gregladen | December 7, 2010My father was a housing authority executive director during much of the 1970s and 1980s. He was fairly well known, having established one or two of the main housing authority directors' professional associations, and having developed the shared risk pool insurance system which reduced the cost of running public housing projects buy tens of percent. Jimmy Carter offered him the HUD directorship, but he asked to be relieved of that request but reconsidered when Carter was re-elected. Which he wasn't, else we may have spent a few years in Washington.
Anyway, it was not terribly unlikely for…
gregladen | December 6, 2010The following is a fictionalized version of a true story recently told to me by two of the people involved. All the names of those still living have been changed. Please do not let this happen to you.
~~~~~
No one is sure why Fred took the chance he took that day, but when Elmer saw him flailing in the icy water surrounded by black ice 300 yards out in Medicine Lake, he did not at that time think to divine his motivations for being there. Fred, an old man who had been ice fishing for dozens of generations of fish and two or three generations of more mortal men, had gone out on the black…
gregladen | December 6, 2010Is this thing on? Hello? Hello? ....
Ah, thats better. Comcast, which every day seems to do something to piss me off, had a major sub-regional outage for the last several hours, it would seem. So, we've been floating free of the Internet and a few things have accumulated.
First, this: Remember the rape charges brought against WikiLeak's Julian Assange? It would seem that with the latest Wikileaks leaks, the nature of and the stakes related to these accusations are taking on a new form, and we are starting to see conspiracy theories with a misogynist slant emerging to excuse Mr. Assange…
gregladen | December 6, 2010
Lamont Ekker experienced what some people might consider a Thanksgiving miracle when he cut through a 15-pound chunk of sandstone at his Torrey rock shop last week.
Ekker cuts and polishes rocks at his shop, Jurassic Rocks, to expose interesting internal patterns and striations. Three days before Thanksgiving, he was "baking" in his oven some rocks he picked up that day in a quarry near Teasdale in southern Utah. The heat causes the iron in the yellow sandstone to oxidize, turning it a brilliant orangish red.
"When I took those pieces out of the oven, I saw this one had turned into what it…
gregladen | December 3, 2010Many months ago, the fossil primate "Ida" was reported to the world with much fanfare, including an entire mass market book and a huge press conference, and everything else one can possibly do to announce a new fossil find. Science bloggers and others got rather upset at the Ida team's over the top fanfare, though few bloggers ever explained why it was a bad thing to make everyone on the planet notice an important new scientific find (and no one made the claim that Ida was not very important). One of the things the Ida team did was to use the term "missing link" in connection with that…
gregladen | December 2, 2010The recount in the Minnesota Governor's race is almost done. As of yesterday evening, only five counties had counting to do. The state "canvassing board" (in charge of the recount, headed by the Secretary of State), is scheduled to meet on December 8th to resolve the recount. That may get done in one day, but is more likely to take about three days. Because there will be lawyers for both sides there and a state supreme court judge on the board who seems bent on dragging out the process (in my humble opinion).
So, how's it going? Well, in order to know how it is going, you have to know…
gregladen | December 2, 2010Looking for life zillions of miles away:
Jill Tarter on why looking for life elsewhere is good.
gregladen | December 2, 2010In his highly readable book, One Long Argument, Ernst Mayr breaks down the body of thought often referred to as "Darwin's Theory" into five separate and distinct theories, the second of which being "common descent." Darwin's second evolutionary theory (second by Mayr's count, not Darwin's) is really a hypothesis that could be worded this way:
All life on earth descended from a single, original, primordial form that arose eons ago.
The evidence in favor of this hypothesis is strong, but the test of the hypothesis ... the means of disproving it, which is, after all, the point of stating it to…
gregladen | December 2, 2010 There has been much talk about whether the recent Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables will be a good thing or a bad thing. I would assume (and that is an assumption ... which is why I used the word assume) that there would be some of both, some forward movement of progressive ideals including honest government and reasonably transparent diplomatic policies that value human rights and the environment, etc., and some damage to ongoing diplomatic processes or exposure of ammunition that can be used for nefarious purposes by nefarious figures and organizations. But, since some of that would…
gregladen | December 1, 2010
I'm fine with this. But first, remove all politicization of science funding. All of it. Stem cells anyone?
gregladen | December 1, 2010The builders of the Creation Museum plan to build a full size replica of Noah's Ark as the centerpiece of a new religious themed amusement park. Answers in Genesis, builders of the Creation Museum, will build the religious-themed amusement park in Kentucky.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is expected to hold a press conference Wednesday to talk about the venture
source
Hat Tip: Joe
gregladen | November 30, 2010Samuel Hengel is, or should I say was, a mentally disturbed, probably depressed student in a rural area of Wisconsin who showed up at school yesterday with a pistol. He used the firearm to hold the teacher and students in one of his classes for several hours. (details here)
Scary part (well, there's several scary parts): He actually fired the weapon a few times and kept everyone in the room for something like an hour or an hour and a half before school authorities were aware that there was a problem.
Anyway, he fired his weapon a number of times, shooting various objects, and finally on…
gregladen | November 30, 2010Or, at least, that's what I assume she means when she asks "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Equating her recent book with the quarter-million or so cables among US embassies and the state department, she is known to have tweeted:
Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?
And imagine, we actually passed by an opportunity to have Sarah Palin in the White House!
Much more here.
gregladen | November 30, 2010That's the Wikileaks guy.
Believe it or not, there's a poll! The act makes it a crime " To convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. This was punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both, or to convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause…
gregladen | November 30, 2010Today is the last day of the official Atlantic Hurricane season, and that seems right because for the last several days there has been no significant tropical storm development in the region. However, there is evidence to suggest that the Atlantic Hurricane seasons have been getting longer, perhaps requiring a change int he expected end date.
Well, today a storm is blowing up along side the Isthmus of Panama which has the potential for developing into a named system. The chances are very slim that this will turn into anything.
I'd love to sit and chat with you more but I have to shovel…
gregladen | November 30, 2010NASA has slyly, or inadvertantly, let out a handful of clues that a planned news conference will reveal details of an important new finding regarding life on other planets. There have been a number of moments in the history of astrobiology where an important find has gotten us all very excited, including the discovery of isotopic profiles on a Mars rock (a meteorite) indicating a biological pathway, parallel findings on Mars, various discoveries related to water on Mars, and analysis of places like Europa and Titan, and so on. The word on the street is that this is going to be one such…