gregladen | May 17, 2012Fewer White People than Other-Than-White-People are being born in the US, which means eventually there won't be too many white people. It's about time.
Almost all societies in the world allow, often encourage, marriage between cousins. There are reasons for this which I shall blog about if you remind me to. But for now, here is a discussion on the topic you will find interesting.
More on those climate change billboards.
gregladen | May 17, 2012At some point, while I was in graduate school, it became apparent that I was going to study the problem of finding one's way around. Navigation, orientation, mental maps, sense of direction, knowledge of the landscape, and related ideas must be linked to how people who live off the land survive, and I was studying the foraging ecology of Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest. One of the things I realized early on is that it is very easy to find something in the rain forest, as long as one simple thing is true: You already know where it is. Otherwise, you are sunk.
Wait, what does this have to do…
gregladen | May 16, 2012First, a word about Nazis and Free Speech, and other matters: Catch up on the latest news about Repression of Nazis, and join the conversation about Free Speech and how sometimes it is better to shut up, over at the X Blog.
Today I am preparing a presentation and discussion for a course in AP Biology. Amanda and her colleague have been teaching AP Bio all year, and the test was just given, so there is nothing to live for any more as it were. I asked Amanda yesterday why the students even show up now that the test is over, and she looked at me funny and said "well, they're required to." ...…
gregladen | May 14, 2012Scott Hanselman has a post on "old people icons" that don't make sense any more. This is one of those posts I've always wanted two write but never got to (or have I? ... can't remember).
The most obvious one is of course the floppy disk for "Save" long abandoned by Gnome and replaced with a down arrow (which makes zero sense, but whatever). One I had not thought of is the radio button, which of course matches those old radios with the buttons... The radio button as a convention in a dialog box makes total sense in and of itself. Calling it a radio button is of course atavistic.
He…
gregladen | May 13, 2012Today is the anniversary of the discovery, by John Tebbutt of New South Wales, Australia, of the Great Comet of 1861. Tebbutt was an astronome.
The comet was initially visible only in the southern hemisphere, but then became visible in the northern hemisphere on about June 29th. I find it interesting that word of the commet spread slowly enough that it was sen in the north before it was heard of.
It has been suggested that this comet had been previously sighted in April of 1500 (that comet is now known as C/1500 H1). The comet will return during the 23rd century.
source
gregladen | May 13, 2012Recording live today on Skeptically Speaking:
This week, we're looking at some of the ways motherhood changes the brain and the body. Kayt Sukel, author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships, returns to explain the neurological effects of pregnancy and motherhood. And on the podcast, we're joined by Dr. Katie Hinde, Director of Harvard's Comparative Lactation Laboratory, to discuss the biology of lactation and breastfeeding.
We record live with Kayt Sukel on Sunday, May 13 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, May 18.
For…
gregladen | May 13, 2012
Image from Reddit posted by user Lunam with the text "What my super religious mother got me for Christmass..."
When a young girl put a picture of herself, holding a book she had just gotten as a present, on the social networking site reddit, she was immediately subjected to intense verbal sexual assault by reddit readers who aptly demonstrated how awful it can be when boys and young men are left to say and do what they want without the social control of anyone knowing who they are. When Skepchick founder Rebecca Watson casually tossed out some relationship advice for clueless young men…
gregladen | May 13, 2012There was a time when I blogged regularly about homeschooling, though I have not done so in a long time. A while back I started to blog about gun ownership. I engaged in each of these topics for similar reasons. I have a political and professional interest in homeschooling (as a science educator) and a complex culinario-political interested in guns (as a political progressive who likes to eat wild animal but does not like people shooting each other). But the reason I blogged about these issues was more narrowly defined. I wanted to see if it was possible to achieve détente among people…
gregladen | May 12, 2012No! A surprising number of toddlers who manage to get their way through a window opening to fall to the pavement below live. Something just over three thousand toddlers do this every year in the US.
Here in Minneapolis, we had our first reported case for the Spring Season of a toddler falling out of a window. The window had a screen in it but that did not stop the child, in Nordeast, from flying out the window after a bad bounce jumping on the bed. He fell three stories. He'll live. He probably bounced off a few things on the way to the ground. This event reminded me to repost this item…
gregladen | May 10, 2012Dear loyal readers, quiet lurkers, constant commeters, and trolls,
On or before the 24th of May (hopefully not later) Scienceblogs.com will under The Branding. The Branding is not a phenomenon found in a cultish horror movie involving corn and a school bus, nor will it involve British schoolboys or a buried alien spacecraft. The Branding is when National Geographic's "brand" is imprinted on this site, and we become something of a National Geographic project. From that point forward several things will be different on this blog, some of which I'll mention below.
Between now and then there…
gregladen | May 9, 2012From the Raw Story:
video platform
video management
video solutions
video player
People around the blogosphere are griping about this. They don't like it. They are saying things like "it should have happened sooner" or "why didn't he do this sooner" or "I'm still mad" or "oh, that's just becuase it became obvious that he had to change is position for political reasons."
The first most obvious fact about any political change like this is that it should have happened sooner. Congratulations for noticing that, you should get a PhD in political science. The second…
gregladen | May 9, 2012The Nazis in Greece, who over the weekend gained some seats in Parliament, are likely to continue to be a factor in a new election experts say will likely be held in about a month or so. These are the real deal ... apparently they self identify as Nazis but the party name is "Golden Dawn" and they have a record of violence and nastiness. They even do the Nazi salute and everything.
Here's the thing: Their web site is hosted on Wordpress, and Wordpress has a policy that should actually exclude them from using that resource. For this reason, people who dislike Nazis are invited to SIGN A…
gregladen | May 9, 2012Anybody live, camp or cabin near the Lost 40 or the Boundary Waters? Let these people know.
More of the story here
gregladen | May 8, 2012Next week, Amanda and I will be Dining in the Dark. It has been determined that I will be wearing a suit.
If you are in the Twin Cities, why don't you join us! Click Here to find out what it is all about.
I just checked and there are a few tickets left. Better hurry!
gregladen | May 8, 2012Starting now, I will be writing blog post now and then at Minnesota Progressive Project. I'll be focusing on the intersection of science and politics, the politics of science, and now and then I'l rant wildly about something random.
My inaugural post is HERE. It is about the possibility of a Science Debate in Minnesota and consists mainly of an interview with Shawn Otto.
gregladen | May 8, 2012... for the idiot from Madison Wisconsin who has been commenting on this site on a very regular basis for a long time and has recently taken to writing a comment several times a day, using different names, and quite often, using YOUR names. His regular use of the names of regular commenters on this site is very annoying and destructive, the kind of thing only someone with his mental illness/political orientation would do.
The way commenting is handled on this site, Scienceblogs.com, makes it almost impossible for me to stop him from doing this. All I can do is delete the comments as I…