June 14, 2008
What are the chances that life evolved on other planets? 100%. What are the chances that some of THAT life evolved "intelligence"? Say 0.00001%. What is the chance that that life form is beaming messages to us? Zero. Nada. Zilch.
But...
What is the chance that intelligent live has junk TV…
June 13, 2008
"We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts." The best job you'll ever love! Travel! Excitement!…
June 13, 2008
Clipped from CultureCat Bacterial Communication Pathways; Super Computer to Mimic Brain Language Area; CDC: Breastfeeding Gap in US. Hospitals; Online Checklist of Bee Species; Bird Flu Strains that have Acquired Nasty Properties
MIT researchers unravel bacteria communication pathways
MIT…
June 13, 2008
The University of Minnesota Mascot, Goldie Gopher. Biological engineers at the University of Minnesota tend to be creationists. The main professor who teaches this subject is a creationist and he teaches a creationism seminar on a regular basis. He helps run and organize a Christian student…
June 13, 2008
Tim Russert, most recently the host of Meet the Press and the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC died earlier today.
Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday's "Meet the Press" program when he collapsed, the network said. No details were immediately available.
Russert, the recipient of 48…
June 13, 2008
A very Darwin-like god ponders what the nature of life will be like. From Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The origin of life presents a number of fundamental difficulties to science. One of these is the seemingly irreducible complexity of life itself. For instance, DNA codes for the…
June 13, 2008
... of Martian Dirt.
Phoenix used its Robotic Arm to test a "sprinkle" method for delivering small samples of soil to instruments on the lander deck. Bigger picture here. The Phoenix Lander is preparing to sprinkle Martian soil onto a flat place for a microscope to look at.
"On Monday,…
June 13, 2008
Hat Tip PZ
But wait, there's more.
And more...
June 13, 2008
A new, absolutely fantastic blog carnival is being developed. It is called "Shoulders of Giants" and it is meant to be a venue for blogging on classic papers.
The details can be found here.
June 12, 2008
Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic is a children's book for kids in third to fifth grade or, in my opinion, a little younger. Certainly this is an excellent choice, because of the cool illustrations, of a book to read aloud to the pre-literate little ones.
Author Gregory Wenzel does a good job in…
June 12, 2008
I and the Bird #77; The Birds Greatest Hits is HERE at Great Auk...
June 12, 2008
The following image (below the fold) is a little large (that is why it is below the fold). Over one half meg in size.
It is a map of major flooding around the world over the last several years, not counting this year and last. If you add in the present flooding in the Midwest, it is very clear…
June 12, 2008
I need to relate a somewhat complicated story about James Watson, Seed, Scienceblogs, Me and You.
James Watson was on the board of directors of Seed Magazine at the time he made remarks mentioned in this post (reposted earlier today). I was just coming on board Science Blogs at that time, so I'…
June 12, 2008
Pluto is the ninth planet in our solar system. In our planetary mythology, it is the ninth planet, it is small, far away, cold, and there is an important cartoon dog named after it. But astronomers decided a while ago that Pluto is not a planet. That throws everything out of balance. Nine…
June 12, 2008
By a vote of 94-3, Louisiana's House of Representatives today passed an academic freedom bill that would protect teachers and school districts who wish to promote critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics.
There was no vocal opposition, and the floor…
June 12, 2008
Joomla! is a Content Management System that is so widely used and cool that you can buy Joomla logo gear, like this shirt. Could that mean that it is a good CMS? And why would you want one?
Before I started Gregladen.com, I went through all of the content management sites that I had available…
June 11, 2008
Carnival of the Godless #93
Carnival of Liberals #66: Anything Goes Edition
The 175th Carnival of Education: Game Show Edition
Homeschooling Carnival, June 10
June 11, 2008
Just for fun. A repost of something that floated to the top several months ago. October 17th 2007 to be exact. There is a reason I'm reposting this. For now, I'll let you guess.
It is now time to kick James Watson's ass.
The man is a terrible embarrassment to us all. ("Us" being scientists…
June 11, 2008
Hat tip: Doug.
June 11, 2008
This just in:
Perhaps he was inspired by the turnout for Young People Fucking, or maybe he misses all that media attention he got after taking credit for getting C-10 through the House with nary a peep over the controversial changes to the film tax rebate. Whatever the reason, Reverend Charles…
June 11, 2008
But wait, there's more....
This reminds me of my first trip to Boston as a non-child. It was with my friend Karl to see his cousin Mark. Mark lived in an area of Somerville that I eventually got to know quite well myself (student ghetto) years later. This was about the time the city was…
June 11, 2008
And this is the resulting divot::
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this image on Sol 14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing. It shows two trenches dug by Phoenix's Robotic Arm.
Soil from the right trench, informally called "Baby Bear," was delivered to Phoenix…
June 11, 2008
In Pictures.....
McCain:
Obama:
This item has been going around the intertubes for a while now, with this quote:
"Other than overleverage, bad debts, sinking home prices, no jobs, shrinking wages, cash strapped US consumers, rising oil prices, a sinking US dollar, $500 trillion in derivatives…
June 10, 2008
The following is a description supplied by Amanda of an event she observed two weekends back at The Lake in North/Central Minnesota:
There appeared to be an animal acting strangely on the surface of the water. On further inspection, it turned out to be a bald eagle moving across the surface using…
June 10, 2008
Participate in Sourceforge.net's 2008 Community Choice Awards.
Sourceforge, along with Freshmeat, is a central repository for OpenSource community driven software projects. When installing software on your Linux box, you are better off using the built in software for installation and not…
June 10, 2008
Has Bill Gates discovered drugs? What is the perfect desktop? Law against cyberbullying.
Bill Gates at a recent press conference:
"Mundie and Ballmer are idiots. Their talk about how open source software damages intellectual property or how Linux is a cancer, is moronic. When I heard these…
June 10, 2008
The film we've all been waiting for ... Randy Olson (of Flock of Dodos fame) has produced a new film called Sizzle. In the film Olson uses the approach he used in Dodos to address the global warming issue. I have not seen the film but hope to review it soon.
Mean time, here's the press release in…
