gregladen | August 2, 2012I am skeptical. Which is perfect because The Disappearing Spoon byKean and The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code author Sam Kean will be the guest on the next Skeptically Speaking. Details of that show, which will be recorded live before an Internet Audience and released later as a podcast, are HERE.
gregladen | August 2, 2012First, Kudos to Twin Cites Kare 11 News for having a weekly spot called "Simply Science." For the last few years media outlest have been dropping science spots, features, sections, or segments. It is nice to see one added.
And now on to the flies. A Minnesota company called Ecolab, features on Kare 11, has device that kills flies. There is a smell that attracts females that humans supposedly "can't really smell" (we'll see about that). Males hang around because of the females, of course. Flies are also attracted to slightly shiny things (the original "Ooo Shiney" then you die effect)…
gregladen | August 2, 2012The worst drought in a long time, which is a result of anthropogenic global warming, has caused barges to run aground in Arkansas and Wisconsin shutting down barge traffic at those two points along the enormous inland waterway.
As reported:
It was unclear when the key shipping waterway might be reopened to commercial traffic...
Low water has restricted barge drafts to a lighter-than-normal nine feet and limited barge tows to fewer barges on numerous sections of the Mississippi River.
But even as vessels have lightened their cargo loads, numerous boats have run aground in recent weeks,…
gregladen | August 2, 2012This is what I posted on the second anniversary. Yesterday was the fifth.
Two years ago today, on a weekday afternoon during rush our, the Interstate 35W bridge, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsed into the Mississippi river. Thirteen people died and about 145 people suffered injuries.
At the time this happened, Amanda, Julia and I were in the Green Kalahari in South Africa, at Augrabies Falls.
Finding out about the incident was interesting. My BFF Lynne had just heard from her husband, Chris, that "the bridge in Minnesota went down." We asked if more details could be obtained,…
gregladen | August 2, 2012I have been telling people for several months now that if you want to have an intelligent conversation about energy and especially the power grid, smart grids, electric cars, and electricity production you need to stop talking for a while and read my friend Maggie Koerth Baker's book, Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us. So just go do that.
If you want to cheat, and read only one chapter of the book, that is not as good but Maggie is making that easy for you. She is giving you are free chapter, HERE. I don't recommend that. I recommend reading the…
gregladen | August 1, 2012Seven Minutes of Terror is right around the corner. 5:24 UTC on August 6th. Nature has just come out with a short but nice overview including some very interesting graphics that I know you'll want to see. Click Here.
gregladen | July 31, 2012Do you know what I'm talking about? They are everywhere. Here are a few places you can find them:
In recent Wordpress installs, in the comment management section, the menu that gives you "save, edit, spam" etc choices is invisible until you move your cursor near it.
In Unity, all the menus are invisible until you approach them, even the entire set of application menus that are not mac-esquely along the top (but invisibly so).
Also in Unity, all the other menus, as I recall. (I ditched Unity as soon as I learned how, about two hours after installing it.)
Gnome 2-point-whatever (the current…
gregladen | July 31, 2012What is probably the worst power outage India's history had has taken out electricity for fully half the country; This is apparently the "second outage" in two days. I'm not entirely sure how they count outages, however. I'm thinking it is more like a big giant outage that then got much smaller then got much (much much) bigger.
There have been all kinds of secondary effects; minors trapped in mines, people succumbing to fire in trains.
The reason for the outage is said to be incorrect levels of draw down from the grid by certain provinces. The ancient and out of date electric grids…
gregladen | July 30, 2012In just a few days, NASA will land one of the more amazing pieces of equipment ever sent into outer space on the Angry Red Planet. On August 5th, at about 10:31 Pacific Time, Curiosity will land on the surface of mars in one of the more spectacularly complex space engineering feats ever attempted. You will not want to miss this.
But before that, starting on Thursday, August 2nd, there will be a series of briefs and press reports that are generally open to the public and that may be quite interesting. There is a schedule, and links, HERE at NASA's JPL site.
gregladen | July 30, 2012American Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney says they are. (Which is funny because he's Mexican, but whatever...)
Speaking of the accomplishments of Israeli Jews in the middle east, Romney said
"... I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things" including ... business climate, ... history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence." He said similar disparity exists between neighboring countries, like Mexico and the United States.
