gregladen | July 10, 2010When I injured my knee last February, it became apparent that I would not be able to fly to my BIL's wedding in DC. So.....
... we called Delta Airline and asked if it was possible to get the ticket refunded or something. This was many weeks before the wedding itself.
A Delta employee, over the phone, assured us that there would be no problem at all. Just get one of those "you can't fly" notes from the doctor, and bring it to the terminal on the day of the flight. A voucher would be issued.
So I got the note from the doctor, and Amanda brought it to the terminal on the day of the flight.…
gregladen | July 10, 2010We took a walk today along the east side of the Mississippi River just down stream from Coon Rapids Dam. The park here invested about ten years ago in a major prairie restoration project which has been paying off big time in recent years. The following is a sampling of the scenery, mainly focusing on flowering plants in the prairie areas, but there are a couple of woodland plants and a few other items of interest as well.
I've numbered the photos so you can provide suggested identifications of any items you recognize. For some photos, you can click to get a larger image. Most larger…
gregladen | July 10, 2010
One of those good grazing spots, attracting white rhino, various antelopes, wart hogs, and birds.
gregladen | July 10, 2010One of those really cool and useful "evolution stories" gets verified and illuminated by actual research. And blogging!
An oystercatcher is a wading bird of the family Haematopodidae, distributed in one genus, Haematopus. As is the case with many coast loving birds, there has been confusion about the limits of the 11 or so species known to exist worldwide. That itself is an interesting story (Hocke 1996), but one we will not go into now.
Adult coastal oystercatchers (some species are not coastal) eat all sorts of animals found in the intertidal zone, including shellfish of all sorts,…
gregladen | July 10, 2010Bwahahahah!!! The true purpose of blogging? No... from Ed, a compilation of the best/worst movie insults evah!
gregladen | July 9, 2010The trial started on July 10th, 1925. It ended on July 21st of the same year. Evolution lost. That time. Subsequently, Evolution won most of the trials.
gregladen | July 9, 2010When and where will the next manhole explosion be? Bonus question: Why are manholes (or is that menhole?) round?
Why is a Black hole emitting a giant gas bubble 1000 light-years wide? Bonus question: How can anything in a vacuum be called a "bubble"?
gregladen | July 9, 2010Basks in wadi, Augrabies National Park, South Africa. Warning, image (below the fold) is a bit large.
gregladen | July 9, 2010And we're talking about bigots and creationists in Alberta, which I figure is more or less the Canadian equivalent of Texas .... the dumbest province in the Great White North.
Starting this coming school year, parents will be able to "opt" their children "out" of certain lessons, such as those that deal in any way with Teh Gay, or with religion. Apparently, it is thought that science that conflicts with religion will be counted as religion, so that means kids can get out of science classes.
And I would not assume that this applies only to evolution. Math, physics, all of it conflicts with…
gregladen | July 9, 2010Is Microsoft Losing its Grip on the Young Developers? Check out this interesting post by LIE. It's the truth.
Check out the BGR Plant Carnival here.
And the Carnival of Cinema is here.
gregladen | July 9, 2010The highly untrustworty rag News Max is reporting:
In the wake of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's lashing out against the war in Afghanistan, CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Bill Plante is reporting a buzz in the GOP inner sanctum that Sarah Palin should replace him.
Huh.
Anybody hear anything about this?
gregladen | July 9, 2010As promised ...
William the Blogger of YNH fame should seriously consider starting a new blog (after a suitable rest period in a witness protection program).
One reason is just because everyone should blog. But the other reason is for his own good. I can't imagine how someone could carry out this litany of transgressions and not feel terrible about himself, but at some point ... after time has past and some reflection has occurred ... he needs to face the Internet again and make a positive contribution. Yeah, a little like a white collar criminal working in a soup kitchen every Thursday…
gregladen | July 9, 2010It's called "Science is Culture" and it is run by Adam Bly, who ...
.... founded Seed out of a biochem lab in Montreal, where he studied cell adhesion and cancer. He now lives in New York and is the CEO of Seed Media Group.
Go say hey to Adam.
gregladen | July 9, 2010Well, it is. But the Proton "got smaller" just now. And, by "got smaller" I mean that the accepted measurement of the proton has been adjusted slightly. The new measurement for the proton's diameter is about 0.00000000000003 mm (0.03 femtometers less than it was before. This is important:
"It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."
The difference between the old and new measurement is…
gregladen | July 8, 2010... As promised ...
Chris Mooney is about to explain to just posted a detailed explanation (which I have not read yet) of his interaction with the famous William the Blogger of YNH, posed as "Tom Johnson." He's posted Part One of an explanation of this infamous maneno, and we await Part II.
Earlier, I had made some comments related to this issue (though prior to the posting of Part I) that people got mad at, and I'd like to clarify and expand on them now, prior to Chris's second post, although what Chris posts in his anticipated Part II may bear on this.
An oversimplified version of what…
gregladen | July 8, 2010On Skeptically Speaking:
We talk to researcher Dr. Kathleen Taylor, the author of Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain. Has the human brain evolved the capacity for evil? We'll examine cruelty as a scientific phenomenon, using the latest research from psychology and neuroscience.
Friday. Click here.
gregladen | July 8, 2010Since its inception, the Huffington Post's business model has been one based on providing decent political reporting and serving as a liberal news aggregate of content assembled from around the internet.
But in addition to its main news page, it has also built its success on the idea that it will let just about anyone write for them as long as they're willing to do it for free. ...
What...ever. Click here.
gregladen | July 8, 2010eTown is a music and community-building radio show broadcast on a number of stations across the US. Well, it's not all music. They do a wide variety of things, including a kind of pickup-game with well known artists and not so well known, but very talented, musicians.
etown's stated mission is "to educate, entertain and inspire a diverse audience, through music and conversation, to create a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable world."
Here is the website where you can find out more.
Anyway, my buddy Zack, a film maker sorta guy in Colorado, has made a very cool film…