gregladen | May 15, 2009Important note: This 'gaff' (=offensive remark) was made in a private meeting but 'got out' via Twitter, and eventually nailed down by a blogger.
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gregladen | May 15, 2009Jason Rosenhouse, of the Evolution Blog, has written a book and it is now seemingly available for pre-order. It is The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's Most Contentious Brain Teaser. The book was recently reviewed very favorably, and you can learn more about that here.
I've not gotten a review copy, so I can't personally tell you anything about this book, but I'm aware of Jason's command of this particular topic, so I'm sure it's fantastic. It has even been suggested that it could be used as a supplementary course text, so stats and probability instructors, take note!…
gregladen | May 14, 2009Maria Reiche was an archaeologist and mathematician who worked on the Nazca lines in Peru. Originally, she worked with Paul Kosok, who discovered the remarkable drawings, and starting in the mid 1940s, Reiche mapped in the drawings. She believed that the lines represented a calendar and a sort of observatory. She is probably single handedly responsible for the preservation of these important archaeological features.
She died in Lima in 1998.
Several crackpots have suggested that the Nazca lines, since they can only be taken in visually from a height achievable only with flying machines…
gregladen | May 14, 2009This is very funny (as you might expect). Chad Orzel posted it because of the references to CERN's super duper collider. (Go see Chad's commentary.)
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gregladen | May 14, 2009Or, putting it another way,
"Why does our energy system face security and environmental challenges?"
Please visit ScienceBlog's new blog, The Energy Grid, which is one of those shorter term issue-driven blogs we do at Sb nwo and then.
This particular iteration is moderated by Jonas Meckling, from the Belfer Center, and hosted by James Hrynyshyn, who I got to know a bit at the conference last winter, and Coby Beck, both of Scienceblogs Dot Com, and a few other rather impressive looking people.
So, please go and help them save the world. Seriously. Let's get a great discussion going here…
gregladen | May 14, 2009Why does a soldier throw himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of a half-dozen unrelated fellow soldiers? Why does someone run into a burning building they happen to be passing to save a child they don't know? From a Darwinian perspective these seem to be enigmatic behaviors that would "select against" such individuals (or more properly, select against the heritable component of this behavior).
There are several possible explanations for this....
...The most important one might be that this sort of behavior doesn't really happen very often. It is so rare that it can be ignored and…
gregladen | May 14, 2009Readers, as I look back at the last TWO years (as I did with one year, yesterday) I find that May 2007 was ALSO a slow month for my blogging, even though job related effects could not have been at play (my job has changed since then, IIRC).
So whereas yesterday was Stephanie Zvan Day, I declare this day, May 14th, to be "Blogging is Hard Day."
On Blogging is Hard Day bloggers are allowed to reach back into their past and repost really old things that they suddenly realized are exactly in lie with the writing or research in which they are currently engaged. The blogger must reach back a…
gregladen | May 13, 2009First, the video, then the discussion:
Sean claims that 'cat' is short for 'concatenate' ... which is what I always thought (I'm sure 'cat' is 'concatinate' in at least one relatively common computer language other than bash).
If you man cat you do indeed get a statement that says "cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output."
It has become fashionable over the last few years for shell programmers to eschew cat. It is often the case that using cat is redundant with some other way of doing something which is seen as better for some reason, but that reason is often rather obscure…
gregladen | May 13, 2009American politicians, some parents, and a few others have previously expressed the concern that learning more than one language muddles the mind. This is, of course, absurd, and it is hard to believe why anyone really thought this. In fact, it could be said that having more than one language under your belt makes it easier to learn yet another language, a demand Americans often place on foreigners or immigrants to the US which is less often placed on the Americans (see this discussion).
Now, to support the idea that having more languages is good for the mind is being demonstrated at the…
gregladen | May 13, 2009It would appear that Rocket Scientist Steve Jurvetson has moved into Photo Synthesis, the photogenic science blog. Check it out!
gregladen | May 13, 2009The 'Atiras'
The first asteroid ever discovered that has an orbit completely inside the Earth's, found by an MIT Lincoln Laboratory telescope in 2003 (with multiple exposures marked in red), has been formally named Atira by its discoverers. Seven more such inner-Earth orbit (IEO) asteroids have been found since, and the group is now classed as the Atiras.
Click the link above for a picture.
Successful translocation sees first petrel chick
The first Bermuda Petrel Pterodroma cahow chick to be born on Nonsuch Island, Bermuda, for almost 400 years, has recently hatched, the result of a…
gregladen | May 12, 2009Not all proprietary software is actually evil. However, very few people who prefer proprietary software over OpenSource software will admit how evil it can be. So this is like having two societies. In one, by convention and social norms we don't hit the kids. In the other, we spank the kids now and then, and this is acceptable. In both societies, there is violent abuse of children but it is never accepted.
Then, in the no-spanking society, violent attack on children that annoy us continues to be shunned and illegal, but in the spanking society, spankers defend all violence against children…
gregladen | May 12, 2009The Spirit Mars Robot is getting stuck in the dust, but it is still sending back data. But mostly about dust.
From NASA:
PASADENA, Calif. -- The five wheels that still rotate on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit have been slipping severely in soft soil during recent attempts to drive, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground.
The rover team of engineers and scientists has suspended driving Spirit temporarily while studying the ground around the rover and planning simulation tests of driving options with a test rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
"…
gregladen | May 12, 2009Attorneys for Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) have asked the Federal Election Commission for permission to use campaign funds to pay his legal bills stemming from allegations that a Coleman confidante funneled improper payments to the lawmaker via his wife.
Coleman and his wife have denied any wrongdoing, but the former CEO of Deep Marine Technology, a Houston, Texas, company, filed a lawsuit claiming that Nassar Kazeminy, a DMT investor, "coerced DMT to make improper payments of $75,000 to Laurie Coleman through her employer, for the ultimate benefit of her husband."
A similar lawsuit was also…
gregladen | May 12, 2009I think this is how my wife does it. I'm not sure. All I know is that every morning she's gone and I'm laying somewhere unconscious.
How To Put On A Bra 101 - The funniest home videos are here
Hat Tip: Miss Cellania
gregladen | May 12, 2009The answer will shock and amaze you.
At the moment, we don't officially have a state level Democratic Party, but rather, a hybrid known as the Democratic Farm Labor (DFL) party. But there used to be a Democratic Party, and it provided the state with a total of four governors. The Farm Labor party supported three, and the DFL gave us five. So, one could say that the state of Minnesota has sort of had 12 governors from what is now the equivalent of the Democratic Party.
A grand total of 26 Minnesota governors have been Republicans, and one independence (That's be Jesse). (That is a slight…
gregladen | May 12, 2009I always liked Jesse. I didn't agree with about half of his policies, but I did not have the automated lefty knee jerk reaction against him that almost everyone I know had. Hey, he did after all, beat Norm Coleman in that governor's race!
Of course, he also beat my candidate, Humphrey. But in so doing Ventura demonstrated what happens when we Democratic Farm Laborers in Minnesota get together to put up a candidate for governor: We screw it up. Humphrey was not the candidate for that election. So we got Ventura. Hatch was not the candidate for the last election. So we got Pawlenty.
I…