gregladen | July 9, 2009.... or is there a honest to goodness glitch in the way browser shares are counted?
There is indeed evidence that IE browser share has dropped at the expense of Firefox over recent months. There is some evidence that there are problems with the way in which different versions of IE are counted which could be screwing up the stats. Regardless, Market Share by Net Applications, the service which provides a monthly market share assessment, has failed to produce the July 1 results claiming that the data are under review.
Can you say ... "Confirmation Bias?"
Some details of this murky…
gregladen | July 9, 2009 It has become virtually axiomatic that as climate shifts or other potential insults to the ecology of a given area occur, plants and animals enclosed in parks bounded by "impermeable" landscapes are at great risk. Instead of the extreme ranges of a plant or animal moving north or south, or across a gradient of rainfall, or up or down in elevation, organisms that are protected in parks are also stuck in the parks and risk local extinction when change happens or disease becomes endemic, or poaching uncontrolled or fire more common or .... well, we can go on and on.
In a new study on "The…
gregladen | July 8, 2009The Citizens Jury on Election Recounts is a privately funded entity that has assembled 24 jurors and given them stipends and various resources to evaluate the recount process and make recommendations. The "jurors" are randomly selected regular people.
"I think there needs to be many different examinations of the lessons learned from the recount," said Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who, along with Rep. Laura Brod, R-New Prague, has endorsed the citizen jury concept for this hyperlocal and hypertopical issue. "Citizens are the ones participating in the elections, and they have…
gregladen | July 8, 2009Have you ever noticed that many google servies, like most or all of the google apps including Gmail and Google Docs, are "Beta"?
Well, not any more:
Like many software products, Google's Gmail service was first released with a "beta" label on it. In the software industry, a product that is in beta is still in its testing phase. Beta versions, which are sandwiched between internal "alpha" versions and final "release" versions, typically have a lifespan of weeks or perhaps months. But Gmail was different. Released on April 1, 2004, it was still in beta five years and tens of millions of users…
gregladen | July 8, 2009Ion channels, chica.
Hat Tip: Virginia Hughes. Who also has something interesting on Coffee.
gregladen | July 8, 2009Whatever you may think about the Military Industrial Complex, you've got to admit that Raytheon does like to give money to edumication and stuff. Or at least, those of you who live in the Greater Boston Area have seen their name on a bunch of projects.
I've just received notice of a new modeling tool that allows education researchers to play out proposed education scenarios and policies in simulated form to test for those programs with favorable/positive outcomes.
Here's the press release:
WALTHAM, Mass., and WASHINGTON, (July 8, 2009) - Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) and Business-Higher…
gregladen | July 8, 2009And a few words about Michele Bachamann. Oh, and he makes the claim that Dan Quail was brilliant. Brilliant!
Man, this guy sure does know how to babble. At least he admits that he is a moron several times.
More details and analysis here, at DMB.
gregladen | July 8, 2009At the beginning of the 20th century, a traveler in Central Africa made mention of some strange people that he had come across. He was traveling among regular, run-of-the-mill natives...probably Bantu-speaking people living in scattered villages and farming for their food. But along the way, strange people came out of the forest. These strange people had sloping foreheads; they were short of stature, bow-legged and otherwise misshapen. They also clearly were, in the eyes of the traveler, of subhuman intelligence. The traveler described these people as a separate, subhuman race that lived in…
gregladen | July 7, 2009Here is Al Franken being sworn in to the U. S. Senate:
Do you remember The Ad? The ad that made everyone in Minnesota who kinda didn't like Norm Coleman go over the line and realize that Norm Coleman is the scum of the earth? You can read about that here but I'll summarize it for you briefly and tell you why I even bring it up.
When Al Franken was running for the Senate, he would often tell a particular story about Paul Wellstone. In this story, Senator Wellstone is running along side his son, who is, in turn, running second or third in a cross country race as part of his high school…
gregladen | July 7, 2009It has come to my attention that you may not know how to do it.
Once you practice a while, you will look just like this:
And, if you practice enough you will be able to moonwalk like a ghost:
gregladen | July 7, 2009The British Council, a Royally Chartered organization involved in education, has completed a survey which indicates that there is "a broad international consensus of acceptance towards his theory of evolution."
From the press release:
The research, conducted by Ipsos MORI, surveyed over ten thousand adults across ten countries worldwide including Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Great Britain and the USA.
The results show that the majority of people polled have heard of Charles Darwin with the highest levels of awareness in Russia (93%), Mexico (91%),…
gregladen | July 7, 2009This is indeed very easy to do.
Notice how "sudo gedit" lets you edit special secret powerful files that you should not be messing with.
Remember, Linux is not for everyone.
gregladen | July 7, 2009The coffee shop was already loud. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Caribou are all made of sound-bouncy materials. The equipment behind the counter is loud to begin with and is not muffled by any structure. The barista has developed the typical barista habit of banging shit on other shit as loud as he can and as often as he can.
Then in walked the big loud highly annoying Christians from the local seminary....
...I am sitting at the far south end of the coffee shop where it is dark, and they are sitting at the absolute other end of the coffee ship, by the windows. I can hear every…
gregladen | July 6, 2009Nothing is typical. As I'm sitting here in the lobby of the hotel noticing that far fewer than half of the people waking back and forth in this busy hotel are wearing unusual science fiction or fantasy costuming (that will change as the day develops) this ("nothing is typical") is the phrase that sticks in my mind from this morning's session on Skeptical Blogging.
The five people on the panel seemed to all agree that the way we treat our commenters, the way we treat people with whom we disagree (or that are disagreeing vehemently amongst themselves) is impossible to plan in advance or to…
gregladen | July 6, 2009This may not be entirely legal so don't tell anyone where you heard it.
Link to Medibuntu Community Documentation page
Always follow the law. And remember, Linux is not for everyone.
gregladen | July 6, 2009Today, Al Franken goes to Washington. And we helped.
Now, it is time to kick his ass.
This is the difference between the dittoheads who will follow the anointed head of the Republican Party into a big pile of dogshit if he so orders them and us. They follow their sens less leaders, they stomp their feet and whinge and threaten, but it takes forever for even the most thoughtful Republicans to even begin to question their leaders. But we in the Liberal Blogosphere do not do this. We watch and we evaluate and we comment and we do not give anyone a pass just becasue we voted for them.
So…
gregladen | July 6, 2009Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science) is a new book by Robert Thompson. The premise is simple. The coolest thing in the world is a home chemistry set like this one from Gilbert, which combined both chemistry and microscopy:
Chemistry Set Combine the sciences of Chemistry and Microscopy in one big laboratory set! Microscope has a magnification of 60 power, plus unique Polaroid device that shows the brilliant colors of specimens under the lens. Set includes "Fun With Gilbert Chemistry", "Gilbert Microscope", "Glass Blowing" manuals and dissecting…
gregladen | July 5, 2009The best of last June
Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference, I was hoping to meet T. Ryan Gregory yesterday. He is listed on the Evolution 2008 program as an author of a talk on genome size. Goodnews/badnews: Gregory did not show, but the talk, given by his coauthor working in his lab, was excellent, so we didn't need him.
The research was done, and the paper delivered, by Jillian Smith. The title of the paper was "Genome size evolution in mammals" but it was more focused on specific results Jillian had come up with regarding bats.
source The bottom line is…