gregladen | January 28, 2008"The first witness called by attorneys for the parents was Dr. Kenneth Miller"
gregladen | January 28, 2008Guitarist and singer Raul Midon performs "All the Answers" in a world premiere at TED2007. "This is a song I wrote about the meaning of technology," he says, and he asks his listeners: What will we do with all this information we have at our fingertips? He follows with the sprightly "Tembererana."
gregladen | January 28, 2008of The Beagle Project! Here, at A Blog Around the Clock.
The Beagle Project is Here.
gregladen | January 28, 2008The Twin Cities Creation Science Association Home School Science Fair, held each year in February, in Har Mar Mall, Roseville, Minnesota, will occur this year on Saturday & Sunday, February 16 and 17, 2008.
The Application Deadline is January 31st, 2008 ($5.00 entry fee)
You can register after January 31st at the door for only three bucks more!
Here are the entry guidelines:
This fair is open to all Home School students in the greater Twin Cities area.
Each student may enter only one project.
There will be only individual projects, and team projects will not be allowed.
Each exhibit…
gregladen | January 27, 2008... I usually become very nauseated or fall asleep.
(If I was Woody Allen there would be a joke about sex right about here)
Anyway, I'm with Bill...
gregladen | January 27, 2008Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts will endorse Senate colleague Barack Obama for president, party officials confirmed Sunday.
The endorsement will be announced Monday in Washington, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the record. An official close to the senator said the announcement will be made during an Obama campaign rally at American University, where he will be joined by Sen. Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy, who also has endorsed Obama.
From Newmax.
gregladen | January 27, 2008This is my reply to a post by Coturnix called The Hopeless Monster? Not so fast!
First, the phylogeny of the discussion.
Olivia Judson wrote this:
The Monster Is Back, and It's Hopeful
Which was responded to here:
Hopeless Monsters--A Guest Post from Dr. Jerry Coyne
That dyad of posts was passed around by Carl Zimmer, who asked for commentary. This is the set of posts of which I'm aware that resulted:
Why wither Goldschmidt?
Nature makes no leaps...
Jerry Coyne smacks down Olivia Judson
Coyne is on the Loom
Macromutations and Punctuated Equilibria
Hopeful Monsters and Hopeful Models
Then…
gregladen | January 27, 2008"Eventually, I came up with a name for it. I called it 'irreducible complexity'"
gregladen | January 27, 2008"Counterknowledge," I would have thought, includes things like how a particular customer likes her eggs, or if another customer gets antsy if he does not get his refill right way. You know, like in a diner. Counter knowledge. But it turns out that Counterknowledge is stuff like creationism, creation science, Scientology, alternative medicine, and so on.
The Telegraph has a review of a book by Damian Thompson with the title "Counterknowledge."
A synopsis from the publisher:
We are being swamped by dangerous nonsense. From 9/11 conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial, creationism to…
gregladen | January 27, 2008J.J. Abrams traces his love of the unseen mystery -- the heart of Alias, Lost, and the upcoming Cloverfield -- back to its own magical beginnings, which may or may not include an early obsession with magic, the love of a supportive grandfather, or his own unopened Mystery Box.
gregladen | January 27, 2008You need:
a pair of binoculars
a pair of tweezers
a bottle
a cork
an elephant call.
First you call the elephants. Then, when they are close but not too close, you look at them with the binoculars backwards. Remember, backwards. That way they will be very small. Then, you pick them up one by one with the tweezers, and put them in the jar.
Don't forget to cork the jar.
Don't have an elephant call? You can make one yourself with spare medical supplies laying around the house:
Elephant Call
gregladen | January 27, 2008The loss of sight in cave dwelling species is widely known. We presume that since sight in utter darkness has no fitness value, the mutation of a gene critical to the development of the sense of sight is not selected against. Over time, any population living in darkness will eventually experience experience such mutations, and these mutations can reach fixation.
Astyanax mexicanus: Top is the surface, sighted form, bottom is the cave-dwelling, blind form. From the Jeffery Lab.Beyond this, we may hypothesize that a mutation "turning off" sight could be beneficial. By definition, an…
gregladen | January 26, 2008"Twelve mentions of Charles Darwin in a 1,400 page textbook..."
Previous in the series
gregladen | January 26, 2008In the US, we (the general citizenry) are never going to agree on gun control. I have a solution.
First, a video or two in case you are interested.
Here is my suggestion: A federal agency is in charge of gun control. That is already the case (it would be the ATF). Congress would pass a law directing this agency to develop best practices for gun permitting, availability, safety, general regulation.
Now, where do you get the best practices? From cops.
As a whole, cops are more likely to know about guns, own guns other than their service revolver, more likely to be hunters or target…
gregladen | January 26, 2008... but it might be a sexual organ...
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue....The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. The scene depicted "multiple, close-up views" of the woman's "nude buttocks" according to an agency order issued late Friday.
...
The agency said the show was indecent because "it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs , specifically an adult woman's buttocks."
The agency rejected the network's argument…