gregladen | June 21, 2008Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines is a book by Caroline Arnold and illustrated by Patricia Wynne for, I'd say, Pre-Elementary School kids and first/second grade. This is a good book to read to a pre-literate kid. Then put it away for later when the first grade academic report on birds is due ... it will be an excellent reference.
This is a well done and highly recommended book.
Birds... is highly specialized. It deals with only one topic: Bird flight. I like that. Who needs just another book on birds. Demonstrating to the little ones that there are questions that can be…
gregladen | June 20, 2008Well, now it's official. The leader of Zimbabwe is an out of control nut-job who will probably linger in office until very slow moving pressures from outside push him out, or until there is a bloody coup of some kind.
This comes after his opposition has publicly considered pulling out of a contested electoral process under threat of increased violence that seems to be perpetrated by Mugabe's corrupt organization.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe says "only God" can remove him from office, as the opposition MDC considers pulling out from a presidential run-off vote.
"The MDC will never be…
gregladen | June 20, 2008 To stop this obnoxious flashing, just hit the ESC key! It's like gold, but better. It's ice! On Mars!
If there's ice, there is water. If there is water, there cold be life. Maybe.
I'm pretty sure the presence of H2O on Mars is not that surprising. But what are the chances of scooping up a robot-fist full of dirt and having visible chunks of ice right there, unless this stuff is actually very common?
NASA is reporting "Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice"
Bits, or more accurately, crumbs, of some whitish stuff was visible in the Martian soil, and then it…
gregladen | June 20, 2008The Evolution 2008 conference started out today with a special program for K-12 teachers (mainly life science teachers) organized by the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MNCSE). The opening speaker was Scott Lanyon, director of the Bell Museum of Natural History. (The Bell hosted this event.)
Scott's objective was to outline several areas of evolutionary biology where fundamental changes had occurred over recent years. This was to provide perspective and food for thought for the Life Sciences teachers attending the event, and Scott was very successful in this effort.
In each case…
gregladen | June 20, 2008This is unbelievable. I go away for a few hours to attend a conference and this kind of crap happens:
The school board of a small central Ohio community voted Friday to fire a teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs despite staff complaints and burning the image of a cross on students' arms, according to the Associated Press.
....
Freshwater also displayed the Ten Commandments in his classroom and taught creationism, according to an independent investigation launched after the parents of the student who was allegedly branded filed a lawsuit.
The suit alleges that he regularly…
gregladen | June 20, 2008Blood flow in the brain is linked to neuronal activity. Therefore, various 'brain scanning' techniques can be used to observe neuronal activity in the brain. This has led to an astonishing revolution in knowledge of how the brain works. Of course, you knew that already.
Also astonishing is that the reason for changes in blood flow in relation to what neurons are doing is unknown! We know this system works, but we don't know why!
Until now...
It turns out that it is the glia cells. There a different kinds of glia, and they are very important in brain function. Glia do a lot of…
gregladen | June 19, 2008The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States by B. F. Morris was published in 1865. Recently, the Right Wing of the United States discovered this book, and wishes to present it as evidence that the United States is officially Christian.
Whatever.
I'm sure they are wrong, but the United States definitely is, and the Right Wing is in particular, driven by mercenary tendencies. So Human Events (which I monitor) is now hawking a commercial reprint of this early book. Here are some of the things the Right Wing is saying about this book:
.... page after page…
gregladen | June 19, 2008Do you have any idea of what is going on in Zimbabwe? And has been for quite some time? I've not chosen to make any effort to note the African news that I semi-regularly follow, but I think it is time for that to change. Expect a bit more. I don't know how much insightful commentary I can add, but I can at least point to goings on of interest.
In ZImbabwe, we have a situation of a long term leader who won't seem to go away even though many people seem to want him to. There was an election recently, and that may have been co-opted by the ruling party. And this, today:
The bodies of four…
gregladen | June 19, 2008
Utah announces 'major dinosaur fossil discovery' from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago.
[...]
Finally, the Congo totally screws up, as expected, and the very last of the only remaining northern White Rhinos are probably dead. There is little reason for optimism...
Group: Northern white rhinos near extinction from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- The northern white rhino of central Africa is on the verge of being…
gregladen | June 18, 2008Wooo... whoa... Holy crap. Call 911.
