gregladen | July 14, 2008 Darwin and Wallace, chillin' Let's talk about Darwin and Wallace's joint presentation on Natural Selection in 1858.
It is not usually the case that I write a blog post for a carnival. I usually just write for the blog, then now and then sit down and figure out which posts should go to with carnivals. That is not the case with this post.
Some time ago I thought, while writing a Peer Reviewed Research post, that it would be interesting to write up older papers, classics, or more recent papers that were of great interest for one reason or another but maybe a few years old. Just around…
gregladen | July 14, 2008The Giant's Shoulders is a web carnival highlighting classic papers in science. Or people or concepts. Go here to get the details.
THe first deadline is Midnight EDT on July 15th (tomorrow)
The first edition will be hosted at A Blog Around the Clock. Send your entries to Coturnix!!!
As for me, I may submit this:
"Vanya on 42nd street", the movie by Louis Malle, was a blast. Such a long time since I have watched a group of actors performing a text with so much intensity. Saw it on Sunday, but on Monday night I was still excited, and couldn't take it from my mind. Simple shots, no cutting…
gregladen | July 14, 2008... And so far, to my knowledge, there has been no commentary by the Catholic League condemning these threats.
For example:
You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the
children. Or you can get your brains beat in....I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt
That one was from mkroll writing from 1800 Flowers.com
And this one from a somewhat more anonymous person:
You are a scumbag, may your insides rot, may your neck be snapped by an iron boot against a curb
Since the Catholic League has a hair trigger when it comes to…
gregladen | July 13, 2008Over the last couple of weeks, I've installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron (the most current version), which comes with Firefox 3.0, on a couple of machines. My most recent effort has left me wondering what could be so terribly wrong with this picture. On one of these computers, it is impossible to open more than three or four tabs (if any of the sites is using flash) without losing almost all functionality within Firefox. The app simply spends most of its time not responding.
Worked fine on my test system, but on my production system... well, production over. Can't really use that computer any…
gregladen | July 13, 2008
Louis Pasteur's research led to the advancement of the still accepted Germ Theory. He created the first vaccine for rabies. One of the key figures in the development of the field of microbiology, Pasteur invented the technique of food processing known today as pasteurization, whereby liquids such as milk are thermally processed to reduce or remove pathogens.
Photo from Wikipeda.
U CAN HAZ MORE LOL
gregladen | July 13, 2008It has become axiomatic that the use of adornment by humans is some sort of symbolic act, and thus is linked to the human symbolic and linguistic mind. The human symbolic and linguistic mind is the trait that we axiomatically believe to be the derived human feature ... the cladistic apomorphy that makes us human (as opposed to other-ape). Therefore, the use of adornment is seen by early 21st century archaeologists as evidence of modern human behavior.
Some artifacts from early archaeological sties might be adornment, or they might be 'art' (or at least "arty") and they might be related to…
gregladen | July 13, 2008... As Homer Simpson once said: "Where's the 'anykey'"...
The title of this post is an actual error message spotted on, I presume, a Windows computer. Another:
"You lied to me when you told me this was a program"
or how about:
That makes 100 errors; please try again.
Or this:
Maybe you should try asking a human?
Actually, I lied above when I blamed Windows. These are all examples of Linux or Unix errors, taken from this massive list on one of my favorite web sites. Have a look.
gregladen | July 12, 2008From the NCSE:
Senate Bill 733, signed by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on June 25, continues to draw criticism from scientists and political observers across the political spectrum.
In the New Scientist, Amanda Gefter reports (July 9, 2008), "The new legislation is the latest manoeuvre in a long-running war to challenge the validity of Darwinian evolution as an accepted scientific fact in American classrooms." Since the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision, where intelligent design creationism was found to be nonscience and unconstitutional to present in science classes, Gefter explains that "…
gregladen | July 12, 2008From the NCSE:
As reported in last week's Evolution Education Update, Chris Comer, the Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency (TEA) who was forced to resign over a dispute involving intelligent design, filed suit in federal court, seeking an injunction against TEA's "policy of neutrality with respect to the teaching of creationism in the Texas public schools."
According to the Dallas Morning News (July 3, 2008), Comer's suit alleges "that she was terminated for contravening an 'unconstitutional' policy at the agency. The policy required employees to be neutral on the subject of…
gregladen | July 12, 2008Joe died yesterday.
Joe Barr (October 19, 1944 - July 11, 2008) was an editor and writer for the SourceForge sites Linux.com and IT Manager's Journal.
