gregladen | July 29, 2008 An ugly fact killing a beautiful hypothesis I'm not mentioning any names, and don't ask me any details. In fact, don't repeat this story.
Some years ago, when I was a mere graduate student, a fellow student working in an unnamed country in Africa discovered a very very old stone artifact. To this day, this bit of chipped stone debris, representing the activities of an ancient very pre-human hominid, is one of the oldest well dated, in situ objects of its kind known.
The stone had some yeck on it, and for giggles, this stone got passed on to a physicist who had invented a new way of…
gregladen | July 29, 2008Did Past Climate Changes Promote Speciation in the Amazon?
Any time you've got a whopping big river like the Amazon (or a mountain chain like the Andes, or an ocean, or whatever), you've gotta figure that it will be a biogeographical barrier. Depending on the kind of organisms, big rivers, high mountains, oceans, forests, deserts, and so on can provide a habitat or a barrier, and when there is a barrier, populations may end up splitting across that barrier and diverging to become novel species.
The role of the big tropical rivers such as the Amazon and the Congo, and the role of rain…
gregladen | July 28, 2008A recent article in PLoS examines the possibility that disease is spreading from domestic to wild bees.
Osmia ribifloris
The conservation of insect pollinators is drawing attention because of reported declines in bee species and the 'ecosystem services' they provide. This issue has been brought to a head by recent devastating losses of honey bees throughout North America (so called, 'Colony Collapse Disorder'); yet, we still have little understanding of the cause(s) of bee declines. Wild bumble bees (Bombus spp.) have also suffered serious declines and circumstantial evidence suggests…
gregladen | July 27, 2008How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. The burned out light bulb is expected behavior.
In fact, it will be incorporated into the next version as an added feature in the Professional Version (not available at discount).
But seriously folks, if you want to have a look at a few funny anti-Microsoft jokes (and a much larger number that really are not that funny) check this out.
Here's a couple of examples:
Windows 95: 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor,…
gregladen | July 27, 2008Strangest thing I've seen all weekend:
The octopuses of the genus Grimpoteuthis are also known as "Dumbo octopuses" from the ear-like fins protruding from the top of their head-like bodies, resembling the ears of Walt Disney's flying elephant. They are benthic creatures, living at extreme depths: 300-400 meters, and are some of the rarest of the Octopoda species. They can flush the transparent layer of their skin at will, and are pelagic animals, as with all other cirrate octopuses, and unlike many other incirrate octopuses. source
gregladen | July 27, 2008Jim Adkisson entered the Unitarian Church for a children's play earlier today, carrying a guitar case. But instead of taking out a guitar and singing Kumbaya, he pulled out a shotgun, killed two adults, and wounded seven others before being overpowered.
This was in Knoxville Tennessee.
Jim Adkisson, 58, of Powell, Tennessee, was charged with one count of first-degree murder, Kenner said Sunday evening.
Adkisson is not believed to have been a member of the Knoxville church, and investigators have not determined a motive for the shooting, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen told reporters.…
gregladen | July 26, 2008 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) commandos Nigeria is where Western graduate students in political science who study corruption go to do their fieldwork. There appears to be an ensconced elite and externally connected ruling body and a down trodden underclass organized into various resistance groups. The discovery of abundant petroleum reserves in the Niger Delta and vicinity meant that the elite ruling group and external forces (including but not limited to Big Oil) have conspired to extract this resource at maximum profit largely setting aside the possibility of…
gregladen | July 26, 2008Amy Binder and John H. Evans, associate professors of Sociology at the University of California at San Diego, have written a piece on efforts to force religion in the guise of Intelligent Design and Creationism down the throats of children in Texas.
A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in the state's science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class. The proposal is a new round in an…
gregladen | July 25, 2008It appears that the Chancellor of the University of Minnesota, Morris put out a statement today regarding PZ Myers' recent activity in relation to the cracker/eucharist. This led to coverage in the Star Tribune where you can, if you like, leave a comment. The story:
Morris chancellor defends instructor who defiled Eucharist, tore Qur'an
The chancellor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, is standing up for a faculty member's freedom of expression after the instructor posted on the Internet a photo of a defiled communion wafer with pages ripped from the Qur'an.
