gregladen | January 7, 2010When I post about race, the racists show up and use my blog to spew their hokey science all over the place. There are reasons that I tolerate that to a certain extent, but there are limits. When a student shows up in a classroom and starts asking "innocent" questions of the teacher about "radiocarbon dating" and "transitional fossils" and such the teacher is being played by the student, who was likely trained (as it were) by some crazy yahoo parent or preacher. When AGW denialists show up on a science blog and start quoting from the famous stolen emails ... same thing.
If such abuse of blog…
gregladen | January 7, 2010Happy New Year and welcome to this new "on-line journal" which will be a collection of essays. It will be sort of a continuation of thoughts from my book, "Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style." In the essays, which will be roughly twice a week, I will be making reference to parts of the book from time to time.
Check it out
gregladen | January 7, 2010Philipe Rushton, in his book Race, Evolution and Behavior, reports average brain size for the three races. The following is the graph from Rusthton's book:
I put this post here for reference in a couple of conversations. The data are bogus and any conclusions that might be drawn from it are equally bogus.
gregladen | January 6, 2010Are you for a pro-gay marriage bill currently being considered in New Jersey or against it?
There's a poll.
This is a tough one. PZ' minions are making a dent but not enough. So I respectfully request all eleven of my readers to head over there and help out.
gregladen | January 6, 2010As you know, Heathrow is the world's largest and busiest airport, second only to Schiphol in Amsterdam and JFK in New York. All three are eclipsed, of course, by O'Hare in Chicago and Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport in Bloomington, Minnesota.
.... read on ...
gregladen | January 6, 2010You may remember this theory regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs:
Now, there's this ...
Hat tip: Glen
gregladen | January 6, 2010George Bush and Barack Obama compared on the Terror Issue:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | January 6, 2010The Family is a fundamentalist group with thousands of members across the world (by their own admission) bent on inserting their religious perspective into national and global politics. It is documented (in part) in The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.
In recent weeks, Rachel Maddow has been documenting and exposing The Family's role in developing and advancing legislation to systematically murder gays and their sympathizers in Uganda (the President of Uganda is a member of The Family). This exposure appears to have resulted in this powerful…
gregladen | January 5, 2010Remember this?
If not, you missed one of the great moments on the intertubes. These kids are Krazy In Love!
Now, CLICK HERE and shell out five loonies for the happy couple!!!!
gregladen | January 5, 2010Soccer practice was brutal. The hot summer heat made every drill twice as hard as usual. Everybody was a little bit off of their game, however I was particularly sluggish. The coaches called for a water break after finally noticing that our dehydration was significantly affecting our performance. I was dragging my feet on the way to the water cooler when one of my coaches, Brett, pulled me aside from the rest of the players.
Read the post
gregladen | January 5, 2010..The Janus Edition is now up at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Click here to read this plant blog carnival.
gregladen | January 5, 2010A tuna has been sold at auction in Tokyo's fish market for 16.28 million yen ($175,000, £109,000), the highest price paid in Japan for nine years.
The bluefin tuna weighs 232 kg - nearly four times as much as the average Japanese man.
It was caught off the northern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu, in waters famed for high quality fish.
Mind boggling.
source
Whenever I see something like this I go and read the Guilty Planet blog for a while. Today I will eat salad garnished with tofu for lunch.
gregladen | January 5, 2010.... Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module"...
Jeanne d'Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I understand she gave her Life Science teachers a very hard time. This is the only contemporary depiction of Joan of…
gregladen | January 5, 2010Social Media and Atheism .... an Atheist Talk Conversation with Mike Haubrich, Stephanie Zvan and Greg Laden.
We talk about trolls too.
The rug really ties the conversation together.
Click Here to see or download the MP4.
Embedded version may or may not be below the fold:
Here is the first part of the show embedded. (This is experimental. If it works I'll add the other three parts eventually.)
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
gregladen | January 4, 2010I don't agree that civility is action and politeness is language. Politeness is formal arbitrary cultural convention, while civility is also arbitrary cultural convention but as dictated by Westernonormative agents. Both apply to language and behavior.
But whatever.
This post by Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock is Bora's take on online civility as well as an excellent link farm pointing to all the other stuff out there on this topic, and this is what you should read in preparation to the civility session at Scionliten, this year's Science On Line conference.
gregladen | January 4, 2010I had mentioned earlier that the volcanoes of the Virugna region in the Western Rift Valley (as well as other highland spots) have often been islands of rain forest separated from each other by different habitats, including grasslands and wooded savannas. this has produced an island effect that has been a laboratory for evolution, and it is likely that these forest islands (and others in the greater region of east Central Africa and western East Africa) have been the loci of evolution of many endemic species. (See Island Africa: The Evolution of Africa's Rare Animals and Plants by Kingdon…
gregladen | January 4, 2010 .. because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homepage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
Homepage of reason? Did he really say that?
Perhaps he was referring to this.
gregladen | January 3, 2010The other day there were cops in front of my local grocery store cajoling people to put money in the Salvation Army bucket. This might be worse:
gregladen | January 3, 2010Yet another blogger is calling for your input and involvement in relation to a session planned for Scioten, the Science Online 2010 conference coming up later this month.
Janet Stemwedel writes: #scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?
gregladen | January 3, 2010In a recent study, 56 percent of the women interviewed in a sample of 1800 claimed that they had a "g-spot" which is an area inside the vagina with increased sensitivity with respect to sexual arousal.
(Added: See THIS write up of the original research)
But a twin study showed that when one twin claimed whether or not to have a g-spot, the other twin did not make the same claim at the frequency one would expect if the g-spot was the expression of a genetic trait with straight forward Mendelian inheritance.
Therefore, the scientists conclude, the g-spot does not exist. At all.
How can this…