gregladen | November 30, 2011The other day, and I kid you not, I saw someone say to someone else "would you like a soda" and the person stared back and said "why would I want a soda" and a third party repeated the question, only saying "would you like a pop" and the person said "yes, very much, thank you."
I grew up in Soda Country, where 80 to 90 percent of the time people used the word soda. Now, I live in Pop Country where 80 - 100 percent of the time people call soda pop. For a while, I lived in the Soda Enclave along the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, where soda is commonly used but there is enough nearby…
gregladen | November 30, 2011New York Academy of Sciences Children's Science Book Award Winner Vicki Cobb has a new volume called "See for Yourself: More Than 100 Amazing Experiments for Science Fairs and Projects (Second Edition)"
Actually, it isn't entirely new. It's a second edition, but updated.
This is for 10 year olds and up, and it does in fact have 100 ways to make glue, fake old documents, extract DNA, do interesting anatomical experiments like finding your blind spot, produce your own ink, hypnotize your friends, make crystal flowers, etc. etc. all with common household ingredients.
It is paperback, richly…
gregladen | November 29, 2011Bret Stephens does not mind looking like an idiot. Today, he published a column in the Wall Street Journal that is full of snark and devoid of thought, ill considered, misleading, moronic and in the end, embarrassing. It is a classic case of irresponsible journalism. Someone sent me the link and I swear, I checked twice while reading the piece to see if I had landing on TheOnion.com. I can't believe the Wall Street Journal published this.
I think it would have been impossible for a paper like the WSJ to publish a piece like this had main stream media not gotten rid of most of their science…
gregladen | November 29, 2011Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Strikingly True is the kind of book you do not want to open up while your toddler is standing around looking for something to look at. Huxley may never be the same.
A pig with no back legs that walks upright on its front legs? People with very large numbers of toes? Squid?
And, most shockingly, ectoplasm. You've gotta love the ectoplasm.
The world is a strange place, and everybody has a camera, so I think there will be no shortage of new volumes in this series of books about the bizarre. This particular issue seems to be more icky and shocking than usual, but…
gregladen | November 29, 2011Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb -- from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods.
gregladen | November 29, 2011Yes, and it is caused by humans. But if you have friends, colleagues, relatives or readers of your blog or facebook feed bothering you about this, telling you that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a hoax or a false claim or a lie, you may want this tool:
The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking misinformation, is now freely available to download. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there's no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of…
gregladen | November 29, 2011The blog post you are looking for has moved TO THIS LOCATION.
gregladen | November 28, 2011The other day, Amanda, who is currently teaching AP Biology, noted that among the various sources she had at hand, including a couple of textbooks, the number of cells that make up human body seemed to range from about five trillion to fifty trillion with a scattering of numbers in between. It is not clear why this number matters but I suppose if we want to impress students with the smallness of cells and the complexity of life it is worth pointing out, and if it is worth pointing out it might be worth getting it right. So, how many are there?
I believe the correct answer is in the upper…
gregladen | November 28, 2011As you know, my nephew, LeRoy Bell, was a contestant on the XFactor singing contest. You may also know that he was voted off the show last week. I'm not going to say much about that other than to note that LeRoy was NOT the 8th or 9th best singer in the group. He was clearly in the top three, and he was voted off prematurely. But that's how these things work. In the end, America will Choose. A Country Western Act.
Anyway, I thought that by way of acknowledgment of LeRoy's Talents I'd point you to his previous work. It's all good. You can get his CD's or download individual songs on…
gregladen | November 28, 2011The trick is, slowing them down enough, and speeding yourself up enough, then you can catch the turkeys.
Yeah, I know, it's an ad, but it's a good one.
gregladen | November 28, 2011Check out this astonishing bit of film from David Attenborough:
I'm pretty sure this is from Harry Potter.
gregladen | November 28, 2011If you read only one book this holiday season, make it all of the following twenty or so!
But seriously ... I'd like to do something today that I've been meaning to do, quite literally, for years. I want to run down a selection of readings that would provide any inquisitive person with a solid grounding in Behavioral Biological theory. At the very outset you need to know that this is not about Evolutionary Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology is something different. I'll explain some other time what the differences are. For now, we are only speaking of fairly traditional Darwinian…
gregladen | November 28, 2011To preserve sanity in the event of changing plans or other contingencies, I'll send you HERE to get the details. Check bat at that location for updates, should there be any.
gregladen | November 28, 2011The term "Black Friday" is said to refer to the day that so many people shop in US retail stores, the day after Thanksgiving, that retailer's ledgers go from red (debit) to black (profit). But this appears to be a more recent use of the term which has been in use since the middle of the last century to mean something different. It was still used by retailers and other concerned with the hoardes of people shopping on Thanksgiving weekend, but not in relation to the ledger books. Rather, "Black Friday" was a bad day because it was when all those obnoxious shoppers, brats in tow, came into…
gregladen | November 27, 2011Below the fold, because this is NOT going to be pretty.
First, a video:
OK, now established what we are talking about here, let's get down to business,
The blogger named WhySharksMatter is in the running to receive a fairly large sum of money, which he has promised to give to the sharks so that they do not attack any more airplanes. He will also use the money to fund his dissertation research on the relationship between sharks and coral reefs. And, he will use some of the money to support his lab's citizen science project which has taken over 1,000 high school students and teachers into…
gregladen | November 27, 2011The poll asks:
Do children need a mom and a dad? By encouraging men and women to marry, society helps ensure that children will be known by and cared for by their biological parents. Whenever a child is born, her mother will almost always be nearby. But the same cannot always be said of her father. Men, especially, are encouraged to take responsibility for their children through the institution of marriage. Marriage is society's mechanism of increasing the likelihood that children will be born and raised by the two people responsible for bringing them into the world - their mother and father…
gregladen | November 27, 2011I'm looking for a small (will always live in Amanda's purse) point and shoot camera and have so far narrowed the choices down to the following. Anybody have any advice on which one I should get (or an alternative, if you'd like to suggest one)? (Descriptions/details are from Amazon, for consistency)
Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full 1080p HD Video (Silver)
World's thinnest digital camera with a 24mm ultra Wide-Angle lens and 5x Optical Zoom and Optical Image Stabilizer.
Canon's HS SYSTEM with a 12.1 MP CMOS and DIGIC 4 Image Processor improves shooting in low-…
gregladen | November 27, 2011Why would you want a field guide to all of the carninvores? They live everywhere, so there is no reason to carry around a field identification guide with ALL of them unless you were going everywhere in the whole world on one trip!
Yet, there is such a field guide, Carnivores of the World (Princeton Field Guides), and the truth is, this is ONE OF THE COOLEST BOOKS I'VE EVER SEEN! All the carnivores (almost) in one book. Interestingly, it turns out to be possible. There are fewer than three hundred species of terrestrial carnivore in the whole world, and that is fittable in a single book…
gregladen | November 26, 2011Science Education Researcher Marie-Claire Shanahan, primatologist Eric Michael Johnson, and I joined Desiree Schell on on Skeptically Speaking to have a conversation very apropos this time of year in The West: The concept of Tradition. We said a number of very smart things which you can hear by clicking here and listening to the podcast.
I should mention that all four of us will be at Science Online 2012 in January.