February 7, 2008
Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man he met at Wofford College. In telling Teszler's dramatic life story, which arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s, Dunlap shares some deep and, ultimately, moving lessons about justice -- and the power of…
February 7, 2008
Whenever I've reviewed a paper for publication, I always remind myself that I don't want to be the guy who reads only the good 75% of the paper, and skips over the 25% that contains some egregious error or insane reasoning. Apparently not everyone thinks that.
A paper recently published in the…
February 7, 2008
[Hat tip: JoAnn]
February 7, 2008
If you're ineligible to walk across the stage in your cap and gown, then you should be ineligible to walk on the field with your cap and glove.
I'm not certain that I agree with this argument, but it is worth considering.
There's [a Seinfeld] episode in which a floundering George Costanza is trying…
February 7, 2008
The video of the shark is cool, but to me it's just a video of a shark. But listen to the commentary and you realize that this is a big deal. Five or six meters long, a head a meter wide, something really interesting about its gill slits. I'm glad these guys are having so much fun!
This comes…
February 7, 2008
... as if you didn't know...
At Panda's Thumb, there
is a guest post by Daniel R. Brooks, FRSC. Brooks is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. In June 2007 he attended an apparently secret conference organized by ID advocates and…
February 7, 2008
An ambiguous report from Dubai suggests that a total of five undersea cables have been cut.
A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.
[source]
I have not seen any other information on this.
February 7, 2008
I became acquainted with an Englishman who was going to visit his estate ... more than a hundred miles [north] of Cape Frio. As I was quite unused to travelling, I gladly accepted his kind offer of allowing me to accompany him.
And so was the case with a number of Darwin's excursions into the bush…
February 6, 2008
The scientists have created the embryo in the lab
Scientists believe they have made a potential breakthrough in the treatment of serious disease by creating a human embryo with three separate parents.
[source]
February 6, 2008
is Here at Quintessence of Dust
February 6, 2008
British artist Alison Jackson talks about her provocative explorations of celebrity culture. By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, she's questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity…
February 6, 2008
The Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting Administration has made a decision in what has come to be known as t"The Luskin situation: A summary, analysis and decision." I believe they made the right decision, but for the wrong reasons. I respect and admire (and participate in) their…
February 6, 2008
Is here, at The Colossus of Rhodey
February 6, 2008
Debate: Are Science and Religion Compatible?
An Evening of Stimulating Intellectual Discourse, with Loyal Rue and PZ Myers
Sponsored by the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00pm - 10:00pm
West Bank Auditorium- Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55455…
February 6, 2008
South Carolina people know true conservatism when they see it.You don't like people outside the state telling you how you ought to raise your kids, you don't like people from outside the state telling you what to do with the flag ... In fact, if somebody came down to Arkansas and told us what to do…
February 6, 2008
... as Obama landslides (if I may verb that noun) Minnesota on Super Tuesday. Amanda and I went to the caucus last night, and stayed around for the vote count. We were in charge of making sure none of the voting slips dropped to the ground in the crowded classroom at the local High School.
The…
February 6, 2008
The nefarious Discovery Institute, the Creation Science think tank, is often secretive about its activities. It has not been entirely clear that they have been involved in the recent fight in Florida over the use of the word "evolution" and the teaching of mainstream, scientifically informed…
February 5, 2008
Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United…
February 5, 2008
Blog Carnival is an easy way to submit your wonderful post to a blog carnival. As the name implies. Berry Go Round is a new carnival about plants.
I think what you need to do now should be quite clear.
February 5, 2008
Natural Selection is the key creative force in evolution. Natural selection, together with specific histories of populations (species) and adaptations, is responsible for the design of organisms. Most people have some idea of what Natural Selection is. However, it is easy to make conceptual…
February 5, 2008
This has been a difficult decision. Clinton or Obama, either one, is a good candidate and would make a good president. McCain will be the Republican nominee. Clinton has been leading in the polls all along, but Obama is surging. In the last few days I've spoken to a dozen people who each know…
February 5, 2008
Concentrate a bunch of geeks in the Boston Area (like, at MIT), and eventually one of them will get a driver's license and discover how bad the traffic is. And invent something...
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers are testing a Linux-based automotive telematics system…
February 4, 2008
Possibly, according to this piece in the New York Times.
Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, pushed by Mr. Ballmer, was hostile. And during a conference call Friday with analysts and in a subsequent interview, he never once uttered the word "Google," referring to the Internet search giant…
February 4, 2008
... until you've read this.
I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system performance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista…
February 4, 2008
I still can't decide whom to vote for. I don't have much time. Must assimilate more data.
February 4, 2008
Determining where a genome has been produced or altered by an intelligent designer is a matter of some importance. Consider the claims that the HIV virus was engineered as a biowarfare weapon, or the concern that virulence genes from other organisms could be inserted into viruses and bacteria to "…
February 4, 2008
But probably too late for this year's election ...
The controversial decision to implement various types of electronic voting machines in place of paper ballots is garnering little public attention, while many states hastily implement flawed electronic voting machines and related election…
February 4, 2008
You may remember some time ago a brouhaha erupted when an upper Midwestern Blogger was told he had to erase a post that said something bad (yet truthful) about Cheri Yecke, who was at that time competing for the job of head of Florida Education. The company was a "scrubber" which promised to find…
