gregladen | June 12, 2008Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic is a children's book for kids in third to fifth grade or, in my opinion, a little younger. Certainly this is an excellent choice, because of the cool illustrations, of a book to read aloud to the pre-literate little ones.
Author Gregory Wenzel does a good job in few words explaining life in the Jurassic, how bones get to become fossils, and something about how they are found. Most of the riveting several hundred words in this 32 page book are about the real stars of the show, the dinosaurs themselves.
Not every single dinosaur in this book is truly giant,…
gregladen | June 12, 2008The following image (below the fold) is a little large (that is why it is below the fold). Over one half meg in size.
It is a map of major flooding around the world over the last several years, not counting this year and last. If you add in the present flooding in the Midwest, it is very clear that God is specifically targeting regions where Gay Marriage is illegal or at least frowned upon. The US Midwest, the Boot of New Zealand, the northern tip of Inner Mongolia, and so on. The little red dot you see near Cape Town is not Cape Town, but rather, a military base just north of Cape Town…
gregladen | June 12, 2008I need to relate a somewhat complicated story about James Watson, Seed, Scienceblogs, Me and You.
James Watson was on the board of directors of Seed Magazine at the time he made remarks mentioned in this post (reposted earlier today). I was just coming on board Science Blogs at that time, so I'm a little fuzzy on this, but my understanding is that many/most/all Sblings issued some sort of complaint, in blogs or via the Sb staff or whatever (as I say, I was barely aware of my surroundings at the time, having just been born), about Watson's affiliation.
After a period of time, there has…
gregladen | June 12, 2008Pluto is the ninth planet in our solar system. In our planetary mythology, it is the ninth planet, it is small, far away, cold, and there is an important cartoon dog named after it. But astronomers decided a while ago that Pluto is not a planet. That throws everything out of balance. Nine Planets is not just some number (nine, in this case) and the word "planets." It is a balanced equation, an iconic formula. Like the Holy Trinity. Or the Ten Commandments. Or the Three Stooges. Can you imagine a world in which there are only two stooges?
Well, Pluto has been given a kind of…
gregladen | June 12, 2008By a vote of 94-3, Louisiana's House of Representatives today passed an academic freedom bill that would protect teachers and school districts who wish to promote critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics.
There was no vocal opposition, and the floor speech by Rep. Frank Hoffman made clear that the bill was about science, not religion.
"This bill promotes good science education by protecting the academic freedom of science teachers," said Dr. John West, Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute. "Critics who claim…
gregladen | June 12, 2008 Joomla! is a Content Management System that is so widely used and cool that you can buy Joomla logo gear, like this shirt. Could that mean that it is a good CMS? And why would you want one?
Before I started Gregladen.com, I went through all of the content management sites that I had available to me in order to consider possibilities for running my blog. I ended up using Wordpress, which is a kind of CMS that specialized in blogs, for a number of reasons. But I did use a couple of different content management systems for private or small scale projects. At the moment, I'm looking again…
gregladen | June 11, 2008Carnival of the Godless #93
Carnival of Liberals #66: Anything Goes Edition
The 175th Carnival of Education: Game Show Edition
Homeschooling Carnival, June 10
gregladen | June 11, 2008Just for fun. A repost of something that floated to the top several months ago. October 17th 2007 to be exact. There is a reason I'm reposting this. For now, I'll let you guess.
It is now time to kick James Watson's ass.
The man is a terrible embarrassment to us all. ("Us" being scientists and rational types.) It is said by the press that Watson "makes his colleagues cringe when he goes off script" or "is known for making controversial remarks" and so on. Fine. But these are not apt descriptors for James Watson's most recent remarks or, for that matter, many of his earlier remarks…
gregladen | June 11, 2008This just in:
Perhaps he was inspired by the turnout for Young People Fucking, or maybe he misses all that media attention he got after taking credit for getting C-10 through the House with nary a peep over the controversial changes to the film tax rebate. Whatever the reason, Reverend Charles McVety is headed back to the capital to co-host a private screening of a very different kind of film: Expelled: The Movie, the controversial anti-Darwin documentary that purports to expose a sinister anti-creationism bias within the mainstream scientific community.
