May 1, 2011
President Obama spoke at 10:36 CT.
He gave a quick review of 9/11 and of ten years of work by military and counter-terrorism professionals, citing accomplishments as well as failure to catch Osama bin Laden.
President Obama made capture/killing of bin Laden top CIA priority. In August, they…
May 1, 2011
This post has moved HERE. To the stone age blog!
May 1, 2011
Good morning. Today is "Mayday Day" in Minneapolis. Mayday is a holiday widely celebrated by the community of South Minneapolis. People from North, Northeast and Southeast are welcome, but I'm not sure they know about it. People from "soutwest" Minneapolis ARE from South Minneapolis and they…
April 30, 2011
John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x5' plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches -- spontaneous, and always surprising -- go further than classroom lectures can…
April 29, 2011
Medical ethicist Harvey Fineberg shows us three paths forward for the ever-evolving human species: to stop evolving completely, to evolve naturally -- or to control the next steps of human evolution, using genetic modification, to make ourselves smarter, faster, better. Neo-evolution is within our…
April 28, 2011
The feeling of security and the reality of security don't always match, says computer-security expert Bruce Schneier. At TEDxPSU, he explains why we spend billions addressing news story risks, like the "security theater" now playing at your local airport, while neglecting more probable risks -- and…
April 28, 2011
Jeff Masters' WunderBlog is a key source of information on any current weather events:
A stunning tornado outbreak of incredible violence has left at least 202 dead across the Eastern U.S.; injuries probably number over a thousand, with 600 injured in the town of Tuscaloosa alone. The tornadoes…
April 27, 2011
ERV joined Scienceblogs on this day in 2008. Seems like only a couple of years ago. Happy Anniversary, ERV!
April 27, 2011
Huxley loves to go to bed at night. You say "Huxley, time for bed" and he runs for the bedroom giggling.
Sometimes he stops on the way to read a book, or more exactly, get a book read to him because he can't read yet. Sometimes the book is Goodnight Moon.
But some kids are not as sanguine…
April 27, 2011
Yes, apparently.
PROPOSED INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS PUT SCIENCE EDUCATION, PUBLIC SCHOOLS AT RISK IN TEXAS
Vendor's creationist materials could be used in public school science classes around the state
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 25, 2011
CONTACTS:
Dan Quinn (TFN), 512.322.0545, 512.799.3379 (mobile…
April 27, 2011
All over the planet, giant telescopes and detectors are looking (and listening) for clues to the workings of the universe. At the INK Conference, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy tours us around these amazing installations, taking us to some of the most remote and silent places on Earth.
April 27, 2011
When Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters came out, I got myself an electronic copy of it and searched for the words "God", "Jesus", "Miracle" etc. Amanda and I had watched Capt'n Sully be interviewed a few times and we guessed that he was a straight up guy who knew how to land an…
April 27, 2011
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining…
April 27, 2011
Donald Trump, Orly Tate, others are "side show carnival barkers" and questions by birthers, others "silliness" according to Obama, in a press conference moments ago.
Following a down-and-dirty live statement to the press asking everyone to just shut. up. and get down to business on the important…
April 27, 2011
The reactors at Fukushima continue to be hotter than "cold shutdown" levels, and at least one reactor (#1) is probably leaking from the core containment vessel. Fission products in high amounts, high pressure, and high temperature indicate that something close to fission is still happening…
April 27, 2011
I started to work in Africa in the mid 1980s. Since I had been admitted to a graduate program that was heavily involved with work in Kenya, it would make sense that I'd work there, but I was well aware of the fact that there would be no work at Koobi Fora until the Koobi Fora monograph was done,…
April 26, 2011
According to Steve Jobs, Apple's iPhone and/or Apple corporation (the distinction is important but often muddled in this conversation) does not track its users' geographical location, but Android (which is neither a phone nor a company, but a system ... another important yet muddled distinction)…
April 26, 2011
Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity. Is that because they are more intelligent? Not necessarily. New research concludes that IQ scores are…
April 26, 2011
I've hardly ever played video games, and Julia, growing up, never did either. Then a couple of years ago we got a Wii and now we play it regularly but responsibly. Amanda joins us now and then.
After the filing of our 1040s, we realized we could afford to buy a new TV to replace our old energy-…
April 25, 2011
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and it is the only one classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear…
April 25, 2011
Pioneering surgeon Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Asia. But a moral concern with transplants (where do donor livers come from ...) led her to look further, and to ask: Could we be transplanting cells, not whole organs? At the INK Conference, she talks through her new research,…
April 24, 2011
From 2000 through 2007, inclusively, approximately 780 thousand people in the United States took a bullet. Most of them were wounded by another person in an act of violence. A fairly large number were wounded by accident, killed by a bad guy, or killed themselves. A small number died in a shooting…
April 24, 2011
Because you wanted to know:
First observation: Far more men are killed in this manner than women. Boys with their toys. Presumably, women are being killed by something else. Second observation: There may be a trend towards decreasing rates of death by accident involving firearms. This could be…
April 24, 2011
Since this came up I thought you might like to see the data.
NOTES: It would be interesting to look at the ratio of fatal to non fatal over long time spans (before/during/after transition to high quality trauma treatment in the US); I would like to see good data breaking down suicide by age that…
April 24, 2011
Yet the 11-year old girl lies in a coma, the bullet removed from her brain on Friday, with a poor prognosis.
Maddy Montanye was shot in the head on Thursday by her father, Jesse.
Jesse's .22 caliber pistol had jammed, and he was trying to get it unjammed while sitting in the living room across…
April 24, 2011
Placed in orbit by the Shuttle Discovery, launched with this payload in 1990. Stop by and say hey.
April 23, 2011
By leading the Americans in his audience at TEDxPSU step by step through the thought process, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can they understand -- not approve of, but understand -- the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? And by extension, can anyone truly understand and…
April 23, 2011
Archaeologist Lew Binford has died at the age of 79 at his home in Kirksville, Mo. He died of a a heart attack.
I knew Lew a little, having spent some time with him while I was in graduate school, and having met him at the occassional conference (he was famous for NOT going to conferences very…
April 23, 2011
iPhones know where they are, so they probably know where you are, and these data have been captured and maintained by the Apple devices and have been used by police in geoForensic investigations. Crushing civil liberties? There's an app for that!
Apple came to international attention in 1984…
April 22, 2011
I'm not sure what I think of Gnome 3's Shell Interface. Imma try it out but I think they may have fallen into the trap of making the desktop the point rather than, well, emacs and a web browser the point (the only two pieces of software I use every day and both days). Either way, Fedora 15 looks…
