gregladen | May 25, 2011Congratulations for Almost Diamonds and Quiche Moraine blogger Stephanie Zvan for her brand new Guest Post at Scientific American.
The Politics of the Null Hypothesis
... Nothing about the field of IQ studies is free of political influence. It's naive to believe that any kind of research on a purported measure of individual merit could be politics-free in a self-proclaimed meritocracy with wide inequalities. ...
Read it HERE
gregladen | May 25, 2011People are asking me: Is the recent spate of tornadoes caused by global warming? The usual answer to that question is that you can't answer the question because a tornado is not caused by climate ... it is cause by weather ... and global warming (which is real, and which is cause by humans) is climate change.
However, that is not really the best answer to the question. Ultimately, I want to propose an analogy for how to think about this question, but first, a stab at a good answer, which if modified could probably be improved:
Question: Is Anthropogenic Global Warming the cause of the…
gregladen | May 24, 2011The last communication from the Mars Rover Spirit was on March 22, 2010. A few moments ago NASA announced that there would be no more attempts to contact the space robot after a transmission that will end on May 25th.
It is suspected that Spirit's internal circuitry was damaged by very low temperatures experienced during the Martian winter. While it was hoped that solar panels would allow heaters to bring the robot back to life, this apparently has not happened. The resources that would be needed to continue what seems to be a fruitless attempt at communication are now needed elsewhere…
gregladen | May 24, 2011It didn't really occur to me that anyone actually believed that the world was going to end the other day. Honestly. I had assumed that some crazy preacher made the claim, that it was being used to scam the gullible here and there, but that almost no one was really taking it seriously. But, in reading a few of the post-Rapture updates, this is clearly not the case. And, I'm sure that this is one of those things everybody else knew and that I was blissfully ignorant of.
Almost a hundred years ago, some guy named Miller came up with the idea that the world would end in 1843 or so. I…
gregladen | May 24, 2011Two pieces of sad news, some useful information, and a personal note (well, more of a political note).
First, the useful information. For those of you affected or busy passing information to those who are, the City of Minneapolis has set up this web page with information: Resources available for North Side residents affected by tornado
Sad item one: There has been a second death, related to the cleanup. Details.
Sad item two: After passing through one of the more urban areas of Minnesota, the north side of the City of Minneapolis, the tornado crossed the Mississippi River, which…
gregladen | May 24, 2011Polio is almost completely eradicated. But as Bruce Aylward says: Almost isn't good enough with a disease this terrifying. Aylward lays out the plan to continue the scientific miracle that ended polio in most of the world -- and to snuff it out everywhere, forever.
gregladen | May 24, 2011As documented by Dana Milbank, Tim Pawlenty has been telling us that he will be the one who "looks the American people in they eye and tells them the truth" and furthermore that Barak Obama can't do to that.
Over a period of several hours after announcing his candidacy for the office of President of the United States of America (which was reported in his local hometown newspaper, the Pioneer Press, in a small piece relegated to the Obituary section ... the only place that always tells the truth in every newspaper, I suppose) he used the word "truth" eleventy gazillion times in various…
gregladen | May 24, 2011As part of Migration Week (inspired by this post), I'm covering migration related books (mainly having to do with birds). How Birds Migrate by Paul Kerlinger (with Illustrations by Pat Archer), Second Edition, is an affordable, up to date (2009 publication) comprehensive and intelligently written book. It is written for the general public but is not dumbed down.
The thing about bird migration is that there are many facets to the behavior. There are different kinds of birds, with respect to the nature of their flight, body size, etc (think albatross vs. hummingbird). There are many kinds…
gregladen | May 23, 2011Here is a short list of what you should read this summer in science and science related topics. Some are old, some are new. There is a lot missing from this list, I'm sure, but the summer is short here in Minnesota and we'll be busy with the corn, so there is not much time.
The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living by Eaton, Konner and Shostack. An oldie but a goodie. Read it as a pragmatic science book rather than a self help guide.
The Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding (Kaufman Field Guides) ... a bird book but not an ID guide. More…
gregladen | May 23, 2011There are several things that cause extinction, but ultimately it is always the same: The last individual (or small number of individuals) of a species die. That may sound like a trivial explanation for extinction but consider what happens when you work backwards from that tragic moment in time. Well, you have more individuals in a population that was once much larger but was reduced in size somehow, which then dwindled to the last few, the last one, then zero. But how did that small population go from hundreds to a few then to zero? Most likely for no particular reason other than this…
gregladen | May 23, 2011They used to hunt whooping cranes. Between that and habitat loss, the number dropped from nearly 20,0000 to a mere 1,400 during the first half of the 19th century, and continued to drop to an all time low of 15 birds in 1941.