The details are HERE.
gregladen | June 11, 2008
But wait, there's more....
This reminds me of my first trip to Boston as a non-child. It was with my friend Karl to see his cousin Mark. Mark lived in an area of Somerville that I eventually got to know quite well myself (student ghetto) years later. This was about the time the city was changing most two way streets over to one way streets in order to relieve congestion. (Somerville was, and may still be, the most densely populated city on the Planet Earth without exception, believe it or not.)
Anyway, to get to Mark's house, you went down one one-way street and turned left onto another…
gregladen | June 11, 2008And this is the resulting divot::
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this image on Sol 14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing. It shows two trenches dug by Phoenix's Robotic Arm.
Soil from the right trench, informally called "Baby Bear," was delivered to Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, on Sol 12 (June 6). The following several sols included repeated attempts to shake the screen over TEGA's oven number 4 to get fine soil particles through the screen and into the oven for analysis.
The trench on the left is informally called "Dodo" and…
gregladen | June 11, 2008In Pictures.....
McCain:
Obama:
This item has been going around the intertubes for a while now, with this quote:
"Other than overleverage, bad debts, sinking home prices, no jobs, shrinking wages, cash strapped US consumers, rising oil prices, a sinking US dollar, $500 trillion in derivatives not marked to market, rampant overcapacity, underfunded pension plans, looming boomer retirements, no funding for Medicaid, no funding for Medicare, and no Social Security trust fund, everything is just fine."
gregladen | June 10, 2008The following is a description supplied by Amanda of an event she observed two weekends back at The Lake in North/Central Minnesota:
There appeared to be an animal acting strangely on the surface of the water. On further inspection, it turned out to be a bald eagle moving across the surface using its wings like oars. This went on for at least a minute or two. Eventually, the eagle dragged itself in a similar manner onto shore where it stood around for a while, and shortly thereafter made its way up the slope by several feet. Closer inspection with binoculars indicated that the eagle was…
gregladen | June 10, 2008Participate in Sourceforge.net's 2008 Community Choice Awards.
Sourceforge, along with Freshmeat, is a central repository for OpenSource community driven software projects. When installing software on your Linux box, you are better off using the built in software for installation and not downloading stuff from Sourceforge or Freshmeat, until you know what you are doing. But these are great sites to browse and/or search for software you need. Or want.
Here's a few other software related tidbits:
Need a twitter client for your Linux box? Try gTwitter or Twitux.
Open Office templates.…
gregladen | June 10, 2008Has Bill Gates discovered drugs? What is the perfect desktop? Law against cyberbullying.
Bill Gates at a recent press conference:
"Mundie and Ballmer are idiots. Their talk about how open source software damages intellectual property or how Linux is a cancer, is moronic. When I heard these attacks I felt sick to my stomach. How could a company that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into spread these untruths? My conscience guides me, that's why I'm before you today."
Don't believe it? Check it out!
Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Performance Compared on Phoronix Test Suite 1.0. "Ubuntu 8…
gregladen | June 10, 2008The film we've all been waiting for ... Randy Olson (of Flock of Dodos fame) has produced a new film called Sizzle. In the film Olson uses the approach he used in Dodos to address the global warming issue. I have not seen the film but hope to review it soon.
Mean time, here's the press release in full:
SILLY AND SERIOUS PREMIERES:
"SIZZLE: A GLOBAL WARMING COMEDY" OPENS AT OUTFEST AND WOODS HOLE FILM FESTIVALS IN JULY
Hollywood, Ca. (June 9, 2008) - The new feature film from scientist-turned-filmmaker Dr. Randy Olson ("Flock of Dodos: the evolution-intelligent design circus," Tribeca 2006…