Paul Z. Myers, who teaches…
gregladen | July 25, 2008According to the Star Tribune:
But the Star Tribune is wrong, and they know they are wrong (according to sources close in). So, is their front page editor on crack or something? Let's test this hypothesis.
(UPDATE: See: Senate race polling breakdown)
Available recent polling data suggest that Barack Obama is leading John McCain in the Great State of Minnesota by double digits. Here is a picture of the data from Polster.com:
The little dots are data points and the lines are regressed off of these points.
The most recent Rasmussen poll shows Coleman and Franken in a dead heat at 44/43…
gregladen | July 25, 2008Some current news in the Linuxosphere, and some things going on on my very own desktop, have me wondering about the nature of the Linux Desktop. Here are a few questions to ponder.
Are Gnome and Ubuntu ruining the Linux Desktop? And if they are, what do we do about it?
Is Linux currently at a fundamental disadvantage that people are often not considering, having to do with how computers are set up?
Is it possible that the Linux Desktop is going to surpass the Mac in use? And why or why not?
Let's start with the first question.
Why am I asking if Gnome and Ubuntu are ruining the Linux…
gregladen | July 25, 2008Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but I assure you, it gets worse.
Google may be taking a shot at Wikipedia (and similar projects) with its newly unveiled Knol project. Knol was announced many moons ago but has been under cover and password protected with only a few special people allowed in to see what was going on and contribute. Now, it is "open to everyone" according to an announcement made this week.
What the heck are we talking about?
A 'Knol" is a unit of knowledge .... a write up, blog-post or wiki-article-like about a particular topic, from an authoritative source.
The key principle…
gregladen | July 25, 2008The birth of the world's first "test tube baby" has been announced in Manchester.
Louise Brown was born shortly before midnight in Oldham and District General Hospital.
Weighing 5lb 12oz (2.61 kg) the baby was delivered by caesarean section because her mother, Lesley Brown, was suffering from toxaemia.
The consultant in charge of the case, Mr Patrick Steptoe, said: "All examinations showed that the baby is quite normal. The mother's condition after delivery was also excellent."
BBC
gregladen | July 25, 2008Enough monkeys banging on keyboards over enough time should produce, through random chance alone, sensible prose now and then.
But if the monkeys are bloggers and reporters and other people, the noise they generate would become merely pseudo-sensible because of (highly unlikely) chance events, but it should actually contain some information. With a little tweaking and a lot of filtering and analysis, it is possible to monitor the chatter for signs of emerging infectious diseases and quite possibly get on top of some of these events faster than otherwise possible.
In one of the most…
gregladen | July 24, 2008The following video is NOT for the feint of heart. Not. If your hear is feint, go away. Now. I am not kidding. You have been warned.
Obviously, the rocking chair is going to move. But notice that the clothing (at least I think it is clothing, not a person) on the bed to the right is moving a little the whole time. Also, the rocking chair is moving, I think, almost imperceptibly. Is there a string attached to it?
gregladen | July 24, 2008Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth's surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale.
This is from a press release covering research coming out momentarily on the PNAS. Even as a subcriber, I cannot SEE today's issue of PNAS, so I cannot cover it directly, but I thought you would enjoy at least this little bit. The press release continues ...
"Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could…
gregladen | July 24, 2008This blog will now engage in twenty four hours of silence as a show of respect for the all those who have suffered at the hands religious zealots around the world and throughout history.
I say this out of inspiration from a post written on Pharyngula by biologist PZ Myers. PZ makes the link between medieval anti-Semitic church law and the original idea that the Eucharist is holy. You must read his post, the best written and most meaningful thing on the internet this day. Here.
Here is a photograph of the staged 'desecration' worked out by PZ, in which we see the Eucharist, pages form the…