July 28, 2010
Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.
July 28, 2010
The Triassic is old. This book is new. That is a hard to beat combination.
Let's see ... The Triassic is about here:
(You can also look it up in this PDF file supplied by the USGS.
It is situated between two major extinction events, and is especially interesting because it is during this…
July 27, 2010
Note: On the Intertubes, he word "strike" and "scienceblogs" now occurs randomly in relation to topic at hand rather than in connection with Pepsico. Such as "Lightning Strike" and "Hunger Strike" and "doesn't strike me as shocking"
Note: When you are a single parent, it's pretty much baby OR…
July 27, 2010
Everybody should do this:
Dear Target,
What's $2183.70 to a big company like you, beloved by millions of shoppers throughout the land, with sales of $63.4 billion during 2009? Not much, but it's what my little family of three spent at your stores in 2009 and 2010, up to now. I know you don't need…
July 27, 2010
Details on the Barbie Video Girl Doll:
Your Barbie Video Girl doll is a real working video camera! With Video Girl, it's fun and easy to make your own movies. Here's how it works: her necklace is really a video camera lens! Lift her hood and you'll see a color LCD screen and three easy-to-use…
July 27, 2010
Break down the oil slick, keep it off the shores: that's grounds for pumping toxic dispersant into the Gulf, say clean-up overseers. Susan Shaw shows evidence it's sparing some beaches only at devastating cost to the health of the deep sea.
July 27, 2010
I've significantly expanded the search domain (or is that range?) of the Evolution ... not just a theory anymore Skeptical Search Engine. Click here to give it a try. Look up stuff like "ghost" and "vaccine" and "fluoride" and see what you get. Let me know if you think I'm missing any important…
July 27, 2010
Can you imagine Stephen Jay Gould recast as a tall and lanky Jesuit priest who has an interest in evolution? Can you imagine someone actually attempting the famous experiment of getting a large number of chimpanzees at keyboards to see if you can get any Shakespeare? Eventually? (The experiment is…
July 27, 2010
Or, more accurately, it is the rubber-meets the road part of the broader abuse known as religion.
OREGON CITY -- A Beavercreek couple who left their infant daughter's fate to God rather than seek medical treatment for a mass that grew over her left eye will face charges of first-degree criminal…
July 27, 2010
If the restaurant was being forced closed by the city making dumb tax-related decisions and the public works department acting almost vindictively against a certain neighborhood, as was the case when JP's closed, I'd be pissed. If it was a restaurant that was really trying to do well but failed…
July 26, 2010
Unless they are stopped which, frankly, does not seem very likely.
The Livingston Parish School Board, in Louisiana, is poised to enthusiastically support the introduction of creationism into the school curriculum as a requirement, and possibly even toss out evolution. You people in Louisiana are…
July 25, 2010
What matters is if he gets an obscene exit deal which essentially rewards him for overseeing the destruction of the Gulf of Fucking Mexico, or if he is tossed out on his ear and disgraced. I don't expect BP to do the right thing, but they will apparently do something soon.
July 25, 2010
Did you know that it is a fallacy that poor people have more babies than other people? I'll be discussing this topic next Friday at 6PM Mountain Time on Skeptically Speaking Talk Radio, with Desiree Schell, in the next installment of "Everything You Know is Sort of Wrong" (This is part of the…
July 25, 2010
Emacs Column Editing from Mark Mansour on Vimeo.
July 23, 2010
Wanted: A Firefox plugin that automatically scrolls pre-selected web pages down a certain distance to automatically cover the ubiquitous banner ad. It could be called "curtains."
July 23, 2010
The whole Pepsi maneno is over, and we are moving on. But I thought you'd like to see this site just because it is so unbelievably ugly. Be careful. The first time I opened this web page up on one of those old fashioned CRT monitors, the glass broke.
July 23, 2010
And that time may be now.
There is a beer (a Belgian ale to be exact) which costs over US$700 a bottle. It is 55 proof and looks like this:
Yes folks, that is a bottle of beer embedded in an actual taxidermied squirrel.
Seems funny, certainly strange to look at, but when I think about it, this…
July 23, 2010
There are several characteristics that make up a field guide. It should be "pocket size" (and birders have huge pockets, so this may not be as much of a restriction as it sounds). It should cover the geographical region in which you are watching the birds, although in some remote areas of the…
July 22, 2010
The story of Bora and Sci, two bloggers you may have heard of.
OMG, bugs AND cool graphs in the same post.
And, for something quit serious: Exercise and Peripheral Artery Disease
July 22, 2010
"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity...And I'm not afraid to say it. " ... so THAT's why they hate Mel Gibson? Follow the bouncing logic here.
When I was a kid, I collected stamp. I loved it. Then, one day, my uncle sent me a box of ash from a volcano that had…
July 22, 2010
Where all the crap on the Internet is excluded, so your results are from the kind of sites you actually want to use as sources of information?
CLICK HERE and bookmark that page!
July 22, 2010
Recently I witnessed something remarkable-yet altogether ordinary.
I had the honor of being invited to a family's memorial service a while ago. While not a member of this family, I am very close to one member and through him knew the deceased. To the others, Sylvia was sister, sister-in-law, aunt…
July 22, 2010
Just do it.
You were planning to give your favorite candidate 50 bucks, and 10 bucks to the Girl Scouts or whatever, and maybe a few bucks to some other cause over the next six months. Well, divert five, ten bucks (or if you're loaded, make it large) as an expression of appreciation to Bora.
Why…
July 22, 2010
... by people who really know how to tell a fortune...
Ask us any question you want! And we'll answer it for you! We'll have tarot cards! Palm readings! A crystal* ball! And dowsing pendulums (courtesy of SurlyRamics)!
You can even attend out pseudoworkshop "5 minute Google: How to impress your…
July 22, 2010
Remember Evolutionary Psychology? The theory?
It's over.
I think I've told the story elsewhere of having been at the birth of Evolutionary Psychology, down in room 14A in the Peabody Museum. If not, remind me some time and I'll tell it.
Evolutionary Psychology is a particular theory of how the…
July 22, 2010
Or at least, Greg Laden's Blog is no longer on strike. There is a scheduled phone conversation today between an elite subset of bloggers and the management. I have no idea how the phone call will go (or went), but I've been promised a summary eventually.
The bloggers were concerned about delayed…
July 22, 2010
There is a small but vocal movement of people who refuse to believe that skin cancer caused by sunlight is a significant health risk. These people tend to also believe that the risk is being purposely hyped by others, and that our current approach to skin cancer prevention is causing an epidemic…
July 22, 2010
On Friday, Paul Goldberg of The Cancer Letter reported on an investigation into Duke cancer researcher, Anil Potti, MD, and claims made that he was a Rhodes Scholar - in Australia. The misrepresentation was made on grant applications to NIH and the American Cancer Society.
This is important. Read…
