gregladen | December 7, 2013This is a movie, narrated by Jodie Foster, produced by Robert Redford, directed by Pamela Green and Jarik van Sluijs, about the first woman director ever. She made the first narrative film ever. She also invented movie stars. Oh, and the thing where you have sound? She was the first to use synchronized sound. She did a lot of things first, and no one has ever heard of her. Many of her films were destroyed, others misattributed to others. This is one of the most amazing stories of modern culture I've ever seen. Can't wait 'till the actual film comes out.
More information is here and here…
gregladen | December 7, 2013Please join us. It will be at the West Metro Critical Thinking Club on Saturday, December 28, 2013, at 10:00 AM at the RidgePointe Senior Apartments on 12600 Marion Ln. W, Minnetonka, MN.
I know these people. This will be a tough audience. This is a well educated and thoughtful group. Also, there are many climate skeptics in the group, and a talk given last September that questioned the strength of the evidence for Global Warming was well received. So, this is going to be interesting and fun!
Here's the writeup for the talk, and more info can be found HERE:
The Global and Local…
gregladen | December 7, 2013The Accidental Species by my friend and colleague Henry Gee is a new, and excellent, book on Human Evolution. I recommend it. I'll even review it soon. But in the meantime, you can get a free chapter of it by clicking this link to download a PDF supplied by the NCSE.
gregladen | December 7, 2013Yes, there is a connection ...
The Imperial Japanese of World War II and the Nazi Germans of the same era held one thing in common: You were with them or you were nothing. Non-Japanese prisoners were treated very poorly. The lives of non Japanese who did not swear allegiance to the emperor were not valued at all. For instance, when the Japanese exited Manila near the end of the war, they killed hundreds of thousands of Philippine people. The Nazi's slaughtered millions of Russian prisoners, those they considered "unfit" or otherwise different from them, and of course, attempted to…
gregladen | December 7, 2013Content warning: Severe obnoxiousosity.
I cribbed this from NPR. The Brain Scoop channel is here. If you've not watched it you are missing some good stuff!
...Emily Graslie's "The Brain Scoop" is one of the warmest, slyest video blogs on the web. She's where I go to find out what museum scientists are up to — and right now she's at the Field Museum in Chicago, where she wanders from department to department, exploring, delighting, asking questions that you and I would ask if someone gave us a free pass to gawk our way through one of the great natural history museums in the world. So I was…
gregladen | December 6, 2013Here's an infographic of some interest:
by sofyay. Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.
If that embedded version doesn't work for you here's the big-huge version that is very readable but also big. And huge.
gregladen | December 6, 2013The Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards are out with the current issue. Let's talk about some of them.
The number one distribution was, as usual Ubuntu. But, Ubuntu only got 16 percent, with Debian coming in second at 14.1 percent. So, one could say that Debian is strong since Ubuntu is based on Debian. One could also say that Ubuntu is surprisingly weak. One would think it would be higher. One possibility is that Linux Journal readers are pretty hard core, and might often eschew Ubuntu for other distributions that cause more pain. Face it. Real Linux users like to wear hair shirts.
I…
gregladen | December 5, 2013Imagine going back in time to visit Nelson Mandela in prison and telling him this: "You will live through this and be free, you'll lead your country and set an unattainable example of leadership, you'll retire as president and die at a very old age. The violence associated with the end of Apartheid will be so little it will be mostly forgotten. There will be truth. And reconciliation." That would have been a remarkable, impossible prediction at the time, because he was clearly destine to die in prison, and there was little possibility of reconciliation and there was every chance of…
gregladen | December 5, 2013I've noted this before. Here is Peter Sinclair's video on the topic:
The most sobering evidence of the planet's response to greenhouse gases comes from the fossil record. New evidence scientists are collecting suggests that ice sheets may be more vulnerable than previously believed, which has huge implications for sea level rise.
gregladen | December 5, 2013Are there more tornadoes because of global warming? Are they stronger? Do they occur more frequently outside of the usual tornado season, or are they more common in areas that formerly had few tornadoes?
There are problems with all of these questions, and the main problem is the fact that the tornado data isn't very informative.
Here's the raw data from the NOAA tornado database, showing the number of tornadoes per year of all intensities greater than one mile long on the ground:
(Click on the graph to see the whole thing in case it isn't showing for you.)