Romney had previously made disparaging remarks about their Olympics to the British and is now on his way to Poland where…
gregladen | July 30, 2012The Drought of 2012 rivals the Great Dust Bowl years of the 30s and is coming at a time of melting arctic ice, shrinking ice sheets, and extreme events across the planet, matching the projections of Climate models for global warming.
gregladen | July 29, 2012
Sarah Moglia and a toad at Camp Quest Michigan.
Camp Quest is a summer camp for "freethinking" children (or, more accurately, children of "freethinking" parents). Depending on where in the US you live, summer camps for children may be very secular, very religious, in betweeen, or more or less oriented towards science and technology vs. sports and so on and so forth. There is a lot of variation. Here in Minnestoa, the majority of camps (by count of camp and I'm guessing by count of "spots" at camp) are affiliated with a religion or have an explicitly religious mission. Having said that,…
gregladen | July 28, 2012This video looks at the scientific research to answer three basic questions: 1) Was the Medieval Warm Period global? 2) Was it warmer than today? 3) And what does this all mean anyway? I examine the internet feud over the hockey stick and the various myths and misinterpretations about the Medieval Warm Period that seem to be rife on the Internet. My sources for the myths are blogs and videos; my sources for the facts are scientific papers.
gregladen | July 28, 2012It is my understanding that brucellosis, a disease that affects humans, bison, cattle, and elk, is transmitted from Bison to other Bison or to other animals such as cattle via contact with fresh afterbirth. This makes it quite possible for Bison with the disease to infect cattle, but only under very specific conditions, but those conditions do not include an adult Bison bull wandering around on ranch land. Nonetheless, "A bull bison was shot to death on Henry’s Lake Flat today, according to Buffalo Field Campaign volunteers and the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department."
The Island Park News…
gregladen | July 28, 2012Skeptically Speaking #175:
This week, it’s part one of a two-week focus on genetics. For our first installment, we’re looking at the ways that evolution might influence our modern lives, from obesity to overpopulation to heavy metal music. We spend the hour with Rob Brooks, Professor of Evolution and Director of the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He’ll join us to talk about his book Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution Has Shaped the Modern World. Email questions to live@skepticallyspeaking.com, or join us live in the chat!
More details…
gregladen | July 28, 2012Science Debate founder Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, David Gergen, and Michael Lubell spoke on Talk of the Nation Science Friday with Ira Flatow. The focus was on climate change.
In the face of a massive drought and climbing sea levels, are the presidential candidates going to talk about climate change? Why is science always at the bottom of the list of campaign issues that resonate with the public? Ira Flatow and guests discuss what scientists can do to shape the national dialogue in an election year.
Click Here to visit the…
gregladen | July 27, 2012It's over. The whole climate deinalism thing, that is. We can now get to the business of addressing climate change with well informed scientifically sound policy.
My friend Ronald Bailey reports:
Stress - this is a rumor. However, the rumor says that next week Richard Muller will release the latest Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis of surface temperature data going back as far as the 18th century. Muller, once skeptical of the temperature records that showed considerable global warming in recent decades, set up BEST to reanalyze that data....
This has been cooking beneath the…
gregladen | July 27, 2012Especailly if it is actually frozen to the ice, I would imagine.
Check out this new book:
Winter-Over is a seriocomic, slightly obscene novel that tells the story of a year at Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, including Cooper Gosling’s eponymous “winter-over” (very few people stay at the station over the polar winter due to harsh physical and psychological conditions). She is one of only a handful of women at the Pole, and must navigate the claustrophobic interior landscape of a remote station populated by a collection of people who don’t believe they belong anywhere else on earth—…
gregladen | July 26, 2012I think my "weblogue" series (here) is getting long enough (though it will get much longer) that it is worth listing out the posts thus far. These posts originally appeared on quichemorain.com or greg laden's blog; I've rewritten or updated them and put them in a special order.
Thump is about a recurring nightmare and its origins. There might be Nazis. I hate those guys.
My Journey Through Race and Racism is a white guy expressing his liberal guilt by showing how he isn't completely evil.
The Subtext is a Sandwich links the horrors of ordering a BLT at Subway with world starvation and…