gregladen | July 13, 2009Yesterday some moron from Missouri made our lives miserable, made thousands of people's lives miserable, got a passenger in his car minorly mauled and caused a major environmental catastrophe.
If you live in Minnesota you probably know what I'm talking about. A man driving on Route 94 out by Alberville missed his exit. Thinking that his time was more important than anyone else's time (or lives) he pulled a nice slow u-turn with his underpowered suburban station wagon, crossing the path of an oncoming gasoline tanker. He took out the tanker. Thousands of gallons of gasoline were spilled…
gregladen | July 13, 2009Amanda, who is pregnant, claims to have had no food aversions and she claims to have no food cravings. This makes me laugh.
One reason it makes me laugh is that Amanda is one of the most rational, straight thinking people I've ever known. She knows there is a reality, she faces it daily, and she even teaches about it in a high school. So when she claims to have had no aversions and no cravings, I can only assume that denial of such things is itself some sort of side effect off pregnancy.
To be fair, the preponderance of evidence has eventually convinced even her that she has had aversions…
gregladen | July 13, 2009I was sick Sunday, and I'm a bit off today, so everything is 36 to 48 hours off. So, my review of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future will be delayed. In the mean time you can have a look at these items:
1) An interesting post by David Dobbs places the current discussion regarding religion and science in an historical context: PZ Myers, Chris Mooney, Asa Gray, and the religion-science divide
2) Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds discusses the Mooney/Kirshenbaum strategy.
3) Stephanie also addresses this issue a bit more circumspectly in a post on "Mere…
gregladen | July 13, 2009CNN is supposed to be a professional news outlet. But even the editors and writers at CNN's Fortune desk are no match for Microsoft's' Stupid-Ray Gun.
This piece is virtually giddy about the fact that the next version of Microsoft Office will be just like Google Office. Free and on line .
Now, think about that for five seconds and imagine yourself to be a writer for CNN. Do you actually believe that Microsoft Office is going to be available for free? Like, me, Greg Laden, can just decide "Oh, I've had enough of Google Docs ... I'm going to switch to the online version of Microsoft…
gregladen | July 13, 2009... or is obesity simply Yet Another Risk Factor in severity of this illness?
Probably the latter, but health officials seem interested in the developing data.
From CTV:
... in a report released Friday, health officials detailed the cases of 10 Michigan patients who were very sick from swine flu in late May and early June and ended up at a specialized hospital in Ann Arbor. Three of them died.
Nine of the 10 were either obese or extremely obese. Only three of the 10 had other health problems. Two of the three that died had no other health conditions.
This hardly settles the question of…
gregladen | July 13, 2009Everything I'm about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it may span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
Kimberley South Africa is said to be the most haunted city in the world, and it certainly is a city with a remarkable and dark history. The culture of Kimberley is constructed from the usual colonial framework on which are draped the tragic lives of representatives from almost every native culture from thousands of kilometers around.
The city's very existence is highly questionable…
gregladen | July 12, 2009Physioprof recently posted some comments on science and religion that I basically agree with.1 But I want to add an observation that I've been thinking about since this Pew Research report came out.
The current issue is that the average American thinks that an electron is larger than an atom, and some other stupid stuff. Back in the 1980s, the poster-concept for the stupidity of Americans was an exam given to school children in which the plurality of individuals placed Boston firmly in the middle of Tibet. This exam was given in Massachusetts. In those days, Geography was the bugaboo of…
gregladen | July 11, 2009There's a lot of philosophical discussion about what, precisely, constitutes a law or a theory in scientific practice. There's also a lot of usage of the terms that has come to us over several centuries of not-quite-consistent application of terms.
Check out this interesting essay at The Austringer
gregladen | July 11, 2009There are two lies you will hear from anyone who is into the sport of angling. 1) "It was THIS BIG!" and 2) "Catching fish isn't the point. It's the experience of fishing that matters."
The Mocking Bass. For four years this fish watched me cast lures and live bait from the end of the small dilapidated dock in the lagoon behind the cabin, without ever showing interest in what I had to offer. Two weeks ago I dropped a plastic worm on his head. The worm slid off and rested on the bottom. The mocking bass reoriented towards the worm and took a sniff. I jiggled the worm. And, BANG. He…
gregladen | July 10, 2009Lousy Canuck has ramped up the metaphor with Two boats tethered together on a lake as his method of addressing the 1% solution. Also, there is now a very interesting post on Quiche Moraine regarding the Hollywood Case Study and the book Unscientific America.
See also this at Pharyngula.
gregladen | July 9, 2009... In which I narrow the gulf between two allied factions enough that with a running start you can jump across ... maybe.
It has been suggested that Accommodationism is "a more moderate atheist perspective on the nature of religion and science."1 In this view, religion and science are not antithetical, and can exist side by side.
I think this is a fair description of accommodationism, and it is what bothers me about accommodationism itself or the description of accommodationism, depending on who's doing the talking, but I also don't think that this is what certain people who have been…
gregladen | July 9, 2009So the other day I stopped at the grocery store to get a few items for the trip up north. One of the things I needed was water. I know, I know, if I buy bottled water the earth will split in half and we will all die. But you have not tasted the water that comes out of the tap at the cabin. Anyway, I bought a couple of gallons, and then decided to buy a six pack of bottles, because we had four people going up in the car, two were kids who never drink enough water, and I thought this would be a good idea.
Then, only after deciding to get bottles of water, I walked over to the bottled water…
gregladen | July 9, 2009Book note: I have received my copy of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection, and am now reading it for review. I am probably going to finish it this weekend, so you can expect something on Monday or Tuesday.
gregladen | July 9, 2009This is illegal. Do not do this in the US. Or, do it only for CD's that you totally own. Like, you are the artist formerly known as Prince and you are going to rip your own DVD off of your own DVD. That is probably not legal either.
So, for those of you tuning in from Bora Bora:
And remember, Linux is not for everyone.
Arrrrrr....
gregladen | July 9, 2009VideoLAN's VLC media player, arguably the world's best media player, hit version 0.9.9 in early April. Three months and more than 78 million downloads later, VideoLAN has announced VLC 1.0.0, or "Goldeneye."
Your media will never be the same.
In fact, with VideoLAN's VLC media player for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it doesn't have to be. One of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that you've ever even thought about playing. That random media format that one site in Ecuador requires--VLC likely plays it, while Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, etc. likely will not.
source
It…