May 25, 2012
I know of a couple of cases where high schools are switching to the use of iPads or other tablets, replacing existing computer infrastructure with the handy and very cool computing device. When it comes to technology, I've never been particularly impressed with school administrations, and K-12…
May 24, 2012
At the moment, Scienceblogs is still undergoing technical difficulties. This is fully expected. The database this network is built on is many gazugabites in size. Despite its power and elegance, the WordPress platform (especailly the multi-user version) is complex and there are all sorts of…
May 23, 2012
As you can see, Scienceblogs.com has a new look. There is no more left sidebar and the right sidebar looks different, the cute banners different blogs had is replaced with a new standardized banner usually with a picture of the blogger. The 24 hour page and some other bits are (depending on when…
May 21, 2012
A while back, the National Geographic Society entered into an agreement with Seed Media Group, the latter being the owner and operator of Scienceblogs.com. This agreement had to do with advertising (simple version: NGS will broker the ad space on Scienceblogs) and branding (simple version:…
May 21, 2012
Missouri, the "Show Me State," had two bills in the state house that wuld have promoted Intelligent Design in the public school science class. The legislature adjourned a couple of days ago without advancing the bills, and that is how a bill dies. RIP bad bills in Missouri.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey…
May 21, 2012
Science Magazine is running a "Science Voices" series of short essays by members of the science community on the topic of Human Conflict. So far there are four or five, and they cover conflict from a wide range of perspectives. You can see them all here.
I've written one on conflict in the…
May 21, 2012
Peter Gleick has been cleared of faking a key memo. Who is Peter Gleick, and what is this memo of which we speak? Here is a refresher of events over the last 3 1/2 months:
You will recall that last February 14th, we were all given an interesting Valentine's Day present: A cache of documents had…
May 21, 2012
Today is Minnesota Senator Al Franken's Birthday. In honor of that, I'm reposting this historically accurate and important essay, which first appeared on this blog on April 23, 2009 at 3:56PM:
I personally put Al Franken in the Senate
Al Franken is about to be seated as the Junior Senator from…
May 19, 2012
Here's the attempted Launch this morning of the SpaceX rocket ship, which would have been the first non governmental flight to the International Space Station. Listen to the chatter to learn all sorts of great jargon!
Details here.
May 17, 2012
Fewer White People than Other-Than-White-People are being born in the US, which means eventually there won't be too many white people. It's about time.
Almost all societies in the world allow, often encourage, marriage between cousins. There are reasons for this which I shall blog about if you…
May 17, 2012
At some point, while I was in graduate school, it became apparent that I was going to study the problem of finding one's way around. Navigation, orientation, mental maps, sense of direction, knowledge of the landscape, and related ideas must be linked to how people who live off the land survive,…
May 16, 2012
First, a word about Nazis and Free Speech, and other matters: Catch up on the latest news about Repression of Nazis, and join the conversation about Free Speech and how sometimes it is better to shut up, over at the X Blog.
Today I am preparing a presentation and discussion for a course in AP…
May 14, 2012
Scott Hanselman has a post on "old people icons" that don't make sense any more. This is one of those posts I've always wanted two write but never got to (or have I? ... can't remember).
The most obvious one is of course the floppy disk for "Save" long abandoned by Gnome and replaced with a…
May 13, 2012
Today is the anniversary of the discovery, by John Tebbutt of New South Wales, Australia, of the Great Comet of 1861. Tebbutt was an astronome.
The comet was initially visible only in the southern hemisphere, but then became visible in the northern hemisphere on about June 29th. I find it…
May 13, 2012
Recording live today on Skeptically Speaking:
This week, we're looking at some of the ways motherhood changes the brain and the body. Kayt Sukel, author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships, returns to explain the neurological effects of pregnancy and motherhood.…
May 13, 2012
Image from Reddit posted by user Lunam with the text "What my super religious mother got me for Christmass..."
When a young girl put a picture of herself, holding a book she had just gotten as a present, on the social networking site reddit, she was immediately subjected to intense verbal sexual…
May 13, 2012
There was a time when I blogged regularly about homeschooling, though I have not done so in a long time. A while back I started to blog about gun ownership. I engaged in each of these topics for similar reasons. I have a political and professional interest in homeschooling (as a science educator…
May 12, 2012
No! A surprising number of toddlers who manage to get their way through a window opening to fall to the pavement below live. Something just over three thousand toddlers do this every year in the US.
Here in Minneapolis, we had our first reported case for the Spring Season of a toddler falling out…
May 10, 2012
Dear loyal readers, quiet lurkers, constant commeters, and trolls,
On or before the 24th of May (hopefully not later) Scienceblogs.com will under The Branding. The Branding is not a phenomenon found in a cultish horror movie involving corn and a school bus, nor will it involve British schoolboys…
May 9, 2012
From the Raw Story:
video platform
video management
video solutions
video player
People around the blogosphere are griping about this. They don't like it. They are saying things like "it should have happened sooner" or "why didn't he do this sooner" or "I'm still mad"…
May 9, 2012
The Nazis in Greece, who over the weekend gained some seats in Parliament, are likely to continue to be a factor in a new election experts say will likely be held in about a month or so. These are the real deal ... apparently they self identify as Nazis but the party name is "Golden Dawn" and…
May 9, 2012
Anybody live, camp or cabin near the Lost 40 or the Boundary Waters? Let these people know.
More of the story here
May 8, 2012
Next week, Amanda and I will be Dining in the Dark. It has been determined that I will be wearing a suit.
If you are in the Twin Cities, why don't you join us! Click Here to find out what it is all about.
I just checked and there are a few tickets left. Better hurry!
May 8, 2012
Starting now, I will be writing blog post now and then at Minnesota Progressive Project. I'll be focusing on the intersection of science and politics, the politics of science, and now and then I'l rant wildly about something random.
My inaugural post is HERE. It is about the possibility of a…
May 8, 2012
... for the idiot from Madison Wisconsin who has been commenting on this site on a very regular basis for a long time and has recently taken to writing a comment several times a day, using different names, and quite often, using YOUR names. His regular use of the names of regular commenters on…
