gregladen | June 24, 2008An utterly incomprehensible paper has been produced by a team of physicists, designed to make everyone feel better about the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider will produce black holes that will suck the Earth into themselves.
There is no effort whatsoever in this paper to speak to normal people. The most I can get out of it is that yes, black holes can form, and possibly very many of them, but it will take them longer to destroy the planet than it will take the sun to destroy the planet by exploding on its present schedule (of some billions of years from now). Which makes no…
gregladen | June 24, 2008We anthropologists love this stuff. This is why we go to zoos. So we can stand around near the ape cage and say to people .. "No, that's not a monkey. It's an ape...." and so on.
Look a this cute little guy:
Obviously, this is an emperor tamarin, Sanguinus imperator. But the news report labels it as an Emporer tamarin and uses this headline:
HA! Lemurs are, of course, prosimians, while tamarins are New World monkeys. That's like calling a deer a cow, roughly.
I quickly ad, I no my blog is ful of erors. But I do not have an editorial staff and it's free.
source
gregladen | June 24, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ...
Yet another item from the first day of the conference, the pre-conference teachers day sponsored by Evolution 2008 and the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE) ...
The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education presented Ken Hubert with an award. I am blanking on the name of the award right now, but eventually, the MnCSE web site will probably have a page on this, or an announcement about it. (We need time for some dust to settle.)
Who is Ken Hubert?
Well, when it comes to the Evolution - Creationism 'debate…
gregladen | June 24, 2008I had the strangest dream last night:
...The DHS girl had picked up that something was amiss, but a strategically placed index finger run from just behind her ear down to her throat while I explained the situation alleviated her concerns. She was suddenly quite helpful, and half a ton of red tape miraculously disappeared. It turns out she was a fan of Greg's. ...and mine.
Greg was going to get his gift, and I was going to give it to him....
But it turned out to be Janie talking to me via the Intertubes, and wishing me a happy birthday. Thanks Janie!
My grandmother was forever uttering…
gregladen | June 23, 2008Yes, I too was asked by EA games to install and test Spore. That is their hot new product.
I have run into certain hurdles. This is the best I could do for spores:
Spore only runs on a Windows computer. Well, I have one of those not for any really good reason, as it turns out ... to run games. (Mainly Julia's games.)
The hard drive is small and the processor is small, but I was able to download spore and convince it to install on an external hard drive that had plenty o' room.
Then when I tried to run it, I was informed that the graphics card is not up to snuff. That does not…
gregladen | June 23, 2008 Triatoma infestans, Chagas vector This is the conclusion of a report to be published in the June 2008 PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal. The report, by Peter Hotez of George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, is a clear indictment of economic disparity in the United States. The bottom line: Many poor Americans are, effectively, living in a poorly managed third world country.
Poor people in the United States are subject to a mostly ignored burden of diseases "caused by a group of chronic and debilitating parasitic, bacterial, and congenital infections known…
gregladen | June 23, 2008NASA's JPL has a new web site which focuses on surface conditions on one specific planet: The Earth.
It has a Sea Level Viewer which is basically a very fancy menu for a number of multi-media presentations, and a list of current or proposed missions. I am not overly impressed with this, but it may be a good resource for the kiddies.
Much more interesting, and in fact, quite impressive, is the "Climate Time Machine" ...
This shows ice melting, sea level change, CO2 emissions, and average global temperature. The CO2 emissions is fascinating, because CO2 emissions are an assay of…
gregladen | June 23, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ...
Karen Oberhauser talked about the "single species" approach to pedagogy. This involves focusing on a single species and using it throughout an entire course. Karen has taught classes on this approach for teachers' professional development programs.
The species she uses is the Monarch Butterfly.
Karen is a world class expert on this insect, and runs a major research project with them.
The idea of a single-species approach is that a student learns a great deal about one particular species, to the extent that this…
gregladen | June 23, 2008Or older. In fact, my hero is dead.
