June 27, 2012
I finally watched Downfall. That's the movie about the last days of the Third Reich, a couple of scenes from which form the basis for all those Internet Memes where Hitler is talking about how much meat there is in a meal from Taco Bell. It is actually quite a good movie. If you were worried that…
June 27, 2012
A lot of animal cams suck. The angle is bad, the lighting is poor, the animal is usually not there, etc. etc. But this puffin cam is actually pretty darn good. When the bird pecks at the camera you want to duck.
Check it out.
It's from Audubon. Here's some text from the press release:
Seal…
June 26, 2012
This is coming from a few different sources none of which are really linkable so I'll just copy and paste this press release from the Environmental Defense Fund:
*** BREAKING *** BREAKING *** BREAKING ***
...
Moments ago, a federal appeals court upheld EPA's climate pollution emission standards,…
June 26, 2012
Astronomers have discovered something that should not be there. It is an arc of light. The arc is the effect of gravitational lensing which happened as light passed by a massive galaxy about 10 billion years ago in space-time. In other words, in this universe, but very far away and a very long…
June 26, 2012
This is the first and only one of these.
There really ought to be a sound track.
June 26, 2012
Matt Lowry, whom I hope to be seeing in a couple of weeks, has written an article on his blog and republished on the JREF web site, called Is It Time To Call Creationists’ Bluff And Push For “Teaching All Views”?
The idea is this. There has been a recent change in strategy among creationists (which…
June 25, 2012
In this video, Genie Scott dissects the claims, the tactics, and the methods being used to confuse the public about what is science and what isn’t:
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photo of Darwin by kevinzim
June 25, 2012
When installing a "porch light" (to light the entrance way ans any stairs, and the immediate area outside the cabin) do not place the light near the door as is often the custom. The light is meant to be used at night. Out in cabin country, when you turn that light on at night, 22 gazillion insects…
June 25, 2012
I am going to write a bunch of blog posts about marriage.
You should regard my opinion about marriage to be valuable; I've had several of them. And in this way, I may be more like a hunter-gatherer than a "modern" Westerner, as the practice among the former is to treat marriage as very important…
June 24, 2012
It has just been reported that Lonesome George, the Galapagos Tortoise who was considered to be the last of is kind, has died.
the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years…
June 24, 2012
Despite the fact that we observe the world around us everyday, for many common phenomena we have a very poorly developed sense of the important variables of size, shape, position, and motion. As I sit here by the side of the lake and look around numerous examples come to mind. One example arises…
June 23, 2012
Are you aware of Dana Hunter's current project? The author of En Tequila es Verdad, the blog that always makes me want to take a shot, is writing detailed essays that track events connected to the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. She's writing them as part of her blogging over at Scientific…
June 23, 2012
I hear things are pretty busy in the Upper Upper Midwest of Alberta, Canada, and I suppose because of that, Skeptically Speaking has two off-air productions, one with the podcast just out, the other, this week's show, coming out next week. Both are really interesting to me, and I'm sure to you as…
June 23, 2012
CERN isn't just the LHC. It's also rusty windows and post war big science. Interesting video:
June 23, 2012
It's cold and raining at the cabin. We got the physics right, capturing the cold night air through open windows and then closing up so that when it get warmer later in the day we'll have built in air conditioning, but we might have overshot slightly. Huxley got up early and was sitting in his…
June 23, 2012
Within a few days of the completion of the on-line draft of Sungudogo: A Novel, scientists have published the key data describing a killer H5N1 virus.
Coincidence? I would assume so. But still....
June 22, 2012
Tip 1: Get some corn-on-the-cob and a large pot for which you have a tight fitting top. Husk the corn while you boil a large amount of water in the pot (salted if you like, for flavor). Put the corn-on-the-cob in the water and leave the heat on only for a minute, put the top on and turn off the…
June 22, 2012
First, I have a new post up at 10,000 Birds: Evolution of the Multi-Media Bird
Then, you should check out the recent adds at Free Thought Blogs. You probably know that Zinnia Jones and Ashley Miller were added recently. The other day, Aron Ra of the Ace of Clades was added.
And, today,…
June 21, 2012
Pastoralism is the practice of keeping and herding animals such as cattle, goats and sheep, and using the products they produce, including meat, hide, bone, horn and of course, dairy. In the old days, armchair archaeologists thought that pastoralism would have been a phase of cultural adaptation…
June 21, 2012
There is an item in PLoS ONE on one of my favorite topics: Wikipedea. This study examines the Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia
... we build up samples of controversial and peaceful articles and analyze the temporal characteristics of the activity in these samples. On short time scales, we show…
June 20, 2012
We can't say how long the 'verge' is. Certainly years. But is it years-years or decades-years? Quite possibly sooner than many might have guessed just a few years ago. I like to be cautious about predicting breakthroughs that have not happened yet, but the results reported a few days ago at a…
June 20, 2012
Music of the Birds by Lang Elliott is a classic book and CD combo well over 10 years old, that provided bird lovers with a chance to learn to identify and appreciate the songs of numerous species. Over the last decade or so many other CD-based bird song offerings have become available. More…
June 20, 2012
Kopplin launched his anti-creationist effort while still in high school, and eventually gathered 55,000 signatures on a petition, enlisted the support of 78 Nobel laureates, and testified State Senate hearings.
He is also responsible for Hurricane Katrina. How cool is that?
Here's his talk:…
June 20, 2012
Cringing in Kansas
The renewed complaints of a few members of the Kansas state board of education about evolution is making Kansans cringe, according to the editorial board of the Lawrence Journal-World (June 15, 2012). As NCSE previously reported, when the board heard a presentation about the…
June 20, 2012
The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood by David Montgomery is new book on the Noachian flood. It is by a real life geologist and is not a creationist book. Might be a good gift for your annoying creationist relative.
Here is a write-up from the publisher:
In Tibet, geologist…
June 20, 2012
Duluth, a second tier Minnesota city on Lake Superior, has been flooding. This is a little unusual; heavy rains following a period of saturation have caused a local river that is usually not even heard of to grow very large and cause flooding that a lot of people haven't seen before.
The polar…
June 19, 2012
The other day I found myself with Huxley standing outside a townhouse with no way to get in, within a walled-in court yard, in Minneapolis. Suddenly a K9 Patrol car with dogs came tearing into the courtyard. Other police cars showed up. Cops with drawn guns were running around. It was…
June 19, 2012
I wrote a remembrance of Phillip Tobias for Scientific American Blogs. Please have a look. Thank you very much.
June 19, 2012
Linux inventer Linus Torvalds gave a talk recently at Aalto University in Finland. It is a very interesting talk that anyone involved in Open Source technology or computer software development would enjoy. During the talk, the issue of support for Linux from hardware manufacturers came up, and…
June 18, 2012
Hi folks
We did a google hangout thingie yesterday which went very well (you can see it here) but my webcam apparently sucked. Even though I changed the tagline under my name several times to various very funny comments you can't read it, and this is presumably because the resolution of the web cam…
