gregladen | September 7, 2012There has been concern over the safety of Gardasil (and other?) HPV vaccines. This concern emanates from the usual Anti-Vax sources. The Anti-Vax people are wrong, often to the point where we have to regard them as delusional, about everything they say. If you find yourself leaning towards thinking that they have a point, you need to check yourself because they don't. There are good reasons why parents worry about vaccines (see "The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?"), but in the final analysis (or even way before the final analysis) these worries are falsehoods. I would…
gregladen | September 7, 2012
The so-called "Galilean thermometer."
The object known as the Galileo Thermometer is a vertical glass tube filled with a liquid in which are suspended a number of weighted glass balls. As the temperature of the liquid changes, so does the density. Since each glass ball is set to float at equilibrium in a sightly different density of the liquid, as the temperature increases, each glass ball sinks to the bottom. It turns out that this thermometer was actually invented by a team of instrument inventors that formed a scientific society who had the impressive motto "Probando e Reprobando,"…
gregladen | September 6, 2012The Twin Cities Metro Transit (which we voted some time ago to call "The T" but still haven't really started doing yet) has added a very cool bus to its fleet. It is Minnesota Made which is nice, and super efficient in part for reasons that I had not realized were important. From the T's web site:
Advanced engine and hybrid technology
Optimized onboard systems for improved efficiency
Reduced emissions from less time spent idling
Less idling + more efficiency = buses that run cleaner and pollute less
Unlike other buses, even some hybrids, the Xcelsior uses super efficient All Electric…
gregladen | September 6, 2012In case you were not noticing, a few items have come up on the X Blog for your attention. I made a few observations from Bill Clinton's amazing speech last night and have a suggestion for my Republican friends. There's a wonderful bit of video in which Mitt Romney sits down with a plaid flannel jacket wearing Vet to hob-nob with the masses, and accidentally ends up in a conversation about gay marriage with a guy who would really like to share is veteran's benefits with his significant other. Be sure to watch it through to the end! And, there's been several special editions of the Sunday…
gregladen | September 6, 2012Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future is a new book on global warming produced by Climate Central which contains ...
...Sixty easy-to-read entries tackle such questions as: Is climate ever “normal”? Why and how do fossil-fuel burning and other human practices produce greenhouse gases? What natural forces have caused climate change in the past? What risks does climate change pose for human health? What accounts for the diminishment of mountain glaciers and small ice caps around the world since 1850? What are the…
gregladen | September 6, 2012
Minda Berbeco
Minda Berbeco is a biologist who is an expert on the carbon cycle, climate change, and science education. She'll be joining the NCSE staff's new initiative on climate change related education.
"I have long respected NCSE's defense of evolution education and I am thrilled that the organization has taken up climate change" says Berbeco. "I'm even more thrilled to be part of NCSE's new climate change team."
From droughts to rising sea levels, climate change will have global effects. "Ignoring the science won't change the realities of climate change", says Berbeco. "We need a…
gregladen | September 6, 2012NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott received the Atheist Alliance of America's Richard Dawkins Award at the group's annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, on September 1, 2012. Unable to attend the ceremony in person, the namesake of the award began his video introduction by saying, "Eugenie Scott is one of my very favorite people, although we have our civilized disagreements, as I shall tell," and adding, "it's impossible to meet Genie without loving her, whether you agree with her or not." Scott began her acceptance speech by joking, "I now possess awards in the names of both Stephen…
gregladen | September 5, 2012Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak speaking in support of President Obama at the DNC:
gregladen | September 5, 2012[Update Update: The probability of ex-Isaac becoming a tropical cyclone is now 50%, and the storm is looking pretty good.]
[Update: The probability of this low pressure system turing into a tropical storm has been increased to 40%. It is moving in the general direction of some relatively warm water.]
Hurricane Isaac was supposed to move, as a tropical storm then as an extratropical low, up the Mississippi, then east across the middle of the US. However, the low pressure system that was once Isaac has instead started to move back south again, and it is now a low pressure system of interest…
gregladen | September 4, 2012The Science Debate Project, co-founded by my friend Shawn Otto of Minnesota, has been trying to get candidates for the office of President to engage in a public debate about science. There has been resistance to that idea, but at least, Obama and Romney were willing to answer a set of questions related to science and science policy. The questions with the President's and Romney's answers are HERE. A press release regarding the project is here.
Romney wants to improve education by allowing parents to send their kids to charter and private schools, and he wants to fund that. He is not sure…
gregladen | September 4, 2012Some time ago, a group of Internet Yahoos who shall not be named (the usual misogynist freaks who spend all their time harassing women who won't shut up) started a petition to get Rebecca Watson tossed off her podcast "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe." As I understand it, no one took that petition seriously, but as a show of support for Rebecca, on behalf of all of us, Haley Stevens started up a petition to keep Rebecca on the show. And now it is time for you to go and sign the petition. If there are not 1000 signatures on this petition soon the Internet Yahoos will win. Go now and…
gregladen | September 4, 2012This is a response to Critiquing the “Critique” and the “Critique of the Critique” of Bill Nye’s Video at UrbanAstro.org. In that post, FURYGuitar addresses both Critiquing the Critique of Bill Nye’s Video by me and Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication Expert in which scientist and marketing expert Marc Kuchner writes in a guest blog for Scientific American Blogs an interview with communication expert Patrick Donadio.
The background is that Bill Nye made a video called Creationism is Not Appropriate for Children that some viewed as controversial…
gregladen | September 4, 2012This is a video of Kill-Me Kare Bare's "Hot Hot." Today, in the Twin Cities, we will have one of the hotter days of the summer, out of season, and thus one of the relatively hotter days of the year. And so...
gregladen | September 3, 2012Yesterday I was driving Julia down to Frog Town Midway where she had an exciting evening of political Phone Banking planned. We drove down Route 10 and merged onto God's Highway southbound where we encountered, in the center lane, a line of white Ford Econoline vans. They were in convoy all going in the same direction. I'm pretty sure I could see about fifty of them. Fifty white Ford Econoline vans. Not brand new but all in good condition. Most of the vans had a driver and passenger, a few had more people than that. there were no markings. We fell in behind them and followed them south…
gregladen | September 3, 2012Remember the GRAIL mission? At the beginning of the year, two satellites, named Ebb and Flow, arrived at the Moon and fell into a parallel orbit. There is an instrument on board that very precisely determines the distance between the two space craft, said to be about the size of a typical washing machine. As the craft circle the Moon in an orbit that takes them all over the place, the exact distance between them changes as a result of differential gravitational forces that are in turn caused by the details of the shape of the Moon below them. Thus, the precise measurements of distance…
gregladen | September 3, 2012The "Next Media" animation company used to send me several animations a week (a few a day for a while) but then they were bought out by a major media outlet (can't remember which one) so most of the emails I get from them now are about how great they are, rather than providing much current content. But today I got a not-very-current animation that seems pretty good and I thought you might like it, of the Mars Curiosity landing and field research:
gregladen | September 2, 2012Marc Kuchner has an interesting post at Scientific American called Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication Expert in which … well, you can guess what it is about from the title. To refresh your memory, here is Bill Nye’s video, which I had posted earlier on this blog. The video made my friend Marc cringe, who was “…pretty sure that the video would do nothing for those who don’t believe in evolution but turn them away.” This prompted Marc to ask Patric Donadio, an MBA and speaking coach to review it.
While I found several of Patric Donadio’s comments to…