gregladen | April 13, 2008State of the Wild 2008-2009: A Global Portrait of Wildlife, Wildlands, and Oceans (State of the Wild) is a production of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
...State of the Wild is a collection of evocative essays featuring emerging issues in the conservation of wildlife and wild places. The book brings together international conservation experts and writers to analyze our time's most pressing environmental topics. Seeking to broaden awareness of major trends that are affecting the state of the wild across all continents, it also includes a catalog of the year's research, rulings, and events…
gregladen | April 13, 2008Do you know that this is National Poetry Month?
Inspired by national poetry month, I've gone ahead and written a poem. I call it "Ode to Ben Stein" ... but really, it is only a limerick.
There once was an actor named Ben
He wrote speeches for Nixon and then
Drank too much kool-ade
While on a crusade
He managed to become a has-been.
gregladen | April 13, 2008Former conservative speech writer discusses economy (he feels that the economy is very strong) and intelligent Design Creationism here.
[Hat Tip: Peter M.]
gregladen | April 13, 2008Leonardo Da Vinci's life and work is well known -- but his own face is not. Illustrator and activist Siegfried Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Here, he walks viewers through exactly how he did it.
gregladen | April 13, 2008Shouldda kept the guy with the hooker.....
New New York Governor David Paterson will likely sign a bill now working its way through the final legislative steps that will add a sales tax to items purchases on the internet by New Yorkers.
The controversial bill ends what for many New Yorkers had been tax-free online shopping, and experts predict that other states could follow suit with similar provisions. Consumers are required to report purchases they make online from out-of-state companies on their tax returns and remit a use tax, but many people are either unaware of that obligation or…
gregladen | April 13, 2008Dawkins Admits to Not Being Perfect Atheist: Consideres Possibility that Fairies and Green Unicorns May, just May Exist. (But almost certainly not.)
Hat tip: Science and Religion News
gregladen | April 13, 2008
The Open Source content management system PLONE runs the newly released NASA Science web site.
The site has something for everyone (researchers, educators, kids, and "citizen scientists"). The Plone seems to be working quite nicely.
Some of it is still a little rough. The Space Calendar link seems to be broken, and the email to the "responsible government official" for the site (who, by the way, is Greg Williams) gets you an email to "noone@nasa.gov" ...
There appears to be a number of distinctly different ways to navigate on this site, including a main in-your-face graphical…
gregladen | April 13, 2008Filmmaker David Hoffman shares footage from his feature-length documentary Sputnik Mania, which shows how the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to both the space race and the arms race -- and jump-started science and math education around the world.
gregladen | April 13, 2008While in Asia in 2007, TEDster Paul Koontz got the priceless chance to spend a few days in North Korea. He brought his two kids -- and his camera, capturing both quotidian detail (like the military bearing of a lonely traffic warden) and the grand spectacle leading up to the Mass Games. It's a rare perspective on a culture we know far too little about.
gregladen | April 13, 2008Is the earth falling apart? Have they started using the Hadron Colider early and not mentioned it to anyone? Are we experiencing a Global Coincidence? Have science reporters suddenly gotten interested in earthquakes? There must be some explanation for the nearly simutaneious occurrence of a powerful 7.1 earthquake in the southern ocean, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano Exploding, an earthquake hitting near Rome, and unusual earthquakes off the coast Oregon all within one blogging cycle....
Details:
Powerful 7.1 Quake in Southern Ocean from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- A strong earthquake hit near the…
gregladen | April 12, 2008A study from the National Violent Death Reporting System of the Centers for Disease Control sampling 16 states and enumerating demographics of the victims of fatal violence and method of violence has just been released. Nationally, there are about 50,000 violent deaths per year in the United States. The present, and most recent, study is of 2005.
The NVDRS was first funded in 2002, and collects violent death data from death certificates, police reports, coroner and medical examiner reports, and crime labs. The purpose of this survey is to provide verified and usable data for a number of…
gregladen | April 12, 2008Simon LeVay, who is the guy who first identified the relationship between sexualy dimorphic hypothalamic nuclei in mammals (in the medial preoptic or anterior areas) and homosexuality in human males, has come out with a new book ... When Science Goes Wrong.
LeVay's book looks interesting, at least according to the Publisheres Weekly Overview on the Amazon site (see link above):
Experimental brain surgery goes horribly awry; a dam fails catastrophically; a geologist leads an ill-equipped party to its doom in the mouth of an active volcano: these are the amazing and sometimes horrific stories…
gregladen | April 12, 2008ISO takes full charge of Open XML, sets up 'harmonization' group
We can't call it "Office Open XML" anymore, because it no longer belongs to Microsoft Office exclusively. As of yesterday, International Organization for Standardization committee SC 34 passed a resolution that effectively assumes stewardship of Open XML, the document format standard originally produced by Microsoft, and which is now officially under new management.
A Cleaner, Leaner Jet
JET engines are now so reliable that a pilot can go an entire career without seeing one fail. Autopilots are so good that some airlines have…
gregladen | April 12, 2008Scott Hatfield of Monkey Trials reports that an infamous Young Earth Creationist Don Patton is planning a church sponsored talk in a local public high school on the topic of creationism. Scott is seeking help.
If you live in the vicinity, please consider showing up and being a person with a brain in the audience.
PZ Myers has outlined an excellent strategy for Scott (or anyone else i his position). I would add one more item: Scott, send off a note to the National Center of Science Education letting them know what's up.
gregladen | April 11, 2008Birds have always gotten a fair amount of the credit for ridding shade grown coffee plants of various insect pests. But a new study now shows that bats have a huge positive impact in this area as well. The study also shows something else interesting: These insect eating bats often use a "perch and wait" technique for grabbing flying insects, rather than flying around all the time hunting on the wing.
At a time when bat populations are declining worldwide, this new-found benefit to organic coffee farmers is another example of how these much-maligned mammals provide ecological services…
gregladen | April 11, 2008In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.
gregladen | April 11, 2008And the review is very negative. Of Expelled, as well as of PZ Myers and atheists in general.
The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, ... quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is it couldn't--and it didn't. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More…