gregladen | December 27, 2010The first thing you need to know about my list of the top ten science stories of the year is this: There are not ten. Well, as I write this, I've not settled what's on the list and what's not, so maybe there will be ten. Or six. Or one hundred and eleven. In any event, it will likely only be ten if you express the number in Basen where n is the number of stories.
What makes a "top ten" science story? I've decided to be picky this year. So, a brand new study that shows that male bower birds do some amazing trick with mirror fragments and monofiliment fishing line and discarded…
gregladen | December 26, 2010Biology is harder to learn than quantum physics. Why? Because most people think they totally get biology, but everyone knows nobody gets quantum physics. Therefore, any effort to explore quantum physics will result in new learning, but people rarely learn new biology. The bottom line is that our brains are full of biology, which would be good if most of it did not consist of ...
The Falsehoods and The Falsehoods II
gregladen | December 26, 2010Obamadog. Barack Obama's first serious mistake since the election.
Many of you heard the question at President Elect Obama's first news conference, which was mainly about the economy, regarding what kind of dog the girls would be getting as per a deal apparently made some time ago. The only safe answer to that question would have been to give the secret signal that cuts the power feed to the cameras, then have the reporter bagged and dragged out of the room and appropriately disciplined. But no, instead, Obama ...
Read the rest here.
gregladen | December 26, 2010I hereby nominate Oklahoma as the Stupidest State in the Union.
According to KTEN, Brecheen is using the tired old argument that because creationism exists as a belief it must be taught in science classes. This is exactly like saying that because some crazy people think bigfoot is real, bigfoot must be included in science classes.
"If we really are going to use science in the classroom, let's use the full science, let's not just be selective in our science. That's what my legislation is designed to do," Brecheen said.
Idiot.
Creationism of any form, including "intelligent design," simply…
gregladen | December 26, 2010It is very common, across the U.S., for science teachers to dread the "evolution" unit that they teach during life science class.
As they approach the day, and start to prepare the students for what is coming, they begin to hear the sarcastic remarks from the creationist students. When the day to engage the evolution unit arrives, students may show up in the classroom with handouts from anti-science sites like Answers in Genesis, to give to their friends. They may carry a bible to the lab station and read it instead of doing the work. If there is a parent conference night around that time,…
gregladen | December 26, 2010... will focus on Christmas.
Actually, he's wrong in comparing his ability, or yours or mine, to trace back a genealogy with Luke and his buddies. Back in those days, and in that culture, people did indeed walk around with pretty deep genealogies attached to them (though the extensive and intensive study of genealogies in anthropology tells us that those genealogies are not expected to be accurate).
(Sorry, I meant for this to come out yesterday but forget to hit the "publish" button)
gregladen | December 25, 2010Merry Christmas! OK, now that I've got you smiling and thinking of Santa and Elves and Snow flakes, Sugar Plum Fairies (hey, sugar, are you reading this?) and dancing gingerbread boys, let's look at some of the more dangerous yet popular items from this blog's past.
Item 1: It is OK to be an atheist, but not an uppity atheist
When you get a chance (but not right now, only when you have absolutely nothing whatsoever else to do) have a look at Matt Nisbet's latest thinly veiled attack on PZ myers*.
It is the usual crap. Atheists are not allowed to express annoyance, disgust, or anger, or to…
gregladen | December 24, 2010Half of my regular readers (well, at least four, maybe five) tell me, under duress, that they truly enjoy my more long-winded posts, but the vast majority of random visits clearly come to the quick and dirty posts, the videos that I slapped up with no forethought, the items that take less than five seconds to read though often there is a video, and the occasional kitty kat. MTV-generation pandering. Later I'll retrospect some of those long winded tomes, but for now, here's a set of pointers to some of the more visited posts not covered in my previous retrospective:
A rare excellent…
gregladen | December 23, 2010It is end of the year retrospective time. This is the time of year those of us who do stuff others read or watch all year run out of good stuff to do and dredge up old stuff to keep the few of you who are not flying to Mexico or baking cookies busy while we get drunk. This is the first in a seemingly interminable set of such retrospectives that I plan to do this year.
I'll start my retrospective with a prelude:
Early in January I'll be doing a live radio retrospective of the year's science stories with Lynn Fellmann, on Atheist Talk Radio. We are waiting until the end of the year to…
gregladen | December 23, 2010This post is a followup on Podcasts good and bad, to which some of you responded with excellent suggestions for podcasts.
I want to say that the criticisms I leveled in the previous post apply mainly to video podcasts in technolology that I've seen via the Roku on TWiT TV and other places, and really, on only a few of those. The following list is compiled from your comments but including only science and skepticism podcasts. I've added a few that you'all didn't happen to mention.
Please suggest what is missing and I'll add that in a future update.
Actually Speaking podcast.
Brain Science…
gregladen | December 23, 2010He took a couple of tentative steps prior to this, not caught on film. But then we got out the flip and started to do the whole "get the baby's first step on film thing" and at the same time learn'd him to walk:
gregladen | December 22, 2010He started walking. The following video is his third or fourth real attempt, the first one that went beyond two or three steps and a dive.
gregladen | December 22, 2010Do you have a favorite podcast? A podcast that you tried and hated? An idea for a podcast that should exist but doesn't? And, do you know of a rating system for podcasts (and should there be one)? As a thought experiment, I propose a Podcast Quality index, or set of indexes. To start, let me propose a set of criteria to evaluate the negatives of a multi-person podcast involving a primary host and a number of co-hosts or guests.
Number of minutes (or percentage of show) before the first interesting thing is said.
Number of times the host indulges him or herself in displaying an…
gregladen | December 21, 2010Everyone knows that there are two kinds of elephants in this world: Asian and African. The Asian is the only one that can be trained and the African ones live in harmony with their environment until hunters come by and shoot them. Scratch a little deeper, and the African bush elephant lives by destroying its environment and moving on to new areas, where it destroys that environment, cycling back to the original region over generational time; Both African and Asian elephants can be trained; and there are three, not two species of elephant in this world: Asian, African Bush, and African…
gregladen | December 21, 2010
Looking at Landesberg's tvography and filmography, I note that there must be an entire genre he was big in that I am utterly unaware of. But I did watch Barney Miller, and he was good in it as the Edgy Skeptic with Quirks. Was he the first intellectual cop in the modern era of US based TV crime and cop shows? Imma say he was.
gregladen | December 21, 2010NOTE Since writing this post other versions of the story behind this tragic and unnecessary gun related death have emerged. See the comments below.
The conversation that emerged from this post is not obviated by the story being different, as that conversation is more general.
I am not suggesting that one particular version of the story or another is correct. You'll have tobdo your own research on that.
Did I say toys? Sorry, didn't mean to prejudice the case. I meant "Legal Firearms For Protection Against Intruders and a Repressive Government."
We talk a lot about gun ownership and gun…
gregladen | December 21, 2010The annual Gallup Poll on how dumb Americans are has come out, and they got less dumb.
A new Gallup poll on public opinion about evolution hints at a slightly higher rate of acceptance of evolution in the United States over the years. Asked in December 2010 "[w]hich of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings," 38% of the respondents accepted "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process," 16% accepted "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less…