What is probably the worst power outage India’s history had has taken out electricity for fully half the country; This is apparently the “second outage” in two days. I’m not entirely sure how they count outages, however. I’m thinking it is more like a big giant outage that then got much smaller then got much…

American Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney says they are. (Which is funny because he’s Mexican, but whatever…) Speaking of the accomplishments of Israeli Jews in the middle east, Romney said “… I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things” including … business climate, … history of thriving in difficult circumstances and…

The Drought of 2012 rivals the Great Dust Bowl years of the 30s and is coming at a time of melting arctic ice, shrinking ice sheets, and extreme events across the planet, matching the projections of Climate models for global warming.

Camp Quest is a summer camp for “freethinking” children (or, more accurately, children of “freethinking” parents). Depending on where in the US you live, summer camps for children may be very secular, very religious, in betweeen, or more or less oriented towards science and technology vs. sports and so on and so forth. There is…

It is my understanding that brucellosis, a disease that affects humans, bison, cattle, and elk, is transmitted from Bison to other Bison or to other animals such as cattle via contact with fresh afterbirth. This makes it quite possible for Bison with the disease to infect cattle, but only under very specific conditions, but those…

Skeptically Speaking #175: This week, it’s part one of a two-week focus on genetics. For our first installment, we’re looking at the ways that evolution might influence our modern lives, from obesity to overpopulation to heavy metal music. We spend the hour with Rob Brooks, Professor of Evolution and Director of the Evolution & Ecology…

Science Debate founder Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, David Gergen, and Michael Lubell spoke on Talk of the Nation Science Friday with Ira Flatow. The focus was on climate change. In the face of a massive drought and climbing sea levels, are the presidential candidates…

It’s over. The whole climate deinalism thing, that is. We can now get to the business of addressing climate change with well informed scientifically sound policy. My friend Ronald Bailey reports: Stress – this is a rumor. However, the rumor says that next week Richard Muller will release the latest Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis…

Especailly if it is actually frozen to the ice, I would imagine. Check out this new book: Winter-Over is a seriocomic, slightly obscene novel that tells the story of a year at Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, including Cooper Gosling’s eponymous “winter-over” (very few people stay at the station over the polar winter due…

I think my “weblogue” series (here) is getting long enough (though it will get much longer) that it is worth listing out the posts thus far. These posts originally appeared on quichemorain.com or greg laden’s blog; I’ve rewritten or updated them and put them in a special order. Thump is about a recurring nightmare and…

UPDATE: The initial info I got clearly stated that this kind of magnet was being generally banned, but Nanodots, a brand name, and possibly some other brands are not being banned. “Buckyball” is the brand being banned. I wonder, can a company call themselves “buckyball” and trademark that name? Original story: I actually suggested this…

… older than a few days so that I can do something other than deal with a new spate of spam. This spam is different from other spam, so it is quite possible that I’ll accidentally delete real comments. If you think a post of yours is taking too long to get posted let me…

Just to let you know, I’ve got a couple of new posts up in the “weblogue” series on The X Blog: My career in music: The Early Years We put a chair there, and we would take turns sitting in the chair and listening to the sound effects record. A train coming from one side…

The question came up: If referring to a person as a word for a female body part in an insulting manner is sexist, then isn’t calling a man a “boob” sexist? (I may or may not have referred to some guy as a boob.) My first reaction was to simply say, “No, because a boob,…

Or, perhaps, not? I was.

The minor league baseball game is on Friday, August 10th, and it is sponsored by the Minnesota Atheists. The local team, the Saint Paul Saints, will change their name to the Mr. Paul Aints for the occasion. If you are in the greater Twin Cities area please try to get to the game! I’m not…

I’ve started a new, modest but I think good, project on The X Blog. I’ve dragged out and dusted off, and rewritten and reorganized, a selected series of essays that I wrote few years ago but were not widely read, especailly by you if you are fairly new to this blog. I’m going to be…

The smartest radio talk show in the world addresses ignorance, Sunday. Skeptically Speaking # 174: Ignorance This week, we’re looking at how the basic condition of not knowing things provides the motivation to keep science moving. We’re joined by Stuart Firestein, Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences, to talk about his book Ignorance:…