gregladen | March 25, 2008Yesterday it was announced that 4000 American Soldiers had been killed, in total, in Iraq. I am not sure if this counts contract soldiers (such as Blackwater; Added: See notes below. It does not.), and I do not know if it includes American deaths since the very beginning of Iraq involvement or since the current invasion (though I think the latter). It does not matter too much, as the number 4000 is a fairly arbitrary thing ... if we used a numbering system other than base-10, some other number would feel like a milestone. But this does give us an order of magnitude of the sense of the…
gregladen | March 25, 2008You've probably already seen this: it is a bunch of crazy home schooling creationists demonstrating that they are utter, incurable morons. In this video, they are seen committing child abuse. Again and again and again.
I stole it from Pharangula, he stole it from Sandwalk.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO APPEASE THESE PEOPLE, PEOPLE??????
Chris and Matt do.
gregladen | March 25, 2008
Attention:
Berry Go Round Submissions are technically due today. But, I'm not going to assemble the carnival until quite late tonight, so you have several hours to get them to me.
Gene Genie is to be published on March 30th, so please get those submission in as well. Any time up to the 29th or 30th will be fine.
Thank you very much, you may now resume your activities.
gregladen | March 24, 2008Conservative Protestants tend to save less and accumulate fewer assets than other Americans, and their religious beliefs contribute to their low wealth, according to a new study by a Duke University sociologist.
Wow. I would have thought the opposite. I would have thought that protestants saved. I mean, Jesus saved...
"We know that wealth ownership is extremely unequal in the U.S., and large numbers of families have little or no savings. However, sociologists and economists have just begun to explore why that is," said Lisa A. Keister, Duke professor of sociology and author of "…
gregladen | March 24, 2008
Take a deer's body, attach a camel's head, add a tapir's snout, and you have a saiga--Central Asia's odd-ball antelope with the enormous schnoz. Unfortunately, these animals are as endangered as they are strange looking. The problem is over-hunting. Now, according to a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) study, the saiga's migration routes are in jeopardy as well.
Conservationists tracked saiga with GPS collars in Mongolia and discovered a "migration bottleneck"--a narrow corridor of habitat that connects two populations. Local people herding livestock and increased traffic from trucks and…
gregladen | March 24, 2008The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research is opting for more female scientists. Two hundred women-only professorships are to be created, says Minister Annette Schavan, having observed that the current 11 percent of female professors is decidedly too low.
Details here if you read German, summary here if you don't.
gregladen | March 24, 2008The [British] government is appealing against a High Court decision that granted Symbian a patent on a computer program.
The ruling overturns a refusal by the UK Intellectual Property Office to give the mobile phone firm a patent.
The case is being watched with interest because before now it was rarely possible to patent dedicated computer programs in Europe.
Read the rest here.
gregladen | March 24, 2008Significant cultural and physical differences ... the stuff of race and ethnicity ... are prominent when people move across continents or between them. Eventually, the ponderous events of history, which involve occasional foldings in the continuum of human variation, causing apparent patchiness, are offset by the frequent events of human activities, resulting in genetic and cultural admixtures. What colonialism, invasion, and migration do is undone.
A new study out in PLoS Genetics examines this phenomenon for Latin America, with a study of genetic admixture.
From the Author's Summary:…
gregladen | March 24, 2008Here is an updated set of links to postings on the critique of Myers and Dawkins' response to Myers-Dawkins-Expelled!-Gate. The point of these links is to provide quick access to the critiques coming from The Intersection and Framing Science blogs, and responses to them. I'm not going to keep updating this entry, so if you have any links please add them in the comments.
If your comment gets moderated it is probably because links with comments get tossed automatically in the dungeon, sometimes. I'll be checking the dungeon now and then and freeing such links.
It all started here:
EXPELLED!…
gregladen | March 24, 2008Myers? Myers? .... Myers? ..... Myers? (He's not here, Ben ... Your producer threw him out.)You know about the incredibly ironic dust up, whereby Expelled! producers kicked PZ myers out of line at a pre-release showing, but failed to notice that Richard Dawkins was standing right next to him. The evidence suggests that this major bit of bad publicity for Expelled! may have led to the movie being pulled from some pre-release showings. It it too early to be sure of this, and there may be several factors other than the utter embarrassment of this incident at play here. For instance, it is…
gregladen | March 23, 2008
I'm happy to say that Amanda still read my blog every day. Almost.
[Stolen from here.]
gregladen | March 23, 2008Or at least, as Mark Twain said, "... it rhymes."
When George Bush invaded Iraq, I was immediately reminded of Julian the Apostate. I've read about Julian the Apostate, and I can tell you, George Bush is not Julian the Apostate. But, Julian died during his ill fated campaign in the region, so that is why I was reminded.
(If you want read a cool book have a look at Julian: A Novel, by Gore Vidal.)
Anyway, Julian was not the only ancient figure to invade Iraq with dire consequences, as Manchester Historian Gareth Sampson describes. According to Samson,
...there are strong parallels between…
gregladen | March 23, 2008News outlets are reporting a surprise attack on Easter. War weary from epoch fighting in the War on Christmas, only recently suspended, most analysts had predicted that there would be no War on Easter this year. But they were wrong.
From the front:
This is Easter, the day Christians everywhere set aside to celebrate the day they were hoaxed by a gang of Middle Eastern charlatans into believing a local mystic rose from the dead... at Pharyngula.
How to spot the enemy, at Laelaps.
Peep Research
Radio Propaganda War Heats Up.
Linked; Easter and Cold Fusion. at Halfway There
Are you ready…
gregladen | March 23, 2008Generally, inhabitants of Bohemia (western region of the Czech Republic) are known to drink more beer than people from Moravia (eastern region of the country). This difference was confirmed for my sample of researchers: researchers from Bohemia drank significantly more beer per capita per year (median 200.0 litres) than those from Moravia
What's it all about? You need to see this study of Open Access Beer by Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock. Seriously.
gregladen | March 23, 2008
But wait, there's more....
This person has too much access to clip art:
Still holding on to your faith? Keep watching...