Fifteen birds, in 1941, represented the entire species.
All those birds were members of a single flock that migrated between the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, USA and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.
Most people know the story, or at least, the vague outlines of the story. Much has been written about them, including several books such as Cranes:…
gregladen | May 22, 2011Have a look at this picture (click to enlarge):
We had a tornado here a couple of hours ago. It did not come near our house. It was probably an F2 or so in strength, and based on videos and the reported damage path it was about three or four tenths of a mile wide or wider at times, as it moved along a path of about 10 miles or so (maybe 20 by some reports), four of those miles being as a strong well formed twister taking out houses, toppling trees, etc. etc.
As I say, it did not hit us, but it was large enough and close enough that I could hear it. You know, that freight train sound. At…
gregladen | May 22, 2011Well, that was interesting. We are having turbulent weather here in Minnesota. The current low pressure system passing across the US is sitting on us like a bullet on a bull's eye. Almost every line of storm activity is breaking into small blobs which in turn are spinning up wall clouds and twisters, mostly small, mostly only on radar, mostly not touching down.
Except the one that is currently bearing down on Coon Lake Beach and Forest Lake. It was spotted on a traffic cam earlier, seen by some spotters, damaged a shopping mall, and hit the small airport we have down the road from here.…
gregladen | May 22, 2011It's all just a matter of calibration. Let me 'splain.
One day I was driving along a suburban street with the sun low on the horizon and the windows covered in rain drops from a sudden sun-shower moments earlier, insufficiently caffeinated and distracted by something. That's when I saw a large black dog transmogrify into a lawn mower. No, seriously, I really did see this. It reminded me of the time I saw a giant UFO over Boston Harbor (details here: The Night I Was Almost Abducted by Aliens in Boston).
What happened with the dog was this: The distraction was a set of children and other…
gregladen | May 22, 2011These are the kinds of books you get if you are either a scientists studying bird migration and related issues, or a very serious bird geek. The first two can be obtained at very low prices used, but the third will set you back at least 50 bucks US$ if you want a used copy. Note the spread of publication dates. It is not the case that the oldest book is out of date in all respects: Quite the contrary. Alerstam reviews theory and ideas that have not been revisited or revised to any great degree. Also, it is interesting to see how changes in the field develop over a decade or so. In any…
gregladen | May 21, 2011The separation of church and state is dead in Kentucky Governor Beshear says he would welcome a "Mecca Theme Park" as well. He also says the Ark Park will be required to not discriminate in hiring. We'll see.
From the Courier-Journal:
A state contractor concluded that the proposed Ark Encounter biblical theme park will draw enough visitors to qualify for state incentives, prompting the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority to grant final approval for up to $43.1 million in sales tax rebates over 10 years.
The state tourism law spells out several requirements, including the number…
gregladen | May 21, 2011Both my desktop and my laptop started working more slowly a few weeks ago. This indicated that something about the operating system (some version of Ubuntu Linux) changed in a bad way. Or, perhaps, since the slowness was mostly noticed in the web browser, the newer version of Firefox was somehow borked. It turns out that the latter is true to some extent because the developers of Firefox left Linux out in the cold with hardware acceleration (and despite the excuses for that I'm still annoyed ... had the same issues applied to, say Windows, they would not have left Windows out in the cold…
gregladen | May 21, 2011Happy Rapture Day!
It's a bummer that it's raining here, because the rapture BBQ at Kammy's might be rained out. In the meantime I've got lots of stuff to get done ... finish cleaning the garage, get the wood for a new book shelf, write a few more posts for Migration Week, update the Fukushima project, and if I have a chance finally get around to watching the new Dr. Wh......
gregladen | May 21, 2011On the Wing: American Birds in Migration is a children's book suitable for up to Middle School or thereabouts. Remarkably, this ten year old volume is actually fairly accurate and comprehensible, covering most of the major aspects of bird migration, discussion ecological patterns, mechanisms, and methods used to study the phenomenon.
It is written and illustrated by Carol Lerner, who has prodcued well over a dozen anture related books of similar (high) quality including Butterflies in the Garden and Backyard Birds of Summer. Since these books are all at least ten years old you can find…