gregladen | November 1, 2009Athens, Ga. - Each year, the influenza virus evolves. And each year, public health officials try to predict what the new strain will be and how it will affect the population in order to best combat it.
A new study by an international team of researchers, led by assistant professor Andrew W. Park, who holds a joint appointment in the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology and in the College of Veterinary Medicine, may make their task a little easier. The study breaks ground by working across scales and linking sub-molecular changes in the influenza virus to the likelihood of influenza…
gregladen | November 1, 2009To me, the Oakland Bay Bridge was always one of those bridges that made you think about bridges when you drove over it. It is very long (one of the longest in the world) and spans an arm of the sea. It is old, and there are earthquakes in the region now and then. So as you drive from one end to the other, it is impossible to marvel that the bridge was even built, and that it is still standing.
A big section of the bridge has apparently needed redesign and rebuild to account for the earthquakes, and this was ignored until the World Series Earthquake of 1989, when planning for a major…
gregladen | November 1, 2009A Russian circus troupe were rehearsing for a performance in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, when the incident happened.
Workers had to drag the bear away during the attack, according to the director of the arena, Kurmangazy Isanayev.
The exits were closed off as staff waited for the emergency services.
Police shot the bear dead at the scene.
Russia has no animal cruelty laws that pertain to circuses.
story here
gregladen | November 1, 2009 "If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will." -- President George Bush, addressing the RNC via satellite feed, September 1, 2008 "I Am The Angry Left." -- T-Shirt seen at demonstration outside RNC, September 2, 2008. * A criminal trial against Eight American Patriots is about to start in Saint Paul. These eight patriots armed themselves with information and guts and planned to attack dogma and repressive politics at the Republican National Convention. They were arrested, treated like animals, and…
gregladen | November 1, 2009This is has been around the internet, most notably HERE, where most people have seen it already.
But, just in case you have not seen it and are having religious angst on this fine Sunday morning, check it out:
I think it will be interesting for many people to see where they would flow on this chart at various changes in your life. For example, I was raised a Catholic. Then I went through my semi-agnostic experimental phase (in seventh grade) which would have probably led me to "Hindu" if there were any decent Indian restaurants where I grew up.
I am uncomfortable with what appears to…
gregladen | October 31, 2009There appears to be a new blog at Science Blogs, and it is APPLIED STATISTICS!!!!! That's the name of the blog, and that's what it is about, and the blogger is Andrew Gelman. Welcome Andrew. We needed a stats blog, and it is very nice to have you here.
So now, a statistics joke:
Three statisticians go rabbit hunting. They wait patiently in the hunting blind for several hours and finally a rabbit comes hopping into view, and pauses to munch on the carefully laid out bait.
By pre-arranged lottery, Statistician 0 fires his rifle at the rabbit, but the bullet shoots right over the rabbit's…
gregladen | October 31, 2009As promised, the footnotes for A True Ghost Story.
1Unless this statement itself is not true, in which case, how can you know what is true and what is not true? And besides, it can't really all be true because some of it is about ghosts.
2Who wants to be alone sitting in the dark?
3I use the term "non-White" along side the terms "Black" and "White" to signal that there is complexity here. There are three sources of complexity. One is linguistic, one is ethnic, and one is historical. First, the "ethnic" or "racial" issue: to the extent that these concepts are valid at all, which is very…
gregladen | October 31, 2009
The McGregor Museum is a complex building with several wings surrounding an inner court yard, a multi-layered roof, balconies everywhere, and numerous trees in the court yard close in to the building. So, a cat can spend the heat of the day in the shaded crown of a tree, and the cool of the evening up on the building's sun-warmed metal roof.
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The interior of the McGregor museum houses numerious exhibits. The old period rooms and hallways focus on the late 19th century, and other newer areas (not shown) have an excellent set of exhibits on archaeology, human evolution, and "San" rock…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Finally, without any further interruption ...
One morning I was up a bit earlier than usual, and I was in the bathroom shaving. It was an hour or so before sunup. The lighting in the bathroom was poor, but there was a security spotlight outside the window, as I recall, so I had opened the frosted glass pane to let in a little more light, as well as the clean, cold but dry night air, which would keep the fogged over bathroom mirror clear.
As I was just starting to scrape the razor against my face in the bathroom, I heard the ghostly footsteps walking one way down the hall .. away from me…
gregladen | October 31, 2009On July 20, Kevin Lily and two friends (Danielle Katz and Brian Coggan) left Bemidji, Minnesota to travel the length of the Mississippi River. They are raising money for local, national and international charities working to alleviate the global water crisis....
Details here
gregladen | October 31, 2009"The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:
Sex with demons
Orgies between animals and humans
Animal and human sacrifices
Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
Revel nights
Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant."
Those are the words of Christian Writer Kimberly Daniels, in a piece produced for the Christian Broadcasting Network (hat tip: Pharyngula…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Since we are talking about geology, I do not want to give up the opportunity to bring up one of the coolest stories of geology ever, given the present day discussion of science and religion. You will be asking for a source for this story. Look it up in Wikipedia, where all knowledge resides, and you will not find it there.
There are things, it turns out, that The Great Knowing Web Site does not know. My source is a combination of primary and secondary documents, written histories, and a documentary that is not generally available.
Barney Barneto nee Barnet Isaacs was a key player in the…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People is the book that the recently published article in Seed Magazine, which was in turn recently banned in an Illinois school is mainly about. Here is the Publishers Weekly overview of the book:
This brilliant and accessible work of biological criticism has the potential to revolutionize the way readers conceive of gender and sexuality in the natural world. Roughgarden, a professor of biology at Stanford University and a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, argues that the diversity of gender and sexuality one…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Dan Delong teaches English at Southwester High School in Piasa, Illinois. He has been suspended for assigning an article originally published in Seed Magazine called "The Gay Animal Kingdom." If you are a teacher you know what to do.. download that article and assign it to all of your students as soon as possible!!!!
Here is a press report on this astounding event.
Here is a blog post by Jonathan Turley about The Banning.
Here is Mike Dunford's blog post: Seed Magazine in the Classroom: Grounds for Suspending the Teacher??
gregladen | October 31, 2009One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
This was on the location of an historic hunting reserve, where every one of the buildings where guests were quartered and entertained was built well before World War II. Even the ancient charcoal refrigerator was intact and in use. This was a large cylindrical structure with double mesh walls. When the game was afoot and dozens of buck were killed by sports…
gregladen | October 31, 2009By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right....
Please read this post at Real Climate and pass it on.
gregladen | October 31, 2009I spent about 45 minutes yesterday in the local HMO clinic. They had turned the main waiting room into a Pandemic Novel A/H1N1 Swine (nee Mexican) Influenza quarantine area, and I could feel the flu viruses poking at my skin looking for a way in the whole time I was there.
Amanda, who is 8.3 months pregnant, started getting symptoms of the flu two days ago. As a high school teacher in a school being affected in a state being affected (as most are) she is at high risk for this. She was one of the first people around here to get the vaccine, just a couple of days ago, but it takes about 10…