gregladen | October 26, 2010Penguins Unbound (the web site for the Monthly Meeting of Linux Enthusiasts) announces the Ubuntu 10.10 Release Party and Install Fest for October 30th, 2010 at 10:00am to 4:00pm at TIES on Snelling Avenue in Falcon Heights (which you may know of as Saint Paul), Minnesota.
Details here.
gregladen | October 26, 2010Former hurricane Richard will dissipate in the southern Gulf of Mexico. At the moment, the satellite view of the storm is interesting, because it looks like a well organized and properly shaped skeleton of a hurricane:
Meanwhile, a stormy low pressure system in the Eastern Atlantic is developing beyond yesterday's suggestive storminess, and many of the conditions are good for the formation of a strong storm, but these conditions are expected to deteriorate over the next two days, thus the chance of this disturbance becoming a named storm in the near future are about one in three.
gregladen | October 26, 2010In light of this recent story of Rand Paul reporters wrestling a woman to the ground and stepping on her head, I decided to post this political campaign note from Jack Conway's campaign, because it contains parallel (and rather disturbing) information:
Rand Paul's issue positions -- and his prior conduct -- are more than quirky or odd. They are wrong.
Not just because he thinks our seniors should be forced to pay a new $2,000 Medicare deductible. And not just because he wants a new 23% sales tax on everything nationwide -- a tax that would penalize the poor and middle class.
I mean, he even…
gregladen | October 26, 2010And I'm not talking about what you hear when you play the album backwards ...
Paul the octopus is dead. This is the octopus that predicted the outcome of the recent World Cup tournament using an ingenious combination of random behavior and confirmation bias.
Paul had reached the octopus old age of 2½ years and died in his tank on Tuesday morning in an aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen, spokeswoman Ariane Vieregge said.
Paul seemed to be in good shape when he was checked late Monday, but he did not make it through the night. He died of natural causes, Vieregge added.…
gregladen | October 25, 2010The Ration of Reason is a new science nature and skeptics podcast in which podcaster Matt Johnson and sometimes Samantha Johnson read selected science, nature, or skeptic related blog posts.
Today's installment includes one of mine ("The most important human adaptation"): Ep. 4: Ostriches Don't... Most Important Human Adaptation and One-Way Mars Missions.
Check it out!
gregladen | October 25, 2010That's what one of my fellow Minnesotans, a gun-nut proto-teabagger, said to Paul Wellstone after he was elected to the Senate, and was busy opposing Gulf War I. There were many other threats as well, once again demonstrating that right wingers are often rude, sometimes violent, and always obnoxious.
This comes up now because Paul Wellstone's FBI file is suddenly in the public eye.
The threats alarmed Wellstone's staff and led his state director, Jeff Blodgett, to contact the FBI and other authorities, MPR reported. Blodgett agreed to an agent's recommendation to put a "trap and trace"…
gregladen | October 25, 2010And in this case, the teabagger is an actual tea party candidate, in the sense that the Republican Party is the Tea Party and Joe Miller is the Republican Nominee for the Senate.
The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller's private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.
Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.
source
Apparently, local police…
gregladen | October 25, 2010Hurricane Richard is now Tropical Storm Richard, and is weakening rapidly. When this storm passes over the Gulf of Mexico, it is not expected to gain strength, but rather, will be torn asunder by the forces of nature and stuff and will dissipate.
Richard knocked out power and messed up a bunch of roofs, but the news from Belize seems to indicate that the storm was not a disaster.
Will there be a Shary (that's the next name on the list of hurricane names for this season in the Atlantic). Maybe. There's a stormy area in the middle of the Atlantic that may develop, but not for a least a few…
gregladen | October 24, 2010
This guy is not interested in anything but hearing is own voice. Obviously he knows exactly where the money is coming from.
gregladen | October 24, 2010It should not really matter how long it takes to boot your OS. Why? Because a good OS will start up once after a major system upgrade, then stay on forever after unless there is a power failure. If you want to shut down the computer you can hibernate the state to keep all your apps 'running' and files 'open.' You never really need to reboot, so why worry if a boot takes one minute, two, or three?
Unless, of course, your operating system is Windows. In this case, it matters a LOT how long it takes to reboot because you have to reboot the damn thing every time somebody's hat falls off. So…
gregladen | October 24, 2010Today is Genie Scott's birthday. Genie is loved by all in the community of biological scientists because of her central role, as director of the National Center for Science Education, in fighting the good fight against irrational efforts to teach creationism in our public schools and elsewhere. Genie is the author of several books, articles, and book chapters, including Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.
gregladen | October 23, 2010Where is Science in the Public Forum Heading? It's time for a discussion!
Most know Ira Flatow as a science journalist, producer, and as the host of "Science Friday," broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) every Friday afternoon. But did you know about his Minnesota connection? He was the original host and writer for the Emmy award winning "Newton's Apple," which broadcast from the television studios at KTCA in St. Paul, Minnesota. Science communicators Greg Laden and Lynn Fellman will ask Ira about the major changes in delivering science news and the effectiveness of new media for science…
gregladen | October 23, 2010Every now and then I hear a sound like a bird hitting the window. Half the time I can also hear the other parts of the noise a shotgun makes, but half the time it sounds just like a bird hitting the window and nothing else. Then, off in the distance I see between five and fifteen or so ducks flying fast across the bay from the general direction of wetlands.
Last week as we drove south on Rt. 371 near Nisswa, Amanda and I saw a bird that we both knew was a golden eagle the moment we saw it. I said "So, what was that?," handing her the bird book that I keep in the driver's side door pocket.…
gregladen | October 22, 2010This story has been more or less in the background for some time, as the receipts of envelopes containing swastikas, cat food, and shit sent by right wing extremists is fairly run of the mill. But the latest envelope from what appear to be white supremacist teabagging terrorists sent to Congressman Raul Grijalva's office appears to have contained a toxic "white powder." His office has been shut down and his campaign in this very close race has been severely disrupted.
Details here.
And, this:
gregladen | October 22, 2010Human infants require more care than they should, if we form our expectations based on closely related species (apes, and more generally, Old World simian primates). It has been said that humans are born three months early. This is not accurate. It was thought that our body size predicted a 12 month gestation, and some suggested that Neanderthals would have had such, but this research conclusion has been set aside based on new analysis. But it is still true that developmentally, human children do not reach a stage of development that allows some degree of self care for a very long time…