gregladen | July 4, 2010
Gemsbok probably have more adaptations to dry conditions than any other antelope. They even recover the moisture from the breath they exhale in their sinuses. They will also fight for shade.
gregladen | July 4, 2010Today is the last day of SkepchiCON, a skeptic and science track at the Convergence Convention, which in turn is one of those science fiction and fantasy conventions. I've attended a number of panels most of which I participated in, and they have all done well. For the most part, I'm told, the Skepchicon tracks get a larger audience than many other events, suggesting that we-all are doing something right. Skepchick Car2D2 deserves a huge round of applause for her awesome efforts in organizing this event.
I've had a great time visiting with friends and colleagues from in town and out of…
gregladen | July 3, 2010Scene: Berkeley, California, April 1986. A bar. Five conference attendees, myself included, grabbing a hamburger and a beer in a fern-bar on or near Telegraph.
All eyes are on the TV’s mounted over the bar, where we watch footage of an air strike against Libya. This is the retribution by Ronald Reagan against Insane African Leader Muammar al-Kadafi. The White House was issuing statements about al-Kadafi’s involvement in bombings in Europe, the OPEC oil ministry kidnapping, linkage to the infamous Jackal, and so on. Nikki, a friend and colleague, said something, and I remember asking…
gregladen | July 3, 2010
This is a canal paralleling the Gariep (aka Orange) River in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Around the turn of the 19th century missionaries moved into this area and developed water irrigation systems that supported the development of an orchard industry which is still going strong, with an increasing focus on table grapes. The dry conditions facilitated drying fruit, so this is essentially the tried apricot and raisin capital of the world. Or at least, southern Africa.
This water wheel turns with the force of the water in the canal, and with the wheel rotates a cup which picks up a…
gregladen | July 3, 2010The coffee shop was already loud. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Caribou are all made of sound-bouncy materials. The equipment behind the counter is loud to begin with and is not muffled by any structure. The barista has developed the typical barista habit of banging shit on other shit as loud as he can and as often as he can.
Saturday is Reposted Essay Day!
Then in walked the big loud highly annoying Christians from the local seminary....
...I am sitting at the far south end of the coffee shop where it is dark, and they are sitting at the absolute other end of the coffee ship, by…
gregladen | July 2, 2010There are two lies you will hear from anyone who is into the sport of angling. 1) "It was THIS BIG!" and 2) "Catching fish isn't the point. It's the experience of fishing that matters."
Saturday is Reposted Essay Day!
The Mocking Bass. For four years this fish watched me cast lures and live bait from the end of the small dilapidated dock in the lagoon behind the cabin, without ever showing interest in what I had to offer. Two weeks ago I dropped a plastic worm on his head. The worm slid off and rested on the bottom. The mocking bass reoriented towards the worm and took a sniff. I…
gregladen | July 2, 2010Our guest is Ben Radford, columnist and managing editor for Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. Ben is a veteran investigator of paranormal incidents, and the author of "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." He'll share stories about his favourite investigations, and the techniques he uses to bring real science to bear on paranormal claims.
Speaking up" Markus Volter with OmegaTauPodcast.net
Details here
gregladen | July 2, 2010When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.
gregladen | July 2, 2010
A dam at a game preserve in the Waterberg. I believe that one crocodile lives here. Gets bigger every year. (It probably has friends in the nearby river.)
gregladen | July 2, 2010I had never felt airsick before, or since. But now I was a nauseated rag doll flopping around in the middle row of a six seater prop plane and I was ready to hurl at any moment.
Saturday is Reposted Essay Day!
BBC depiction of the path of Flight 447. I find it astonishing that the most important weather related feature on the planet is a "place where there are a lot of thunderstorms" or often not even identified at all. This is equivalent to a plane crashing into the Cascades and the news reporting that the aircraft went down in a "place with some hills" or not even noting the existence…
gregladen | July 2, 2010A handful of posts that made people mad at me, or each other:
Slaughter a Cow Every 28 Days: How the Bible Ruined Western Society
Mail Order Brides and Hypergyny
Mail Order Russian Brides, Woovending, Shell Oil and Silence
The Natural Basis for Inequality of the Sexes
gregladen | July 1, 2010The Plant Blogging Carnival Berry Go Round is up and running at Agricultural BiodiversityWeblog.
The Carnival of Evolutoin # 25 is at Culturing Science.
gregladen | July 1, 2010This is a guest post by professional photographer Scott Rowed, describing his experience in switching from Windows to Linux.
Does Linux have the tools for a professional photographer?
A few months ago I would have answered "no". After switching primarily to Linux I gradually migrated my computer activities away from Windows. While there are some good open source imaging tools in Linux, there always seemed to be some missing function, forcing me to boot into Windows for serious image editing.
I'd developed a complex workflow for Windows over the years. Irfanview for browsing the RAW files…
gregladen | July 1, 2010Unlikely to come to a theater near you, this obscure foreign film would make you laugh, cry, and wonder about what is really possible:
Hat tip: Java Joe
gregladen | July 1, 2010According to a Social Analysis who has studied the issue. Gillard is the new Prime Minister of Oz.
In a Canberra Times report, David Chalke said: "No more than they are fussed about her not being married and living with a hairdresser. That's the way the world is."
"In fact, Julia Gillard is more typical of modern Australia than are the religious-married-with-kids previous prime minister and Opposition Leader. They are actually in the minority now. Households with parents married to each other with children is less than about 20 percent of households now."
Ms Gillard has spoken about being…
gregladen | July 1, 2010The Blog Pick of the Month is a monthly award given for the best (well, they don't actually say best, but I'll assume) blog post covering a story from PLoS ONE and aggregated in ResearchBlogging.org. (There are several such posts each month.)
This is considered one of the most prestigious awards on the entire Internet. (If you area blogger, please remember, YOU can get one of these awards!)
Anyway, the June Award goes to ... (drum roll) ...
....
Moii!
For This Post, which was about this PLoS ONE paper.
gregladen | July 1, 2010Wasps, hornets, and other Hymenoptera may live nearly solitary lives, live in huge colonies, or something in between. The European hornet, Vespa crabro, lives in a colony consisting of one queen mated to a single male. In Hymenoptera, females are typically diploid (having genes from both parents) while males are typically haploid (having genes only from the female parent). If you draw a diagram of this and stare at it for a long time, you may come to the same conclusions that Bill "Buzz Off" Hamilton came to several years ago. A female would benefit genetically from helping her mother…
gregladen | June 30, 2010The Wetterling Abduction (1989) is a relatively well known case of an unsolved child abduction. Patty Wetterling went from bereaved mother of abductee Jacob Wetterling (11 years old) to child saety advocate to Congressional canddiate. Had Patty Wetterling won her race for Congress, she'd be there instead of ... yes, you guessed it, Wacko Michele Bachamann.
Anyway, right now, something seems to be happening in the abduction case, as I write this:
Investigators Wednesday swarmed around a St. Joseph property near the spot where 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted in 1989.
The Stearns…
gregladen | June 30, 2010June is almost over, and with nary a comment from this blog on rape. But June is the month we normally discuss this important problem. So to comply with that idea, I'm going to point you to a couple of posts from last year. If you've not read them, please have a look. Especially read the comments. Things got ugly, but they also got interesting.
A rape in progress
"I am a scientist observing the culture of the Namoyoma people. I am sitting in a shady spot just outside the village, writing up some notes, and I observe a disturbing event. Four men are trying to drag a young woman from the…