gregladen | October 10, 2011I know a lot of you will be interested in this and may want to comment on it. It is obvious to me that Netflix pays close attention to this blog, so your comments will matter a great deal. It is almost like you were on the board of directors or something:
Dear Greg,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password...in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price…
gregladen | October 10, 2011My first job as an archaeologist in Boston (having moved there from New York) had to do with Deer Island, the northern of two islands that separate Boston's Inner and Outer Harbors. The actual archaeology was uninteresting but the historical research was fascinating. Among the things I learned is that Boston's Inner Harbor regularly froze over. It no longer does. When the Continental Army placed the British in Boston under Siege at the beginning of the Revolution, the idea of holding off an assault until the harbor froze over was routine. No one expected the harbor to not freeze over.…
gregladen | October 10, 2011Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims have won the Nobel Prize for economics for their work on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.
Sample their work here.
gregladen | October 10, 2011The following photograph is a Facebook Peme (Pic Meme, sometimes spelled "peem"). In its original form it had a caption that was sexist and offensive, feeding the idea that girls can't do math (innately) and also suggesting that a good backup plan for a middle schooler frustrated with academics is sexual self-objectivictoin.
I've blogged about this at The X Blog. Here, I'd like to ask you to suggest alternative captions for this photograph. And by "alternative" I mean positive. Or funny but not sexist.
gregladen | October 8, 2011The magazine:
Biomedical researchers have lost a respected source of information--and science journalists have lost yet another publication for which they can write--with the news that The Scientist will stop publishing immediately. The news comes just after the magazine celebrated its 25th anniversary with a special issue.
Wow, that was unexpected. In a totally expected sort of way. Story here.
gregladen | October 8, 2011And other things....
Episode 31:
INTRO: Belinda, Jason, Jack and James. New panelist, James Cooper, TAM 9, Belinda's Masters studies.
ON THE STREET: Martin Pribble at Think Inc. 2011.
INTERVIEW: Eugenie Scott.
NEWS: Faster-ââthan-ââlight neutrinos, Blackmores' pharmacy deal, secularism in the Israel/âPalestine conflict.
gregladen | October 8, 2011Curiosity is a new Mars Rover that looks like a UFO when it's all folded up in its space-pod, but looks like a Transformer when it is deployed.
The space travelling robot has been folded up and sealed into its anti-germ container (to avoid letting germs out into the Martian ecosystem, the rover is sterilized and sealed up) in preparation for its launch, which is coming up soon.
According to NASA, Launch Window opens at 10:21 EST on November 25th. Arrival at the planet Mars is expected in August, 2012 .
The main thing this robot is curious about is the presence of microbial life, past or…
gregladen | October 8, 2011You know you want to! This is just one of the many project you can help out:
My Students: Kids love to find out what's happening inside them! From their blood to their bones, we study the human body. Our health book is a good resource for students, but having a model for them to look at and touch would make connections for those struggling students who are not strong readers.
We are a small, rural school in Minnesota. We have a surprisingly diverse population that comes from many different socio-economic backgrounds. The students are excited and eager to learn. Our students sometimes…
gregladen | October 8, 2011is ... here, at Kevin Zelnio's blog at Scientific American. Go read it, click on stuff, and pass it around!
gregladen | October 7, 2011Sunday, May 22nd, 2011: That is a day people around here will never forget. I remember standing in the maw of my open garage holding an iPad with the weather radar running on it. The weather map showed that a tornado was on top of me. Amanda, Julia and Huxley were in the basement preparing for the worst. But, strangely, the rain was falling striaght down and there was not a whiff of wind.
That's when I heard the freight train coming. Problem was, that train was running were there were no tracks....
The wind never did pick up. I could hear the tornado pass by to my left, in the east.…
gregladen | October 7, 2011Check it out:
OK, you have fought hard to deny or challenge the realities of climate change, perhaps because you are afraid of the policies that might have to be put in place; or are afraid of the possibilities of increased government intervention; or you don't think it will be that bad; or you think it will be too expensive to do anything about; or you don't understand the science; or you don't trust scientists, including, by the way, every national academy of sciences and every professional scientific organization in the geosciences... or whatever.
Read the rest of this piece by Peter…
gregladen | October 7, 2011The Republic of the Marshall Islands is now home to the world's largest shark sanctuary. The Nitijela, the Marshallese parliament, unanimously passed legislation this week that ends commercial fishing of sharks in all 1,990,530 square kilometers (768,547 square miles) of the central Pacific country's waters, an ocean area four times the landmass of California.
Details
It's huge. You could see it from space. If you could see it.
gregladen | October 7, 2011Remember the gravity mapping project on the moon?
NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-B spacecraft successfully executed its first flight path correction maneuver Wednesday, Oct. 5. The rocket burn helped refine the spacecraft's trajectory as it travels from Earth to the moon and provides separation between itself and its mirror twin, GRAIL-A. The first burn for GRAIL-A occurred on Sept. 30.
"Both spacecraft are alive and with these burns, prove that they're kicking too, as expected," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena…
gregladen | October 7, 2011Three women who have worked for peace and women's rights in Liberia and Yemen have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, it was just announced at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee and Yemeni protest leader Tawakkul Karman are being honored.
source
gregladen | October 6, 2011I'm very excited to have the opportunity to interview Don Prothero this coming Sunday on Atheist Talk Radio. If you are local to the Twin Cities, you can listen in on AM 950. If not, you can get there via the Minnesota Atheist web site (where you will have to pretend you live in a twin cities zip code, such as 55433). Also, AM 950 is available on at least one digital radio station server ... I seem to be able to get it on my Roku.
Prothero is a palaentologist who has been featured on the Discovery Institute web site (they don't like him) as well as several podcasts (see below). He is a…
gregladen | October 6, 2011A study incorporating over 12,000 prior peer reviewed publications, addressing the question of vaccine safety, is due for release by the National Academies of Science. The study attempts to understand adverse effects of vaccines and to assign causality to supposed negative outcomes. The 667 page study covers a large number of vaccines. And yes, it addresses autism.
The study cataloged about 60 distinct adverse effects across 8 categories of vaccine treatments, two of which contain multiple vaccines, for a total of 12 distinct vaccines, as well as more general injection-related events (…
gregladen | October 6, 2011How do we search for alien life if it's nothing like the life that we know? At TEDxUIUC Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research into artificial life -- self-replicating computer programs -- to find a signature, a 'biomarker,' that is free of our preconceptions of what life is
Timing is everything.
gregladen | October 6, 2011Look at this map, of a small part of the state of Minnesota:
See the wide channel that runs from left to right with the windy river in it? You are looking at one of the most amazing stories in geological history ever. I'd like to tell you about it.
When not in flood, the meandering river is little more than a slow moving stream in a wide marsh, with thickets and stands of pioneer trees dispersed among reeds and pools of open water. Largely bypassed by farm, rural and urban development, it is in this channel that the state's rare cougars live, and where some of the best birding in the…