gregladen | November 14, 2009Al Gore talking about his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.
gregladen | November 14, 2009The other day, I went to a magic show. The magician manipulated energy fields, pulled toxins out of my stomach, and then gave me a remedy - but there was nothing inside. Then he pulled out a prescription pad, prescribed some Tamiflu, and sent me on my way.
Seem unlikely? Well,...
gregladen | November 14, 2009In the old days, you could just use the "help" menu item to figure this out (drilling down to "about") but now there is so much "helpful" crap in the dialog that opens when you do so, that it has become much less helpful.
So just open a command line and cause the contents of the files that contain your release information to be fed to standard output.
i.e., type:
cat /etc/*-release
gregladen | November 14, 2009"We'll start by steering the wheels straight and driving, though we may have to steer the wheels to the right to counter any downhill slip to the left" ... OMG have I ever been there before . But not on Mars.
The Martian rover Spirit got stuck in the dust on April 23rd of this year. One wheel was already broken, forcing the little martian rover to drive backwards. Then, its other wheels plunged through a crust covering the dusty infill of a 26 foot wide crater. If Spirit turns into the crater, it's curtains.
So, from April 23rd to now, NASA engineers have been thinking about this,…
gregladen | November 14, 2009The "statins" make up a class of cholesterol lowering drugs. Fish oil (oil derived from fish) is rich in certain fatty acids. Both types of compounds can have powerful positive and protective effects in the brain.
a repost
A study just now coming out (to be published in Brain Research Reviews) looks at the biochemical effects of statins and fish oil in the brain in detail. The study makes specific recommendations for further research, and concludes with a proposal that the way we classify certain neural pathologies be reconsidered to take into account the complex biochemical pathways that…
gregladen | November 13, 2009People and dinosaurs were adapted to chase down and kill any plants that tried to get away.
gregladen | November 13, 2009He is a bad, bad man in so many ways.
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gregladen | November 13, 2009Café Scientifique: Feeding Africa With Paul Porter, University of Minnesota Professor in Agronomy and Plant Genetics November 17, 2009Â
Doors at 6 p.m., Talk at 7 p.m.Â
Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W Lake St, Minneapolis
Tickets: $5 - $12 sliding scale
Paul is a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota. He researches cropping systems with a focus on rye as a cover crop, canola, crop rotations, alternative crops and organic production strategies. With his cross-continental bicycle trip Paul's intent is to view agriculture, food and agro-ecosystems…
gregladen | November 13, 2009Apropos much of what has been discussed here lately, there was a very interesting piece on Rachel Maddow's show yesterday in which the legal meaning of the word "terrorism" was discussed. By people who actually know what they are talking about.
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gregladen | November 13, 2009... has a what!?!?
A rewritten repost for your amusement
I don't know how many times I've heard the phrase "Every culture has a story about a flood..." This is very annoying because a) it is not true (I can think of several cultures that do not) and b) it is very Euro-centric, as are most phrases that start with "Every culture has a..."
So, I decided to enter the phrase "Every culture has a" into Google and see how many other stupid ideas I could find.
The list is not very long because this exercise, while interesting in principle, can get a bit old. But here is what I found before I…
gregladen | November 13, 2009I'm just hearing that on the news. Here's a link to the story about the hearing.
gregladen | November 12, 2009The House of Representatives passed health-reform legislation that included an anti-choice amendment that will seriously jeopardize women's access to abortion - making it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new health system to offer abortion coverage to women.
This would have the effect of denying women the right to use their own personal, private funds to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage in the new health system.
We must stop health-care reform from being enacted with this ban!
Sign our petition calling on Senate Majority Leader…
gregladen | November 12, 2009I don't believe this for a second:
This symbol is stylized et, Latin for "and." Although it was invented by the Roman scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro in the first century B.C., it didn't get its strange name until centuries later. In the early 1800s, schoolchildren learned this symbol as the 27th letter of the alphabet: X, Y, Z, &. But the symbol had no name. So, they ended their ABCs with "and, per se, and" meaning "&, which means 'and.'" This phrase was slurred into one garbled word that eventually caught on with everyone: ampersand.
I wish it were true, because then all the other things…
gregladen | November 12, 2009The final of four guest posts by Jim Hall, of the freeDOS project is available for your considered attention at Collective Imagination: Jim Hall: Transitions in an open source software project
Oh, and I should tell you that some interesting things are going to be happening at Collective Imagination Blog (not that it has not already been interesting!). You'll see on Monday (for starters).
gregladen | November 12, 2009The man owned a virtual arsenal of firearms and ammunition, which was ineffectively secured. So it was fairly easy for his son, Tim, to arm himself and kill 15 people before turning a weapon on himself.
Subsequent to this horrific act, regulations have been rewritten to allow authorities to inspect gun collections in private homes, unannounced, to make sure they are secured properly. And now, charges are about to be filed against the gun-owning father.
It was a crime that plunged Germany into grief and shock. On March 11, 2009, Tim K., a 17-year-old from the small, Baden-Württemberg…