January 26, 2011
From the NCSE:
It's time to dust off your Darwin costume again: less than a month remains before Darwin Day 2011! Colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country -- and the world -- are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or…
January 25, 2011
The BBC us cosing down Douglas Adams Hitchiker's Guide web site. But there is a plan to get off the planet before it's too late. So have a beer and read this.
January 25, 2011
And yes, Michele...
the Civil War was indeed fought to end slavery.
Your average teabagger probably thinks that the American Civil War was not fought to end slavery. I'm guessing that they subscribe to one of those revisionist versions of American History in which the Civil War was about…
January 24, 2011
A question came up in the comments on the post Mars will pass behind sun, Rover operations affected, and the answer turns out to be very interesting.
The question was, to paraphrase, how often and when are the Earth based Mars rover operators out of radio contact with the Rovers? It turns out…
January 24, 2011
You may or may not have heard the news: There was a major explosion, or set of explosions, with suicide bombers and everything, 31 or more dead, at the Moscow Airport. The details are sketchy.
And in a totally unrelated story, but still with an explosion, then there's this:
God's Highway, I 35w…
January 24, 2011
And most of them are boys with their toys
Yesterday a few miles northeast of here, two dudes had a head-on collision in their snow machines. The snow machines burst into flames, one of the drivers died and the other is apparently in critical condition. Elsewhere in the state a man died of CO…
January 23, 2011
The vikings are out of it, but it is still very important that the Packers lose. Because. Because they are cheese-heads, OK?
If you want more reasons than that, check this out:
Of course, when I lived in Milwaukee and had not yet even heard of Minnesota, it was like this (warning, gratuitous…
January 23, 2011
Rumor has it that Apple is developing what is probably the worst idea ever. Now, I quickly add that when Apple yanked 3.5 inch floppies1 from all of their computer designs, I thought that was the worst idea ever, and it turned out to be the best idea ever. But this one, I don't know ... a mouse…
January 22, 2011
... or does it???
One day I was eating some chicken, outdoors, somewhere in Africa, with a colleague I had been living with for a few months and two brand new visitors, Dick and Jane1 from the US. After cleaning most, but not all, of the meat off a leg bone, I tossed it to Hozi the Cat, who…
January 22, 2011
I just love when Citizen Science results in a new finding. J. Goodbody reports on an Amateur Astrologer who found a new constellation! Click Here.
carr2d2 reviews Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World without God by Greg Graffin and Steve Olson, which she seems to like…
January 22, 2011
Apple likes its hardware to be closed source. Very closed:
If you want to remove the outer casing on your iPhone 4 to replace the battery or a broken screen, it won't be easy anymore. In the past, you could use a Phillip screwdriver to remove two tiny screws at the base of the phone and then…
January 22, 2011
It was so abrupt that MSNBC ads and promotions still include his show. It is being said by MSNBC officials that this has nothing to do with the Comcast takeover.
"There were many occasions, particularly in the last 2 1/2 years, where all that surrounded the show -- but never the show itself --…
January 22, 2011
Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP's risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to extreme risk in finding new energy, new financial instruments and more ... and too often, we're left to clean up…
January 21, 2011
And such closeness has not been achieved before or since. Voyager 2 passed very close to the funny-named planet 25 years ago today (plus or minus) and that is the only close fly by to date.
As NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft made the only close approach to date of our mysterious seventh planet Uranus…
January 21, 2011
One of the complications of interplanetary research is that the probes you've placed on the other planet can't be reached via radio while the planet they are on passes to the other side of the sun, which happens now and then. In fact, for the days before and after Mars is opposite the sun,…
January 21, 2011
This came up a while ago and I assumed the idea would die the usual quick and painless death, but the idea seems to be either so fascinating or so irritating to people (mainly in various blog comment sections) that it still twitches and still has a heartbeat, but only as a result of the repeated…
January 20, 2011
Surprise!
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Wednesday, Jan. 19 at 11:30 a.m. EST, engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., confirmed that the NanoSail-D nanosatellite ejected from Fast Affordable Scientific and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT. The ejection event occurred spontaneously and was…
January 20, 2011
Fountain Lady, Imma let you be upset and all in a minute, but right now I've got to say that there is not a single one of the 37 million people who watched you fall in the water 'cuz you were texting and not watching where you were going who has not at some time or another in their life ran into a…
January 20, 2011
A new study compares "acceptance of evolution" by highly educated adult academics with college students in various categories, with all those sampled being in New England, which has the highest overall acceptance of evolution in the US (a mere 59 percent). The results are interesting.
The study…
January 20, 2011
Van Jones lays out a case against plastic pollution from the perspective of social justice. Because plastic trash, he shows us, hits poor people and poor countries "first and worst," with consequences we all share no matter where we live and what we earn. At TEDxGPGP, he offers a few powerful ideas…
January 20, 2011
I don't know about this ...
There's an angry divisive tension in the air that threatens to make modern politics impossible. Elizabeth Lesser explores the two sides of human nature within us (call them "the mystic" and "the warrior") that can be harnessed to elevate the way we treat each other. She…
January 20, 2011
Just because, I mean, wouldn't you want to know who she'd appoint to the supreme court?
January 20, 2011
Well, maybe, but probably not. Even though milk allergies in infants and very young toddlers are the most common food allergy, they still occur in only about 2.5 percent of the population in the US and other Western groups. For this reason, I was rather perplexed some months back when I…
January 19, 2011
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal President Obama's health care law.
I'm sure I'm speaking to the converted here, but if you happen to live in a US Congressional district with one of those representatives who voted to repeal this law, I'd like to pass on one whopping big "…
January 19, 2011
Of these three items, two will be of interest to you. Can't tell which two, though:
"My roomate lives like a horseradish" ... check out this web site that accumulates funny auto-correct mishaps.
Bill Gates beats Pope, Dali Lama in Popularity Contest (see this) just as Windows stops being THE…
January 19, 2011
Bedbugs (Insects of the Cimicidae family, commonly Cimex lectularius) are annoying, might carry diseases (though this is unclear, so probably nothing importat1, and are apparently becoming more common in the US. Interestingly, there has been very little study done of their genetics. A new study…
January 18, 2011
The Linux command 'units' may or may not be installed on your system. If not, if you use synaptic or apt, type (at the prompt)
sudo apt-get install units
or equiviliant for other distributions. Then type in the word "units" and play around. Here are a few sample outputs:
The program is a…
January 18, 2011
Since he is a minor his name has been withheld. The 14 year old boy in South Carolina called the police to tell them that he had attacked his father, his grandmother, and his great aunt. He told the police he'd be there when they arrived, possibly waiting outside. When police appeared on the…
January 18, 2011
Sometimes interesting scientific evidence shows up in unexpected places. Years ago, there had been discussion of the possibility that immediate post glacial climate in the North Atlantic coastal region was unusually warm, but the evidence was spotty. Then, I was looking through material taken…