This looks like more tornadoes…
gregladen | December 4, 2013It occurs to me that many of you may not know this because you don't live in the Twin Cities or are not Facebook Friends of the Mayor of Minneapolis, but the guy is very funny and creative and produces a lot of poetry, especially this time of year.
In Minneapolis, there is an arcane system of plowing snow that I will not even attempt to explain. (I come from New York and Boston where the system for removing snow from the city streets makes perfect sense.) The point is, if you mess up they tow your car to a sort of automotive dungeon and it costs a lot of money to get it back.
So, when…
gregladen | December 3, 2013This is a cool two part Youtube video that explains a lot of interesting science.
Part I:
Part II:
gregladen | December 1, 2013This makes total sense. Physics was unable to deliver us our flying cars or jet packs. But what were we going to do with them anyway? Well, go to the bookstore, of course! Alas, in the absence of advanced space age technology we are forced to drive, or even walk, to the bookstore.
But not any more, because Jeff Bezos at Amazon has promised us ... promised ... the new "Amazon Prime Air" service. This is where the books (and other stuff we order from Amazon.com) fly to us, encased in small brightly colored boxes that apparently we get to keep after the delivery. They fly attached to the…
gregladen | December 1, 2013Somebody tipped over a bag full of a white powdery substance. Most of what fell out splayed across the dirty wooden table, but about a cup poured onto the dirt floor of the open-air Baraza at our research site in a remote part of the Congo’s Ituri Forest. Embarrassed about tipping onto the ground more of this valuable substance than most people living within 50 kilometers would ever see in one day, the tipper started to push loose dirt onto the powder to cover it up. But the spill had been noticed by two children lounging nearby; in what seemed like a fraction of a second, the boys were face…
gregladen | December 1, 2013Nature editor and author Henry Gee has produced his Christmas list in which he describes his three wishes as an editor at a scientific journal; he enumerates the scientific discoveries that sit at the top of his professional "bucket list."
Henry Gee. Not a Leprechaun.
I started to write a comment on Henry's blog post, here, but it turned into a blog post of my own, here:
Henry: As you know, I address in a fictional context in "Search for Sungudogo" (now only 99 cents on Amazon) all three of your wishes, the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe, the discovery of intelligent life…
gregladen | November 29, 2013Every now and then, more often than you might expect, I mention something in lecture (usually in a classroom in front of students) and a small number of individuals express incredulity that the thing exists. Pygmies are one of those terms that garners disbelief. Many people assume they are made up. At the same time, a disconcerting number of times the opposite happens. Mermaids, aliens, dragons, Atlantis, etc. are not real but many students, educated by the History and Discovery channels, apparently, (I don't watch them but I hear things), think they are.
Strangely, one of the things…
gregladen | November 29, 2013LOL cat:
I apologize for the fact that this turns out to be an ad. Terminate at 1:40 to avoid that part, but it is relatively harmless, and the product being advertised does a great job at solving one of the most pressing First World Problems suffered by cat owners.
gregladen | November 27, 2013Did you know that a fox's tail is called a "brush"?
There are 12 species of fox, but 37 different dogish animals are called fox. But somewhere along the line we figured out what true fox is, and there are only 12 of them. These are member of the genus "Vulpes." Vulpes is Latin for ... wait for it ... fox. Something that is fox-like is "vulpine."
What does the fox say? They bark (sort of), scream, and sometimes they howl.
Here's a red fox screaming. May not be work safe, depending on where you work:
In the case of the television network, FOX, the fox says "bla bla bla" and no one quite…
gregladen | November 27, 2013An Update on #ClimateThanks.
Heather Libby has a nice piece on Climate Thanks here. The Denialists have started to spam the hashtag with their insipid, unoriginal drek. Tallbloke, whom I do indeed consider to be a criminal (as are the rest of them) carrying out crimes against humanity (he sued me once for saying that, which was totally lame) has even joined in, as have some members of the SlymePit adding that special MRA-Science Denailist crossover stink to the mix. But for the most part it is just good people thanking other good people for doing good stuff having to do with climate…
gregladen | November 27, 2013From Paul Douglas at Weathernation.com:
Here's a picture of the moisture in the atmosphere: