gregladen | June 16, 2008I have not read this book, but I'm interested in finding out more about it. Has anyone out there had a shot at it?
Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Sather Classical Lectures)
Information from Amazon.com: Review
"Sedley's argument is subtle and expert. . . . The brilliance of this book is that Sedley lets the Greeks talk to us and, surprisingly, we can understand what they're saying."--Nature
Product Description
The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the…
gregladen | June 16, 2008All I have is a lousy press release, since my University does not subscribe to this journal. (Well,we get it but I am not allowed to see the most recent six months!). So here it is:
Edmonton - A partial dinosaur skeleton unearthed in 1971 from a remote British Columbia site is the first ever found in Canadian mountains and may represent a new species, according to a recent examination by a University of Alberta researcher.
Discovered by a geologist in the Sustut Basin of north-central British Columbia 37 years ago, the bones, which are about 70 million years old, were tucked away until…
gregladen | June 16, 2008Wine is the software that runs in Linux which, in turn runs Windows programs. I have experimented and I could not believe how incredibly well it worked. At the time, I was able to achieve greater stability and performance, and an easier install, for Microsoft Office and Endnote on my Linux computer than on a comparable Windows computer. The down side in that case was that I had to run an older version of Office than currently (at that time) available. Also, the increase in reliability and performance was almost certainly in the system itself. The Linux computer simply worked (as they…
gregladen | June 15, 2008It utterly shocks me every time I make a reference to plastic alligators, Macy's bags with poisonous snakes in them, a guy named Skink or my favorite Bass Lure .... the Double Whammy .... and people look back at me with blank stares. Like, don't you get it? "To be or not to be" jokes or allusions to Sherlock Holmes are always understood. Or at least, people pretend to get them. But does no one read contemporary literature?
It is impossible, actually, to explain Carl Hiaasen's novels to anyone without sounding like a fool. All such attempts, made by anybody, start out with an honest…
gregladen | June 15, 2008Medical woo is not restricted to Minnesota. They even have it in California.
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - A 76-year-old man operating an unlicensed chiropractic clinic out of his Oak Park, Calif., garage is suspected of killing one of his patients with a neck manipulation, according to Sacramento police.
Antonio Arellano, whose only training was a massage class he took in the 1940s, was booked into the Sacramento County jail Friday on suspicion of murder, authorities said.
According to police, Jose Lopez, 64, and his wife went to Arellano's home on Washington Avenue on Tuesday. Lopez went to see…
gregladen | June 15, 200842 of the Best Commercial Linux Games
KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8 (an office suite for KDE)....
0 Best KDE Applications Not Included in KDE
And for those of you who like it even when it is not OpenSource: Opera 9.50 Is Out! Review of the Newest Opera Release
gregladen | June 15, 2008On Sale in Madagascar: Carbon
This time, the forest product for sale is 100 percent sustainable and guaranteed to return on the investment. The product is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that healthy forests can store in vast reserves and prevent from being released into the atmosphere. Put simply, protecting an intact forest keeps its store of carbon from heating the planet.
In a landmark agreement, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the government of Madagascar announced the sale of more than nine million tons of carbon offsets to help safeguard this African nation's wildlife-…
gregladen | June 15, 2008By African standards, Kenya's Amboseli itself is small, but it is part of two or more large scale systems that extend far beyond its boundaries. One is the Serengeti Ecosystem, which extends far to the south in Tanzania. The other is the Nilotic (mainly Maasai) Pastoralist cattle keeping culture. It is being reported that lions in Amboseli are in crisis because of conflict between these two systems.
From a National Geographic Society press release:
Lion populations in and around Kenya's Amboseli National Park have dropped so low due to spearing and poisoning by local Maasai that…
gregladen | June 15, 2008Jason-1 Will Make its 30,000th Orbit
The Jason-1 spacecraft will make its 30,000th science orbit this week. Revolution number 30,000 will begin at 10:27 UTC (3:27 a.m. PDT) on June 14th, 2008 and will be completed at 12:19 UTC (5:19 a.m. PDT). From its vantage point 1,336 kilometers (830 miles) above Earth, Jason-1 uses its radar altimeter to precisely measure the topography of the ocean surface.
Jason-1 was launched December 7, 2001, as the follow-on to Topex/Poseidon, which successfully collected science data from 1992 to 2005. Both missions are a partnership between NASA and the French…
gregladen | June 14, 2008
A team led by University of Manchester archaeologist Professor Julian Thomas has dated the Greater Stonehenge Cursus at about 3,500 years BC - 500 years older than the circle itself.
They were able to pinpoint its age after discovering an antler pick used to dig the Cursus - the most significant find since it was discovered in 1723 by antiquarian William Stukeley.
When the pick was carbon dated the results pointed to an age which was much older than previously thought - between 3600 and 3300 BC - and has caused a sensation among archeologists.
source
The "cursus" is a rectangular earthwork…
gregladen | June 14, 2008What are the chances that life evolved on other planets? 100%. What are the chances that some of THAT life evolved "intelligence"? Say 0.00001%. What is the chance that that life form is beaming messages to us? Zero. Nada. Zilch.
But...
What is the chance that intelligent live has junk TV, radio-transmitted music and other forms of EMF communication? Very very high. Therefore, the way to find extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe is to try to tune in their version of Days of Our LIves or MTV. Hey, we'll take the Milton Berle Show if we have to.
And now, finally…
gregladen | June 13, 2008 "We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts." The best job you'll ever love! Travel! Excitement! Join NASA on an amazing new venture. A trip of a life time.
To where you ask?
Why, THE SUN, of course!
The mission will be called Solar Probe+. Launch may happen as early as 2015.
Solar Probe will be a historic mission, flying into one of the last unexplored regions of the solar system, the…
gregladen | June 13, 2008 Clipped from CultureCat Bacterial Communication Pathways; Super Computer to Mimic Brain Language Area; CDC: Breastfeeding Gap in US. Hospitals; Online Checklist of Bee Species; Bird Flu Strains that have Acquired Nasty Properties
MIT researchers unravel bacteria communication pathways
MIT researchers have figured out how bacteria ensure that they respond correctly to hundreds of incoming signals from their environment.
The researchers also successfully rewired the cellular communications pathways that control those responses, raising the possibility of engineering bacteria that can…
gregladen | June 13, 2008 The University of Minnesota Mascot, Goldie Gopher. Biological engineers at the University of Minnesota tend to be creationists. The main professor who teaches this subject is a creationist and he teaches a creationism seminar on a regular basis. He helps run and organize a Christian student group that has a pledge of faith for members. The bio-engineers student group uses a gopher (our school symbol) standing in the Leonardo position ala the Discovery Institute.
Yes, you read that right. The symbol of the student group for biological engineering is a take-off of the Discovery…
gregladen | June 13, 2008Tim Russert, most recently the host of Meet the Press and the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC died earlier today.
Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday's "Meet the Press" program when he collapsed, the network said. No details were immediately available.
Russert, the recipient of 48 honorary doctorates, took over the helm of "Meet the Press" in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, "Meet the Press" is the longest-running program in the history of television.
In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in…
gregladen | June 13, 2008 A very Darwin-like god ponders what the nature of life will be like. From Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The origin of life presents a number of fundamental difficulties to science. One of these is the seemingly irreducible complexity of life itself. For instance, DNA codes for the molecules that are essential to life. Some of these molecules, however, are the very enzymes that help DNA code for molecules. It is difficult to imagine DNA works without these enzymes, but the enzymes exist in a cell because, in part, of the activities of DNA. Even the basic process of moving…
gregladen | June 13, 2008... of Martian Dirt.
Phoenix used its Robotic Arm to test a "sprinkle" method for delivering small samples of soil to instruments on the lander deck. Bigger picture here. The Phoenix Lander is preparing to sprinkle Martian soil onto a flat place for a microscope to look at.
"On Monday, Phoenix tested delivering Martian soil by sprinkling it rather than dumping it. The positive result prompted researchers not only to proceed with plans for delivery to the microscope, but also to plan on sprinkling a sample in the near future into one of the eight ovens of an instrument that bakes and…
gregladen | June 13, 2008A new, absolutely fantastic blog carnival is being developed. It is called "Shoulders of Giants" and it is meant to be a venue for blogging on classic papers.
The details can be found here.