gregladen | May 20, 2011The worker's death was probably unrelated to the nuclear disaster, but it can't help moral much at the crippled site. Fission and cooling still remain issues at the Fukushima plant. Although fission is not happening to any large degree, or possibly at all, there has been fission more recently than many expected, and there is still concern that the reaction could restart. Various attempts at introducing long term cooling solutions at the site have been less than successful. It is clear that at least two of the reactors will have to be covered by a protective overarching structure.
The…
gregladen | May 20, 2011On the Move: How and Why Animals Travel in Groups, edited by Sue Boinski and Paul Garber is a compendium of academic research on ... well, on how and why animals travel in groups. Notice of this book is a fitting start to a series of reviews of migration-related books that is part of Migration Week on GLB. (For an overview of the Bigness and Vastness of bird migration in particular, see A Question of Migration.)
Group movement is only rarely migration, though the two phenomena are overlapping subsets. An example of group movement that demands some explanation is that found in chimpanzees…
gregladen | May 19, 2011Bird migration is a huge topic. Super-Big. Vast. Overwhelming.
So, starting today, it is Bird Migration Week (running from Thursday to Thursday) on this blog. I'll be posting a number of quick reviews of bird-migration related books and a few other items, but for starters, I'll send you over to 10,000 Birds for a post on bird migration.
To a birder, migration means that you can live in Minnesota, New York, Paris or Moscow and see exotic tropical birds such as Piranga olivacea and Icterus galbula on a regular basis without buying a plane ticket. The birds do the flying for you. Even if…
gregladen | May 19, 2011Everything is connected to everything else. Sometimes, the connections are non-trivial. Often they are fundamental, sometimes exploitable, and now and then very potent sources of debate and discussion. I've come to think that a measure of sanity is the degree to which one limits a sense of connection when taking in new information. For instance, I was lambasted by a fellow blogger a few months ago when he insisted that there were connections ... of influence, of a pecuniary nature, at least ... between me and a major Big Science institution which caused me to say things that he thought I…
gregladen | May 16, 2011The law of superimposition says that stuff found on top is younger than stuff found lower down, in a geological or archaeological column. This is generally true, but there are exceptions, mostly trivial and easily understood. If a cave forms in a rock formation, the stuff that later ends up in that cave is younger in depositional age than the rock underneath which it rests (the rock in the roof of the cave, and above).
One of the coolest examples of what seems to be (but really is not) a violation of this Law of Geology is a thrust fault. A thrust fault is essentially a horizontal fault (…
gregladen | May 15, 2011on Skeptically Speaking, recording live today.
We look at the cutting edge science and old-fashioned wonder of the hunt for planets circling other stars. We'll talk to Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and author of Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System. And we're joined by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, to discuss the current progress, and the uncertain future, of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
This show records live on Sunday, May 15 at 6 pm MT…
gregladen | May 14, 2011There is a lot happening in Japan, and the situation at Fukushima remains pretty much out of human control. There is a nuclear incident at a reactor site other than Fukushima. There is still quite a bit of radioactive material leaking into the sea. The radiation levels in the crippled Fukushima plants is still high or even rising. There is information coming out now about radiation levels and exposure that was apparently kept secret earlier for fear of causing panic. And so on. Check out Ana's feed (below) for numerous details and links.
One of the most important things to have come to…
gregladen | May 14, 2011I'm looking forward to the moment in a few weeks from now when Desiree Schell and I sit down and have a serious public conversation about approaches to promoting skepticism and science-based reasoning and policy. We'll also discuss New Atheism and Accommodationism, I assume.
As you know, Desiree hosts the highly popular radio program and podcast "Skeptically Speaking." This may be the first time she's engaged in a public conversation with some crazy New Atheist blogger anywhere other than on her own home turf (we'll be talking on Atheist Talk Radio, with Mike Haubrich hosting). It…
gregladen | May 14, 2011You can't easily. But you can do something similar, enjoy a rewarding experience, and have access to a tasty brew at a reasonable price and only a moderate level of fiddling. A while ago I bought a Cuisinox COF-M4 Milano 4-Cup Espresso Coffeemaker. It is a modernized version of the early 20th century "moka pot," which is designed to make an espresso-like beverage. The original moka pot is made of aluminum, which is an excellent metal for this job given it's heat conductive properties, but it also provides an undesirable addition to the taste of the final product. And, aluninum is not…
gregladen | May 12, 2011I had never felt airsick before, or since. But now I was a nauseated rag doll flopping around in the middle row of a six seater prop plane and I was ready to hurl at any moment.