Colleen Leduc already had a lot going against her. The Barrie woman was holding down a job while struggling to raise her autistic 11-year-old daughter. She couldn't afford to give the child the intensive therapy she needed, and was forced to send her to a public school in the area.
So she was completely unprepared for what happened to her and the youngster, an almost unbelievable tale of red tape involving a strange claim from a teaching assistant, a bizarre decision by a school board, a visit from the Children's Aid Society (CAS) and most improbably of…
gregladen | June 18, 2008In the early days of South Africa ... well, not the really early days, but some time in the 19th century or early 20th century, a fairly large number of Chines people were imported as workers/slaves. One of the reasons to do this was to break the indigenous workers' efforts for reform. It failed, and the Chinese became of no special use to the Apartheid government or the mining corporations, so they were sent back. All of them.
Nonetheless, there are some 200,000 or so "ethnic Chinese" living today in South Africa. Now, I do not really know for sure who these people are or how they got…
gregladen | June 18, 2008
Mike Myers has a new film with a new set of zany characters that clearly mimic and probably mock Hinduism. Yet, the producers of the film maintain that the depicted religion is entirely made up. Right.
American based Hindu activists are not buying it...
They say that in the West so little is known about Hinduism that even a parody like Love Guru could be misinterpreted by teenagers and give them a skewed view of the religion.
"They should draw a line when it comes to people's faith," says Bhavna Shinde of the Sanatan Society in the US.
She is upset that the main character wears sacred…
gregladen | June 18, 2008
Now I'm busy looking for the video that tells Obama and McCain what they should be doing.
Hat Tip: Ana
Convergent message from Fox News:
gregladen | June 17, 2008And an opportunity for you to give Al money. Click here to see the ad. The money part is optional.
gregladen | June 17, 2008Check it out:
Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code-those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs-with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.
The code becomes a type of "roadmap" for others who might…
gregladen | June 17, 2008... at Firefox Central.
Firefox had been organizing "Download Day" on their web site ... getting as many people as possible to show up TODAY (June 17th) todownload the newly released Firefox 3 ... so many people as to set a record for number of downloads.
But it isn't there! Ha! You can download Version 2, but not Version 3. Maybe they mean some other time zone... Maybe they were only kidding... Maybe they messed up....
Well, the Firefox Browser is so good we'll forgive them. Maybe they will get he software on line in a few minutes or an hour or so and still break the record.
gregladen | June 16, 2008She was a church lady. I could see it a mile away. Her hair cut, her clothing, her way of standing, and as I got closer, her way of speaking and, eventually, the things she said. I will call her Joan.
It is not that surprising to find a church lady like Joan at Har Mar Shopping Mall. Har Mar is a unique phenomenon. From the outside, it is a strip mall, and from the inside, it is a regular "inside" mall. Some of the stores are only on the inside part, some open on both the inside and outside part. None are only outside. So you park, walk into a store in the strip mall, like into the…
gregladen | June 16, 2008Brian Unger can be very funny. I just got an electronic device similar to (but not) an iPhone. More on that later. But in the mean time, I heard this today while I was on my way over to Har Mar and I thought it was so funny that I'd pass it on to you. (More on Har Mar later, too .. )
Go here, and click on "Listen Now. It's Brian Unger's letter to Steve Jobs. Written on his iPhone.
(Spell check that, Mr. Sparty-pants.)
The iPhone Blues
gregladen | June 16, 2008I very recently reviewed Carl Hiaasen's novels. Among his fiction are two books that are written explicitly for kids. Looking just at Hiaasen's titles it may be hard to pick them out from the pack, so I'm making a special reference to them here. They are called "Hoot" and "Flush." Details follow:
Hoot
Roy Eberhardt is the new kid--again. This time around it's Trace Middle School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it's still the same old routine: table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick-headed bullies like Dana Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn't for Dana…
gregladen | June 16, 2008The first dinosaur bones (that we know of) to have been discovered in British Columbia, Canada, are now being reported. These are bones found in 1971, eventually making their way to the Royal British Columbia Museum, and now being reported by V.M. Arbour and M.C. Graves. The bones were initially found by Kenny Flyborg Larsen, a geologist prospecting for thorium. He was drawn to these bones because the bones themselves are radioactive, and his instruments led him to them.
(This is an update on this, as Arbour kindly sent me a copy of the original paper.)
Arbour and Graves go through great…