gregladen | October 6, 2011First, the version by the Eagles:
And now, LeRoy Bell (and some other people):
Yeah, they've all got notes, but LeRoy can sing!
HERE is where you can go to make a positive comment about LeRoy, if you want.
gregladen | October 5, 2011I'll be interviewing Don on the radio in the AM, then, later that day:
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011, 1:30 p.m.
Party Room of Larpenteur Estates
1276 Larpenteur Ave. W.
St. Paul, MN 55113
(Park in the back of the apartment complex and go to the gap between buildings near the east end. Signs will point to the Party Room.)
Minnesota Atheists is pleased to host Prof. Donald R. Prothero, who will give a presentation on "Science Denialism: The Holocaust, Evolution, Climate Change, etc."
Prof. Prothero is the author of the popular book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters." He is a…
gregladen | October 5, 2011He was 56, and just recently stepped down from his position at the helm of Apple.
gregladen | October 5, 2011Did you know that the British scientific journal Nature publishes a section, called Futures, edited by Henry Gee, which presents a short science fiction story every issue?
Well, if you go to this week's Futures in Nature, which is available on line (and not behinda firewall) you will see something special. I'm not going tell you what it is, I'm just going to tell you to go and look, read it, and enjoy.
GO!
Why are you still here? Click here.
gregladen | October 5, 2011As a result of our last posting on Fukushima, we had a discussion initiated by commenter Daedelus2u about radioactive istopes of Cesium becoming concentrated in fish. I thought I'd take this opportunity to expand on that discussion a little. This relates to the possibility that radioactive elements spilled or spewed from a nuclear reactor site (as per normal or following a meltdown and China Syndrome, as in the case of Fukushima) can become part of our diet especially in fish, and how much concentration of radioactive isotopes we might expect.
Ana's feed is loaded with startling and…
gregladen | October 5, 2011Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry.
gregladen | October 5, 2011The finding for which this year's Chemistry Nobel was awarded earlier today was sufficiently unexpected and counter to the orthodoxy of the time that today's prize winner was tossed out of his own research group for reporting it. His 1982 discovery has to do with how atoms are organized in solid matter, and is based on observations made with electron microscopy. Daniel Shechtman's imagery...
...showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons,…
gregladen | October 4, 2011The Amazon Kindle originally promised a technology that would improve your reading experience, at the same time cutting the cost of books in half. Those books would arrive on your Kindle through the magic of the Whisper Net, a free space age delivery service. The Kindle itself would be easier to use, lighter weight, and more readable than an actual book.
Well, there's good news and bad news. As the Kindle technology and the eBook market have developed, all of those original promises have become either vapor or else very different than first imagined. Nonetheless, I want a new-old Kindle…
gregladen | October 4, 2011... Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues ...
It's hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called "hockey stick" -- work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years -- as "fraudulent," and claiming that it "it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program."
These are…
gregladen | October 4, 2011I went to graduate school to study Anthropology, so naturally, there was very little funding. Some semesters, I paid the bills working as an administrative assistant for one Harvard Muckimuck or another, often at the Kennedy School of Government, but for a while, at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. There, I was the assistant to the director, a man named Marvin Kalb. There is a chance you've heard of him as well as his brother, Bernard. Kalb was the Shorenstein Center's original director and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy.…
gregladen | October 4, 2011"In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role. ...
"The two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected -- this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. ... For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery…
gregladen | October 3, 2011Threaded comments have advantages but they also have disadvantages. I won't mention the disadvantages because if you don't know what they are already than they aren't disadvantages to you. The advantages are: 1) You can keep track of a sub-conversation in a comments stream; 2) You can refer to a specific upstream comment easily (which in non-threaded contexts often uses a reference to a comment number, which has the disadvanage of not being fixed if old moderated comments are inserted prior to the numbered comment); and 3) at least in some cases, you can subscribe to a specific comment (…
gregladen | October 3, 2011Remember last summer's tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region, with a high poverty rate and where the schools are struggling against all odds. One of the schools in North Minneapolis that needs your help is one of the schools damaged by that tornado. So they got a double hit. I've hand selected all of the schools based on my interaction with local and regional schools, with a focus on supporting doable project related mainly to science or math. In addition, DonorsChoose carefully inspects budgets and proposals to make sure they are…
gregladen | October 3, 2011
Oh great, it's got healing powers. Thank you news person for reporting that as though it wasn't insane.
gregladen | October 3, 2011The prize went to Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann, and Ralph Steinman for their work on the immune system.
Beutler and Hoffmann's work enhanced our understanding of the activation of innate immunity in humans. In other words, the link between cytokine and swelling and related issues. Among other things, this work resulted in the development of Etanercept, a treatment for Psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn's disease.
Steinman discovered dendritic cells and the role they play in adaptive immunity. These are part of the mammalian immune system. They mediate between antigens (…
gregladen | October 2, 2011With a science connection. OK, I admit not much of a science connection, but really, it's hard to find them.
I'm trying to cover all the bases here, so I've got a suggestion for an adult, a child, and a dog.
For the adult, the obvious choice is this "Man in a Cage" costume, wherein a gorilla holds you in a cage. I'm not sure how much you have to pay the gorilla or if there are other options such as, maybe, an orang-utan. I'm sure this can easily be adapted to be a "Woman is a Cage" as you wish.
It is called the Man in a Gorilla Cage Costume and is available in fine costume stores on the…
gregladen | October 1, 2011Scott Lohman will be talking to Jen Hancock, the author of Handy Humanism Handbook.
Jen blogs at Happiness Through Humanism. She is an author, blogger and humanist activist. Her website is at Jen-Hancock.com. Scott is the president of the Humanists of Minnesota.
Atheists Talk is produced with funding from the Minnesota Atheists, the Humanists of Minnesota, and the generous support of our members and donors. We also wish to thank Q. Cumbers restaurant for purchasing on-air advertising and for providing a great place to eat and gather.
Details here.
Next week, I'll be interviewing Don…