December 16, 2011
Now that the authorities have confiscated the computers of a few contrarian bloggers to see whether they can find evidence of who hacked the University of East Anglia's e-mail servers, Lord Monckton is incensed! INCENSED, I tell you! He says he's going to go after the climate scientists whose e-…
December 16, 2011
Why is the Robin's breast red? Why are any of the parts of any birds colorful? To make it easier for birders to identify them, of course!
But seriously, Science has a more interesting set of answers, and some recently published research on European Robins helps to examine this question in some…
December 16, 2011
More of my unused shortlist of presents.
For music, consider the latest Florence + The Machine , something by my nephew, XFactor contestant LeRoy Bell, or one of my latest fav's, Holly MIranda.
I'm actually giving someone the The Robert Downy Sherlock Holmes Movie, because I think it is important…
December 16, 2011
One of the authors of Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery (John) himself, Shackleton himself, and Emiliani himself were ushered into the building past the graduate students, the guards, and the members of the public who wandered the halls of the museum blissfully unaware that the powerhouses of…
December 15, 2011
The Washington Post reports:
Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, "Islamic fascists" and religious faith of any kind, died…
December 15, 2011
Recently, I mentioned two new books on human evolution, and I told you I had a print review of them coming up.
Well, it's here, in American Scientist!
Yes, I know, that's an internet thing, but it is the internet version of the print thing. Please have a look, and leave a nice comment! Or a mean…
December 15, 2011
I've decided to update this blog entry (20 Dec 2011) because it occurs to me that certain things could be misinterpreted, in no small part because of the common language that separates us across various national borders, and differences in the way debate and concepts of free speech operate in…
December 15, 2011
Coventry England experienced a downpour of apples.
This happened to me once, but all I got were these lousy bits of foliage.
December 15, 2011
If you know a Dr. Who fan and you plan to buy that person a present, consider the following:
Doctor Who: The Complete Specials. This will be a much appreciated addition to anyone's library.
A Sonic Screwdriver. Don't leave the Tardis without it!
A Dalek Alarm Clock, which wakes you up to "…
December 14, 2011
With a brief filed (PDF) in Ohio's Fifth District Court of Appeals, John Freshwater is appealing a court's ruling to uphold his termination as a middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio. It is the latest twist in a long saga that began in 2008, when a local family accused Freshwater of…
December 14, 2011
Do Christmas Songs give you nightmares? They give me nightmares.
I'm writing something about Gender and where we get it, but that project is delayed (I know some of you are waiting eagerly). So, to #occupy your time, check out these two items:
Gender Transitioning and Gender Stereotypes
and…
December 14, 2011
First, let's just quickly say what it is. The Higgs boson may or may not exist. If it does exist, it is a boson.
Matter is made up of smaller and smaller things, down to a point. A chair may be made of pieces of wood, which in turn are made up of plant cells, etc. etc., until we get down to the…
December 14, 2011
Nominations for The Skeptic Awards 2011.
The Skeptic Magazine is delighted, for the first time, to be giving awards celebrating skeptical activity in several categories during 2011. As well as an 'Editors' Choice' award for lifetime achievement, we have five other categories - and for those we're…
December 14, 2011
The holidays are upon us, and as part of the War on Christmas, we must EAT ALL THE COOKIES!!!11!
But first we must bake them. I will be farming Julia out to help in The Kitchens in Plymouth this weekend while I go to the gym for nine hours. Over at the Zvans the ovens will be stoked and there…
December 13, 2011
Acupuncture is the ancient East Asian practice of poking people with needles in specific places and in specific ways in order to produce any one of a very wide range of results that could generally be classified as medicinal or health related. I don't know much about it, but Wikipedia tells us:…
December 13, 2011
Gene Marks writing for Forbes has laid out a plan for how Poor Black Kids of the Inner City can end up going to an Ivy League College. It is simple and elegant: They merely need to prioritize.
But there are some problems with this idea, only a few of which I touch on here.
December 13, 2011
brb. going to floss.
December 12, 2011
Two times in one week in Australia:
December 12, 2011
What kind of birding binoculars do you use? How do you chose a good model?
Obviously, the best way to pick out a pair of binoculars is to try them out, but in doing so, I strongly urge you to try at least a couple of pairs that are beyond your budget, and work your way down from there. Not…
December 12, 2011
Wildlife of Southern Africa , by Martin Withers and David Hosking, is new (August 2011) and good. If you are planning a trip to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana or anywhere nearby, or if you live there and like to go to the bush sometimes, consider it.
This is a pocket guide, it is small, has good…
December 11, 2011
Skeptics love to hate CAM. And often, with good reason. Alternative medicines or medical treatments, as is often pointed out, become "mainstream" when the available science suggests that they work, so it is almost axiomatic that "alternative" means "unproven" and it is probably almost always true…
December 11, 2011
...A door had slammed shut for Thompson and Ritchie in March of 1969, when their employer, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., withdrew from a collaborative project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and General Electric to create an interactive time-sharing system called…
December 10, 2011
This is a very good LaTex Tutorial, marred only by the fact that it is running in some odd operating system that I am not familiar with:
The rest of the tutorials are HERE, nicely organized.
Hat Tip Got Emacs
December 10, 2011
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution and Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life are two very recent books on human evolution, both of which I recommend, depending on your interests.
The first is by Dean Falk, who has studied…
December 10, 2011
Follow the adventures of Klaus the Forklift Operator. May not be work safe, depending on where you work:
Bonus video:
December 9, 2011
Some interesting news from the world of computer programming. A company that provides products to improve code studied a bunch of programs and evaluated how badly they were written. Cobol programs had the lowest rate of bad code, while Java the highest. Part of this is because Cobol programs are…
December 9, 2011
This is actually outrageous. Some of your messages, perhaps many, have been hidden in a place you probably never thought to look. I just found out about it, and looked there, and in fact there were messages I needed to see. Facebook has majorly let me down with this cute little move of theirs.…
December 8, 2011
Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean (near here) some time ago. In the absence of much physical evidence, experts figured out that the crash involved a misunderstanding of air speed due in part to faulty air speed data from iced over sensors. Then, last April, the cockpit data…
