gregladen | October 23, 2009The much anticipated Part Three of Jim Hall's exploration of OpenSource ... This is getting really interesting. This collection of posts will be the go-to source for anyone wanting to start an OpenSource project.
Here, on Collective Imagination.
gregladen | October 23, 2009It's mole day. The mole day site is down (try it later), but you can find out about it on Wikipedia.
Mole Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated among chemists in North America on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM[1], making the date 6:02 10/23 in the American style of writing dates. The time and date are derived from the Avogadro constant, which is approximately 6.02Ã1023, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in a mole, one of the seven base SI units.
Mole Day originated in an article in The Science Teacher in the early 1980s.[2] Inspired by this article, Maurice…
gregladen | October 23, 2009It is an old story that a vegetarian diet is linked to a more efficient use of resources than a meat-rich diet. One of the reasons cited for this is that meat is taken from a higher level on the food chain, and thus about one tenth of the energy that enters the system is used per culinary unit (calorie, meal, whatever) than for vegetables. However, this argument, while partly true, overlooks a lot of other factors. For instance, the meat is a more efficiently used package for some purposes than the veggies. Think about it this way: A certain percentage of the food you eat is used to…
gregladen | October 22, 2009... as in folds Fox over her knee and spanks it.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | October 22, 2009I never liked Tucker Carlson.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | October 22, 2009... is doomed.
This is what happens when you (and by "you" I mean the insurance industry") go one step to far in bullying Congress. Even the Republicans turn on you. A little.
Details from Rachel:
... and more ...
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | October 22, 2009The Minnesota Flu Hotline that I had mentioned earlier is a failure. The state is calling it a "hiccup." Basically, no one can get through because a lot of people are calling in. The local news is reporting that they have yet to get through themselves or to see anyone get through.
Reports are that the state or its contractor were not expecting the volume of calls they are getting. I wonder why it did not occur to anyone that they would get a lot of calls DURING A PANDEMIC!!!!
Anyway, not to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but if you ARE sick and you REALLY do have the flu, and you…
gregladen | October 22, 2009Map of newly extended certainty of Eurasian Neanderthal range. From Nature
It has for some time been difficult to assess the eastern limit of classic "Neanderthals." Some have claimed that Neanderthals were limited to western Asia, others that they extended across much of Asia. The fossil remains themselves have been difficult to interpret. One reason for this is that Neanderthals are not different enough from other contemporary hominids to assert a similarity or difference for a particular fossil, unless you have enough of it, and the fossil record in Central Asia and East Asia for the…
gregladen | October 22, 2009Surprise! That's the name of a town in Arizona, and that's where the victims in this particular story live. A young Iraqi-American woman was living a very westernized lifestyle, and that lifestyle would not play in Peoria. And by Peoria, I mean Peoria Arizona, where the young woman's crazy "traditional" father lived.
PEORIA, Ariz. - Police in a Phoenix suburb are looking for a man suspected of running down his daughter because she was becoming too "Westernized" and was not living according to their traditional Iraqi values.
Police say 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale…
gregladen | October 22, 2009Peter Tu masterfully crosses face recognition technology, the Naturalistic Fallacy, and engineering in Faces, brains and prairies, oh my.
gregladen | October 22, 2009Those of us who live in Minnesota have suspected this for a long time.
It is all visible in the following video. PZ is the one with the two big zeros on his shirt:
The University of Minnesota is apologizing for a bit by its Goldy Gopher mascot poking fun at a praying Penn State football player.
A video made before last Saturday's game at State College shows Penn State defensive end Jerome Hayes kneeling in prayer in the end zone, in front of Minnesota's cheerleaders.
Goldy Gopher then kneels in front of Hayes. When Hayes stands up, so does Goldy. The mascot tries to make some contact, but…
gregladen | October 22, 2009Below the fold is the video of Oprah and her encounter with Atheists.
"So you don't believe in a higher being? ... I'm puzzled. I'm confused. You don't believe in god ...? Maybe you believe in you don't know you believe ... maybe it's more spiritual ..."
Oprah, has anyone ever told you that they assume you would prefer to not be black? There are people who think that, you know. I certainly hope that if someone said that to you ... something like "I can't believe you'd want to be black. Wouldn't life just be easier if you were white...." that you would not find such a thing offensive…
gregladen | October 22, 2009"I don't need the Swine Flu vaccine because I already had the Swine Flu when it went around in the 1970s"
Sorry, you do.
While we're on the subject, a couple more:
"I had the mist vaccine for the seasonal flu, so now I have to wait a month to get the H1N1 vaccine"
No you don't. You should not have both vaccines as a mist without a waiting period between, but if one is a mist and one is shot, no problem. They can be taken on the same visit, on the same day.
"I can't afford a Swine flu vaccine."
Yes you can, it is free from most sources. That have it. Which there hardly are any yet…
gregladen | October 22, 2009By now I assume you've experimented with Alpine, as a character-based email client. Well, I have another tip for you.
I have been using alpine almost exclusively for a few weeks now. I switch to Evolution now and then because it is easier to gather groups of emails and move them to storage folders, etc. in a fully GUI program, but for the most part, if you have been communicating with me via email at all over the last few weeks, you have to imagine me on this end looking at a terminal window, using a character based program, mouse-free, typing rather than clicking.
I've provided a few…
gregladen | October 22, 2009He talks about his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. The interviewer is not my favorite interviewer. A public radio interviewer should not even be asking questions about religion and creationism unless doing a story that is explicitly on fringe beliefs. She digs in just after 16 minutes with the meany atheist thing. But here you have it:
gregladen | October 21, 2009Twitter had to shut down 33 bogus Twitter accounts that were created by Republicans in the name of Democratic state reps. The plan was to mock the democrats.
Mock THIS, Republicans nincompoops!!!
Details here
Hat tip, Bora's Twitter Stream. ... which for all I know is a total fake perpetrated by LIBERTARIANS!!!
gregladen | October 21, 2009 Well, not really. But if you are looking forward to this momentous occasion, have a look at Linux in Exile's pre-release commentary. Here.
JH compares the current Windows 7 release with the Vista release in times of yore.
Tux Radar has a set of benchmarks tests comparing Linux to various versions of Windows, including the new release. It is here. In almost every respect Windows gets way higher numbers than Linux. Unfortunately, these numbers are for how many seconds it takes to do stuff.
Sorry, Windows, you're just not that good and probably never will be.