gregladen | December 10, 2007CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE:
Tough Ceramics at the Seashore
Tuesday, December 11, 2007; 6 p.m.
Kitty Cat Klub, Dinkytown
What secrets to seashells hold? For University of Minnesota Civil Engineering Professor Roberto Ballarini, the natural strength of materials found in seashells may be the key to improving the design of bridges and other human structures. Join Ballarini for a discussion of science, seashells and the potential of bio-inspired design.
Re-Greening Cities
Tuesday, December 18, 2007; 7 p.m.
Bryant-Lake Bowl, Uptown
City parks characteristically define urban nature - an oasis of…
gregladen | December 10, 2007And who would have known were it not for my Linux Calendar....
Dec 10
Emily Dickenson born, 1830
Dec 10
Metric system established in France, 1799
Dec 10
Nobel Peace Prize awarded each year
Dec 10
Foundation of Worker's Party in Angola
Dec 10
Human Rights Day
Dec 10
Thai Constitution Day in Thailand
Dec 10
Wyoming Day in Wyoming
Dec 10
N'oubliez pas les Romaric !
Dec 10
Bonne fête aux Eulalie !
Dec 10
Aujourd'hui, c'est la St(e) Melchaide.
Dec 10
N'oubliez pas les Miltiade !
Dec 10
à la sainte Julie,
Le sole
il ne quitte pas son lit.
Dec 10
Friedensnobelpreis für…
gregladen | December 10, 2007The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.
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The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.
[source]
This is a strange story of a deranged person who was killed by an armed security guard working at the said church.
"It appears that the…
gregladen | December 10, 2007This is one of those cool views of changes in scales. It runs from pretty large (some distance from the Milky Way) to pretty small (subatomic). One of the things you notice is that there is NOT a consistent fractal theme that operates on all scales. Fractals are not everything. They are just something.
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to…
gregladen | December 10, 2007There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years.
By an increased rate of evolution, the authors mean an increased rate of adaptive change in the genome. By recent times, the authors mean various things, depending on which part of the analysis you examine, and depending on what is meant by "increased." ... In other words, the timing of an event that is not really an event (but rather a change in rate of something) is hard…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Seagate's new "Free Agent" (ha!) drives are all broken, it would seem in an interesting way that makes them partially incompatible with Linux and other *nix based operating systems, including Macs.
Seagate representatives claim that there may be workarounds for this, but they do not intend to find out what they are and will not support them.
Solution: Never, ever buy a Seagate product again. It really isn't necessary to do so. There are plenty of other disk manufacturers. Also, wait for the next bit of news on this, about how Microsoft bribed Seagate to pull of this particular…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Yes, of course there should. And a large number of prominent scientists have put their shoulders to this idea and are pushing hard.
This is embodied in the "Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology"
You should seriously consider going to this site and adding your name to those supporting this initiative. Seriously. You may have come to this blog for the gravy recipe, or to get the latest news on the War on Christmas, but most likely you are here on account of your interest in science. So you are the kind of person they are looking for.
Is it adequate to have science and…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Sort of. The hurricane that the press ignored until it was impossible to ignore is now listed on Time's Top Ten Natural Disasters of 2007.
I don't like the sound of that at all: "Top Ten Natural Disasters." Maybe I'm used to "top ten" being good things. Maybe that's just me.
Packing winds of over 100 mph, the storm took out power lines and trees, and pulverized mud and thatch homes. The death toll was over 1,000, with more than half a million people forced to flee their homes. But by Bangladesh's sad standards, Sidr was nothing -- a cyclone in 1991 killed an astounding 140,000 people.…
gregladen | December 10, 2007We're Number Five for the Bridge Collapse:
Bridges failed this year in China and in Guinea, killing 64 and 70 people, respectively. But the disaster that really grabbed U.S. headlines was the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis on August 1, where the death toll reached only 9.
I was in the Kalahari when the bridge fell. I heard about it this way:
"Oh, did you hear that the bridge in Minnesota fell down yesterday?"
(they don't have a lot of bridges in South Africa. That would require rivers..)
"Which bridge?" I asked.
Next day: "Oh, I found out, it was the bridge over the…
gregladen | December 10, 2007Chistians, especially Catholics, continue "tizzy" regarding The Golden Compass, based on books by atheist Philip Pullman. I heard a woman from the Catholic League, spitting and furming on MSNBC about how this movie was really really bad because it would ...
Lead to children to reading the books..
Read the books? Hey, read the books! Next thing you know, the children will be cannibalizing each other when we are not looking....
From a column in the Times Record New, Wichita:
C'mon, people. "The Golden Compass" is a fantasy film - a fantasy film - which generally means it's not real.
You can…
gregladen | December 9, 2007... but fun on so many levels...
The scene: At a gathering of semi related people, with my daughter, sitting next to two conservative born again Christians (one being a "perfected" Jew). All very nice people in their own way, just don't bring up religion.
Then M comes along very interested in discussing The Golden Compass ... could she take Julia to the movie, has she seen it yet, etc?
I'm thinking, great, good idea, and I'm thinking how smart I am for deciding to get The Golden Compass books for Julia for Solstice. That's when Julia pipes up and says "Yea, I love those books I've read…
gregladen | December 9, 2007... the guy who has ants in his hard drive, so he loads it up with insect spray. Kills bugs dead. And data too...
... the woman who's USB stick went through the wash. Whites whiter, brights brighter, data gonner...
... the guys who decided to test a parachute using their fancy digital camera as a weight. The parachute didn't work. But the camera did bust into tiny pieces....
... The British Scientist who got annoyed at the squeeking noise his hard drive made. So he experimented with oiling the hard drive. Hypothesis: Rejected. Data: Gone....
[source]
gregladen | December 9, 2007This is a bad one, folks.
In Simle North Dakota, at the Middle school, a
...teacher is under investigation after showing a religious-themed video in health class.
"We acknowledge that a video clip was shown in a classroom that violated School Board policy and that a parent has submitted a letter of complaint," said Superintendent Paul Johnson, reading a written statement. "We are investigating the incident and will decide on Monday what action to take."
The teacher showed "A Letter from Hell," off of Godtube.com to a health class Wednesday, according to a letter from Steven and Heather…
gregladen | December 9, 2007Have you seen the Marumushi news map?
Here is an example of the output for the category Health, showing the relative "presence" of different categories of news on Health in the US:
Here is the same topic for Canada:
And here is the national news map. For Britain:
Go here to make your own news maps!
gregladen | December 9, 2007Ebola in Uganda:
New Ebola fatalities push Uganda toll to 25: official from PhysOrg.com
A dreaded Ebola outbreak has killed two people, bringing the toll to 25 in western Uganda, an official said Saturday, as health teams battled to contain the virulent strain in the region.
[...]
With the outbreak earlier in the year in DRC, and this outbreak, this is a big year for Ebola. Some time soon, someone is going to have to go and figure out where this disease resides in the wild. I'm betting on it being a plant virus that reaches human populations through a number of different routes,…
gregladen | December 8, 2007I don't know about you, but I always wait until the last minute to get obligatory holiday gifts. And then I hate going to anything like a mall or shopping center. Praise be to Amazon.com and UPS.
His Dark Materials (trilogy)
From the publsiher, on book I:
When Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon decide to spy on a presentation her uncle, the commanding Lord Asriel, is making to the elders of Jordan College they have no idea that they will become witnesses to an attempted murder--and even less that they are taking the first steps in a journey that will lead them into danger and adventure…