gregladen | August 23, 2008Jamaican sprinters make people who are not really thinking about this jump, like pole vaulters, to the conclusion that there must be a gene for running fast that somehow evolved ... like Olympic Beach Volley Ball seemingly from sterile sand ... despite the numerous hurdles for such an event to happen. Such is the nature of amateur science.
As much as I'd like to make a contribution to this discussion right now, I'm engaged in other activities that preclude a knee-jerk reaction. So for now, I offer this repost of an earlier piece on running and genetics. As a wet blanket. Enjoy the wet…
gregladen | August 23, 2008Joe Biden, as predicted on this blog! (and since I'm usually wrong about this sort of thing, this is impressive. Or random)
US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has announced that Joe Biden will be his running mate in November's election.
Mr Obama's choice, confirmed on his website and with a text message to supporters, comes ahead of next week's Democratic Party convention.
Mr Biden, a 65-year-old veteran lawmaker, is highly respected on foreign policy issues.
Republican contender John McCain could announce his choice next week.
BBC
gregladen | August 22, 2008Or so it would seem.
Hat tip: Phil
This blog continues to boycott the Olympics. Hey, I've been in the woods for a few days, are the Olympics still going on? Seriously. Are they?
gregladen | August 22, 2008Chris Abani tells stories of people: People standing up to soldiers. People being compassionate. People being human and reclaiming their humanity. It's "ubuntu," he says: the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.
...
Imprisoned three times by the Nigerian government, Chris Abani turned his experience into poems that Harold Pinter called "the most naked, harrowing expression of prison life and political torture
...
gregladen | August 21, 2008On August 21, 1863 William C. Quantrill and a band of 450 proslavery yahoos raided Lawrence, Kansas and butchered 182 individuals, including children.
Quantrill and his men staged numerous raids into Kansas during the early part of the Civil War. He was quickly labeled an outlaw by the Union for his attacks on pro Union forces. He was involved in several skirmishes with Jayhawkers (pro Union guerilla bands) and eventually was made a Captain in the Confederate Army. His attitude towards his role in the Civil War drastically changed in 1862 when the Commander of the Department of Missouri,…
gregladen | August 21, 2008It was important that this man was thrown in jail. It is very bad that he is not spending more time there. Let me tell you why.
The South African man convicted of feeding one of his ex-workers to the lions is due to be freed on parole shortly, after three years in jail.
Mark Scott-Crossley was originally given a life sentence for murder but this was reduced after a judge said there was no proof the man was alive. [at the time the victim was thrown into the lion cage]
The remains of Nelson Chisale's body were found in the lion enclosure, causing a national outcry.
The case highlighted the…
gregladen | August 20, 2008
An Ossetian protester holds a poster parodying US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a rally outside Nato headquarters in Brussels.
gregladen | August 20, 2008The Linutop is a tiny Linux computer that you stick onto the back of your flat screen monitor (and hook it to the monitor, obviously), plug in, and go. It makes no noise, produces very little heat, uses hardly any electricity (eight watts) and seems to be reasonably powered. It cost about 300 bucks.
There are things it won't do. The system is solid state, which means it is totally secure but upgrading would not be done in the usual way. I believe this computer is what you want to use if you are not storing data or if all your data is stored on line.
But for public computers in…
gregladen | August 20, 2008Cosmos, the TV show by Carl Sagen, as in:
Anyway, Cosmos is now available on iTunes.
If you click this, it will open your iTunes store. So you may not want to click it. Up to you.
gregladen | August 20, 2008A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little.
When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in the mirror, it sees another monkey. Typical adult male macaques stuck in a cage with a mirror will treat the image as a fellow adult male macaque until you take the mirror out of the cage.
(Experiments that attempt to determine if an individual can recognize themselves in the mirror ultimately derive from what is known as the Gallup Test, after Gordon…
gregladen | August 19, 2008
The Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival, most recently hosted on Almost Diamonds, by Stephanie Zvan, who is Almost an Anthropologist, will be hosted next on Tangled Up in Blue Guy. However, TUIBG needs YOUR SUBMISIONS!!!! Send him your anthropological bloggery! Here
NOW!!!
gregladen | August 19, 2008Or so says everybody who's anybody.
It might not be Biden, but it will be Saturday.
Am I right?
gregladen | August 19, 2008They ... the guys ... sold the freezer, with bigfoot inside of it, to some chumps who claim to be "bigfoot scientists", and have taken off, went on the lam, disappeared. According to Countdown (Live, happening now) and it's on CNN (click the picture).
It turns out on further inspection that it was just that bigfoot suit we all thought it was. The guts and some of the flesh was possum. The foot was made out of rubber.
What a perfect ending. Live by the lie, die (or at least pay) by the lie. That's what I say ...
The supposed corpse of Bigfoot has been revealed as nothing but a rubber…
gregladen | August 19, 2008 It was supposed to start up in June, at which time the Earth would explicitly NOT be sucked into a tiny black hole. Or at least not quickly. Or at least not a black hole any different than the thousands that are already forming in our upper atmosphere more or less constantly.
Did it start up? No. There have been continued delays, or more accurately (perhaps), the exact startup depends on things that cannot be precisely measured mainly because they have never been done before and it is a good idea to take one's time. I'm pretty sure the legal challenges have not been part of the delays…