gregladen | November 5, 2012Bottom line: In the popular vote, Obama will win over Romney by a surprisingly small margin, if he wins.
People generally think Obama is going to win, as per this graphic:
But the actual "I'm voting for X" numbers are 50% Obama, 47% Romney. That is within the margin of error.
The poll, which is here, indicates that while the numbers are close, Obama's support is slightly (but only slightly) more enthusiastic than Romney's. Obama has a good approval number compared to Romney's but for some reason people, who are apparently all idiots, think that Romney will do a better job than Obama at…
gregladen | November 5, 2012When I was a kid, I loved the almanac. I don't remember where they came from, but every couple of years a new one would appear in the house, and as soon as I got my hands on it, it moved into my room and anybody who wanted to look stuff up in it after that needed to see me first. And, actually, much of the time I could give them whatever info they needed if they just asked me, because I knew the contents.
I have on my desk the "The World Almanac for Kids 2013" produced by World Almanac. It has a picvture of a ballerina, a frog, a football player with the New York Jets, somebody who looks…
gregladen | November 5, 2012I’m a guy who “gets” nasty threats from haters. I receive anti-atheist threats and icky comments, I receive a LOT of nasty stuff from climate science denialists (and that often comes along with bogus threats of law suits), I receive nasty emails and tweets from the sexist and racist SlymePitters and those folks seem to spend more time than is healthy for them making Greg-hating memes and videos and comments on web sites I would not normally visit.
So, I receive nasty horrid verbal attacks from people who hate me and what I stand for, but do I get these nasty horrid verbal attacks in the way…
gregladen | November 5, 2012... Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals...
"Look, for the last time, we're not angry lesbians! We just considered all of the options and it makes more sense for us to reproduce on our own!" ... "Ha! I told you she'd yell. Yo owe me fifty bucks."
I remember when the story of the blood shooting lizard of the American Southwest was first figured out. The native people of the area had always spoken of the ability of a particular lizard to spew a stream of blood from its eyes. This would be done to thwart attackers. Naturally, as is often the case, scientists working in the area wrote…
gregladen | November 5, 2012This is an interview at Atheists Talk (TV), an update on the war on science, and a rare opportunity to see me wearing a suit.
The first few seconds are sound free; do not adjust your television set.
I mentioned the NCSE, here's their web site.
Here's a couple of books related to the topic:
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril
Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto
Something on crying babies and vaccination is here, and something on milk allergy is here.
Minnesota Atheists YouTube channel is…
gregladen | November 4, 2012The Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA fired him for performance reasons.
Ars Technica's John Timmer has the story:
Coppedge had worked on the Cassini mission to Saturn, starting as a contractor in 1996, and later becoming a full-time employee. But one of the projects he pursued on his own time was the promotion of intelligent design, the notion that the Universe and, most prominently, life itself, is too orderly to have come about without a designer. (Like many others in that movement, Coppedge is a self-identified evangelical Christian.)\
In 2009, he apparently got a bit aggressive about…
gregladen | November 4, 2012Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan ... they all have birds, it turns out. Until now there has never been a field guid to the birds of this regino. Raffael Aye, Manuel Schweizer, and Tobias Roth have written one, and it is called, fittingly, Birds of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan.
It covers 618 species using 143 plates with multiple birds on a plate, set up in classic Peterson Field Guide format with the range maps right with the bird descriptions across from the illustrations. The…
gregladen | November 3, 2012Answer: About 20 meters. Th Hubble Space Telescope's aperture is 2.4 meters. So, you really can't do it at the present time.
This is one of a large, seemingly inestimable number of practical need-to-know and esoteric questions addressed in Lawrence Weinstein's book Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today's Problems on the Back of a Napkin, a followup book on the earlier Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.
I should say that I personally have an uncanny ability to estimate things. This comes from being an archaeologist with a lot of experience in CRM. For…
gregladen | November 2, 2012Personally, I can give you a half dozen reasons. But why listen to me, when you can listen to Desiree Schell speaking with John Zeller, Nicole Gugliucci, John Matson, and Cynthia Phillips??? Which you can do on Sunday. Check out: #188 Why Should I Care About Space?
gregladen | November 2, 2012Climate change denialism is on its last legs and will soon be no more relevant than Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists or Obama birthers. But on the way out they are making me laugh. In the last 48 hours I've heard one denialist's claim that Superstorm Sandy was not relevant to climate change and storminess because it was not a hurricane (it was, and it is relevant). Most recently I've seen an email that is getting passed around that claims that the Arctic ice that melted last summer was melted on purpose using Tesla Technology operated by a conspiracy between the Russian and…
gregladen | November 2, 2012If this does not lose a LOT of votes for Romney in Ohio than everyone in Ohio will have some 'splainin' to do.
gregladen | November 2, 2012Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as "Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin," "Bare-necked Fruitcrow," "Peruvian Plantcutter," and "White-browed Purpletuft." And certainly, you've heard of the Andean Cock-of-theRock. These birds and their relatives are THE famous colorful amazing birds of the Neotropics, the birds people who go to the Jungles of Central and South America go to see. "... the song of the Xcreaming Piha,... the loudest bird on Earth, is used by moviemakers to epitomize…
gregladen | November 1, 2012
I'll vote for Brian and I think he's make a great Congress person, but I will be speaking to him about dissing the stone age!
If you want to help get rid of a Michele Bachmann clone, click here!
And this too: