gregladen | October 9, 2009An item from the NCSE:
A special issue of the Journal of Effective Teaching, a peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to the discussion of teaching excellence in colleges and universities, is devoted to the topic of teaching evolution in the college classroom. Featured are Randy Moore, Sehoya Cotner, and Alex Bates's "The Influence of Religion and High School Biology Courses on Students' Knowledge of Evolution When They Enter College"; Katherine E. Bruce, Jennifer E. Horan, Patricia H. Kelley, and Mark Galizio's "Teaching Evolution in the Galapagos"; Patricia H. Kelley's "A College Honors…
gregladen | October 9, 2009If you are a right wing Republican conservative Yahoo, this letter is NOT for you. If you are a moderate, progressive, liberal, centrist, or anyone associated with the legitimate (i.e., not FOX News) press, this IS for you.
Dear Disgruntled Sisters and Brothers,
Many people are beside themselves, or at least a little annoyed, or in some cases simply bemused, because Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but he "seems to have not done anything yet." There are so many misconceptions behind that sentiment that I don't know where to start.
If you are one of the people who does not…
gregladen | October 9, 2009You'll recall that it was recently reported that the Californial Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" which is apparently a creationist documentary.
Well, now, the venue has cancelled the showing and the ID people are all lathered up about it.
The group claims the cancellation was an act of censorship, made after the center was pressured by the Smithsonian Institution, but the center chalked it up to a contract issue, without elaborating.
Coined "The Darwin…
gregladen | October 9, 2009A recently published statement on current scientific knowledge on cosmic evolution and biological evolution from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences concludes: "The extraordinary progress in our understanding of evolution and the place of man in nature should be shared with everyone. ... Furthermore, scientists have a clear responsibility to contribute to the quality of education, especially as regards the subject of evolution." The statement appears in the proceedings of "Scientific Insights into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life," a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of…
gregladen | October 9, 2009NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered a new ring around Saturn. This ring is very different from those previously known. In some ways, this ring resembles the "accretionary disk" found around some stars more than it resembles the thin, orderly rings that Saturn is famous for.
Read about it here.
gregladen | October 9, 2009A team of archaeologists working offshore from Haifa, Israel in the Mediterranean has discovered both direct and indirect evidence of human tuberculosis. This is important because, if confirmed, the TB cases date to 3,000 years earlier than expected: The disease should not be in skeletons this old. Also, this research seems to indicate that Tuberculosis did not originally arise in cattle to be later transmitted to humans, but rather, the other way around.
A Repost
The site is called Alit-Yam, and it is a 9,000 year old Pre-Pottery Neolithic village. This site is about two or three…
gregladen | October 9, 2009This just in from the NCSE:
Will a Massachusetts bill entitled "An Act Relative to Protecting the Religious Freedom of Students" encourage the discussion of creationism in public school science classes? That's what a cosponsor of the bill, Representative Elizabeth Poirier (R-14th Bristol), told the Cape Cod Times (October 7, 2009). The bill, House No. 376, received a hearing on October 6, 2009, at which, according to the Times, "No one testified against the bill, which has bipartisan support and is expected to pass favorably through the Joint Committee on Education."
Evolution is in fact not…
gregladen | October 9, 2009... there was a speech and a plan ...
Posted here on Collective Imagination.
gregladen | October 9, 2009The big machines are going to whack into the moon in a few minutes.
They just said "Ten minutes to impact. Fight, are you go?" (go) "Payload, are you go?" (go) "Command, are you go?" (go) "Somebodyelse I can't remember are you go?" (go).
We are seeing images being beamed back from the moon.
There is a problem with the transmission rate of the data which will force them to make a last minute adjustment of the resolution of some of the images the space craft will be sending back.
A critical instrument has been checked out and it seems to work: This is an instrument that will observe the…
gregladen | October 8, 2009On September 11th, 2008 Meleanie Hain went to her child's soccer game with a Glock pistol in a holster strapped to her hip.
This was in the vicinity of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. To her and presumably others, it may have been an act of patriotism. I suspect it was an explicitly anti-Obama act given the ado about his remark during the primaries. But I could be wrong. The Lebanon County Sheriff very appropriately thought it was inappropriate for a gun owner to bring an overtly displayed dangerous weapon to a children's soccer game, so he revoked her permit. Hain managed to get the permit…
gregladen | October 8, 2009And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it."
-Isaiah 35:8
A Repost
So, I'm having dinner over at Lynn Fellman Studios with Lynn, Genie Scott of NCSE who is in town for a conference, and a variety of friends and colleagues including the recently decorated Randy Moore. And I bring up the idea that I 35 ... the main north-south interstate through the Twin Cities, the one with the recent bridge collapse, is seen by some crazy religious people as a special…
gregladen | October 8, 2009It does not matter what you believe about god, creationism, science, evolution, whatever. If you were raised in a society in which there is an evil enemy that you are convinced intends to arrive some day on your country's shores, take over your government, impose a new social order, marry your sister, and so on, then when this evil foreign government sends the first warning shot in this war and it is an unprecedented and amazing feat of science, then suddenly you love science.
You pay taxes to fund science. Your idolize science. You start demanding that science comes to the rescue. One…
gregladen | October 8, 2009So after watching what will surely go down as one of the most epic games in Twins, and even all of baseball, history, it seems a little anticlimactic to sit down and write about the 200-mile high club, but what the hey, it's for science.
Adults only, please
gregladen | October 8, 2009Joey: "Hey, Greg. You're a regular Walking Encyclopedia!"
Greg: "Thanks, Joey. I like to learn lots of stuff."
Joey: "Mugrphhhmmmft."
(Mugrphhhmmmft is the sound Joey's fist makes giving Greg a bloody nose.)
Read more.
gregladen | October 8, 2009There are several answers to this question. One was overheard the other day among a bunch of well educated people oriented towards science who were taking a break from their job.
Person 1: "So, how effective is the seasonal flu shot?"
Person 2: "I heard about 1%. If you get the flu shot, you'll have a 1% difference in if you get the flu."
Person 3: "That's crazy. I don't know where you are getting your data from. It can't be 1%, but I admit I don't know what the actual answer is, but it can't be that."
Persons 4 through 6: "Well, if YOU don't know, and HE says 1%, I'm going with the 1%.…
gregladen | October 8, 2009This just in: Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the NCSE, has won the California Academy of Sciences Fellows Medal.
This is somewhere between an Oscar and a Nobel. Congratulations Genie!!!
Details...
DARWIN DEFENDER TAKES TOP PRIZE
California Academy of Sciences honors Dr. Eugenie C. Scott
OAKLAND, CA October 8, 2009
It's better than an Oscar. The NCSE's Dr. Eugenie Scott has received the California Academy of Sciences' highest honor: the Fellows Medal. The Medal recognizes Dr. Scott's "...many important contributions to science, education, and evolution, and for her tireless efforts…
gregladen | October 8, 2009It's not Linux, that's for sure...
Lest we forget: Windows 7 is just like Vista, folks. "Windows 7" is Microsoft's attempt to re-brand the damaged "Windows" name after the extremely poor "Windows Vista" release. I love that you can still buy systems with Windows XP "downgrade" because Windows Vista still isn't trusted 3 years after it was released....
Check out this commentary by Linux in Exile.
gregladen | October 8, 2009By default, the text-based email client 'alpine' requests a password the first time, per session, that it is requested a password from any email services it checks. For the duration of that session, it remembers the password, but forgets it if you quit alpine so you have to enter it again later. From a security point of view, that is probably a good thing, but most people do like to have their email client remember the password between sessions.
The way this works in alpine seems a little obscure at first, but actually makes a lot of sense. Alpine checks for a file in which passwords should…