November 30, 2012
Hat Tip: Becky Crew
November 30, 2012
This looks interesting: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.
This is the description of the book:
The No Asshole Rule was awarded a Quill Award as the Best Business Book of 2007.
When Robert Sutton's "No Asshole Rule" appeared in the Harvard Business…
November 30, 2012
Huxley's Aunt and Uncle have given him, as Christmas and Birthday presents, various kits to make Imaginarium style train setups. Imaginarium is like Brio and Thomas the Tank Engine, but generally available as a Toys R Us Brand. He has enough cool bits and pieces to make a kind of double figure…
November 29, 2012
There are these things called "Atmospheric rivers." They are big long things up in the air that are loaded with water vapor, and much of the rain and other precipitation we experience comes out of them. This is notable when one of these rivers is extra wet, and there is an extra wet one out West…
November 29, 2012
When Bill O'Reilly said that you "can't explain tides" I laughed. Why did I laugh? Because if he wasn't such a dumb-ass he could have EASILY named a dozen thing that science claims to "know" that a reasonably good rhetorician could convince the average Tea Bagger that science really can't "know"…
November 29, 2012
From NASA:
PASADENA, Calif. - An international team of experts supported by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) has combined data from multiple satellites and aircraft to produce the most comprehensive and accurate assessment to date of ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica and their…
November 29, 2012
Next Fall, I will probably try something new in teaching an intro Biological Anthropology course: The Reverse Classroom. This is an idea that is being increasingly applied in High School settings. The simplest version of this idea is that classroom lectures are converted to an on line resource…
November 29, 2012
Let's see ... The Triassic is about here:
(You can also look it up in this PDF file supplied by the USGS.
It is situated between two major extinction events, and is especially interesting because it is during this period that modern day ecological systems and major animal groups took a…
November 28, 2012
You all know Don Prothero. He is an active member of the Skeptics and Science Blogging community. He is the author of several books, one of which you are totally supposed to own and if you don't it's kinda lame: Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. It occurred to me today that I…
November 28, 2012
Apparently a bunch of white guys.
And, now that I have your attention: I apologize if your comment was in "moderation" for a long time. The Scienceblogs backend stopped sending me notices when something was being held in moderation, so I did not see a build up of moderated posts happening. They…
November 28, 2012
Climate Denial Crock of the Week gives us this new video. Details here.
We are not yet where we need to be with this "when did you stop beating your wife" question sometimes in the form of:
"Can you REALLY attribute ANY storm to Global Warming, really? No? Then is global warming really real?…
November 28, 2012
Are you interested in birding but don't really know much about it? Did you just put a feeder outside and noticed that birds are interesting, or did you finally get around to stopping at that wildlife refuge you drive by every week on the way to the casino and realize that walking down to the swamp…
November 28, 2012
In an old colonial-looking restaurant that served ten kinds of steaks, I met up with an experienced explorer and a local farmer, to have dinner and discuss plans for an upcoming research project that would be managed by The Explorer and that would partly be on The Farmer's land, which adjoined a…
November 27, 2012
I find the following bit of video to be very interesting. The letter itself, which they read at the beginning, is instructive of why many people are creationists or otherwise anti-science. They are afraid to go to hell. The idea that a person will go to hell for believing in science is something…
November 27, 2012
After a couple of months of testing, the results are in.
I've attempted to wrestle with this issue on this blog before, but with unsatisfying results. PHS (Push Here Stupid) cameras can be tricky, for a number of reasons. A few years ago, my sister gave Julia a Sony, that new fancy digital…
November 27, 2012
The phrase "Correlation does not imply causation" has developed in to a Falsehood, as I discuss here. This is in part because people often use the phrase to argue that a particular correlation has no meaning, which is a false argument. It is, of course, true that a correlation does not in and of…
November 27, 2012
There are several things you need to do to be a better birder. Some of these things can be handled by just tossing money after the problem. Better binoculars, more books, that sort of thing. If you use those tools well they will improve your abilities as a birder. But the most important thing you…
November 27, 2012
Robin Lynne of DNA Diagnostics has put out a press release indicating that
…A team of scientists can verify that their 5-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” living in North America.…
November 27, 2012
The title of this post is, of course, a parody of the sociobiological, or in modern parlance, the "evolutionary psychology" argument linking behaviors that evolved in our species during the long slog known as The Pleistocene with today's behavior in the modern predator-free food-rich world. And,…
November 26, 2012
Alternate titles for this post:
"It turns out, it is a little like a priesthood."
"Join us. Join us. Join us. Braaainzzzzz"
"Imma gonna let you finish, but first I think you need to get your Wellies wet."
...
[Modified repost]
In a library, there is a spatial relationship between knowledge and…
November 26, 2012
When traveling and working in South Africa, I've always used Newman's guide to the birds of Southern Africa, and more recently, I found the Sasol guide to be helpful as well. (I discuss both briefly here.) Now, I've got on my desk a copy of Princeton's Birds of Southern Africa: Fourth Edition by…
November 26, 2012
Nature 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. When it comes to airplanes, you'd better be a servant to the rules of nature or the airplane will go splat. When it comes to…
November 25, 2012
Here is the website, here is the Facebook page, and here is the writeup:
Feeder Sketch is an 8 week free one line casual course. You can come and go as you please. No requirements, and any level of participation is welcome (from just seeing what it is, to drawing 2 times a week for and hour).
Join…
November 25, 2012
Many people assume human brains vary genetically and genetic variation maps to races. But the races are not real and genetic variation can't explain brain differences. Because, dear reader, brains don't work that way.
Let's look just at the brain part of this problem.
A Repost
There are…
November 25, 2012
It is not possible for anyone to understand every policy-important aspect of scientific knowledge at the level of detail necessary to accept that knowledge as valid, or to defend it against the evil anti-science denialists. So what is a skeptic to do?
[a timely repost]
Real science happens at…
November 25, 2012
Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games is a book designed for the youngest kids who can read comics and basic text who want to learn to program. The prgramming environment, Scratch, will be familiar to those who have experimented with Logo and Squeak.…
November 24, 2012
When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
(A timely repost)
Imagine the following two…
November 24, 2012
Imagine the following scenario. Two guys are walking down the street, in different cities. Guy A has two PhDs, one in quantum physics with a focus on dimensionality dynamics, the other in astrophysics with a focus on relativistic aspects of gravity and black holes. She has published dozens of…
November 24, 2012
Scientist could probably do a better job at understanding, and addressing, science denial. I know this is true. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard a scientist say something like "All you have to do is, bla bla bla" or "What I do is bla bla bla" in relation to science denialists, or…
November 24, 2012
My first computer language was PL/1, but soon after I learned, among other languages, Basic, and I really liked Basic and I still do. Basic is linear, and I think in linear constructs when I do any kind of computer program. This is probably, in part, because user interfaces are the last thing I…
