gregladen | February 10, 2009But according to this scientific diagnostic tool, I have the brain of a 25 year old. How old is your brain?????
You'll have to know how to read Japanese to make this work, or you can just follow these instructions:
1) Click on start. The diagnostic tool will count down from 3 and show you some numbers.
2) Remember where the numbers are. The diagnostic tool will make the numbers go away and replace them with empty circles.
3) Now click each circle in turn, in order from smallest to largest. Zero is smallest (that's what screwed me up ... for some reason my brain would not remember that…
gregladen | February 10, 2009A quick note for those of you interested in mud volcanoes (and I know there are many of you). From an article titled "Earthquake Triggering of Mud Volcanoes" by Magna et al we learn that ...
Mud volcanoes sometimes erupt within days after nearby earthquakes. The number of such nearly coincident events is larger than would be expected by chance and the eruptions are thus assumed to be triggered by earthquakes. Here we compile observations of the response of mud volcanoes and other geologic systems (earthquakes, volcanoes, liquefaction, ground water, and geysers) to earthquakes. The…
gregladen | February 10, 2009... Ah, actually, it was a subway sandwich. The details are not important.
But then my cell phone rang. The caller ID showed that it was my daughter's cell phone.
That was weird, because the cell phone's been missing for weeks!!!!!
"Ah, hello?"
"Hi. I found this cell phone."
"I know, that's amazing, where are you, who are you?"
I was talking too fast. I think I may have frightened the poor man.
"Ah, you're listed as 'Dad' ... so I figured I'd call you.."
And so on and so forth. The cell phone turned up in a melting snow bank in a place that makes sense as to why it might be there. My…
gregladen | February 10, 2009Charles Darwin wrote a book called Geological Observations on South America. Since Fitzroy needed to carry out intensive and extensive coastal mapping in South America, and Darwin was, at heart, a geologist more than anything else (at least during the Beagle's voyage), this meant that Darwin would become the world's expert on South American geology. Much of The Voyage is about his expeditions and observations. Part of this, of course, was figuring out the paleontology of the region.
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Bahia Blanca is a port at the northern end of Patagonia. Chapter V of The…
gregladen | February 10, 2009Thursday, February 12, 2009, 7 to 9 p.m.
Bell Museum Auditorium
$10/ free to museum members and University students
The speakers will present in the auditorium from 7 to 8 pm. Birthday cake and refreshments are served after the presentations.
Celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday! Part of a world wide celebration, the Twin Cities' version is at The Bell Museum of Natural History this Thursday night. Join in the fun with cake, drinks and presentations by U of M scientists and educators. They will present funny, outrageous and controversial rapid-fire, media-rich…
gregladen | February 10, 2009One of the really useful features of the new edition of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction by Genie Scott is the coverage of the socio-cultural context of the so called "debate" between Creationists and Evolutionary Biologists. This tidbit is an example:
The obvious patterns are interesting. There is a modest drop in overall religiousity over the last twenty years. This drop is entirely acounted for by a drop in Christianity specifically. And the biggest change overall (percentage wise, doing the figures in my head so this is subject to revision) is an increase in the "No…
gregladen | February 10, 2009Well, that's not exactly what they are saying, but it is what they are doing. Or at least trying to do.
To stamp out voter fraud, GOP legislators have offered a proposal that would make Minnesota's voter-ID laws the most restrictive in the country. But according to their own party, no actual cases of voter fraud have been reported here. Still Reps. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, and Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, have sponsored a bill requiring photo identification for every voter.
...
Read it at the MN Indy.
Hat tip: Ana
gregladen | February 10, 2009... are not confined to any one area of interest. Check out this post on How Not to Manage Your Image at Almost Diamonds. It is all about this picture:
Well, it's not really all about that picture, but that picture might be what draws the corporate lawyers to my site to force me to take it down. But I'm not going to mention the name Arcade of the Nickle Divided by Five or the name Country of Mom and Apple Pie How To Say Hello other than cryptically. Like I just did. And I've changed the name of the file this photograph exists as to be difficult to trace. The only way Big Brother can…
gregladen | February 9, 2009We're half way through Darwin Month, and only a tiny ways through the voyage. Need to hurry up! So, let's skip ahead a bit and hit the Gauchos....
