gregladen | December 17, 2007
Your Christmas is Most Like: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
You can't really get into the Christmas spirit...
But it usually gets to you by the end of the holiday.
What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?
gregladen | December 17, 2007Sent from one of my more faithful readers
(includes footage of my brother in law being being Willie Nelson or the Everly brothers or somebody.)
gregladen | December 17, 2007A small group of US experts stubbornly insist that, contrary to what the vast majority of their colleagues believe, humans may not be responsible for the warming of the planet Earth.
3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming.
In mid-November the IPCC adopted a landmark report stating that the evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now "unequivocal."
Retreating glaciers and loss of snow in Alpine regions, thinning…
gregladen | December 17, 2007The new Anthronotes is available, here
This is a Smithsonian publication. This issue has, among other things, a very nice article on the Flores Hobbits and a piece on teaching Human Evolution. Teachers should take special note of this, the material in this publication is usually perfect for 10th through 12th grade Life Sciences.
[Hat Tip: Ed Hessler].
gregladen | December 17, 2007
The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education Teddy Bear!
I know you want one...
I personally have a mug, a tee-shirt and a hat. Hey, they should add bumper stickers.
gregladen | December 17, 2007Prawns (shrimp) behavior is exploited by sticklebacks in the quest for food.
The fish ...
... use prawns to determine the best place to be. Prawns, it seems however, don't have the same aptitude to use the sticklebacks for their advantage
[According to researcher] Paul Hart, "It is a common experience for most of us to look at what other people are doing when we ourselves are not sure of what to do next. One of the benefits of being a social species is that we can tap into the expertise of our fellow humans to improve our own chances of success when circumstances are uncertain. Many would…
gregladen | December 17, 2007McKesson Provider Technologies is a health care industry software vendor. A few years ago, they began to search for ways to cut costs for the hospitals and medical offices that make up their customer base. Switching to Linux was the obvious solution.
Today, McKesson, a San Francisco-based company, offers the majority of its health-care related software applications on Linux, which significantly reduces costs for these medical offices and hospitals.
The move was solidified in February, when McKesson partnered with Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. to unveil the Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare…
gregladen | December 17, 2007Planarian worms can regenerate new body parts (well, I know they don't look like "parts" but you get what I mean). How do they do this? No one was quite sure until now.
An MIT research team led by Peter Reddien has discovered a gene that apparently produces a product that facilitates this sort of regeneration.
"Evolution has selected for mechanisms that allow organisms to accomplish incredible feats of regeneration," and planaria offer a dramatic example, Reddien said. "By developing this model system to explore the molecular underpinnings of regeneration, we now have a better…
gregladen | December 17, 2007From Indiana University's Press Room:
Resting in less than 10 feet of Caribbean seawater, the wreckage of Quedagh Merchant, the ship abandoned by the scandalous 17th century pirate Captain William Kidd as he raced to New York in an ill-fated attempt to clear his name, has escaped discovery -- until now.
An underwater archaeology team from Indiana University announced [on Dec. 13] the discovery of the remnants. IU marine protection authority Charles Beeker said his team has been licensed to study the wreckage and to convert the site into an underwater preserve, where it will be accessible to…
gregladen | December 17, 2007The Foja Mountains have been the subject of investigation for a couple of years now, and new species are being found there on a regular basis. The lastest, from last June, is the discovery of a possum and a rat.
The Foja Mountains are in Paupa, Indonesia, and form part of the norther ridge of the central mountain range on this large island. There are no records of visitors to this remote area prior to the late 1970s. In december, 2005, a joint international team of scientists bean documenting plants and animals in the area, and subsequently there have been reports of at lease one new bird…
gregladen | December 17, 2007I get email... In this case, virus-like but funny email. Pass it on...
COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I…
gregladen | December 17, 2007But fails to recognize it. Again.
Just moments ago, the Discovery Institute posted a commentary on a paper that came out some time ago on dog evolution. I wrote about that paper because it made me laugh out loud (LOL). Indeed, I wanted to share this again, so I reposted my earlier post just moments ago.
The new DI post is by Casey Luskin. I've misplaced the URL, sorry. Anyway, it turns out that the Discovery Institute is pretty sure that Artificial Selection is Intelligent Design, with the breeders being the Intelligent Agent. Of course, they are correct. Intelligent Design is real…
gregladen | December 17, 2007 St. Bernard Dog
I woke up this morning to see headlines such as the following in my newsreader:
Study Casts Doubt on Creationism ... and St. Bernard Study Casts Doubt on Creationism....
It turns out that the shape of the dog's head has evolved over time, and that this can only be explained by evolution.
The study looked at 47 St Bernard skulls over a 120 year period, and analyzed these in the context of ancient written specifications for the breed.
"We discovered that features stipulated in the breed standard of the St Bernard became more exaggerated over time as breeders selected…
gregladen | December 17, 2007NYT: Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft
The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices -- a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its…
gregladen | December 17, 2007Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team
The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted…
gregladen | December 17, 2007Warning to Mac Users: Security Flaw with .Mac:
"The de facto online connectivity software sold along with many Apple computers, .Mac, has a Web interface through which users can check their 'iDisk' while away from their own computer. However, there is no Log-Out button in this Web interface, so most users just close the browser and walk away... not realizing that their iDisk has been cached by the browser and that anyone who wants to can open up the browser, go back to the link in History, and get into their iDisk completely logged in. From here, files can be downloaded and/or deleted. This…