A former programmer, Barr had worked on everything from microcomputers like the TRS-80 Model I to IBM mainframes with acres of DASD, writing code in more than a dozen languages, including RPG II, 370 ALC, COBOL, BASIC, TIBOL, MASM, and C. Much of that experience coming in his 13 years with Ross Perot's EDS.[citation needed]
As a writer, Barr first gained notoriety and, according to Ziff-Davis' Spencer F. Katt, a cult-like following for his zine…
gregladen | July 12, 2008"At a contentious public meeting in Mount Vernon, Ohio, the district school board scheduled a hearing on whether to fire teacher John Freshwater. Freshwater has been accused of teaching intelligent design in his biology classes, and of using a piece of lab equipment to brand a cross on a student's arm."
.... from an NCSE press release. More:
The Columbus Dispatch reports (July 7, 2008) "The Mount Vernon eighth-grade science teacher who has been under scrutiny for focusing on creationism and intelligent design in his classes will contest his planned firing at an Aug. 26 hearing. The date…
gregladen | July 11, 2008
I would like to take a moment to examine Catholic League president Bill Donohue's statement regarding PZ. (Details of the CL's attack on PZ Myers here) Here is the statement:
"The Myers blog can be accessed from the university's website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the 'Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.' One of the school's policies, 'Code of Conduct,' says that 'When dealing with others,' faculty et al. must be 'respectful, fair and civil.' Accordingly, we are…
gregladen | July 11, 2008... Or just some kind of odd Internet Shenanigans.
It turns out that if there is an organized effort to bias the discussion, it may be coming from the usual place ... the trolls...
As I've been following the new energy blog on Sb, something seemed odd. Tiny pieces of evidence filtered together ... a memory here, a memory there ... and suddenly it became apparent that one of the commenters on Sceicneblogs new energy blog "Next Generation Energy" not only rang a bell, but indeed might be ringing numerous bells.
I'm talking about Kent Beuchert. Kent is always there on the internet when the…
gregladen | July 10, 2008Wild game is good. More wild game and fewer cattle, in some habitats, would better. But when wild game is extracted en masse from a wild area (usually a rain forest, usually in Africa) and shipped to a city, or an enclave of logger's camps, or overseas to nostalgic African populations in Europe, it is no longer called wild game, or venison, or just food or meat.
It is called bushmeat, and bushmeat (in modern parlance) is bad.
Havalook:
Although illegal wildlife poaching is conducted worldwide, the impact in Africa has been devastating. Unsustainable commercial hunting for bushmeat will…
gregladen | July 10, 2008 Sizzle
Randy Olson is a Harvard ('84) trained marine biologist with field experience on the Great Barrier Reef, in the Antarctic, the US Virgin Islands, and elsewhere. He even spent a little time with Jacques Cousteau.
But an extensive career in marine biology was not to be.
Randy started to change careers around 1990, with the production of a number of short films including "Barnacles Tell No LIes" (which I've placed at the bottom of this post for your enjoyment). In 1994 he literally jumped ship. walking away from a tenured professorship in New Hampshire, and went to USC to study…
gregladen | July 10, 2008Well, I can't answer that question. But in a related matter, Koelsch et al. ask, in a new paper published in PLoS ONE, Why Musicians Make Us Weep and Computers Don't? ... obviously, they have not met my computer.
The study investigates the somatic effects of "...unexpected chords of piano sonatas as they were originally arranged by composers, and as they were played by professional pianists." This was compared with rote non-emotional playing of the music. The somatic effects investigated included event-related brain potentials (ERPs), skin conductance responses (SCRs) and heart rate (HR…
gregladen | July 10, 2008We made this site to spread the word about our effort to combat Creationism in Louisianan Schools.
You may be aware that yesterday(June 28) Governor Jindal signed bill 733 into effect. This bill will allow Creationist material, specifically from the Discovery Institute, to be used in classrooms to 'inspire critical thinking'. It will also allow teachers and students to spread ridiculous religious ideas at will.
What's wrong with that, you might ask? ....
Check it out.
gregladen | July 10, 2008This article in PLoS Medicine investigates the difference between modern multi-drug treatment with individuals monitoring of patients in a developed country (Switzerland) with similar treatments using a different, non-individualized "public health" approach in South Africa, to see if there is any difference between the two approach. The results are surprising, and encouraging.
AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) has caused the death of over 25 million people worldwide since 1981, and an additional 30 million people are currently infected with the causal agent of AIDS, the virus HIV…