gregladen | December 2, 2012The Carnival of Evolution is one of the few remaining carnivals. As such it is probably not so much as an atavism as another unique bloggy thing which still has a function in this world even if all of its nearest relatives are extinct. Like Aardvarks.
Anyway, Carnival of Evolution #54: A Walkabout Mount Improbable is HERE
gregladen | December 2, 2012This post has been moved, with a copy of the very important comments, to THIS LOCATION, otherwise known as Greg Laden's Blog.
Please click through and visit the post, and the blog!
gregladen | December 1, 2012
Michele Bachmann. Photo by Flickr User Gage Skidmore.
Or, maybe just waiting for a pin to drop, to break the silence? Bill Prendergast at Minnesota Progressive Project has floated an interesting, if somewhat complicated, hypothesis. He notes that Michel Bachmann has been very silent, out of the news, since the election which is now (though it seems like yesterday) nearly a month in the past. He suggests that the GOP establishment has shut her down, something they may have wanted to do for some time but would have been able to do because of her independent support from the coalition of…
gregladen | December 1, 2012... And I don't mean the good kind.
A feature of WordPress blogging software is that you can turn off commenting on old posts, older than a specified number of days. I don't like doing that because some of the most interesting comments trickle in on some of those old posts. Like this one.
But, for some reason, old posts are spam magnets, and I'm not talking about the canned meat. I opened up commenting on old posts a while back, and suddenly the spam is rushing like Atlantic Seawater in a New York Subway. So, I've re-closed comments on those old posts.
In the mean time, I deleted a LOT…
gregladen | December 1, 2012I have discussed rabies before. In Attack of the Hound of Malembi. Or, “Whose are these people, anyway?” I discussed a personal encounter with a rabid dog, which killed my cat and bit six friend. In Ode to Rocky I discuss an encounter with a cute little raccoon which probably did not have rabies, but since this was during the Great Rabid Raccoon Scare a few years back he got busted anyway.
And now, we have Skeptically Speaking #190 RABID ... last Sunday's show which is now a podcast available for you to download.
This week, we’re talking about a viral menace that’s one of the scariest –…
gregladen | December 1, 2012These three things are intimately connected.
Well, OK, they're not really connected at all, but all will be the subject of discussion on the next Skeptically Speaking. I believe Desiree will be speaking on Sunday, December 2nd with James Pinfold about Dark Matter ... apparently there is new information bringing an explanation for it into question ... and the other items will be added into the podcast to be released on Friday, December 7th. Details here.
gregladen | December 1, 2012I've been interested in Animal Navigation for years. I've always been interested in things like orientation and maps and so on, but it was when I started working with the Efe Pygmies in the mid 1980s, and noticed that there were some interesting things about how they found their way around in the rainforest, that I started to track and absorb the literature on the issue. Back then, there were a few researchers who felt that some animals, possibly including humans, had built in navigation equipment, possibly using magnetics. Some of those researchers oversimplified their models and took the…
gregladen | December 1, 2012Does grinding your own meat make a better burger? How does adding fat to your eggs create the perfect tender omelet? Why should you have patience before carving your roast?
Discover the science behind everyday cooking with Christopher Kimball from America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated. Join us as we explore the fundamental science explaining how — and why — your recipes work.
gregladen | November 30, 2012Here's Joe being a regular guy, picking up some cookies, a pie, some kids toys, and a big-ass TV.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | November 30, 2012I'm kidding, I'm kidding, NASA did not say that. But I do think people need to take it down a notch with this whole blaming NASA for doing their press conferences wrong. As far as I know, the Curiosity Martian Laboratory Robot recently approached a non nondescript pile of dirt, analyzed the bejesus out of it as a test of the fancy dancy instruments on board, and everything worked. The pile of dirt was not interesting but they did to that pile of dirt what would have required 3,000 feet of laboratory floor space full of expensive equipment and a dozen technicians working for two months back…
gregladen | November 30, 2012This 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 Review, readers of this staid publication were amazed at the outpouring of support for this landmark essay. The idea was based on the notion, as adapted in hugely successful companies like Google and SAS, that employees with malicious intents or negative attitudes destroyed any sort of productive…
gregladen | November 30, 2012Huxley'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 eight layout, but the ends can't ever be closed into a continuous loop because we don't have enough pieces of track. Or maybe we do. We keep trying different configurations but it never works. It also may be the case that while Huxley, Amanda and I make great Train Engineers once the tracks are set up…
gregladen | November 29, 2012There 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 in the US.
The Sierra Nevada range will be accumulating something like 16-20 inches of rain, but where that translates into snow, it will be up there in the 12 foot range, maybe more. There will be a very significant risk of flash flooding north of Sacremento and places in northern California and…
gregladen | November 29, 2012When 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" because it can't really "see" them. The tides have been understood not only by science by by a lot of regular working class potential Republicans (though many are not) who eek out their living on the shores of the briny sea. Bill O'Reilly must have looked like a complete idiot to them. Meanwhile,…
gregladen | November 29, 2012From 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 contributions to sea level rise.
In a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories report the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. Together, these ice sheets are losing…
gregladen | November 29, 2012Next 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 that the students access on their own time, and what would have been study or homework time is done in the classroom. In reality it is a bit more complex than this, because a "lecture" converted to an on line resource may, and probably should, be very different than an in-class lecture, and the…
gregladen | November 29, 2012Let'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 recognizable form. The preceding Permian, if contrasted with modern day, would form a very stark contrast while the Triassic would be at least somewhat more recognizable.
But of course the Triassic was in many ways distinct, different, and fascinating. Dinosaurs arose during the Triassic. The Triassic is…
gregladen | November 28, 2012You 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 never produced a formal review of one of Don's other books that I really enjoyed: Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet. The reason for my skipping that review is that I had a radio interview with Don during which we discussed the topic as some length.…
gregladen | November 28, 2012Apparently 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 should be free now.