gregladen | November 10, 2009I watched a pre-release copy of tonights show, the second of three episodes, last week, and I have some comments to make about it. The short version: Do watch it! Then report back here and tell us what you thought.
I've seen every single human evolution documentary ever made, and some of them I know by heart, having used them in teaching. The present work, a three hour updated look at human evolution, satisfies most of my requirements for use in a classroom setting or for general dissemination of knowledge about human evolution.
The second episode focuses on Homo erectus and related forms…
gregladen | November 10, 2009Don't mess with Maddow. Or, "Keep your right wing Christian hands off ... the pages????"
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | November 10, 2009In Pine Plains New York, a gunman in his 40s, alone, has taken a high school administrator hostage, no shots have been fired, and it sounds like they are getting the students out of the school OK.
Pine Plains is east of the Hudson near Rhinebeck, near the Mass/Conn borders. This is a fairly rural area.
gregladen | November 9, 2009
Friday the thirteenth is a day. This Friday
Dark dark dark is a band.
Brute heart is another band
Fashion Sabbath is a fashion show featuring the works of a bunch of people I don't know and one person I know quite well.
At The Bedlam on the West Bank in Minneapolis. Ten bucks, starts s at Ten PM.
See you there.
gregladen | November 9, 2009This isn't the only way, but it is a good way. It is also the hardest way that I've done it.
My daughter, Julia, is named after two people. One of them is Julia Child. I happen to think Julia Child has had more influence on American society than most other people, by helping to make varied and interesting cuisine part of American culture.
One day when Julia was a very young child (my Julia, not Julia Child), I was out walking her in her carriage. I turned the corner around the Van Serg Building on the Harvard Campus and practically ran into Julia Child, who was walking in the other…
gregladen | November 9, 2009Rebecca Skloot found a story of immortality and faith in a young woman's tissue sample.
The book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The author is: Rebecca Skloot. And the PW paper is here:
Check it out!!!!
gregladen | November 9, 2009Have you seen the movie "Speed"? Great action flick if you haven't. One of my favorite scenes in that movie is this one (apologies for vagueness ... I have not seen the movie in quite some time): There is a bus running wild on the streets being followed by emergency vehicles. A group of girl scouts are crossing the street, but the bus is coming, and the horn is blaring, so they run out of he way. The bus speeds by. The troop of girl scouts is led by their leader across the street again. But now a police car, siren blaring, comes tearing down the street. The girl scout troop jumps out of…
gregladen | November 9, 2009Just when you thought it was time to abandon the mouse altogether and start using only the command line, the OpenSource world has come up with a mouse with one zillion buttons that allows one-handed use of OpenOffice apps and plays World of Warcraft.
Orvieto, Italy, November 6, 2009 - In partnership with the OpenOffice.org community, WarMouse
announced the release of the OpenOfficeMouse, the first multi-button application mouse designed for
the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. With a revolutionary and patented design
featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and…
gregladen | November 9, 2009Many people claim it is easy to explain. I once heard a bunch of high school teachers at a conference patting each other on the back about how easy it is to understand evolution. And I remember thinking "OK, so this must be why none of my intro college freshman students don't have a clue...."
Anyway, Discover magazine had a contest to try to explain evolution in two minutes in a video.
Here's one runner up and the winner:
The rest of the videos with an overview by PZ Myers are here.
Did they do it???????? Do the people who watch these now understand evolution?
gregladen | November 9, 2009In lecturing about behavioral biology (in any of a number of classes) it has been hard for me to avoid the lion story and the languar story. Both involve infanticide and selfish strategies by individuals. In both cases, females do things that are unexpected from the middle class heternormative Caucasoidowestern perspective. Babies die. For all these reasons, the stories wake up the students, get the students interested, and stuff gets learned. The key pedagogy here is this: If you are presented with a counter intuitive situation (and you are alert enough to recognized its…
gregladen | November 9, 2009It is a good idea to not use religious phrases like this in your newsletters:
The activities that took place inside and outside of the classroom last week were a wonderful example of how blessed I am to serve as the principal here at ____.
We want you to be qualified. Your being blessed or not is a matter to be addressed between you and your minister, or in your prayers at night, or elsewhere.
gregladen | November 9, 2009Reference management is always an issue for academics. I have the following piece of advice for you in this regard:
1) Start early in your career to actually manage your references.
2) Consider OpenSource alternatives where possible.
3) Check out this post and it's comments for a current discussion on what seems to be working for people.
gregladen | November 8, 2009Those people were gambling and consorting with donkeys. They deserved to die.
gregladen | November 8, 2009I can tell you which one I'd prefer to go up against. Below the bold because it is all squiggly and gross.
gregladen | November 8, 2009Minneapolis is the City of Bikes. There are more bikes here per capita than any other US city, I'm told. Many Japanese cities have more bikes per capita and even less room, so the whole bike parking issue in Japan is pretty severe. And, as usual, Japanese culture allows for more flexibility in technological solutions than American culture does (a limitation that I don't think Americans realize they are living with).
Anyway, here's how to deal with bikes in an urban setting with less and less available bike parking space and more and more people on the bikes:
gregladen | November 8, 2009There is a theory that the Large Hadron Collider has had bad luck getting started up, and the US based super colldiing super duperductor was defunded over 10 years ago because the Higgs Boson does not want to be discovered, and has gone back in time (to now) to muck up the process of its own discovery in the future (then). The story is outlined in an article in the New York Times.
I like this theory a lot because not only is it the ONLY POSSIBLE rational explanation for congressional sticker shock regarding a major big science project in the US during a Republican administration and the…