gregladen | September 26, 2011Tonight and tomorrow, there should be auroras visible much much farther south than normal. According to Universe Today you should see Auroras in most US states north of the southern tier of states. Unless they are exaggerating. Worth a look.
gregladen | September 26, 2011Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time! is a book about lisp programming. If you are into programming for fun, artificial intelligence, role playing games, or an emacs user, you should take a look at this book. I've got some info on this book as well as a few others for the budding emacs enthusiasts.
Land of Lisp teaches the lisp programming language using the development of games as a focal point.
Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages, and occurs in numerous dialects. The standard form that is taught in Land of Lisp is Common Lisp.
The teaching style in…
gregladen | September 26, 2011Hurry over while the guessing is still good! A Darwin I Think Mug to the first commenter who correctly identifies the symbolism of the name "The X Blog"
gregladen | September 26, 2011It is very reasonable for a parent to worry about vaccines. For one thing, most of them involve sticking the baby or child with a sharp object, thus making the little one cry, and it would be abnormal to not have an automatic reaction to that. For another thing, they are drugs, in a sense. When the little one is ill, and you call in to the health care facility in the hopes that there will be some useful advice, most of the time you hear "No, we no longer recommend giving [fill in the blank with a medicine you thought might work] to children under [one or two months older than your child].…
gregladen | September 25, 2011It will be the Early Show at 830-9 Eastern. Details here.
OK, they skipped that segment but Sheril should be on TOMORROW MORNING. 8:40 ET.
gregladen | September 25, 2011How do you know when alternative views are real alternatives, and thus should be considered in a "balanced view" vs. when those views are not any longer valid and should be ignored? This sounds like a hard thing to do but it is not as hard as you might think. I suggest two different approaches: "Tipping Points" and "Clues that Something is Wrong Here."
The Tipping Point approach works like this: As the percentage of qualified scientists that hold a particular view diminishes, when it reaches about 25 percent or so, the view should continue to be references but as a minority view. Many…
gregladen | September 25, 2011There was a poll.
On climate change, 69% of respondents said that they believe that "there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades," with 26% saying that they did not believe it, 2% volunteering that there is some or mixed evidence, and 3% saying that they didn't know or refusing to answer the question. Among those who believed that there is evidence (whether solid or mixed), 64% said that "[c]limate change is caused mostly by human activity such as burning fossil fuels" came closest to their view, while 32% preferred "[c]…
gregladen | September 25, 2011A paper coming out in the next issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases addresses the question of the link between vaccines and autism. This new review article examines three hypotheses linking vaccines to autism:
(1) the combination measlesâmumpsârubella vaccine causes autism by damaging the intestinal lining, which allows the entrance of encephalopathic proteins;
(2) thimerosal, an ethylmercuryâcontaining preservative in some vaccines, is toxic to the central nervous system; and
(3) the simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines overwhelms or weakens the immune system.
[…
gregladen | September 24, 2011Today is Stephanie Zvan's birthday. Instead of giving he the usual trinkets or consumables, a few of us got together and did something different. We pooled some resources and gave Stephanie a miniature.
A miniature what you say? A miniature non profit!
How does that work? Click here to find out.
gregladen | September 24, 2011There are several answers to this question. One was overheard the other day among a bunch of well educated people oriented towards science who were taking a break from their job.
Person 1: "So, how effective is the seasonal flu shot?"
Person 2: "I heard about 1%. If you get the flu shot, you'll have a 1% difference in if you get the flu."
Person 3: "That's crazy. I don't know where you are getting your data from. It can't be 1%, but I admit I don't know what the actual answer is, but it can't be that."
Persons 4 through 6: "Well, if YOU don't know, and HE says 1%, I'm going with the 1%.…
gregladen | September 24, 2011The virus that kills cancer is in the news again. Recent research at Penn State is being reported that indicates some interesting new findings. I have not read any of the original work in this and won't likely have time to, but there is a press release:
HERSHEY, Pa. -- A nondisease-causing virus kills human breast cancer cells in the laboratory, creating opportunities for potential new cancer therapies, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers who tested the virus on three different breast cancer types that represent the multiple stages of breast cancer development.
Adeno-…
gregladen | September 24, 2011I very rarely read a story on the WCCO web site. That's my local news station. I don't scroll down below the headlines, and that by the way means that I don't see any of the wonderful ads that are down there. I often don't respond to facebook conversations with anything more than a sentence, but rather, put my thoughts in a text editor and then post them somewhere, usually not facebook. Lately, I've stopped with any extensive responses on Google+ as well.
Why?
Well imagine that you are using the ancient technologies of pen and paper, writing an important letter while at work. And…
gregladen | September 24, 2011Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be, a kids evolution book, has won the 2010 Lane Anderson Award. The reason I mention this is because of this blog post which discusses how the book is published in Canada but not the US.
This bit of the post is interesting:
Loxton has reported receiving hate mails asking as to why his book doesn't give "equal time" to Intelligent Design". Loxton, an editor of the Skeptic magazine, has the answer ready - the book is about science and not religion.
It may not be published in the US but Amazon will still sell it to you! Imma give a copy or…
gregladen | September 24, 2011Or, for that matter, a solar eclipse? If the moon is going around the earth once a month shouldn't the moon's shadow fall on the earth (a solar eclipse) every month, and the earth's shadow fall on the moon (a lunar eclipse) once a month?
Yes, it should,and all the planets and moons and stuff should all be on the same flat plane with the sun in the "middle." Someday astronomers will find a solar system with several planets and they'll name it something special because it will be very rare.
Anyway, this came up in conversation and the conversation led to some googling around and this nice…
gregladen | September 23, 2011I have a small laptop that I carry to the coffee shop for writing. It is a bit shaky in the hardware department, very small, and has no functioning wireless. The hard drive is encrypted. These attributes together make it the perfect laptop to carry around between, say, the gym, the coffee shop, the grocery store, Huxley's daycare, etc. I have a small number of files synced on it via a hard wired network connection at home so there is quasi-real time work to do with it, but only a subset of the larger number of files and folders I regularly use. The lack of an Internet connection means…
gregladen | September 23, 2011Twitter Feed (most recent on top):
UARS_Reentry UARS Reentry
RT @SPACEFLIGHT101: Indications are that UARS is down following its last perigee. Waiting for official words. #UARS
ztresearch Tom A. Warner
by UARS_Reentry
RT @mycatthesquee: People north of Edmonton AB Canada saying they saw something "like fireworks" and 3 lights falling at10:20 pm MDT #UARS
SchwartzNow Jeff Schwartz
by UARS_Reentry
Source? RT @BASEDDRAG: Getting a UNCONFIRMED report saying that #UARS may have gone down in Northern Quebec.
RT @JPMajor: RT @b0yle: RT @numbercrunchers: RT @newswatchcanada Some reports say #UARS…
gregladen | September 23, 2011NCSE headquarters was flooded with almost 550 entries from almost 150 people, including sixty entries from a single indefatigable sloganeer. After days of statistical analysis and rigorous peer-review, we are pleased to congratulate the winners -- David Cone, Tom Griffiths, Michael Keller, Tania Lombrozo, Jerry Newton, Bill Pogson, S. Michael Smith, Drew Weller, and a few who preferred not to be identified -- who received such fabulous prizes as a Charles Darwin bobblehead from Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Department of Zoology, a DVD of Greta Schiller's documentary No Dinosaurs…