gregladen | July 15, 2012Here's a pretty good video discussing the Higgs Boson and stuff. It turns out you can't have anti-gravity. Oh well. Hat tip Nathan.
gregladen | July 14, 2012Yesterday Huxley and I were out on the porch checking out the incoming thunderheads. Then we heard thunder. Huxley immediately ran over to the door and pulled it shut.
"We don't want thunder going in the house."
Good idea. Who knows what it would do in there.
Anyway, everybody knows that when you see lightning, the thunder takes a while to get to your ears because lightning is percieved by us first from its light which travels at...the speed of light!...while lightning is percieved by us later from the sound it makes which travels at...the speed of sound! The latter is much much slower…
gregladen | July 13, 2012Are you a Secular Woman? I am. Joined a couple of weeks ago. Kimm Rippere is the president of Secular Woman, and she'll be the guest on Atheist Talk Radio on Sunday Morning. Live, so you can call in. All the details are HERE.
gregladen | July 13, 2012Alan Cassels wrote Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease, which is all:
Why wouldn't you want to be screened to see if you're at risk for cancer, heart disease, or another potentially lethal condition? After all, better safe than sorry. Right?
Not so fast, says Alan Cassels. His Seeking Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening, where well-meaning practitioners and a profit-motivated industry offer to save our lives by exploiting our fears. He writes that promoters of screening overpromise on its benefits and downplay its harms, which can range…
gregladen | July 13, 2012Brian Clegg, author of A Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable, was the guest on Skeptically Speaking last Sunday. I'm sorry I missed it, but I was recovering from several days hanging out with the very host of that show mostly working and hardly sleeping.
It will be available for download some time today (should be up by now).
Click here to get to the download link: #172 A Brief History of Infinity
gregladen | July 12, 2012Just thought you'd like to know: Dropbox has doubled the amount of storage you get when you get Dropbox. I wonder if I can now fit my photographs on dropbox without resizing and compressing them first?
Probably. But the videos: no way. Damn you, Huxley, for being so cute!
gregladen | July 12, 2012Using a base ten numbering system. In another numbering system, it is a different numeral.
gregladen | July 11, 2012George Carlin was ahead of society. He led freethinkers, skeptics, others. Think of all those clips from George Carlin routines that we play today as reference to important, vibrant, current ideas. Those clips are always years old, sometimes decades. Something similar could be said of Louis Black. Ellen. There are others.
Recently we have seen a rash of something very different happening. The comedian who offended everyone at an atheist conference in Australia earlier this year comes to mind. Recently, when Daniel Tosh suggested that it would be really funny if a woman in his audience…
gregladen | July 11, 2012Available now for download:
Skeptically Speaking #171 Ask A Pharmacist
We’re back live this week, and we’re giving you the chance to Ask a Pharmacist. Ontario pharmacist Scott Gavura is the founder and editor of Science-Based Pharmacy, and a contributor to Science-Based Medicine. He’ll be answering audience questions for the full hour.
Click Here and follow links to download
gregladen | July 11, 2012I am not happy with this NPR title: Will Medicaid Bring The Uninsured Out Of The Woodwork?.
Dear New York Times: The uninsured are not in the woodwork. They are in pain. They are in trouble. They are in debt. They are not in the woodwork. Cockroaches are in the woodwork. The uninsured are not.
I have a friend who was badly injured last winter. She's always been either a full time student or had a job. Her jobs as far as I know are always helping people in some way, usually working with youth, either education-related or working with kids at risk. That is what her schooling is about at…
gregladen | July 10, 2012You know Michael Mann as the scientist who described recent climate change with the "hockey stick" graph. He also wrote The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. He is talking about the McCarthyistic tactics of the climate change denialists, including crazy people lurking in the shadows, and sitting members of the United Stated Congress.
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If the interview does not work properly, you can view it here.
gregladen | July 10, 2012This just in:
Former South Carolina GOP Rep. Bob Inglis, is urging conservatives to stop denying that humans are contributing to global warming.
Inglis ... will lead a new initiative at George Mason University to promote “conservative solutions to America’s energy and climate challenges" ...
Inglis lost his 2010 primary to Trey Gowdy, who went on to win the general election to represent South Carolina’s 4th district, which is in the northern part of the state.
Details here at The Hill
gregladen | July 10, 2012Almost three in four of Americans accept recent global warming, according to a new poll conducted for the Washington Post and Stanford University — but only three in ten agree that it is mainly due to human activity.
Asked "Do you think that the world's temperature probably has been going up ["slowly" was used with half of the sample] over the past 100 years, or do you think this probably has not been happening?" 73% of respondents said yes, 25% of respondents said no, and 2% indicated that they didn't know or refused to answer.
That's from the NCSE
Here's the study (PDF)
gregladen | July 9, 2012There is a new book coming out called How We Know What We Know about Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming. Here is a description:
When the weather changes daily, how do we really know that Earth’s climate is changing? Here is the science behind the headlines - evidence from flowers, butterflies, birds, frogs, trees, glaciers and much more, gathered by scientists from all over the world, sometimes with assistance from young "citizen-scientists." And here is what young people, and their families and teachers, can do to learn about climate change and take action.…
gregladen | July 9, 2012A talk by Genie Scott of the NCSE.
Do reason and creationism ever intersect? What reasons do creationists cite in explaining their beliefs? Genie Scott examines how "reason" is misunderstood and misused by creationists. When: 4/15/2012. Where: Global Atheist Convention, Melbourne, Australia
gregladen | July 9, 2012The question has been asked: What was the sex ratio of attendees of the recent SkepchickCON Track at CONvergence, and of the panelists? To this it would be nice (and appropriate) to add the same questions for CONvergence as a whole. I have some, but not all, of that information.
I looked at the panelist sex ratio by examining every Skepchick run panel on the CONvergnece schedule, and adjusted where I know for who actually was on the panel (it is usually the same but now and then things turn out differently). To sample panels at CONvergence, I simply examined the CONvergence panel…
gregladen | July 9, 2012
Debbie Goddard. Photo from CFI website.
One of my favorite people is Debbie Goddard, and she was in town for the last few days for SkepchickCON. (That is where we originally met, a few years back.) We managed to have a few longish conversations about the history and current state of skepticism and secularism. Debbie has been involved in these movements for longer than most people I know well, although she is very young. (She started early.) Also, we share something in our respective pasts that that was kind of fun to talk about which I will not bore you with here.
Anyway, while…
gregladen | July 9, 2012Cute Kitteh is a Metaphor for Atheist Talk Radio.
What do all these people have in common?
Don Prothero
Ed Brayton
Eugenie Scott
Ira Flatow
Jennifer McCreight
John Abraham
John Hawkes
Lois Shadewald
Lynn Fellman
Maggie Koerth Baker
Martin Rundkvist
Massimo Pigliucci
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Peter Lipson
PZ Myers
Randy Moore
Sehoya Cotner
Shawn Otto
Well, that's the short list of people who come to mind when I think of Minnesota Talk Radio, because I've either interviewed them or co-interviewed someone with them. Mike Haubrich, Stephanie Zvan and Biodork also come to mind because they've run or do…
gregladen | July 6, 2012We just might be experiencing the hottest year on record (can't be sure yet, but it looks like it might be) and if that is the case, I estimate it may be the hottest year (except a few unidentified and undocumented outliers) for a half a million years or so.
She's wrong about the forest fires; The reason there are so many fires right now is that timber is at record low moisture level.