gregladen | February 7, 2008Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man he met at Wofford College. In telling Teszler's dramatic life story, which arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s, Dunlap shares some deep and, ultimately, moving lessons about justice -- and the power of lifelong learning. Sit back and listen.
gregladen | February 7, 2008Whenever I've reviewed a paper for publication, I always remind myself that I don't want to be the guy who reads only the good 75% of the paper, and skips over the 25% that contains some egregious error or insane reasoning. Apparently not everyone thinks that.
A paper recently published in the journal Proteomics may have been read by such individuals. It addresses endosymbiosis, and apparently contains a lot of seemingly appropriate and "correct" text (though it turns out much of this is plagiarized), but it also contains brief passages asserting the idea that the origin and role of…
gregladen | February 7, 2008If you're ineligible to walk across the stage in your cap and gown, then you should be ineligible to walk on the field with your cap and glove.
I'm not certain that I agree with this argument, but it is worth considering.
There's [a Seinfeld] episode in which a floundering George Costanza is trying to figure out what career to pursue after quitting his real estate job. He hits upon sports broadcaster.
"Well," skeptical pal Jerry says, "they tend to give those jobs to ex-ballplayers and people that are, you know, in broadcasting."
"Well, that's really not fair," George replies.
The joke is, of…
gregladen | February 7, 2008The video of the shark is cool, but to me it's just a video of a shark. But listen to the commentary and you realize that this is a big deal. Five or six meters long, a head a meter wide, something really interesting about its gill slits. I'm glad these guys are having so much fun!
This comes from Deep Sea News
gregladen | February 7, 2008... as if you didn't know...
At Panda's Thumb, there
is a guest post by Daniel R. Brooks, FRSC. Brooks is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. In June 2007 he attended an apparently secret conference organized by ID advocates and entitled the "Wistar Retrospective Symposium."
This is quite an interesting read, and will make your blood boil. Read it and weep. . Or seethe.
This is part of the reason that the Blogging Peer Reviewed Research people do not need to explain why intelligent design material or Discovery Institute blogs…
gregladen | February 7, 2008An ambiguous report from Dubai suggests that a total of five undersea cables have been cut.
A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.
[source]
I have not seen any other information on this.
gregladen | February 7, 2008I became acquainted with an Englishman who was going to visit his estate ... more than a hundred miles [north] of Cape Frio. As I was quite unused to travelling, I gladly accepted his kind offer of allowing me to accompany him.
And so was the case with a number of Darwin's excursions into the bush.
Although he organized expeditions to the interior, he also took advantage of individuals or groups traveling one place or another, such as this Englishman, in order to carry out random acts of geologizing and opportunistic biologizing.
And thus seven men, including Darwin and his Englishman,…
gregladen | February 6, 2008
The scientists have created the embryo in the lab
Scientists believe they have made a potential breakthrough in the treatment of serious disease by creating a human embryo with three separate parents.
[source]
gregladen | February 6, 2008British artist Alison Jackson talks about her provocative explorations of celebrity culture. By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, she's questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson's work contains some graphic images.
gregladen | February 6, 2008The Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting Administration has made a decision in what has come to be known as t"The Luskin situation: A summary, analysis and decision." I believe they made the right decision, but for the wrong reasons. I respect and admire (and participate in) their efforts, but I think they are being nice. This is no time to be nice.
Here's the story. Casey Luskin is a creationist who posted a discussion of a PLoS (peer reviewed) article on the Discover Institute's web site. I don't give a rat's ass what he has to say or what the Discover Institute puts on their…
gregladen | February 6, 2008Debate: Are Science and Religion Compatible?
An Evening of Stimulating Intellectual Discourse, with Loyal Rue and PZ Myers
Sponsored by the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00pm - 10:00pm
West Bank Auditorium- Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
See here for more details and discussion.
gregladen | February 6, 2008South Carolina people know true conservatism when they see it.You don't like people outside the state telling you how you ought to raise your kids, you don't like people from outside the state telling you what to do with the flag ... In fact, if somebody came down to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell'em where to put the pole.
Whether or not a flag, in this case the confederate flag, is a racist symbol is not necessarily something that a small group of people can decide. If a plurality or majority see it that way, then those waving the flag around and pretending it is…
gregladen | February 6, 2008... as Obama landslides (if I may verb that noun) Minnesota on Super Tuesday. Amanda and I went to the caucus last night, and stayed around for the vote count. We were in charge of making sure none of the voting slips dropped to the ground in the crowded classroom at the local High School.
The people who run the caucus reported that they had never seen so many people come to the event.
Oh, and we're delegates. We'll be taking this to the next level, next month. So if you are running for something, you'd better be nice to us!
gregladen | February 6, 2008The nefarious Discovery Institute, the Creation Science think tank, is often secretive about its activities. It has not been entirely clear that they have been involved in the recent fight in Florida over the use of the word "evolution" and the teaching of mainstream, scientifically informed evolutionary biology, in public schools. Going with the interpretation of The Gradebook, the Discover Institute ...
acknowledged on its Evolution News & Views blog today that it provided information to Fred Cutting, the member of the standards-writing committee who recently submitted a minority…
gregladen | February 5, 2008 Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could you build a free wireless system that vast and pervasive? Chase finds the answer in a few short lines from The Graduate. And it has nothing to do with plastic.
gregladen | February 5, 2008Blog Carnival is an easy way to submit your wonderful post to a blog carnival. As the name implies. Berry Go Round is a new carnival about plants.
I think what you need to do now should be quite clear.