gregladen | April 12, 2009The Galapagos National Park says La Cumbre volcano began spewing lava, gas and smoke on uninhabited Fernandina Island on Saturday after four years of inactivity.
The park says in a statement the eruption is not a threat to people living on nearby Isabela Island.
But it says lava flowing to the sea will likely affect marine and terrestrial iguanas, wolves and other fauna.
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gregladen | April 12, 2009"ubuntu" is a southern and/or eastern Bantu word ... one of those words that is found in a number of languages and that no one is quite sure of the origin of. But this does not mean that it can't be pronounced correctly.
There are very straight forward rules of pronunciation for Bantu words in general. Especially in Eastern and Southern Bantu languages (of which there are hundreds) you can think of the vowels as always being pronounced the same way whenever and wherever they are encountered. There are not really any silent vowels, and although there is some elision, there is very little.…
gregladen | April 12, 2009I bet you didn't imagine that I would have an Easter story. Well, I've got one and it consists of nothing more than a mercifully short dialog between me and my daughter when she was very little:
"Dad, do you believe in the Easter Bunny?"
"Well, what do you think? Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?"
"Well, I don't know, I'm thinking about it."
"Well, is this important? Why is it important to you to know if the Easter Bunny exists?
"I don't really care about the Easter Bunny. But if the Easter Bunny existed, it would sure make it a lot easier to believe in Santa Claus!"
gregladen | April 12, 2009By design you must log onto your session in Linux. This is a recently added feature in Windows, nothing more than a kludge. The following can not happen in Linux:
Hat tip: Natalie
(Here's the picture without the caption)
gregladen | April 11, 2009One afternoon I was sitting by the hearth writing notes on the morning's data collection, and a cassette player was running nearby. The Beatles White Album was on. Happiness is a Warm Gun was playing.
Lengotu, an Efe man I had been working with, who had made the claim to be a rain shaman (which in the case of the Rain Forest, meant someone who could stop the rain from being so severe) came over to me and said "You have to turn off that song."
"Why?" I said. Then, right after I said that I took in the look on his face. He was clearly disturbed. Without saying another word, I walked over…
gregladen | April 10, 2009There are a lot of ways to do this, but I just ran across one that may be just what some people need. This is an Open Access book called The Linux Starter Pack produced by Linux Format (which is an over-priced but entertaining Linux magazine).
The "starter pack" is a giant PDF file, 130 pages, which tells you how to install and use a common Linux distribution known as Ubuntu. You've probably heard of it.
Here is where you download the PDF file and learn more about it.
gregladen | April 10, 2009
Thou SHALT NOT believe all thou art told.
Thou SHALT seek knowledge and truth constantly.
Thou SHALT educate thy fellow man in the Laws of Science.
Thou SHALT NOT forget the atrocities committed in the name of god.
Thou SHALT leave valuable contributions for future generations.
Thou SHALT live in peace with thy fellow man.
Thou SHALT live this one life thou hast to its fullest.
Thou SHALT follow a Personal Code of Ethics.
Thou SHALT maintain a strict separation between Church and State.
Thou SHALT support those who follow these commandments.
Details here.
gregladen | April 10, 2009In front of Stanford University's Main Quad, biologist Tom McFadden raps for a video camera. The flat bill of his Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap sits on the white rims of his sunglasses as he bounces his head to the beat. The video then cuts to him gesticulating in front of a projection screen that shows the cells of an embryo dividing. ...
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gregladen | April 10, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
In a vaguely related matter ...
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | April 10, 2009Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do.
For example, Mr. Morano said he once spotted former Vice President Al Gore on an airplane returning from a climate conference in Bali. Mr. Gore was posing for photos with well-wishers, and Mr. Morano said he had asked if he, too, could have his picture taken with Mr. Gore.
He refused, Mr. Morano said.
"You attack me all the time," Mr. Gore said, according to Mr. Morano.
"Yes, we do," Mr. Morano said he had replied.
Mr. Gore's office said Mr. Gore had no memory of the…
gregladen | April 10, 2009 Evil Plan (tm)!
Your objective is simple: Soul Accumulation.
Your motive is a little bit more complex: Revenge
Stage One
To begin your plan, you must first blackmail a senator. This will cause the world to swallow nervously, confused by your arrival. Who is this evil genius? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good as a brain in a jar?
Stage Two
Next, you must destroy that opera house in sydney. This will all be done from a fake mountain, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will weep uncontrollably, as countless hordes of evil clowns…
gregladen | April 9, 2009... is here, at Quiche Moraine. Please go and visit this blog carnival, then visit all the sites pointed to by the blog carnival, read them, submit them all to social networking sites, enter them in blogspheric contests, and so on and so forth. Because that's how we do things in The Blogosphere .
I'll check back with you later.
gregladen | April 9, 2009... isn't just for plants anymore. It's a new blog here at the Blorg, a Scienceblogs Dot Com production.
The internet is home to a wealth of captivating science images, from the many microscopic components of a cell to the remote corners of the universe captured by Hubble. On Photo Synthesis, we aim to bring you the best of what's out there. Every month we will feature the work of a different photoblogger, exposing worlds both small and large, familiar and exotic. We will let the power of the lens take us where we ourselves are not able to go.
Photo Synthesis presents its first photo-…
gregladen | April 9, 2009I heard an interesting story today from someone involved in heart surgery research, a story about the first battery powered pacemaker to be used on a human. I don't know if any aspect of this is apocryphal or not, but I can tell you that the source is pretty reliable, and parts of this story are widely repeated on the Intertubes, so they must be true.
The original pacemaker was, of course, developed here at the University of Minnesota. In fact, open heard surgery was pioneered here and a lot of other heart related research. This is also where the first (and only) human-grown heart was…
gregladen | April 9, 2009Voters in a small town in ... Missouri have re-elected their popular mayor to a fourth term, several weeks after he died of a heart attack.
Harry Stonebraker died at the age of 69 in March ...
He won by a landslide, securing 90% of the vote in the 723-population town.
Winfield [town] will appoint a temporary mayor to serve until a special election is held in April 2010.
...
source
gregladen | April 9, 2009 Negotiations are continuing for the release of an American captain held by Somali pirates in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa.
He was taken from cargo ship Maersk Alabama after it was briefly seized by pirates a day earlier.
A US warship on anti-pirate patrol in the high-risk area sailed to the ship.
It remains unclear what the pirates want, but maritime sources say it could be a ransom or compensation for their boat which sank during the attack. ...
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