gregladen | December 2, 2008From Lifehacker:
Windows/Mac/Linux: The long-awaited cross-platform media player Songbird officially reaches its 1.0 release today. The open-source application--built on the same platform as Firefox--promises to bring exciting new innovations to a software jukebox market that has become arguably quite stale. Like Firefox, Songbird is extensible, meaning that users can customize the look, feel, and features of Songbird to their heart's content.
gregladen | December 2, 2008
December 2008 History Carnival
Carnival of Evolution #6
Berry Go Round # 11 - Berries, and more than just Berries
The 153rd Carnival of Homeschooling
Carnival of Space #81
The (November) Carnival of Elitist Bastards is Up at Last!
All Things Eco Blog Carnival Volume Twenty Seven
Please submit your entries to the upcoing Oekologie Carnival, to be hosted here. Click here to submit.
gregladen | December 2, 2008
Ceratotherium simum, or "White" Rhinoceros, a.k.a. Square-lipped Rhinoceros. Click the caption for a much larger image.
This is a young white, or square-lipped rhinoceros that was still traveling with its mom (not shown) at Pilanesberg, a mineral and game park in South Africa not far from the famous "Sun City" Casino northwest of Pretoria.
Notice the wide lip. It could easily be called the wide-lipped rhino to distinguish it form the other African species ("black" or "bush" rhinoceros). The mouth parts of this creature are actually designed to act as a lawn mower, as the animals spend…
gregladen | December 2, 2008One of Rwanda's most famous singers, Simon Bikindi, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for inciting violence during the 1994 genocide.
His conviction stems from a speech he made from a vehicle equipped with a public address system encouraging ethnic Hutus to kill Tutsis.
bbc
gregladen | December 2, 2008Also known as the "Anti-Dork Antelope." Not really. These are springbok.
The springbok has four remarkable characteristics. It is among the most dramatically colored of the antelopes, with the starkest contrast between the dark lateral stripe and the light brown (above) and white (below) fur. It is the fastest of the antelopes, by far. Lions and leopards need not apply: These are too fast for you to catch. It is one of the most rapidly reproducing of the antelopes, and will pump out little antelope babies as long as there is grass to eat. In the kalahri, where this photograph was…
gregladen | December 2, 2008Analysis of this year's seabird breeding data on RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) coastal reserves shows that Black-legged Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla, Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea and Parasitic Jaeger Stercorarius parasiticus - more commonly known as Arctic Skua - have had a terrible season, with virtually no chicks reared to fledging in the far north of the UK. Changes in food supply, which may be linked to climate change, could threaten the future of these species in the UK.
more
gregladen | December 1, 2008Do you remember the Moral Master 2.0? Well, you may have noticed that the training video gave you the first and last of the Fundemental List of Moral Question, but not the ones in the middle.
This is because it was assumed, correctly I'm sure, that we are a culture of immediate gratification and rapid MTV style entertainment and would not sit through the whole thing.
But, there were complaints. So the middle ... the additioanl questions ... are now available as part of the Moral Master 2.0 Add-On Pack. Here:
Hat Tip Javier
gregladen | December 1, 2008A sugar molecule linked to the origin of life was discovered in a potentially habitable region of our galaxy.
The molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the less-chaotic outer regions of the Milky Way. This suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.
more
gregladen | December 1, 2008
Cool. Is it or isn't it? Hey ... the UPS guy... he saw it!
Learn more here.
gregladen | December 1, 2008This is my best bud Stephanie relaxing in her rock.
I have a whole series of photographs of Stephanie inside rocks. I think it is utterly hilarious that in an entirely unrelated stream of events, a friend of hers (whom I do not know) asked her to model for a photography class she was taking, and ended up shooting her has an earth mother goddess sort of thing emerging from a mossy spot in the ground. And here she is hanging out inside rocks. Must be something about Stephanie.
But wait, there's more...
The rock iteslf is gneiss. In fact, it is very nice gneiss. Gneiss is a metamorphic…
gregladen | December 1, 2008Seed Media Group, who brings you Scienceblogs.com and Seed Magazine, is ....
offering the chance to give the gift of science year-round. Donate a Seed magazine subscription to a science classroom and we'll give you the base subscription price of $14.95. You may donate one or more subscriptions to a school (or schools) of your choice, or, if you do not have a specific school in mind, DonorsChoose has selected schools that are most in need of these donations and will happily choose one for you.
Go HERE to donate a year's subsciption of Seed to your kid's school, your neighborhood school,…
gregladen | December 1, 2008
Carnival of Recipes: Holiday Gift Giving Edition 2
Change of Shift: November 27, 2008 Volume Three - Number Eleven
Carnival of Cinema: Episode 102 - Escape to Blog Mountain
the November 30, 2008 edition of Everything Worth Reading
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gregladen | November 30, 2008An enjoyable overview of the Coleman Franken Recount process all it attends to ...
"What do we want?" Franken shouts.
"PATIENCE!" the volunteers respond.
"When do we want it?" Franken asks.
"NOW!" the crowd demands.
Here
Hat tip: Ana
gregladen | November 30, 2008This particular elephant was one of the nicest elephants I've ever met.
click for a larger picture
I was leading a tour group in the vicinity of the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The local guide suggested that we could take a walk along a particular trail, as long as vehicles stayed near by in case of trouble. This is a pretty standard thing to do with tourists in Africa. They get tired of being in vehicles all the time. If you know an area well enough, and have the vehicles near by, you can walk around a while. This gives us a chance to show people things like plants and insects…
gregladen | November 30, 2008If that headache plaguing you this morning led you first to a Web search and then to the conclusion that you must have a brain tumor, you may instead be suffering from cyberchondria.
This is about a Microsoft publication (in the 'journal' Microsoft Research), here, and written up in the New York Times.
The Scientific, Political, Social, and Pedagogical Context for the claim that "Race does not exist."
gregladen | November 29, 2008These days, many people say that race is largely a social construct; while it may have a place in describing the population genetics of some species, is not particularly applicable to humans. I'm one of those people. The race concept is generally inapplicable or at best misleading when used as it often is with our species. This is why race should be abandoned in favor of other ways of describing human variation.
At the same time, there are political, social, and pedagogical reasons to put aside the race concept. Race is not that useful of a concept to begin with, and beyond that it has…
gregladen | November 29, 2008Do you know what Cyber Monday is? If not, find out here. But don't wait 'till Tuesday.