March 6, 2008
As wolves wander into Massachusetts, we now have a report of the elusive Wolverine being spotted on a research camera in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Camera Spots Wolverine in Sierra Nevada from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- A research project aimed at weasels has turned up a bigger prize: a picture of a…
March 6, 2008
May any parent legally homeschool children in California? Last week, a state appellate court said no. A unanimous three-judge panel ruled that California law lays down specific circumstances under which homeschooling is permitted, and not all parents meet the requirements.
[source]
March 6, 2008
Late last month, I put up a quick post, New-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression, that addressed a PLoS published metastudy of interest.
I was careful to use the phrasing from the paper as the title of my post, and to provide only the author'…
March 6, 2008
A public service announcement for those of you living in or passing through Nevada:
Vegas Clinic May Have Sickened Thousands from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick. In a type of scandal more often associated with Third…
March 6, 2008
There is a fairly new paper in PLoS on the colonization of the New World. It is the latest in a series of attempts to synthesize biogeography, climate change related paleoenvironmental reconstruction, genetics, and archaeology.
The authors draw these conclusions:
These results support a model for…
March 6, 2008
Tangled Bank #99, Bad Flew Edition is Here at Archaeoporn
March 6, 2008
This just in via my Newsmax.com newsletter:
WASHINGTON -- Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count.
The governors of both states are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over…
March 6, 2008
There is a new paper out suggesting that the Flores hominids, known as Hobbits, were "human endemic cretins."
From the abstract of this paper:
... We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic (ME) cretins, part of an inland population of (mostly unaffected) Homo sapiens. ME…
March 5, 2008
I'm kind of shocked. Well, whatever.
Some moron just blew 70 bucks, or whatever it takes to register a domain name, to anonymously post photographs of most of the scienceblogs.com bloggers (without linkbacks, and therefore in violation of Blogging Ethics and possibly copyright laws), dividing the…
March 5, 2008
Brokered Conventions do not happen too often these days. This is partly because everyone remembers 1968 as a nightmare. But we also have to remember 1968 as a key moment in a kind of revolution that happened.
A very large number of voters today do not necessarily know what this is about. I've…
March 5, 2008
At least, according to Clinton:
Asked on CBS's "The Early Show" whether she and Obama should be on the same ticket, Clinton said:
"That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me."
March 5, 2008
McCain is Bad
March 5, 2008
This, obviously, is the removal of an entire mountain to get at the coal, to ship to a power plant near you so that you can get electrictiy. There is a movement to reduce the amount of mountaintop removal mining, and you can get the details here at Bootstrap Analysis.
You will also find a number…
March 5, 2008
Several years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who at that time, like me, spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks in Update New York. This was in the 1970s. He had spent a week or so on cross country skis on the north slope (facing Canada) the previous winter. On his second or third day…
March 5, 2008
Our colleagues over at scienceblogs.com of Germany have a new cool video. My German is rusty but let me try to translate:
If you mix warm and cold (liquid or gas) you get a temperature that is in between. But what if the "warm" is burning thermite (at thousands of degrees C) and the cold is…
March 5, 2008
Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) who fear that the "soft" Indian state may not be able to stand up…
March 5, 2008
I only heard this term recently, as one of my students is beginning a research project on the topic. The idea, of course, is that the more food you eat from local sources, the better your impact, or lack there of, on the environment. (Well, I had heard of this concept before, but not that…
March 5, 2008
Given two pills, one that costs ten cents and the other that cost $2.50, with both being simple sugar pills with no possible medical benefit, the more expensive pill works better to ameliorate certain conditions. I'm sure that the pharmaceutical companies will like this!
Durham, NC -- A 10-cent…
March 5, 2008
In 1986, 22-year-old Boston Celtics forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. This week, DrugMonkey argued that Bias' death--as opposed to educational programs like DARE--was the major reason why self-reported rates of cocaine use by 20-year-olds dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to 7% in the…
March 5, 2008
The Obama Surge may still be real, but it has hit the hard rocky shore of the Clinton Campaign in Ohio and Texas. Or has it. I heard an alternative theory explaining the patterning of the election last night that I think is pretty interesting.
This was related by Chris Matthews during election…
March 5, 2008
Jonathan Wells has launched a nasty attack on PZ Myers and Ian Musgrave on the discredited Discovery Institute web site.
Darwinist bloggers P. Z. Myers and Ian Musgrave hate me. In fact, Myers writes, "My animus for Jonathan Wells knows no bounds."...
The most recent outbursts by Myers and…
March 5, 2008
Voters told urologist Barney Maddox to piss off, leaving incumbent and former school teacher Pat Hardy in her position on the school board representing District 11. The people of that Texas District were too smart to be fooled by an excessively expensive campaign by Maddox who spent over $120,000…
March 4, 2008
When certain space ships travel by the Earth they seem to demonstrate a shift in velocity that is not predicted. Space ships traveling parallel to the Earth's Equator do not seem to show this anomaly; It appears to be most readily observed in those that travel in a path unsymmetrical with respect…
March 4, 2008
NASA is considering a trip to the moon, and this time, the destination would be the scenic South Polar Region. Pursuant to this, they have compiled a set of more detailed than ever high-resolution radar maps of the Man in the Moon's chin.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected…
March 4, 2008
As spring approaches, so does fishing opener. My tackle is at the cabin. I'll go there soon and begin preparations, stopping at the Mule Lake Store to pick up a fresh License. The following is the preliminary draft of my list of things to do. This list includes both things to do in preparation…
March 4, 2008
It is very common, across the U.S., for science teachers to dread the "evolution" unit that they teach during life science class. As they approach the day, and start to prepare the students for what is coming, they begin to hear the sarcastic remarks from the creationist students. When the day to…
