gregladen | September 30, 2012Sunday Funnies, two of them: Funny and Political Funny.
And, the latest Huxley Video, How to comment on a blog post.
gregladen | September 30, 2012
Arrrrrrgh.
... for science-oriented secular skeptical people like you?
Halloween is when the really scary things make their appearance, mostly in the form of the Halloween Costume Industry. This is when we learn about all those latent adult sexual fantasies involving school children, for example.
But more insidious and damaging, if not just plain annoying, is the janus-faced monster of jack-booted gender policing and Disney/Pixar marketing. Little girls should be princesses or some other girly thing, and little boys should be race cars or some other boyish thing.
Huxley will be…
gregladen | September 29, 2012RIP Ubuntu. Ubuntu was great. For years, I kept trying to get my own Linux box up and running, initially so I could relive the halcyon days of UNIX and later so I could avoid Windows. But every time I tried to get Linux working some key thing would not be configurable or would not work. Well, I'm sure it was configurable and could work but configuring it and making it work was beyond me. Those were also the days when what little support was available on the Internet was limited mostly to the sort of geeks who prefer to give answers that are harder to parse than one's original problem. In…
gregladen | September 29, 2012This week's Skeptically Speaking should be very interesting. David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness, will be on to discuss Naomi Wolf’s book Vagina: A New Biography. There will also be a segment on ENCODE.
Details HERE. Listen live on Sunday (and participate) and download the edited podcast later in the week.
gregladen | September 29, 2012The Secular Coalition of America is a lobbying group that represents several groups, including American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, Camp Quest, the Secular Student Alliance and so on. A few months ago the SCA made news, in a bad way, by appointing a former Bush White House Staffer, Edwina Rogers, as Executive Director. Many of us did not like that and we complained, and we were essentially told a) the decision is final and b) don't worry, everything will be OK.
But it is not. Much more recently, the SCA appointed as a co-director for one of its state groups a guy who has…
gregladen | September 29, 2012Apple, Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Google, all of them ... the companies that make the hardware and software we use ... are, it would seem, ignorant, probably willfully so, of an important thing. We use their hardware and software in our work. Many individuals are like miniature institutions or corporations. Our HR department, our payroll department, our accounting department, our R&D department, our car pool, and everything consists of a handful of machines (a car, a desktop, a mobile device, a printer) and a single person to staff them all (you, me, whatever). We do quite a bit to…
gregladen | September 26, 2012There are a number of US HOuse of Representative races that are too close to call at this point. Although the house is currently predicted to go Republican, which would be a shame, there are not a lot of current data to predict this. Given the potential strength of Mitt Romney’s coattails going in one direction, and President Obama’s going in the other, it is possible that a large share of the toss-up states will end up in the Blue column. Here are a few of the currently contested races.
California 6th House District Bera vs Lungren - Latest info - This is a very close race but observers have…
gregladen | September 26, 2012
A small college out east. Photo by wallyg.
I very strongly agree with the basic conclusion offered by a post at teenskepchick by Ali Marie, advice for those now looking at college: “…what’s the undecided student to do? My advice: community college.”. Ali discussed the problem of getting all the required courses in within a four year time span. The key problem she points out is that unless you know pretty much what you want your final major will look like you may end up having to take more than the expected number of courses and thus, have a hard time graduating in four years. I’ll add to…
gregladen | September 26, 2012
Bacon. Photograph by Flickr User Kentbrew
It appears that there is going to be a bacon shortage. It is estimated that the total amount (in poundage, I assume) of swine that will be produced next year will be several percent, about 10% most likely, less than expected. It is said that there will be an approximate doubling of the cost of pork production, not necessarily doubling the cost of bacon and other products at the consumer end, but certainly squeezing the farmers and raising costs in the grocery store significantly. Presumably this will mean a shortage of all pork products, and quite…
gregladen | September 25, 2012Late Winter, 1997, just before moving from Boston to Minnesota, was very snowy out east. And, that year I had stupidly agreed to shovel the snow for our apartment building in exchange for a pittance of some kind. One night I was shoveling the latest 7 inch storm off the walk, and the father of our upstairs neighbor came out to look at the weather, the snow, and the sky. Our neighbors were Russian, and had been in the US for only a year, and their dad may or may not have been a refugee of some sort. He was wearing his big Russian hat and his big Russian coat and he knew almost no English…
gregladen | September 25, 2012Al Gore announces an online event taking place on November 14: 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report:
gregladen | September 25, 2012I did this thing:
Minneapolis News and Weather KMSP FOX 9
A few notes:
Ross Olsen is a retired physician who is a principle player in our local Young Earth creationist group, which produces the local creation science fair (this search will get you most of my posts on that).
When I said second amendment I meant first amendment. But maybe I was really thinking about ... oh, never mind.
My intent was not to debate Evolution, although Ross clearly had a different idea in mind. Ross was asked to this discussion by the producers after they (the producers) contacted me to talk about Bill Nye's…
gregladen | September 24, 2012Helium is rare. It is not produced in factories, and the places where it is found in the wild are unusual. When it gets lose, it tends to drift out into space. Simply put, it is a hard to find commodity with a limited availability. Helium is important in science. Big Science Projects like the Large Hadron Collider use Helium to cool magnets down to near absolute zero. Helium is also used in MRI machines, which have become an important part of medial research and diagnosis. Without a supply of Helium, a lot of important science projects would be in trouble.
From the BBC:
Prof Welton…
gregladen | September 24, 2012But at the same time say that Obama is doing it wrong:
The campaign’s plan cited four priorities – giving NASA focus, working with the international community, increasing the nation’s capacity to defend its assets in space and easing trade limits on foreign sales of American “space goods.” Romney did not suggest increased space spending — his budget plan would force cuts in domestic programs, including space — but on increased reliance on commercial firms to get Americans and their goods into space. That mirrors the Obama administration’s plan.
gregladen | September 24, 2012First, if you don't have health insurance, that's OK. Just wait until you are catastrophically ill and then they'll pick you up in an ambulance and bring you to an emergency room. He does not discuss what happens later when they come to collect the payments. Also, according to Romney, an Obamacare like plan was a great way to manage health insurance for Massachusetts at the time he was governor, but this does not apply to other people.
gregladen | September 23, 2012A GOP PAC has produced a ridiculous ad supporting Michele Bachmann for re-election to Congress representing Minnesota's 6th District. You'll remember that Bachmann made national news when she declared that a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Minnesota 5th District Congressman Keith Ellison were plants inserted into high places in the United States Government by the shady organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. At that time, Democratic Party (DFL) 6th District candidate, Jim Graves, joined the chorus of sensible voices pointing out that Bachmann's comments were…