For me, George Carlin was inspirational, influential, even formative, on a personal level. For society, Carlin was extraordinarily important. He should have gotten a Nobel for making people think even when they did not want to. He was about to be awarded the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Even the news media is calling him a "hero" of the counter culture. Since the new media is staffed by the remnants of the counter culture, dired out, that is saying something (subtly).
He apparently died of heart failure. He was 71.
From one writeup…
gregladen | June 22, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ... many things have been going on and I have more to report than time to report it. But I will get to all of it, I assure you. Tonight, I just want to cover part of today's Education Symposium (moderated by your's truly) ... not all of it at once, thought, as it is kind of complex.
If you happen to work for the University of Minnesota or know anyone who does, best to not read this or let anyone know about it. This is a little to heavy to be spoken of openly. (Since there are only 11 of you who read my blog, I think we'll…
gregladen | June 22, 2008It has been said that home schooling is a bit suspicious because it is possible for people to keep their kids home to abuse them. This is probably very very rare, but yes, it is possible and there are examples of it. however, home schoolers often (at least the most vocal amongst them) insist this is impossible and that it is merely a ploy to ... ah, do to something, I'm not quite sure what.
As these arguments waft and weft across the intertubes, there is a very common kind of pseudo-logic that we hear. This is what is looks like:
"Home schooling is not bad because public schools are bad…
gregladen | June 22, 2008It was actually yesterday, June 21st, but sixty years ago, when the first "modern computer" which in this case is defined as a computer that could store it's own memory, as born i Manchester, England. It's name was Baby.
The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or "Baby", was the first to contain memory which could store a program.
The room-sized computer's ability to carry out different tasks - without having to be rebuilt - has led some to describe it as the "first modern PC".
Using just 128 bytes of memory, it successfully ran its first set of instructions - to determine the highest…
gregladen | June 22, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference, I was hoping to meet T. Ryan Gregory yesterday. He is listed on the Evolution 2008 program as an author of a talk on genome size. Goodnews/badnews: Gregory did not show, but the talk, given by his coauthor working in his lab, was excellent, so we didn't need him.
The research was done, and the paper delivered, by Jillian Smith. The title of the paper was "Genome size evolution in mammals" but it was more focused on specific results Jillian had come up with regarding bats.
source The bottom line is this: Genome size…
gregladen | June 22, 2008Obviously, Uri Geller is a fraud. Always has been. He had tricks he uses to make people think he's bending a spoon using super natural powers, or moving compass needles, etc. Mainly, he uses cheap tricks to fool gullible ready-to-be-fooled people.
Don't be a ready-to-be-fooled person!
Here's are three videos that are currently popular on YouTube regarding this. The first shows a typical Geller show:
Here's James Randi talking about Uri Geller:
Lately, there's been an obnoxous email being sent around to everyone by a person who as far as I can tell does not exist with the name of David…
gregladen | June 21, 2008Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference, I'd like to relate at least the essence, as I saw it, of an excellent talk by Mark Borrello.
I've seen Mark speak at least three times including yesterday, and soon after his talk we continued on the topic in a conversation over lunch and beers, so my comments here are less a summary of Mark's talk at the Evolution 2008 conference than a more general reaction to what I believe to be his main points.
Everyone knows that history repeats itself. Or, at least, as per Samuel Clemens, if history does not repeat itself, at least it…
gregladen | June 21, 2008I'm at the Evolution 2008 Conference. It's great. And I got a tee-shirt.
Here's what the front looks like:
This tee-shirt was only available for a brief period for people attending the Education event on Friday at the Bell Museum. That was great too. The connection with the bell museum is evident from the sleeve of the tee-shirt:
Say no more.
gregladen | June 21, 2008Remember a while ago, I joked that NASA is twittering Phoenix? Well, either they were listening to me, I'm psychic, or .... or maybe it is just a totally obvious thing to do. Point is ... THEY ARE! Here.