A timely repost
BBC depiction of the path of Flight 447. I find it astonishing that the most important weather related feature on the planet is a "place where there are a lot of thunderstorms" or often not even identified at all. This is equivalent to a plane crashing into the Cascades and the news reporting that the aircraft went down in a "place with some hills" or not even noting the existence of the mountain…
gregladen | May 11, 2011Surly Amy has been (successfully) raising money to help defray conference costs for women interested in attending The Amazing Meeting. Moments ago, Emma Cating, Megan Wells, and Amy Peters, who has applied among many others to obtain this funding, were awarded the first Surly Women Thinking Free TAM Grants.
There are more women in need of funding and I know you can help. Please visit this blog post to find out how.
gregladen | May 11, 2011Did I use 'offing' correctly? Strange word.
Anyway, Mike Haubrich has pulled off another coup at Atheist Talk Radio. He has arranged for a conversation to happen, live, between Desiree Schell and yours truly. This will be in early June (details forthcoming). We'll be talking about multiple strategies for effecting change, especially with reference to things like skeptical (in a good way) thinking, science, and so on.
This is very timely because we are quickly approaching SkepchiCON (click here to donate), at which this will be one of the topics discussed in the track organized by the…
gregladen | May 10, 2011It's Bora's birthday. He's here and here. Well, he's everywhere, but those are two places he be.
gregladen | May 10, 2011"We should not have published the altered picture"
Meaning, what exactly? Oh never mind. Have a look at this:
Here's a picture from the same newspaper:
I ask you: Who was the woman standing at that podium before she was erased?
Now, look at this picture:
Are we certain that the banana depicted in the vitamin ad is not a female? Certain, as in, stone the transgressor to death certain? I. Don't. Think. So.
gregladen | May 10, 2011You've all seen the photograph. Here's a closeup:
On the right is a bunch of people in the Sitch Room at the White House watching in-house coverage of the Navy Seals taking out O-b-L. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counter Intel Adviser Audrey Tomason are, notably, the only women in the room. There are not a lot of women in the highest echelon of power in the US, it would seem. The photograph on the left is the same shot published in the 'newspaper' Der Zeitung, a Brooklyn Hasidic publication. Here, the two women who actually were in the room have been deleted for religious…
gregladen | May 10, 2011A lot of paleolithic diet and exercise books, many how to be a hunter-gatherer guides for the suburbanites, and numerous biologically-based-sounding self-help volumes based mainly on woo have been produced since The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living was published in 1989. To my knowledge, none of the subsequent books has been as useful or as well done, even if TPP requires some updating.
I'm not recommending the book as a self help guide, but rather, as a way of linking the scientific evidence for human diet and activity, based mainly on…
gregladen | May 10, 2011UC Davis Prof Steps Down from Chair-ship over his own misogynist treatment of grad students:
A while back
...a department chair in the veterinary school at the University of California at Davis had polled a class on what grade he should give to a student who had to miss some quizzes because she had given birth.
This week,
... the university released a statement from Edward Feldman, chair of the medicine and epidemiology department, in which he apologized for the incident in his class, and said that he was complying with the university's request to step down as chair.
source
Birthers are…
gregladen | May 9, 2011Florida Senate Bill 1854 would have required a so-called "thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution" which is code word in US state legislatures these days for "taught along side Intelligent Design Creationism as an alternative to established scientific reckoning of the nature and history of life on earth." Whe the state legislature adjourned a few days ago, that bill died a quiet death .
In 2009, before introducing a similar bill, SB 1854's sponsor, Stephen R. Wise (R-District 5), announced his intention to introduce a bill requiring "intelligent…
gregladen | May 8, 2011We explore the changing ways that medicine and culture have treated pregnancy and childbirth. We'll talk with doctor and medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein, about her book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. And on another edition of Everything You Know is Sort Of Wrong, Greg Laden looks at common misconceptions about life expectancy.
CLICK HERE!!!
gregladen | May 7, 2011This post at 10,000 Birds, an item I accidentally bumped into on the Internet while looking for something else, and an unusual sighting moments ago, converge. And, its a nice distracting convergence which I need right now because as I sit here one week before fishing opener, looking at the glassy surface of Hunters Bay, I see fish jumping everywhere. Not only that, but a 54 inch muskie was found dead a few days ago 25 feet from where I'm sitting now. And, the Department of Natural Resources put up a fish weir just across the bay, and they've been coming by every morning and pulling out…