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Well, you don't really want to hit at Gaucho ... they hit back rather hard....
The Gauchos are the cowboys of the so-called Southern Cone and Pampas. The Gauchos are a Latin American version the horse mounted pastoralists that emerge wherever four things are found together: Grasslands, horses, people and cattle. Like all horse-mounted pastoralists, they have been known to have certain cultural tendencies or…
gregladen | February 9, 2009A Much Earlier Start for Animals
Where did all the animals come from? ... The problem with the earliest animals, from a paleontologist's perspective, is that they lacked hard parts.
...
The answer lies in the unique molecules they left behind.... one such molecule [c]alled 24-IPC, ... is only produced by Demospongiae, a class of animals that includes most modern sponges and is thought to constitute the roots of the animal family tree. The researchers acquired 30 pristine drill cores removed from underneath the southern Arabian Peninsula by the oil company Petroleum Development Oman. The…
gregladen | February 9, 2009Eventually, the Beagle headed south to the area of Uruguay and Argentina, still on the Atlantic Coast, where extensive mapping of the coastal waters was required.
The Parana and Uruguay Rivers meet in the Atlantic estuary known as Rio de la Plata. On the north side of this huge body of water is Montevideo, Uruguay, and on the south side, the northern coast of Argentina. There is an interesting story linked with early European exploration of this area. A Spanish ship is the first known European craft to explore La Plata. The ship's captain and a small crew went inland, and never came…
gregladen | February 9, 2009For the past few days I have been in contact with Mr. Richard Mullens a school teacher in Brookeland Tx. Brookeland Tx, is an incredibly "Conservative" area of Texas, and only 16 miles up the road from Jasper Tx. the scene of several incidents of racial violence and murder. Mullens has been the victim of a smear campaign and a slew of unethical practices, based solely on his religious and political beliefs. I have received numerous calls today from area parents, and concerned local residents who feel that Mr. Mullens is a good teacher, who has encouraged and inspired his students to think…
gregladen | February 9, 2009The mother of the woman who used a fertility doctor to give birth to octuplets, despite already having six young children, called her daughter's actions "unconscionable" in an interview posted online Sunday.
details
I'm not sure my hypothesis of a race effect has been fully falsified, but the alternative hypotheses of edginess due to the economy and people thinking she is a nut bag are starting to feel stronger and have not yet been falsified.
gregladen | February 9, 2009
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We shall now have a moment of silence from the Global Warming Denialists. (By the way, did you notice? No praying or exortations to a creator or savior during this report. That was nice.)
gregladen | February 9, 2009When reading the Voyage, it is impossible to miss the observation that much of the time Darwin was engaged in adolescent boy behavior: Pulling the heads off insects, noting how long they would wiggle after cut in half, closely examining the ooze and guts, occupied much of his time. Obviously, careful observation and a strong stomach were not all that was required to think up Natural Selection and his other theories, or the Origin of Species would have been written dozens of times by dozens of grown up kids.
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...
In the following passages, Darwin is still along…
gregladen | February 9, 2009Genie Scott's new edition of Evolution vs. Creationism is especially useful for people in the trenches in this so called 'debate' because Scott manages to touch on virtually every point of argument you will run into if you are, say, a life science teacher. For instance, the role of 'theory' vs. 'fact' and 'hypothesis' and so on is generally misunderstood by students and the general public ... and this misunderstanding then exploited by the creationists. So, this issue is dealt with clearly. Have a look. The top list is how many people rank these terms in importance, and here Scott…
gregladen | February 8, 2009The publishing industry is dangerous. Why? Because it is big and rich, but it is also in danger. The publishing industry, like the music industry, and like the commercial proprietary software industry, faces structural reorganization of the markets served and uncertainty in the flow of cash into coffers. So we should not be surprised when we see the industry buying off members of congress to get legislation passed that protects the industry from change that is coming. Change the industry does not want to see.
The most recent event is the reintroduction of a bill in congress that will…