Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator. His research has covered North American prehistoric and historic archaeology and African archaeology and human ecology. He is an OpenSource and OpenAccess advocate. Greg's wife, Amanda, is a High School biology teacher, his daughter Julia is a world traveler and his son Huxley is 2.
And the worst case scenario is that this lead could drop by far less then necessary to turn the race around.
Everyone assumes that the loser, in this case Coleman, will file a law suit. It would fit with how the game has been played so far. But what would such a law suit do? It is not the case…
Or perhaps just the scariest... Game Show In My Head.
(Chances are this has been on TV for years and I've never noticed it, but we just happened to watch it tonight. Not that we ever watch TV ... we just happened to bump into the TV and it turned on and stuff.)
Have you seen it?
As a daughter, I was raised to know nothing about money. Whenever I tried to ask my father a question on the subject he would respond, "Nu, Daphne? Since when the interest in business?" and shoo me away.
... apropos our discussion here, read about Bernie Madoff -> here
ty Ana
Scientists monitoring at Mount Moreland - South Africa's largest Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica roost - have captured their first overseas ringed bird from a festively snowy location. The young Barn Swallow had flown all the way from Finland - a total of 11,000 km! "This is an amazing Christmas gift…
A French warship has intercepted two suspected pirate boats in the Gulf of Aden and arrested eight Somalis on board, the French navy says.
International naval patrols are credited with helping deter most recent hijack attempts off Somalia, with only two ships captured last month.
But pirates still…
I live in Minnesota, and our team is the Vikings. So I know something about losing, and from this perspective, I can explain to you what Norm Coleman is doing.
First, the context. Tomorrow, Saturday, the canvassing board will open and count absentee ballots and add that to the mix. As I…
With the increased seismic activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, it is likely that there is some increased interest in in the geology of the area. Here are some resources that should be of interest.
First, we have a fairly recent peer reviewed publication on the "Super Volcano" known as Yellowstone…
Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team.
story here
You have already heard that there has been increased seismic activity at Yellowstone National Park over the last few days. Since December 26th, there have been several earthquakes a day, some jut over 3.0 magnitude, in the vicinity of the north side of Yellowstone's lake. This is a seismically…
Oldest American man dies at 112
America's oldest man, an African-American who befriended Louis Armstrong and voted for president-elect Barack Obama "because he's black," has died in Sacramento, California, his family said.
The current situation is this: We are waiting for a final decision next week on the outcome of the race, and most likely this outcome will start numerically with Franken's current 49 vote lead and be adjusted by the addition of several hundred absentee ballots. The exact number of these ballots…
The best soccer team on the planet has just over a 1 in four chance of winning the world cup even it it makes it to the last stages of the season. I suppose this is because they play for, like, four hours and each side gets, like, zero or one points. So it's kinda like being really really good at…
I do not have the vaguest clue what a Microsoft Zune is, but there are reports that they are all crapping out roughly at the same time for unknown reasons. Microsoft technical support is on vacation, so apparently they don't know about it. Details can be found here.
It is a good thing it is…
Naturalism is a potential source of guidance for our behavior, morals, ethics, and other more mundane decisions such as how to build an airplane and what to eat for breakfast.1 When it comes to airplanes, you'd better be a servant to the rules of nature or the airplane will go splat. When it…
... So, if you drive the boat downstream past the hippos they watch you go by, the big male feints attack a few times, you get past them, and everybody gets over it. Up ahead, the next pod of hippos has observed this, and they are waiting for your arrival....
Read the rest.
Who?
Yes, the Who too!
So, I'm watching a bit of the Kennedy Center's annual super duper awards. Morgan Freeman won an award. Did you know he was discovered as the driver in Driving Miss Daisy, though he had a long and undistinguished career before that? Did you know that B.B. King has gotten…
From the BBC:
Wildlife officials in Australia are investigating how an alligator native to North America was found wandering around a campsite in New South Wales.
Campers at the site in Pambula managed to snare the beast in a volleyball net and held its jaws shut.
Police first issued a press…
... and other matters.
The following list represents widely held beliefs, either first order beliefs (things you hear people say) or second order beliefs (things implied directly by what people say):
Evolution is very slow.
It takes millions of years for a species to evolve into another species.…
The next few days will be the most interesting, potentially, in the Franken Coleman recount.
Notice that I do not use any words like "Debacle, Fiasco, Circus, Swampmire" and so on when speaking of the recount. This is because this is a democratic (as in America! The Greatest Democracy in the…
Without distinctions and boundaries, the race concept cannot apply to a given species. Species with observable geographical differences in one or more traits may be better described as having clinal variation. Without correlation among traits, the race concept has none of its usual utility, whereby…
The Bush Anti-Patriot Act and its paper minions across the states is nothing less than the undoing of the fundamentals of American freedom. Ironically, this has been done with the collusion of the poorly educated Libertarian and Rightist supporters of the conservative movement, who really, honestly…
...I notice the door man take a quick glance up the street and subtly drop his smoke out of sight next to the stairs. He steps half way onto the sidewalk. Sure enough, Baronelli himself is coming down Hanover, walking his dog ... a tiny frenetic brown thing ... leash in one hand and an unlit cigar…
Why was this post so popular? Scantily clad athletes? Hair raising death denying stunts? Incredible writing and a fascinating story? People googling the Olympics a lot? We'll never know.
I'm not mentioning any names, and don't ask me any details. In fact, don't repeat this story.
Some years ago, when I was a mere graduate student, a fellow student working in an unnamed country in Africa discovered a very very old stone artifact. To this day, this bit of chipped stone debris,…
To me, the key moment in CrackerGate was the posting by PZ Myers of the key, essential truth of it all: The same church law that mandated the sacredness of the Eucharist also mandated that Jews would always wear a mark indicating their Jewishness. The latter eventually lead to the holocaust, as…
Many of my posts related to the Webster Cook Affair received a great deal of attention. In fact, the blogospheric activities related to the PZ Myers CrackerGate showed up as a noticeable bump in the internet and blew out a couple of those Middle Easter cables that are always breaking. This post…
