gregladen | December 19, 2007Popular Mechanics (one of those magazines that genteel people refuse to admit they read, but that is actually a blast) has published a thing called "Geek the Vote." According to an email from PM, this is:
...an online guide to all the candidates' stances on issues related to science and technology including energy policy and climate change, gun control, science education and infrastructure investment. The full chart, which can be navigated by candidate or issue, is [provided]
The site is here.
This is apparently in response to (maybe not, but there is evidence to suggest this) the Science…
gregladen | December 19, 2007Homo floresiensis more widely known as the "Hobbit," may have had arms that were very different from those of modern humans.
A paper in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution explores the anatomy of H. floresiensis. To explore this we first have to understand the concept of "Humeral torsion." Humeral torsion is the orientation of the humeral head relative to the mediolateral axis of the distal articular surface. Don't bother reading that sentence again, I'll explain it.
The humerus is the upper arm bone, that runs between your shoulder and your elbow. The humeral head is…
gregladen | December 18, 2007I'm putting this bit of human biogeography under the "species coming and going" category:
Greenland DNA could hold key to migration mysteries: researchers from PhysOrg.com
Danish researchers are to sieve through human and skeletal remains on Greenland in a quest to explain an enduring enigma over the island's settlement over thousands of years, one of the scientists said Tuesday.
[...]
This is a very large change in diet over a very short period of time. I call Macro Evolution!
Study links success of invasive Argentine ants to diet shifts from PhysOrg.com
The ability of Argentine ants…
gregladen | December 18, 2007
Dec 18
Konrad Zuse died in Hünfeld, 1995. Zuse was an engineer and a pioneer in the computer field. He developed the world's first functional program-controlled computer, the Z3, in 1941. He also designed the first high-level programming language, Plankaklul in 1948, although the langauge was never implemented during his lifetime. He also founded the first dot-com, before there were dot-coms, in 1946. source
Dec 18
Republic Day in Niger. Niger is a landlocked nation in West Africa (barely ... almost Central Africa). The official language is French, and it includes 1.26 million…
gregladen | December 18, 2007Statistically, atheists have a higher intelligence than people with a strong religious faith. The difference is 5.8 points, according to a new study by the Danish professor of developmental psychology, Helmuth Nyborg.
Read all about it here.
gregladen | December 18, 2007Before I sign on to this, I want to know what happens when the vehicles become self aware and take over the planet:
Vehicles That Talk to Each Other Know What Lanes They're In from PhysOrg.com
A standard GPS receiver has an average 2D-positioning accuracy of about 13 meters. While this precision is high enough to direct you to your hotel, it's quite a bit lower than the accuracy required to determine which lane your car is in while driving down the highway.
[...]
But wait, this could also be robots. Robots fighting in outer space:
Intergalactic 'shot in the dark' shocks astronomers from…
gregladen | December 18, 2007I wanted to point out two interesting posts both having to to with the nature of knowledge, or as we call it here in Minnesota (where the "k" in "Knute" is proudly pronounced).
The first is The Problem with Google's Knol Initiative (aha, you see, there's that "k" again...). This is about Google's idea of starting up it's own version of Wikipedia. Pierre Far of BlogSci questions the wisdom of Google's approach. The Google version of a wiki that is an encyclopedia promises to be better because it will recruit, and rely on, expertise. However, Far suggests that this could backfire, and asks…
gregladen | December 18, 2007You will recall this story about a woman raped in Saudi Arabia and convicted of her crime of being a victim.
There is an update.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday.
The victim's husband welcomed the news, but said he had not been informed officially of the pardon decree.
"I'm happy and my wife is happy and it will of course help lift some of her psychological and social suffering," he told Reuters. "We thank the king for his generous attention and fatherly spirit…
gregladen | December 18, 2007From Scientific American, a piece on the "Cooking Hypothesis" (which yours truly helped develop some years back).
Our hominid ancestors could never have eaten enough raw food to support our large, calorie-hungry brains, Richard Wrangham claims. The secret to our evolution, he says, is cooking
Cooking does indeed turn a lot of stuff that is not edible to humans (or any primate) into usable energy. We think the increase in body size that comes along with the genus Homo (with Homo erectus and kin) is itself a biological signal of cooking.
The problem with his idea: proof is slim that any…
gregladen | December 18, 2007Pursuant to a discussion here regarding the use of the word "evolution" in various scholarly contexts, consider the article in PLoS: Evolution by Any Other Name: Antibiotic Resistance and Avoidance of the E-Word
The increase in resistance of human pathogens to antimicrobial agents is one of the best-documented examples of evolution in action at the present time, and because it has direct life-and-death consequences, it provides the strongest rationale for teaching evolutionary biology as a rigorous science in high school biology curricula, universities, and medical schools. In spite of the…
gregladen | December 18, 2007This video has been removed becaus, I assume, THEY did not want you to see it...
So how about this one instead:
(an oldie but a goodie)
gregladen | December 18, 2007OK, so you are vacuuming the house, and along the way, you suck up a couple of spiders, some spier eggs, a beetle or two, and as the cat or dog walks by, you figure you're probably sucking up some fleas and flea eggs, and so on and so forth.
SO you know all these cooties are now in the vacuum cleaner bag. When you are done vacuuming, you put the vacuum cleaner away. The thought is in your brain... all these creepy crawlers are now going to slowly work their way out of the vacuum cleaner and go back to their crawly creepy business. But you stop yourself from thinking further about it and…
gregladen | December 18, 2007The good news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. The bad news is that the object that hit the earth at Tunguska 1908 was much smaller than previously thought. In other words, if such a small object can do so much damage, then the prospect of something bad happens goes up orders of magnitude...
This is from a press release which, in turn, stems from a paper given at the geophysie meetings last week:
The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction…
gregladen | December 18, 2007Owing to public presure, the BBC iPlayer is now going to support Linux. But if you are a student in Newville, Pennsylvania who is into OpenSource, you may serve detention! (or NOT, see update below)
From Slashdot:
After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform ... the BBC's content is now available to UK-based users of Linux and Mac OS X. From their site: 'From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programs on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of…
gregladen | December 18, 2007
I knew there was something holey about this road that I drive on every day. And all this time I thought it was the potholes. (see this for earlier post on this topic)
You understand, right, that this video proves that religion is not only very kooky and sometimes amazing, but also, that it is ABSOLUELY INSANE!!!
[hat tip, The Lizard Queen]
Hey, Krazy Kristians, Take Your Dirty Hands Off My Highway!
gregladen | December 18, 2007Finally, some spirituality I can live with...
I was a little disappointed with the online store, though.
gregladen | December 17, 2007
Every few years a paper comes out "explaining" short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al.
From the abstract:
Explanations for the evolution of human pygmies continue to be a matter of controversy, recently fueled by the disagreements surrounding the interpretation of the fossil hominin Homo floresiensis. Traditional hypotheses assume that the small body size of human pygmies is an adaptation to special challenges, such as…