gregladen | November 20, 2007
My best photograph of a cheetah.
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I took this photo of a cheetah at De Wildt's in South Africa. It is a "King Cheetah." Although there was a period of time when some thought the King was a new subspecies of cheetah, it turns out to be a simple color morph. Although this was taken with a zoom lens, it was not set on telephoto ... In fact, I had to wipe the breath of the cat off the lens ... (And I'm only slightly exaggerating).
gregladen | November 20, 2007This is the fifth in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
During the 1970s and 80s, creationists had a long list of reasons to doubt evolution, and every one of those reasons was wrong. But they had so many reasons, and it was so hard to keep track of them all, each with various versions, that a creationist that was trying to not live a lie could convince themselves that they had an honest dispute with evolutionary biology. But if you sat down and looked at every detail, "creation science" could be shown to be nothing more than a big bag of falsehoods. So to continue…
gregladen | November 20, 2007Well, OK, it's actually fake snake oil....
Wired Magazine (wired.com) gadgets section has its annual (I don't really know if it's annual, but it should be) issue of Snake Oil products.
Such as The Orbo:
When it comes to gadgets, perpetual motion machines are bullshit's bread and butter. Steorn, the Irish company behind Orbo, is only the latest in a long line of deluded, incompetent or fraudulent firms to claim the scalp of the laws of thermodynamics. File this one under deluded: enthusiastically setting up a public display, the inventors were humiliated when it failed to operate. But wait!…
gregladen | November 20, 2007Well, no news there... but this really irks me. There is this great piece of biological simulation video that came out of Harvard last year ... I've posted bits of it here and there. Well, according to PZ Myers at Pharyngula,
what would a group of good Christians with the aim of renewing American culture do? Simple. Steal the video...They are shameless thieves..
gregladen | November 20, 2007The new creationist textbook, The Design of Life, is now available, or very shortly will be.
This definitive book on intelligent design (ID) comes as a shot across the bow to dogmatic defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy. Written by two key ID theorists, mathematician William Dembski and biologist Jonathan Wells, it presents the full case for intelligent design to a general audience. Critics, in dismissing The Design of Life, contend that intelligent design has collapsed in the wake of the 2005 Dover trial. Author William Dembski responded, "Those same people have been announcing intelligent…
gregladen | November 20, 2007
The Trivers Willard Hypothesis predicts that under certain conditions, individuals will bias their investment in offspring differently depending on the sex of the offspring. It is believed that this can be as extreme as infanticide or as subtle as providing different amounts of breast milk.
A new study by Katherine HInde finds that macaques may do this. However, I think this may be counterintuitive.
Hinde uses data from 106 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to show that first time mothers produce richer milk when they have sons compared to when they have daughters. She suggests that "[t]…
gregladen | November 20, 2007Save the date: November 30th. The Christain Study Center knownas the MacLaurin INstitute, of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus will sponsor this event:
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: The Distubring Legacy of America's Eugenics Crusade
Friday, November 30, 2007
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
FREE
Email contact: osbu0001@umn.edu
A hundred years ago in 1907, Indiana passed the world's first forced sterilization law. In subsequent years, dozens of states passed similar laws, including Minnesota in 1925. These laws were part of a crusade to breed better humans known as "eugenics." Promoted by…
gregladen | November 20, 2007How Whitey Bulger Helps Us Learn About Evolution and Biology!
UPDATE: This is a post I wrote a while back about Whitey Bulger, who was to me back in the day just another local celebrity and crime boss, when I was living and working in the Boston area. But now he is in the news all over the place, so I thought you might enjoy this.
Most of you won't know who Whitey Bulger is. He is actually on the FBI's ten most wanted list. He may have been spotted in Italy last Spring, and the FBI is just now asking for assistance from anyone who knows where he might be. (That's not gonna work.)
Whitey was…
gregladen | November 20, 2007
This is a photograph of three Great Pyrenees dogs harassing a brown bear in Northern Norway. This photograph was downloaded by me some time ago from a web site that seems to no longer exist. I'd love to know if anyone knows where this web site is now, or
if the documents previously available on it are still available somewhere.
[This is a repost from Gregladen.com]
The story goes like this: Apparently, in this region of northern Norway, brown bears that normally reside in a reserve or park had started to wander into cattle farmland. This would be alarming because a) cattle farmers do…
gregladen | November 20, 2007I live in Minnesota and work in South Africa. That means that every time somebody I don't know hears that I've been to South Africa more than once or am going there for an extended period, they say "Oh, is it mission work ... my [cousin/aunt/uncle] is a missionary there."
Thankfully, I have yet to meet a missionary in South Africa, but when I lived in the Congo, I often lived among them. And there are two kinds. The good ones (as far as I know they all speak only Italian and KiSwahili and are Catholics) and the evil ones (American, Australian, and British, mostly).
OK, they've helped me…
gregladen | November 20, 2007I want to point out an interesting opinion piece about the threat of black boxes and the roll of OpenSource software in math.
A key part of the message:
Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs. To quote J. Neubüser, "with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking."
In other words, the difference between using proprietary software and OpenSource software for mathematical research is that for…
gregladen | November 19, 2007You've got your turkey all planned out, and you've got some stock. Now, it's time to explore the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Gravy. (And maybe something to put it on.)
I will tell you how to make excellent gravy with no stress and guaranteed success. Without lumps.
I don't do recipes. I do theory. But this theoretical approach will get you through. Its very simple.
You are going to need the following:
A stick of butter or two, and an equal volume of regular flour. You can use special cooking flour if you want, but that is not necessary.
Several cups of a liquid such as stock.
Some…
gregladen | November 19, 2007This is the fourth in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
"Climate Studies" is a "causal" science. Most sciences are "causal" in nature, which is why the sciences and scientists are often loathed and distrusted by people in the humanities and some of the soft sciences. There is not the time or space right now to address this issue, but I'll just say this: People who criticize science for its interest in causality usually do not understand what scientists are talking about. I think this is partly because people in the humanities and social sciences have gone gaga…
gregladen | November 19, 2007There are a handful of street preachers around on our campus. Some are just stoners standing on boxes babbling about Jesus, others are older guys, more typical, telling us we are all going to hell and handing out literature, often somewhat aggressively. There was one who was habitually blocking a major building entrance way with his preaching, and I believe the cops took him away.
There's a piece by a student columnist for The Oracle (more irony), a college newspaper of the University of South Florida:
According to Wednesday's Oracle, a 22-year-old junior sociology major claims that on…
gregladen | November 19, 2007The question is basic: Is evolutionary change largely random or is it more often shaped by selective forces? The former is linked to what is called Neutral Theory, and it has a lot of support, to the extent that it most likely true. The latter is part of what is sometimes known as the Adaptationist Program, and it is certainly correct. New research on the Development of the Nematode Vulva is sure to cloud the issue even further...
First, a word on this confusing introduction. We know that when we observe life, we do not see a really wide range of degree of adaptation among closely…
gregladen | November 19, 2007Well, this is interesting:
Evolution is deterministic, not random, biologists conclude from multi-species study from PhysOrg.com
A multi-national team of biologists has concluded that developmental evolution is deterministic and orderly, rather than random, based on a study of different species of roundworms. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.
[...]
I've got my mouse on the link to read the original paper, but CB is not delivering it. Something wrong with their server. But rest assured, I will get it, I will read it, I will blog it.