gregladen | May 8, 2012... and it is starting to look like they are mainly tilting at windmills, but still:
Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power...
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda....
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange…
gregladen | May 8, 2012The Heartland Institute is tonight's tool time for putting out insane ads attacking the theory of climate change. The Heartland Institute is a deep pocketed conservative organization that counts Koch industries, Phillip Morris and Microsoft among its well-heeled donors. The Institute is funding a school curriculum to question the theory that carbon emissions have caused global warming and recently funded billboards in Chicago highlighting the fact that a handful of unhinged individuals believe in the theory. The billboards read "I still believe in global warming. Do you?"
gregladen | May 8, 2012The author of the historically transformative and widely loved book "Where the Wild Things Are" had died. He was 83.
Standing with a character from his book Where the Wild Things Are, author and illustrator Maurice Sendak speaks with the media Jan. 11, 2002, at the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York City. Sendak died in Danbury, Conn., on Tuesday. He was 83. Story from NPR, photo from Spencer Platt/Getty
gregladen | May 7, 2012This was just posted on State Farm's facebook page:
State Farm is ending its association with the Heartland Institute. This is because of a recent billboard campaign launched by the Institute.
That was a result of this: An Open Letter to State Farm about Climate Denial
Bwahahahaha...
Go "like" it!!!! on Facebook!
gregladen | May 7, 2012Shawn Otto, author of Fool me Twice, will be on Science Friday this week talking about Science Debate with Ira Flatow and Vern Ehlers.
Fri 1-2 CT, 2-3 ET
gregladen | May 7, 2012A more sophisticated form of underwear bomb has been developed, but the CIA has thwarted an attempt to deploy it to blow up a US based plane.
The plot involved an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. [it has] a more refined detonation system...
... the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector.
But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.
The bomber, who was with an al_Qaida affiliate based in Yemen, had not yet…
gregladen | May 7, 2012Discussed: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality, which I've got my copy of and am now reading, and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion which I'm probably never going to get to.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
You see the game the guy on the "left" is playing? Psychologists....
gregladen | May 6, 2012Tom Levenson will be on Skeptically Speaking later today, talking about his book Newton and the Counterfeiter.
gregladen | May 6, 2012This just in:
Diageo announces it is to end funding of Heartland Institute
Diageo, one the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute, a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski.
On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that…
gregladen | May 6, 2012We had a hella storm come through the Twin Cities last night. Some hail, some wind, but piles of lightning. And then this happened in Dinkytown: Lightning struck a high power line, which fell across a couple of parked cars and stayed "live." The live line heated up the pavement on the street enough that it caused a buried gas line to explode.
I'm pretty sure there are details we don't know yet. Perhaps there was already a leak and the gas that caught on fire was already out of the pipe. Perhaps the lightning grounded through the gas line and that is what sparked the fire. Either way it…
gregladen | May 4, 2012Here in Minnesota, and in surrounding states, there is some real tension between Native and Immigrant communities. The poorest, most drug-ridden, down trodden and repressed communities here are often Native, and conveniently these communities tend to be (but not always are) located far away from urban areas or other places with a lot of white eyes. Health in Native communities is of major concern to the usual institutions and people that are concerned with such things.
Indians make White people nervous. White people are either worried that the Indian has kooties, or are criminals or…
gregladen | May 4, 2012Thank you to all the bloggers and others who jumped immediately on the Heartland Institute for putting up horribly offensive billboards equating scientists with the scientist/mathematician killing terrorist Unibomber. I have heard unofficially that Heartland will be taking down those billboards.
We'll see.
more details:
4 p.m. update: Heartland Institute President and CEO Joe Bast has issued the following statement:
We will stop running [the billboard] at 4:00 p.m. CST today. (It's a digital billboard, so a simple phone call is all it takes.)
The Heartland Institute knew this was a risk…
gregladen | May 4, 2012.... comparing holocaust survivors to Hitler? Hmong refugees to Pol Pot? Well, maybe not exactly but there is a structural similarity.
People at the Heartland Institute have very little to do with science and very little experience in that area of academics. Otherwise they would remember the Unibomber days, when everyone was worried about the packages they were receiving in the mail, but especially those in mathematics. Now, the Heartland Institute has a billboard campaign with a picture of the Unibomber on it, making the claim that only very fringe people, such as the Unibomber, still "…
gregladen | May 4, 2012As is the case with most things that are important, we as a society have done a very bad job of developing an effective conversation about Global Warming. The vast majority of electronic and real ink that I see spent on the discussion of Global Warming (outside of the peer reviewed literature) is not even about climate or climate change. Rather, it is about talking about climate change, the politics of climate change, critique of the rhetoric about climate change, clarification, obfuscation, complaining, accusing, yelling or belly-aching, and the occasional threat of violence. And today,…
gregladen | May 3, 2012Have a look at this story.
The first blind patients to be fitted with electronic eye implants in a UK clinical trial have regained "useful vision" only weeks after surgery....
The implants are basically little camera chips that get hooked up to the neural circuitry in the eye. The results are not normal human developed vision, but the patients can see stuff.
Having gotten your attention with that remarkable story, let me remind you of this:
Dining In The Dark: Hope for Retinal Disease
Thank you very much.
gregladen | May 3, 2012These are two of a series of videos made by faculty and students at various Twin Cities area schools as part of a contest to get a local furniture store to help them improve their teacher's lounge. These are my two favorite videos of the bunch.
Nellie Stone Johnson Community School, in North Minneapolis, an area you will know from this blog because of the tornado that went through there about a year ago:
Edison High School, in Nordeast, Minneapolis, MN, which is the part of the Twin Cities where much of Amanda's family originally comes from (some still live there):
Go here and "like" a…
gregladen | May 2, 2012PBS has something coming out tonight about teaching climate change in American Classrooms.
From a press release I just got in the mail:
The PBS NEWSHOUR examines the struggle over teaching climate change Wednesday
The PBS NewsHour's Hari Sreenivasan will report Wednesday (May 2) on how the controversy over climate change affects America's classrooms. Part of a NewsHour series on the impacts of climate change, Sreenivasan's piece takes a look at a political think tank creating climate change curriculum, examines recent state laws dictating what can be taught about global warming and…