November 15, 2008
So, for the next two weeks or so, an army of volunteers, state workers, and lawyers are going to be counting and observing the counting, and contesting and arguing about, every single one of the nearly three million ballots cast last election day in Minnesota in the race for Senator.
I had spent…
November 15, 2008
(click the picture of the poll)
November 14, 2008
The paper I'm about to discuss is a minefield of potential misconceptions that arise from the way we often use language do describe natural phenomena. This is a situation where it would be easier to start with a disclaimer ... a big giant obvious quotation mark ... and then use the usual…
November 14, 2008
During the Franken - Coleman senatorial campaign in Minnesota, Republican Norm Coleman issues a number of very negative campaign ads filled with misrepresentations and lies about Al Franken. Meanwhile, Democrat Al Franken issued ads critical of Norm Coleman. There was a difference: Coleman's ads…
November 14, 2008
... or should I say "Archeology."
Analytical Archaeology by David Clarke is a medium size blue book about methods in archaeology that, during the 1970s and 1980s was probably required reading in all graduate level method and theory archaeology classes. It may still be in many cases. Clarke was…
November 14, 2008
... which should not be a huge surprise. Here are a few quotes from the recently published ... then hastily removed ... column of Cynthia Dunbar, who is a member of the Texas State Board of Education. Yes, she's one of the creationists:
Can we truly even imagine an America under an Obama…
November 14, 2008
What difference is there, really, between a roll, a muffin, and a croissant?
So what do we have in the blogosphere today, looking near the top of my blorg muffin...
You need to promise you are over 18 and an adult to visit A Blog from Hell, but if you get past the security, you can learn about…
November 14, 2008
An excellent read: Muslim Sailors, a Skeptical Redux
In a recent issue of Skeptic, Tim Callahan discusses the issue of ancient astronauts and lost civilizations.(1) This is perhaps one of the most frequent and popular theories of pseudo-archaeology, and certainly an area of concern ripe for a…
November 14, 2008
"I may not have won your vote," Obama said, "but I hear your voices, need your help, and I will be your president, too."
But the promise meant little to leaders of the religious right, who are undaunted by the Democrats' gains in the White House and in Congress.
"I knew, moments after the election…
November 14, 2008
The government army in the Democratic Republican of Congo has pushed rebel forces five km back in the vicinity of Goma. These rebels are north and west of Goma. Of particular importance is the effect on some sixty thousand refugees who camped out in the vicinity of Kibati, which is north of Goma…
November 14, 2008
While on a trip to Nebraska, Blogger PZ Myers has has the worst possible thing happen to a blogger happen to him.
His laptop has bit the dust.
Please send PZ condolences, and if anyone is anywhere near Kearney Nebraska, with a spare laptop, GO SAVE HIM!!!!
November 14, 2008
Maize weevil, Sitophilus zeamais [usda] ... or the corn rust or the corn root cutter or whatever pathogen that comes along that cannot be fought off with a cleverly concocted combination of chemicals. This is because all we eat is corn, or so it seems.
In a paper just published in PNAS,…
November 13, 2008
Imagine that you are a bad guy running from the law, and the sheriff is about to catch up to you. If you want, you can be Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid or any other charismatic bad guy. Or maybe you're a wizard in Harry Potter and Dementors are about to catch up to you.
But then, just as…
November 13, 2008
UNISEF in the Congo:
NEW YORK (November 12, 2008) -- Insecurity persists in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 250,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last two months alone, due to fighting between the army and a rebel group.
Today, two…
November 13, 2008
Evidence is increasing that foreign forces are being drawn into the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Eyewitnesses told the BBC Angolan and Zimbabwean troops were on the ground.
Meanwhile, journalists report that some of Laurent Nkunda's rebel fighters are in the pay of the…
November 13, 2008
In July 2007, armed men entered the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park and killed five critically endangered mountain gorillas at point-blank range, leaving the bodies where they fell.
Since September 2007, rebel forces have controlled the area, threatening to kill any…
November 13, 2008
Not just ANY planets, but planets outside of our solar system. Planets in another solar system! Observed by the Hubble Space Telescope, the other using other methods.
Visible and infrared images have been snapped of a planet orbiting a star 25 light-years away.
The planet is believed to be the…
November 13, 2008
You all remember the PZ Myers vs. Chuck Norris meme. Well, Chuck Norris just wrote a letter to Barack Obama which makes me think we need a Chuck Norris vs. Barack Obama meme. First, the letter from Chuck to Barack (which I have because I was cc'ed, of course...)
Dear President-elect Obama:
First…
November 13, 2008
In 1953 a student named Stanley Miller did an experiment showing that the simple chemicals present on the early Earth could give rise to the basic building blocks of life. Miller filled a flask with water, methane, hydrogen and ammonia--the main ingredients in the primordial soup. Then he zapped…
November 12, 2008
This image of the northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Energetic particles, crashing into the upper atmosphere cause the aurora, shown in blue, to glow…
November 12, 2008
The head of UN peacekeeping has asked the UN Security Council for more than 3,000 extra troops to protect civilians in the eastern DR Congo.
Alain Le Roy said current peacekeeper numbers were not enough to protect civilians from violence perpetrated by rebel groups and the Congolese army.
There are…
November 12, 2008
Or is "cheetos" singular ... I'm not sure.
But wait, there's more...
And now, a word from Joe the Plumber...
November 12, 2008
The name of Allah is written in this eggplant. (source) ... in Western Europe.
Currently, strange shaped veggies ... carrots that look like human sex organs, potatoes that look like Mr. Potato head wearing glasses, and of course, rutabagas in the shape of the Virgin Mother Mary cannot be…
November 12, 2008
It is hard to kill fungus. Well, not really. They can't handle being burned and chlorine does them in and lots of other chemicals are bad for hem. But when a fungus infects a person ... like with Aspergillos, an infection with Aspergillus in the lungs, fungi are tricky. To kill an infectious…
November 11, 2008
The Al Franken campaign seeks volunteers to help with the recount starting next week. There is a training session this Saturday and people are being asked to commit a day or more (but in units of whole days) to the effort some time over the subsequent weeks, on weekdays. (There are logistical…
November 11, 2008
Today, French and other European dignitaries gathered at the site of Verdun, where an eight month battle between the French and Germans was carried out during World War I, also known as the Great War, or the War to End All Wars. This is Armistice Day, marking the end of that war.
There were no…
November 10, 2008
Happy Birthday John Wilkins!
November 10, 2008
Cute baby lion kittens. When they grow up, they will want to eat you. I'll never forget the first wild lion I ever saw. It was a pitch black night, on the savanna in the Western Rift Valley. I had climbed on top of the hood of the Land Rover, engine off, but headlights on. My plan was to…
November 10, 2008
God Poll: This looks like a nice AJAX application that happens to ask some interesting questions. I'm showing it to you because of the technology, not because of the content. Not to encourage you to crash a poll or anything. Just because PZ does that.
