August 7, 2010
Oceanographer John Delaney is leading the team that is building an underwater network of high-def cameras and sensors that will turn our ocean into a global interactive lab -- sparking an explosion of rich data about the world below.
August 7, 2010
Conversion is the process through which a person's orientation on reliigion changes. How do people turn from and to new religious groups, ways of life, systems of belief and modes of relating to a deity or a the nature of reality. Dr. Grant Steves will be with me in the studio to discuss faith,…
August 6, 2010
Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.
August 6, 2010
On Thursday, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Operations, blogged on the official Google Blog (which, funnily enough, is just some blogspot blog, but whatever) that Google would no longer be developing Google Wave. Key elements of the technology are OpenSource so they may continue to be used…
August 5, 2010
Wanted: A bash command that undoes the previous bash command. The name of the command shall be "oops." It will be written in an object oriented programming language.
See the whole "WANTED" list here.
August 5, 2010
The Carnival of Evolution #26 is Here on The Thoughtful Animal.
Submit your posts for the next carnival here.
August 5, 2010
After he swam the North Pole, Lewis Pugh vowed never to take another cold-water dip. Then he heard of Lake Imja in the Himalayas, created by recent glacial melting, and Lake Pumori, a body of water at an altitude of 5300 m on Everest -- and so began a journey that would teach him a radical new way…
August 5, 2010
Check out the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" web site.
Get rid of the senate method of fillibuster.
If you are in CA, work against Prop 23.
August 5, 2010
"When my life is through, bury me in barbeque."
Hat Tip: Miss Cellania.
August 5, 2010
Watch it now before AGW makes it all go away.
August 5, 2010
My grandfather fought against the assault on our freedoms in the form of the Kaiser's army in WW I. At one point he became gravely ill (the "Spanish flu" perhaps) and was not allowed to march forward with his unit. They were all killed.
My father fought in WW II against the Nazi's, who were one of…
August 5, 2010
Named Tropical Depression Colin, which started to dissipate more quickly than expected yesterday, looks like it may be getting reorganized again. It is now just a low pressure area 300 miles north of the Virgin Islands, but probably contains some tropical storm force winds. It is possible that…
August 4, 2010
First, the horrific, over the top, original video:
Then, the funny version:
Thanks (I think) to Virgil Samms for the tip.
August 4, 2010
Which we already knew, but now the gummit knows it too.
Details
August 4, 2010
For now. This just in from the National Center for Science Education:
Creationism won't be taught in the public schools of Livingston Parish, Louisiana -- at least not yet. The Baton Rouge Advocate (August 1, 2010) reports that "The Livingston Parish School Board won't try to include the…
August 4, 2010
Do you remember when, in an act of slap-in-the-face cynicism (that American Environmentalists accepted with little protest) Ronald Regan took the previously deployed (and largely symbolic) solar panels off of the roof of the white house?
Bill Clinton did not restore them. Bush ... well, whatever…
August 4, 2010
... emerged Huxley:
No, no, not THAT Huxley, THIS Huxley:
Please visit Cocktail Party Physics for an amazing essay on Thomas Henry Huxley (who is indeed the namesake of the other Huxley). Read: How East London defined "Darwin's Bulldog" and brought him into conflict with the world's most…
August 4, 2010
It is well established among those who carry out, analyze, and report pre-employment performance testing that slope-based bias in those tests is rare. Why is this important? Look at the following three graphs from a recent study by Aguinis, Culpepper and Pierce (2010):
Figure 1. Illustration…
August 4, 2010
Did you know that Isaac Newton had two jobs? One, you know about: To figure out all that physics and math stuff so we could live for a while in a Newtonian world. The other was as th big honcho of the Royal Mint. Where they make the money.
In that second job, Newton had several interesting…
August 4, 2010
Park mangers say they euthanized "an aggressive, habituated, and human-food-conditioned black bear" Tuesday out of "concern for visitor safety."
But it was also a result of stupid people making unnatural food available to the bear.
The adult female bear had been seen frequenting the Slough Creek…
August 4, 2010
In Iran, there was NOT an assassination attempt on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here is a picture of him not being assassinated as his bodyguards don't react to anything as startled onlookers glance at the cite where there was not an explosion behind them.
(Photograph from Reuters, in The Guardian,…
August 4, 2010
Barack Obama
Born on or near August 4th 1961, in Honolulu Hawaii. Or somewhere.
August 4, 2010
Overturning more than 40 years of accepted practice, new research proves that the tools used to check tests of "general mental ability" for bias are themselves flawed. This key finding from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business challenges reliance on such exams to make objective…
August 3, 2010
John McKay at Archy has written an in-dept analysis of Minnesota Congressperson Michele Bachmann. Read it here.
Surly Amy address Religion vs. Faith.
And, of course, the Ultimate Death Match: Fungus vs Worm
August 3, 2010
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Write your answer here!
August 3, 2010
In the 1960s, the whole idea of a "greenhouse effect" was well understood, and assumed to be an important potential factor in climate change. So was glaciation, and the short and medium term future of the Earth's climate was less clear than compared to now. But the basics were there ... C02 was…
August 3, 2010
There is a new blog you should check out: OpenSourcePhotography.org. It deals with, believe it or not, OpenSource stuff and Photography stuff. There is some real potential there, I hope it develops.
There is apparently a big fight among OpenSource community members about whether or not Ubuntu (…
