gregladen | July 13, 2010Today the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund released results from a statewide survey of what Texans think about the intersection of politics and religion with public schools. We released results from two questions back in May. One showed overwhelming support for putting teachers and scholars, instead of politicians on the State Board of Education, in charge of writing curriculum and textbook requirements. Another revealed that nearly 7 in 10 Texans agree that separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution.
Source: TFN
gregladen | July 13, 2010I've actually studied the relationship between storm activities and tree falls in a rain forest, so when I saw this, I thought it was quite interesting.
Study Finds Amazon Storm Killed Half a Billion Trees
A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, according to a new study funded by NASA and Tulane University, New Orleans.
While storms have long been recognized as a cause of Amazon tree loss, this study is the first to actually quantify losses from a storm. And the losses are much greater than previously suspected, say the…
gregladen | July 13, 2010A regular cell phone does not do enough, and has a small screen. An iPhone or smart phone is not easy to hold as one might hold a phone, but has all sorts of functionality and an OK screen. An iPad is kind of cool, but it does not have phone capacities. And, if it did, it would be hard to hold up to one's ear.
But, with a little tweaking ....
gregladen | July 13, 2010Speaking of Accommodationism and New Atheism and stuff, check out this 10 year old discussion:
gregladen | July 13, 2010The French have moved one step closer to banning purdah and other veil-wearing in public. In France, this intolerance of religious freedom /slash/ protection of vulnerable populations from the patriarchy is a feminist issue. Would this be the final paragraph of the final chapter of the recession of Islam (from France) following its high water mark in 1492?
Details:
France's lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban wearing the Islamic full veil in public.
There were 335 votes for the bill and only one against in the 557-seat National Assembly.
It must…
gregladen | July 13, 2010National Center for Science Education staff will be featured at two key panels at the Netroots Nation 2010 conference in Las Vegas at the Hotel Rio. Details below the fold.
"The ABCs of the Education Culture Wars"
Time: 4:30pm - 5:45pm
Date: July 22, 2010
Steven Newton, NCSE
Dan Quinn - Texas Freedom Network
Michael Bérubé - Literature Professor, Penn. St. Univ.
Judy Jennings, Ph.D. - Texas Board of Ed. candidate
Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Ph.D. - Texas BOE candidate
Activists and leaders on the right have spent the past three decades running "stealth" candidates and funding pressure groups…
gregladen | July 13, 2010Skeptically Speaking's podcast on Cruelty is now available here. Next week's show will be Adventures Among Ants, with my close personal friend Mark Moffett. You're gonna like Mark. Details here.
gregladen | July 12, 2010"You're holding it wrong," is apparently the latest 'advice' from Apple's Steve Jobs. When the iPhone 4 first came out, people noticed a lot of signal drops. To me, that would not be surprising because the iPhone requires the AT&T service, which, in Minnesota, totally sucks. There are vast areas of my own personal geography where AT&T has zero signal, and most of the rest of it ranges from acceptable to sucky.
But it turns out that the iPhone had low-bars to an extent beyond that expected. In early July, Apple explained this as a software problem. The signal was fine, but the…
gregladen | July 12, 2010
... in Kruger Park. Waterbuck have a neat adaptation: Nasty tasting subcutaneous fat. It is said that lions and leopards avoid them for this reason. I assure you, however, that they do not avoid them totally. In fact, I'm not sure if it works at all. They seem to be hunted in reasonably close proportion to their numbers in the environment.
But then you have the lions all going "ick, ick ... ptui ... why do we kill these tings again?"
gregladen | July 12, 2010have decided not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the US to face sentencing for a case dating back to 1977.
from the BBC
gregladen | July 11, 2010Sixty-four people were killed by two bombs set off at World Cup related events. Roughly the same number again were injured. The Somali group al-Shabab is suspected. One American is among the dead, and three American missionaries were wounded.
The BBC has details.
gregladen | July 11, 2010
This is Lutetia, as photographed by the European Space Agency's Rosetta Probe. Details.
gregladen | July 11, 2010... Or not .
And if not, and if this keeps going for, say, a total of one year, this is what we can expect:
That animation is from the University of HawaiÊ»i at MÄnoa.
The possible spread of the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig over the course of one year was studied in a series of computer simulations by a team of researchers from the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Eight million buoyant particles were released continuously from April 20 to September 17, 2010, at the location of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The…
gregladen | July 11, 2010In which I suggest a way that Pepsigate could have been different.
I think PepsiCo's research scientists have something to say that I want to listen to. So do the scientists at Coke. And Cargill. The reason I think this is that some of my own research involves diet and nutrition, and I assume that the bench scientists working in the food industry are busy figuring stuff out at the molecular and biochemical level that I would not mind knowing.
Strike that: I know they are figuring stuff out. A few years back I had the honor and pleasure of being asked to give the keynote speech at a…