gregladen | March 18, 2008... known as Berry Go Round .... will happen here on or abouts the 25th of March. Please get me your posts on plant evolution and biology stuff!
You can email me here.
gregladen | March 18, 2008Gnome 2.22 was just released (a few days ago). This is not the big-bang major overhaul type of release we have just seen with KDE, but it is worth nothing.
Information on Gnome can be found here.
A few highlights:
GNOME 2.22 introduces a new application, Cheese. Cheese lets you take photos and make videos using your computer's webcam. You can apply a range of different effects like mauve, noir/blanc, shagadelic, and warp. You can share these photos and videos with your friends, load them into F-Spot, or set them as your account photo.
Cool.
GNOME 2.22 introduces GVFS: a new network-…
gregladen | March 18, 2008We tell people we use Linux because it's secure. Or because it's free, because it's customizable, because it's free (the other meaning), because it has excellent community support...
But all of that is just marketing bullshit. We tell that to non-Linuxers because they wouldn't understand the real reason. And when we say those false reasons enough, we might even start to believe them ourselves.
But deep underneath, the real reason remains.
We use Linux because ...
An Amazing Mind: The REAL reason we use LInux... has it exactly right.
gregladen | March 18, 2008There are plans to build a new Bell Museum. The plans are fantastic, and we need this. But the State has to float a bond to pay for it. Things are happening in the Legislature right now, and if you want to support the Bell, you need to take action right now.
Visit this site and do whatever it says.
Quick, before it is too late!!!!
gregladen | March 18, 2008SciBarCamp is a gathering of scientists and others, in an effort to create connections across diverse interests, and, wherever possible, annoy the heck out of Larry Moran.
Larry was at SciBarCamp and had a run in with a couple of other dozen people, finding himself as the ONLY person in the room with a particular viewpoint, and getting very little sympathy for it.
According to Moran:
At one point there was a group of us talking about a number of different things when the topic of consciousness arose. One member of the group happened to mention that humans were special because they are "…
gregladen | March 17, 2008If you are interested in astronomy, you know that there are a lot of Planetarium applications that you can install on your computer in order to find your way around the night sky. Kstars is a well known standby for KDE (but of course it will run under Gnome as well). Search for "stars" in your package manager and you'll see quite a few other pieces of software as well.
But when you get to "Stellarium" ... stop and install that one.
Stellarium pretty much has all the stars. Well, not all of them. It has 120,000 stars (I understand there are billions and billions of them...). It has the…
gregladen | March 17, 2008Sometimes the items falling into my in-box are totally random and unconnected. Sometimes they fit together very nicely. Then, there are the times they fit together in a random and unconnected sort of way.
I moved to Boston, from Upstate New York, when the Governor was a King. I only vaguely remember who the mayor was, but there was another King running for that office ... Mel King, an African American activist and against him, Ray Flynn, a home boy Irish politician. Sorry about the Ethnic Labels, but this is, after all Saint Patrick's day, and by the time I'm done with this post you'll see…
gregladen | March 17, 2008The following is a total ripoff of Steve Martin, who pulled the same exact gag on one of his early TV specials. But it is still fun:
[Totally ripped from Sandwalk]
gregladen | March 17, 2008A number of staff of a Los Angeles Hospital will likely lose their jobs for reading Britney Spears' medical records.
The Los Angeles Times says workers at the UCLA medical centre looked at Spears' confidential files when she was admitted to the hospital in January.
Jeri Simpson, the hospital's head of human resources, confirmed to the AP news agency that several staff would be disciplined or fired over the incident.
"It's very frustrating and it's very disappointing," she said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 13 staff - none of them doctors - will lose their jobs.
[source]
It is very…
gregladen | March 17, 2008Via Pharyngula, we learn of a post on Query: Sally Kern Scrubs Gay Son?
Sally Kern is the Okie who was caught on tape making a number of outrageous statements about homosexuality. For instance, she claims that any society that totally embraces homosexuality is doomed.
The Oklahoma lawmaker's homophobic remarks have been the talk of the town recently, especially her assertion that gay folk are infiltrating schools to indoctrinate children. And, sensing a critical national spotlight, Kern made a very suspicious change to her official government homepage.
If you compare a March 4th cache and…
gregladen | March 17, 2008First, Larry said:
...the right people hate Idiots...Wells makes a virtue out of lying for Jesus...He should be an embarrassment to the intelligent design creationist cult except that the members of that cult are all incapable of separating fact from fiction when it comes to science...When I first saw the Wells article I seriously wondered whether Jonathan Wells was mentally stable...
Then, Michael Egnor said:
Dr. Moran has a low view of people who question his evolutionary views from the perspective of design.
Larry had previously said:
Flunk the IDiots...40% of the freshman class [at UCSD…
gregladen | March 16, 2008There is trouble in Tibet. And some reports indicate that things are only going to get worse in the near future.
Protests over Chinese Rule, controlled by both police and Chinese military, have spread beyond Lhasa, according to recent reports, and the Dalai Lama has called for an international inquiry into the deaths of many protesters.
The clashes in Aba, known as Ngawa in Tibetan, happened around 1200 local time on Sunday, according to Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet....
"According to reliable reports the police opened fire," said Ms Saunders, who is in London but…
gregladen | March 16, 2008So we arrive at the cabin, and something seems amiss. With each new clue uncovered, we are at first disturbed, then aghast, and finally, astonished. None of it made very much sense until we found the note. Wow. The note.
The reason we were there at all was to drop off an old refrigerator and to check on things. There are two cabins, one semi-heated for winter, the other closed down, and into the second of these we would haul the fridge, staying for the night in the first.
Someone noticed a bag of cans, mostly soda, and some beer bottles, not our brand, sticking out of the snow. Since…
gregladen | March 16, 2008Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors. Their finding: People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones.
Read the details here. Print it out and give it to your boss. In fact, hang it on his/her computer screen…
gregladen | March 15, 2008Saturday March 22 at 3:30 p.m. at Mayday Books.
301 Cedar Ave. S, Minneapolis.
(Located below Midwest Mountaineering and The Hub Bike Co-op, on the West
Bank side of the University of MN campus)
If you want to be truly subversive, read to the bottom of this post.
CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Seventy percent of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq yet the U.S. occupation
continues. We've signed petitions, called our representatives, and attended
vigils. We've rallied and marched locally and nationally. Yet after 5 years,
the war is still on. A coalition of Twin Cities activists believe it's…