than a real toddler. Affetto is modeled after a one- to two-year-old child and will be used to study the early stages of human social development. There have…
Antievolution legislation in Tennessee
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2011 House Bill 368 (PDF), introduced in the Tennessee House of Representatives on February 9, 2011, is the sixth antievolution bill introduced in a state legislature in 2011, and the first introduced in Tennessee since 2007. The bill, if enacted, would require state and local educational authorities to “assist teachers to find effective ways to present…
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