gregladen | August 5, 2010My grandfather fought against the assault on our freedoms in the form of the Kaiser's army in WW I. At one point he became gravely ill (the "Spanish flu" perhaps) and was not allowed to march forward with his unit. They were all killed.
My father fought in WW II against the Nazi's, who were one of the greatest threats against our freedoms to ever exist. He won a couple of medals, finished off his work in the European Theater, and the war ended as he was on his way to Japan, having volunteered for the invasion against the Japanese Imperialists, who were the other great threat against our…
gregladen | August 5, 2010Named Tropical Depression Colin, which started to dissipate more quickly than expected yesterday, looks like it may be getting reorganized again. It is now just a low pressure area 300 miles north of the Virgin Islands, but probably contains some tropical storm force winds. It is possible that over the next two days Colin could strengthen and perhaps by Friday regain its tropical storm status.
There is even a possibility ... and not a small one .... that Colin could become a hurricane. Keep an eye on Colin.
Yes, folks, it isn't just the priests engaged in the whole child abuse in the name of religion thing
gregladen | August 4, 2010First, the horrific, over the top, original video:
Then, the funny version:
Thanks (I think) to Virgil Samms for the tip.
gregladen | August 4, 2010For now. This just in from the National Center for Science Education:
Creationism won't be taught in the public schools of Livingston Parish, Louisiana -- at least not yet. The Baton Rouge Advocate (August 1, 2010) reports that "The Livingston Parish School Board won't try to include the teaching of creationism in this year's curriculum, but has asked the School Board staff to look at the issue for possible future action." At a July meeting, inspired by the Louisiana Science Education Act, the board formed a committee to explore the possibilities of incorporating creationism in the parish'…
gregladen | August 4, 2010Do you remember when, in an act of slap-in-the-face cynicism (that American Environmentalists accepted with little protest) Ronald Regan took the previously deployed (and largely symbolic) solar panels off of the roof of the white house?
Bill Clinton did not restore them. Bush ... well, whatever. And Obama has not restored them either.
Time to put them back. Here's a petition you can sign.
gregladen | August 4, 2010... emerged Huxley:
No, no, not THAT Huxley, THIS Huxley:
Please visit Cocktail Party Physics for an amazing essay on Thomas Henry Huxley (who is indeed the namesake of the other Huxley). Read: How East London defined "Darwin's Bulldog" and brought him into conflict with the world's most dangerous anarchist.
gregladen | August 4, 2010It is well established among those who carry out, analyze, and report pre-employment performance testing that slope-based bias in those tests is rare. Why is this important? Look at the following three graphs from a recent study by Aguinis, Culpepper and Pierce (2010):
Figure 1. Illustration of the typical finding of no slope-based differences and intercept-based differences favoring the minority group (Panel A), and the possibility that there are slope-based differences (Panels B and C) together with no intercept-based differences (Panel B) and small intercept-based differences (Panel C…
gregladen | August 4, 2010Did you know that Isaac Newton had two jobs? One, you know about: To figure out all that physics and math stuff so we could live for a while in a Newtonian world. The other was as th big honcho of the Royal Mint. Where they make the money.
In that second job, Newton had several interesting problems to deal with, which were in some ways more complex than how planets keep orbiting around stars and apples keep falling from trees. He needed to secure the coinage of the land against counterfeit, and in particular, to end the career of one particular counterfeiter, William Chaloner.
This…
gregladen | August 4, 2010Park mangers say they euthanized "an aggressive, habituated, and human-food-conditioned black bear" Tuesday out of "concern for visitor safety."
But it was also a result of stupid people making unnatural food available to the bear.
The adult female bear had been seen frequenting the Slough Creek area in the park's north central area. The bear was 4 - 5 years old and weighed between 100 and 125 pounds. Some observers had mistaken her for a grizzly since it was brown in color.
In mid-July, the bear entered an occupied backcountry campsite in the Slough Creek drainage. Attempts to chase her away…
gregladen | August 4, 2010In Iran, there was NOT an assassination attempt on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here is a picture of him not being assassinated as his bodyguards don't react to anything as startled onlookers glance at the cite where there was not an explosion behind them.
(Photograph from Reuters, in The Guardian, which is NOT reporting anything.)
The BBC also reports that nothing happened in Iran today. Aljazeera.net, on the other hand, reports: Iran denies attack on Ahmadinejad.
gregladen | August 4, 2010 Barack Obama
Born on or near August 4th 1961, in Honolulu Hawaii. Or somewhere.
gregladen | August 4, 2010Overturning more than 40 years of accepted practice, new research proves that the tools used to check tests of "general mental ability" for bias are themselves flawed. This key finding from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business challenges reliance on such exams to make objective decisions for employment or academic admissions even in the face of well-documented gaps between mean scores of white and minority populations.
Here's the link.
gregladen | August 3, 2010John McKay at Archy has written an in-dept analysis of Minnesota Congressperson Michele Bachmann. Read it here.
Surly Amy address Religion vs. Faith.
And, of course, the Ultimate Death Match: Fungus vs Worm
gregladen | August 3, 2010Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Write your answer here!
gregladen | August 3, 2010In the 1960s, the whole idea of a "greenhouse effect" was well understood, and assumed to be an important potential factor in climate change. So was glaciation, and the short and medium term future of the Earth's climate was less clear than compared to now. But the basics were there ... C02 was being released into the atmosphere, this could cause a greenhouse effect, and that would warm the earth. Certainly by the early 1980s, it was possible to make some thumb-suck estimates of how much the earth would warm given various assumptions about CO2, and it was not that difficult to see that a lot…
gregladen | August 3, 2010There is a new blog you should check out: OpenSourcePhotography.org. It deals with, believe it or not, OpenSource stuff and Photography stuff. There is some real potential there, I hope it develops.
There is apparently a big fight among OpenSource community members about whether or not Ubuntu (pronounced Ubuntu) gives back to the community. In my view, not knowing much about the debate, the fact that the vast majority of desktops and laptops that run Linux these days do so because Ubuntu did what it did should be plenty, but apparently there is more to it than that. The fight, really,…