May 28, 2011
Wake up early on Sunday and catch ""Choice In Dying," Eric MacDonald on Atheists Talk #117"
Choosing one's own death should be the right of every living person facing the process of a long, debilitating, painful terminal illness. Not everyone finds "dignity in suffering," and yet religions insist…
May 28, 2011
Wow. And no keyboards!
OK, gotta go. You wouldn't believe how many messages I have to deal with on my electronics correspondence machine thingie.
What really happened ...
Huh. Bill gates was a paranoid ass even in those days!
May 28, 2011
It is Memorial Day Weekend, which can only mean one thing. It's time for this year's Summer Reading Recommendations List! Unlike the Summer Readings Suggestions: Science list, these books are primarily (but not entirely) fiction. Since I've not read very much fiction over the last year, I polled…
May 28, 2011
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949. He spent his early years in Jackson, Tenn., attended high school in The Bronx, and spent time at Pennsylvania's Lincoln University before settling in Manhattan. His recording career began in 1970 with the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which featured…
May 26, 2011
It is easy to make fun of other people with whom we disagree, but when it comes down to it, how do we really know when we are being smart about something vs. getting it all wrong? Gut feeling? Our friends agree with us? Some smart person tells us what to think? This is a problem that as plagued…
May 26, 2011
It is possible that the bottom will fall out of the Fukushima Reactor 4 spent fuel tank. Efforts are being made to shore up the concrete structure. There is no longer any doubt that those mysterious holes hypothesized, seen or not see, in some of the reactor vessels are for real. It is now…
May 26, 2011
When wildebeest, such as those famous for crossing the Mara River in Tanzania during their annual migration, run into a crocodile or some other danger it is often the first time they've seen that particular thing. This is because most wildebeest don't live very long so many are on their very first…
May 25, 2011
NASA is going to send two probes to the moon, later this summer. They are called "GRAIL" which stands for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory. They will orbit the moon in an effort to determine the structure of its interior. They will be launched by a Delta II rocket some time between…
May 25, 2011
I'm going to have more to say about this topic and this book at a later time, but I wanted to get a notice of it out for Migration Week. Bird Migration and Global Change by George W. Cox addresses the issue of impact on bird populations under conditions of global warming.
This is an…
May 25, 2011
Congratulations for Almost Diamonds and Quiche Moraine blogger Stephanie Zvan for her brand new Guest Post at Scientific American.
The Politics of the Null Hypothesis
... Nothing about the field of IQ studies is free of political influence. It's naive to believe that any kind of research on a…
May 25, 2011
People are asking me: Is the recent spate of tornadoes caused by global warming? The usual answer to that question is that you can't answer the question because a tornado is not caused by climate ... it is cause by weather ... and global warming (which is real, and which is cause by humans) is…
May 24, 2011
The last communication from the Mars Rover Spirit was on March 22, 2010. A few moments ago NASA announced that there would be no more attempts to contact the space robot after a transmission that will end on May 25th.
It is suspected that Spirit's internal circuitry was damaged by very low…
May 24, 2011
Or else there will be ... consequences.
May 24, 2011
It didn't really occur to me that anyone actually believed that the world was going to end the other day. Honestly. I had assumed that some crazy preacher made the claim, that it was being used to scam the gullible here and there, but that almost no one was really taking it seriously. But, in…
May 24, 2011
Two pieces of sad news, some useful information, and a personal note (well, more of a political note).
First, the useful information. For those of you affected or busy passing information to those who are, the City of Minneapolis has set up this web page with information: Resources available…
May 24, 2011
Polio is almost completely eradicated. But as Bruce Aylward says: Almost isn't good enough with a disease this terrifying. Aylward lays out the plan to continue the scientific miracle that ended polio in most of the world -- and to snuff it out everywhere, forever.
May 24, 2011
As documented by Dana Milbank, Tim Pawlenty has been telling us that he will be the one who "looks the American people in they eye and tells them the truth" and furthermore that Barak Obama can't do to that.
Over a period of several hours after announcing his candidacy for the office of President…
May 24, 2011
As part of Migration Week (inspired by this post), I'm covering migration related books (mainly having to do with birds). How Birds Migrate by Paul Kerlinger (with Illustrations by Pat Archer), Second Edition, is an affordable, up to date (2009 publication) comprehensive and intelligently written…
May 23, 2011
Here is a short list of what you should read this summer in science and science related topics. Some are old, some are new. There is a lot missing from this list, I'm sure, but the summer is short here in Minnesota and we'll be busy with the corn, so there is not much time.
The Paleolithic…
May 23, 2011
There are several things that cause extinction, but ultimately it is always the same: The last individual (or small number of individuals) of a species die. That may sound like a trivial explanation for extinction but consider what happens when you work backwards from that tragic moment in time…
May 23, 2011
They used to hunt whooping cranes. Between that and habitat loss, the number dropped from nearly 20,0000 to a mere 1,400 during the first half of the 19th century, and continued to drop to an all time low of 15 birds in 1941.
Fifteen birds, in 1941, represented the entire species.
All those…
May 22, 2011
Have a look at this picture (click to enlarge):
We had a tornado here a couple of hours ago. It did not come near our house. It was probably an F2 or so in strength, and based on videos and the reported damage path it was about three or four tenths of a mile wide or wider at times, as it moved…
May 22, 2011
Well, that was interesting. We are having turbulent weather here in Minnesota. The current low pressure system passing across the US is sitting on us like a bullet on a bull's eye. Almost every line of storm activity is breaking into small blobs which in turn are spinning up wall clouds and…
May 22, 2011
It's all just a matter of calibration. Let me 'splain.
One day I was driving along a suburban street with the sun low on the horizon and the windows covered in rain drops from a sudden sun-shower moments earlier, insufficiently caffeinated and distracted by something. That's when I saw a large…
May 22, 2011
These are the kinds of books you get if you are either a scientists studying bird migration and related issues, or a very serious bird geek. The first two can be obtained at very low prices used, but the third will set you back at least 50 bucks US$ if you want a used copy. Note the spread of…
May 21, 2011
The separation of church and state is dead in Kentucky Governor Beshear says he would welcome a "Mecca Theme Park" as well. He also says the Ark Park will be required to not discriminate in hiring. We'll see.
From the Courier-Journal:
A state contractor concluded that the proposed Ark Encounter…
May 21, 2011
Both my desktop and my laptop started working more slowly a few weeks ago. This indicated that something about the operating system (some version of Ubuntu Linux) changed in a bad way. Or, perhaps, since the slowness was mostly noticed in the web browser, the newer version of Firefox was somehow…
May 21, 2011
Happy Rapture Day!
It's a bummer that it's raining here, because the rapture BBQ at Kammy's might be rained out. In the meantime I've got lots of stuff to get done ... finish cleaning the garage, get the wood for a new book shelf, write a few more posts for Migration Week, update the Fukushima…
May 21, 2011
On the Wing: American Birds in Migration is a children's book suitable for up to Middle School or thereabouts. Remarkably, this ten year old volume is actually fairly accurate and comprehensible, covering most of the major aspects of bird migration, discussion ecological patterns, mechanisms, and…
