September 6, 2017
This is a response to "Removing statues of historical figures risks whitewashing history: Science must acknowledge mistakes as it marks its past," a commentary published in Nature. For the most part, the commentary reads like a caution to not un-name things and not remove monuments in at least…
September 2, 2017
First, please take two minutes to watch and listen to this, in order to calibrate:
https://youtu.be/g25G1M4EXrQ
Now, remove all liquid containing vessels from the vicinity, put on your head-desk helmet gear, and watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=GUcsAFnwC7k
Then,…
September 2, 2017
There has been a trickle of state or federal level races pitting Democrat against Republican, which potentially serve as a barometer for how politics will actually play out on the ground over the next 18 months or so under the Trump Regime.
In my view, these races have shown two things.
1)…
August 31, 2017
Three statisticians go hunting for rabbit. They see a rabbit. The first statistician fires and misses, her bullet striking the ground below the beast. The second statistician fires and misses, their bullet striking a branch above the lagomorph. The third statistician, a lazy frequentist, says, "…
August 30, 2017
UPDATE Sept 9, AM
Note that tropical storm force winds may start hitting southern Florida around 1 or 2 PM today, Saturday, and will reach central Florida by about 8AM Sunday.
The eye of the storm should be abreast southern Florida at around sunup on Sunday. The storm may remain a major hurricane…
August 29, 2017
No, this is not a religious reference to Houston or even Trump.
This is, however, a notice that the sci fi classic by Arthur Clarke, The Hammer of God , is suddenly, and I assume temporarily, available for two bucks in Kindle version. Just thought you'd want to know.
August 28, 2017
Harvey the Invisible Rabbit: Did not exist.
This is a picture of some men.
Since they are men, they have some abilities. They can, for example, knock each other over, and they can play with balls. This is what men do, and this is what these men can do.
This is a picture of some professional NFL…
August 27, 2017
There are two reasons that it is fortunate that the death toll for Harvey is very low, compared to similar size storms at other times and at other places (zero at the time I first wrote this, a few confirmed, maybe ten or so suspected three days after landfall).. One is that all those people didn't…
August 26, 2017
Member of the press are so cute. They evolve so slowly. They are like monotremes or something.
It is said again and again that a) government agencies and other entities, especially things like the White House, dump their news late on Fridays because this avoids the normal five-day news cycle and…
August 25, 2017
You know of Pat Shipman at the very least because of her recent and, dare I say, highly controversial and excellent book The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction. If you've not read it, do so. But, in the mean time, another book she wrote in the same area, The…
August 25, 2017
The following information is cribbed (with permission) from a FACTBOX produced by S&P Global Platts. Petroleum companies in the Gulf, especially around Houston, are are responding to likely shutdowns or possible damage due to the strengthening Hurricane, which is expected to have its largest…
August 24, 2017
It suddenly became apparent, just a couple of days ago when President Trump was ranting and raving at a political rally, that the man does not know what clean coal is.
This is a concern because his entire energy policy stems from the assumption that we can mine lots of coal in West Virginia and…
August 24, 2017
Anthill: A Novel
Winner of the 2010 Heartland Prize, Anthill follows the thrilling adventures of a modern-day Huck Finn, enthralled with the "strange, beautiful, and elegant" world of his native Nokobee County. But as developers begin to threaten the endangered marshlands around which he lives,…
August 24, 2017
Many years ago I was working on a project that, if I recall correctly, used the basic idea of the mouse-elephant curve to test out some statistical feature of reality or some such thing. Or the reverse. Either way, the point is I was using the mouse-elephant curve data.
What is the mouse-elephant…
August 24, 2017
Remember the revelation back a year or so ago that Exxon Mobil knew all about the likely effects of the global warming they contributed to, and the subsequent denials by Exxon that this was not true, yada yada yada?
A paper has just come out that confirms what we all said then. From the abstract:…
August 24, 2017
Every now and then, I hear someone giving the Republican Party credit for finally starting to get on board with 20th (or even 19th) century science, and 21st century eyeballs, to accept the idea of climate change. That is annoying whenever it happens because it simply isn't ever true and never will…
August 24, 2017
Posting this with no comment because it is expected and so obviously bone-headed Trump:
US President Donald Trump's administration has disbanded a government advisory committee that was intended to help the country prepare for a changing climate.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric…
August 24, 2017
SEE END OF POST FOR IMPORTANT UPDATE
A while back, I read Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War by Mark Ragan. The central theme of the book was the invention, more or less, of the submarine and the torpedo, curing the Civil War, but the South.
The…
August 24, 2017
Harvey the Hurricane will hit Texas roughly between Corpus Christi and Victoria (but stay tuned for exact details).
Harvey is passing over water that is significantly warmer than usual, owing to global warming. This storm was too disorganized to even, under normal conditions, to have a name, just a…
August 22, 2017
Darwin's Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution explores the explorations of Wallace, Huxley, Darwin and Hooker. You don't see this in one book, and it is all very important and, for the moment, cheap at twice the price.
I've never read The Lion in the Living Room: How…
August 22, 2017
Stay classy, Trump administration.
Details here.
August 21, 2017
One mean spirited decision intended to end the effort to end slavery led to one million dead and the end of slavery anyway.
I spent some time this weekend comparing prosecutors and other legal eagles, who were all hoping to get the job of Attorney General. They were Candidates General, I guess…
August 18, 2017
I've mentioned at various times in the past The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett. This is not a new book, but it is an excellent scholarly and accessible accounting of the situation with respect to emerging diseases at the time of its publication…
August 18, 2017
Over the years, the field guide and the coffee table book have merged, and we now have coffee table-ish books (but serious books) that include a species description of every critter in a certain clade. In the case of Horses of the World by Élise Rousseau (Author), Yann Le Bris (Illustrator),…
August 17, 2017
General John F. Kelly is retired from the US Marine Corps, where he commanded the Southern Command. He replaced political operative Reince Priebus as President Trump's Chief of Staff.
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking staff member in the White House, and was formalized as such…
August 16, 2017
Greenhouse gases go up and down in three ways.
First, there is the annual up and down cycle that happens because there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere. I won't explain that to you now because I know you can figure out why that happens.
Second, there is natural variation up and down aside…
August 16, 2017
It wasn't much of a corner, he was already pretty much there, but yesterday, Donald J. Trump, pretender to the Presidency of the United States, threw in his lot with the "good people" of the fascist, white-supremacist, KKK-loving movement.
There is a lot of commentary out there about this. None of…
August 16, 2017
I have a feeling that foxes are in trouble with the new EPA administration, but FOX is in great shape. According to an analysis by Media Matters, Scott Pruitt has spent considerably more time appearing on Fox News than other networks. In fact, he's spent twice as much time on Fox as he has on all…
August 15, 2017
Not the same.
Muslims must take the blame for all things done by anyone linked to an extreme Islamic group or ideology. Christians have nothing to do with anything, they were just standing there minding their own beeswax.
The video below was fixed by Media Matters for America thusly:
In a notably…
August 15, 2017
Let's start with CheMystery.
This is a fun graphic novel mystery book by C.A. Preece and Josh Reynolds. Two cousins experience an incident that would make a physicist cry, but that works in a chemistry book because they now have the ability to observe and change matter. So this is a superhero…