gregladen | May 26, 2010As the world's attention focuses on the perils of oil exploration, we present Richard Sears' talk from early February 2010. Sears, an expert in developing new energy resources, talks about our inevitable and necessary move away from oil. Toward ... what?
gregladen | May 26, 2010is at the Prancing Papio (= Dancing Baboon) at THIS LINK HERE. click it. enjoy.
gregladen | May 26, 2010Today, many biotechnology blogs focus on genomics (especially personal genomics) and the business side of biotech. The blogs listed below are produced by professors, students as well as law firms and researchers. One other focus in these top 50 biotechnology blogs is bioinformatics, represented in both in molecular biology as well as in databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theory.
Hey, I'm on the list!
Anyway, check it out, this is a blogroll's blogroll.
Which reminds me, my blog roll needs fixing up. It's been months. I'll get to that, I'll get to that.
gregladen | May 26, 2010According to a study just coming out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, "variations in emotional intelligence--the ability to identify and manage emotions of one's self and others--are associated with orgasmic frequency during intercourse and masturbation."
In short, the study found:
Emotional intelligence was not associated with ... age and years of education, nor did we find a significant association between emotional intelligence and potential risk factors for [female orgasmic disorder] FOD such as age, body mass index, physical or sexual abuse, or menopause. We found emotional…
gregladen | May 26, 2010Or, on the other hand, this may be a good thing:
You know about the [ooh.. something spooky just happened. tell you later] Adolph Hitler video memes, where conversation about pretty much anything (the new iPod, the latest ballgame, whatever) is superimposed over german dialog from Downfall (the 2004 film) giving Hitler and his last remaining bunker-bound Nazi-symps funny dialog.
Here, for reference, is the original in German:
Well, apparently, the era Hitlering our discourse has gone the way of the Dodo and the Third Reich:
On Tuesday, the clips on YouTube, many of which had been watched
by…
gregladen | May 26, 2010Check out this meta app. It runs fully functional in an iPad (I'm told), and is a super fancy reference library for the iPhone OS.
It is a web app that you can see on any web browser but, when it senses that it is on an iPad, shifts into super-duper mode.
Here's the links you need to pursue this technology:
The app on your web browser
Daring Fireball page
Dominion of the Bored page
gregladen | May 26, 2010It has been 100 days since I accidentally severed my right patellar tendon. I'm bending my knee to 105 degrees or so, I can now use my quads (though not for much), and I usually walk around with no brace or crutch. On the other hand, if I take a long walk (as in a full grocery store shopping, up and down most of the aisles, or walking the two blocks to the gym) without the brace, there are regrets ... so I still use it now and then. I rarely use my right leg to lead up stairs, but I can physically do it (and I do it as a matter of physical therapy), and I have yet to lead down stairs with…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.
gregladen | May 25, 2010
OMG. Go to the sign on page. Look at the "select an avatar" part. What is that all about? I think I'll be an Asian Girl then they'll know I'm smart but non-threatening. No, wait, maybe I'll be a non-white non-hispanic, like in the Census. No wait ...
Well, I tried to register but their registration system is rather broken. Typical. Republicans can never get anything right.
gregladen | May 25, 2010I was talking with a friend from another country yesterday and she indicated that whenever she caught herself up on American politics, she would become frightened.
She was underestimating.
Apparently, the 1964 Civil Rights act is "UNCONSTITUTIONAL, PROGRESSIVE and HITLER." according to one of the first Republican Party activists (or somebody, anyway) to post on the new Republican Party web thinkgie called americaspeakingout.com
This is not a surprise. It is not uncommon for the new Tebagging Republicans to have problems like this (remember this incident when John McCain visited Minnesota…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they've created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.
gregladen | May 25, 2010I previously noted that to survive as a Westerner, you can get away with participating in a culture that asks of you little more than to understand the "one minute" button on the microwave, while to survive in a foraging society you needed much much more. Moreover, I suggested that the level of complexity in an individual's life was greater among HG (Hunter-Gatherer) societies than Western societies.
However, this is not to say, in the end, that one form of economy and society is more complex than the other. I happen to think that the maximum level of complexity ... of thought, social…
gregladen | May 25, 2010The Diversity in Science Carnival will be hosted at Quiche Moraine. Today is the submission deadline, but I'm sure posts submitted tomorrow (the 26th) will also be considered.
Here is the theme:
We are inviting all posts that challenge pre-conceptions and mis-conceptions of who scientists/engineers are, what they look like, how they behave, what they do, etc. A cross-disciplinary examination of this issue is encouraged and posts about everything from the merging of art and science or science and faith, to posts that highlight social life to how people from well-represented groups are strong…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Erik Paulsen is my representative to the US Congress. This is his first term. He replaced a very centrist Republican (Jim Ramstad) who retired honorably. I worked for the Democratic Party (DFL, we call it in Minnesota) candidate, Ash Madia during that election. Ash was a good candidate but he was inexperienced (which may or may not have been a factor) not quite waspy enough for this very waspy district (which may or may not have been a factor), and although his politics matched those of the district's constituents quite well (at least as well as the long-lasting Jim Ramstad's politics did…
gregladen | May 25, 2010WebMage is an interesting book if you are a computer geek. For one thing, the title of the book uses CamelCase. For another thing, the main characters are a hacker and his laptop. But since this is also a fantasy book, the main character is also a non-human (but you wouldn't' know to look at him) who is one of the best code hackers among his kind (which happens to include many of the Greek mythical figures you've heard of) and his laptop is a shape-shifting familiar, who changes between a laptop and an imp-like daemon thingie who is explicitly programmed to be snarky, like a modern human…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Kenya court rules Islamic courts are illegal
Kenya's Islamic courts are illegal and discriminatory, a panel of judges has ruled.
The three judges said the Islamic "Kadhi" courts favoured Islam over other faiths, and that this was unconstitutional as Kenya was a secular country.
South Africa's Julius Malema defends his radical views
The controversial leader of South Africa's youth league has defended his behaviour after being disciplined by the ruling ANC.
Julius Malema had provoked anger with a series of outbursts about race, Zimbabwe and Jacob President Zuma.
In a BBC interview, he efused…
gregladen | May 24, 2010Those are the words of UCLA's Ned Wright, a PI with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
NASA is putting out a press release summarizing the results of the project so far. For example:
"We are taking a census of a small sample of near-Earth objects to get a better idea of how they vary," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to catalog asteroids seen with WISE.
So far, the mission has observed more than 60,000 asteroids, both Main Belt and near-Earth objects. Most were known before, but more than 11,000 are new.
details here