gregladen | May 6, 2013My friend and colleague, executive director of the National Center for Science Education's Genie Scott, will retire by the end of the year. She's been director of the NCSE for 26 years. Genie is a key player, perhaps the key player, in the battle to keep science in the classroom and other things that are not science out of the classroom, in public schools. She's gotten piles of awards and has done a huge amount of great work. While a lot of people have been involved in this fight, I think it is fair to give Genie top billing in such major and momentous efforts as the fight in Dover (which…
gregladen | May 2, 2013Two young boys are having an argument while their fathers, resting in hammocks, look on. The argument is over something silly but escalates until the dads decide to intervene. They equip each boy with a small pole and position them face to face, explaining the rules of the game. Each child has the opportunity to whack the other with the stick, in turn. The boys can continue to carry out this ritualized but stingingly painful combat until one of them gives up, handing victory to his opponent. Eventually, these boys will grow into men, and this sort of combat, using either long poles borrowed…
gregladen | May 1, 2013Hey, guess what? It turns out that if 90% of the people want something, and it is the only right thing to do, and not doing it not only "not the right thing" but it is also an abysmally horrid, insensitive, immoral, and boneheaded thing to do, that YOU LOSE.
Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire is going down in flames. She will be voted out of office entirely on the basis of her no vote on the background check law. Good bye Kelly.
If you want to see the mechanism of pushback against hate and gun nuttery, have a look:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news…
gregladen | April 30, 2013Before the release of vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of this gas was about 300 ppm or a bit more. Soon, that number will be 400 ppm. How soon? Let's see ... it is now Tuesday at about 7pm. Maybe mid morning tomorrow? Maybe early next week? In fact, there have been one or two readings over the last few weeks that have registered above the 400 ppm mark.
So, this is important because humans have officially increased the concentration of this key greenhouse gas by a third. That's a big deal.
Having said that, I…
gregladen | April 30, 2013Published on Apr 30, 2013
Science education is under assault again. Not just evolution education, but climate change education. NCSE policy director Dr. Minda Berbeco traces the history of science denial, the links between evolution- and climate change deniers, recent legislation targeting both, the role of the Next Generation Science Standards, and more. Where: East Bay Atheists, Berkeley, CA. When: 4/21/2013
gregladen | April 30, 2013Vonvo.com is a new thing. We had a conversation about the Boston Marathon Bombing.
I wish there had been a sound check, I could have had my mic up higher. Also, that notification beep you will repeatedly hear is not your computer (or mine) so just ignore it! Anyway, it is in two parts:
gregladen | April 29, 2013I rarely review fiction, but I've got a nice book I'd like to recommend. My friend Amy suggested it to me on facebook a while back when I was casting around for a novel to read. The novel is People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.
INTERNET WARNING: THIS BOOK IS LIKE FIVE YEARS OLD I DON'T CARE
Although a lot of people made a wider range of suggestions on my facebook post, I knew that when I saw Amy's suggestion it was the one I should try. She knows enough about me (we worked together for a few years) to zero in on something that I would appreciate, and she's a person who understand…
gregladen | April 29, 2013Being a bee is hard. I'm speaking specifically of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, the one that produces the honey you buy in the store. Many insects, and other critters, eat by finding food and then eating it, and then they do that for a while and now and then reproduce by finding a mate, laying eggs that they perhaps put in a good location but thereafter leave alone, etc. etc. But honey bees do all of these thing in a way that makes it seem like they are trying to make it harder for them than it is for everyone else. Much of the food that honey bees eat is gathered at rare and hard to…
gregladen | April 29, 2013What do UFO's, the belief that magnetism causes climate change but atmospheric gasses are not related, child molestation, and academic sock puppeting have in common with sea level rise? To find out, set aside some time to carefully read this: UFOs, Sea Level Rise And The Magnetism Of Climate Science Denial and then click on this.
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Photo Credit: Jofre Ferrer via Compfight cc
gregladen | April 29, 2013You've all heard about the horrible tragedy in Bangladesh, still unfolding. Not to distract from that event, or diminish its importance, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that low lying country in relation to long term sea level rise caused by climate change. I am making no claim here about the maximum rate of sea level rise or about the timing of sea level rise. But the truth is, there have been times in the past when there was virtually no year round ice (glaciers) anywhere on this planet, and sea levels were much higher than they are now. During a time period not too…
gregladen | April 29, 2013James Hansen, author of "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity", recently announced his retirement from his position as director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. My friend John Abraham write's about Hansen's retirement in his inaugural* post in the new blog "Climate Consensus - The 97%" ...
What does this mean for climate science and the future of the Earth? It is impossible to know now but instead of looking forward, I want to shine a light on what Jim has done for climate science, what he signifies to…
gregladen | April 28, 2013This video by Media Matters on the Zany Denialists on Fox News .........
..... is nicely augmented by this blog post by Phil Plait: Climate Change or Global Warming? Both.
gregladen | April 27, 2013Almost a year ago, Edwina Rogers took over as the executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. It's been an ambitious, busy year for the Secular Coalition. This Sunday, Rogers joins us to talk with Scott Lohman about what they've accomplished and where they're going in the next year. They'll also discuss the formation of the Minnesota chapter of the Secular Coalition.
Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio: 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to radio@mnatheists.org during the…
gregladen | April 27, 2013I was chatting live on Vonvo.com, speaking about the Boston Marathon Bombing with a few others. Vonvo is a new social media talkie thingie, a little like if Blogging Heads and Google Hangouts had a baby which then married Twitter.
A bit later I'll have links to the discussion.
gregladen | April 26, 2013I gave a talk at the Brookdale Public Library last night as part of the celebration of DNA day. DNA Day, or DNAD for short, was created about the time of the "completion" (more or less) of the Human Genome in 2003, and is set to be on the date of the publication of the famous research on the structure of DNA.
The point of the talk was to link behavioral biology and the anthropological study of kinship with the practice of conducting personal genealogy. There was a time when I did a fair amount of genealogical research, in connection with historic archaeology, which in turn was part of…
gregladen | April 24, 2013... Or, Why Did Your Great-great-grandfather Marry His Cousin?
A talk I'm giving ....
Genealogy reveals the structure of family relationships among distant relatives. Why do certain families intermarry while others shun each other? For the young singles, how do you calculate your suaboyä, in order to find the ideal spouse?
Brookdale Library
Thursday, April 25, 7–8 p.m.
Details
gregladen | April 24, 2013Dana Nuccitelli writes:
The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single second. That's the global warming that we're frequently told isn't happening.
That's Dana's opening paragraph in the inaugural blog post in a new two-person blog called Climate Consensus - The 97% which started up today at The Guardian. The other blogger is my friend John Abraham.
Both of these authors are climate scientists. Dan is famous for his work at Sketpical…
gregladen | April 23, 2013No, it does not
We've had a winter-like spring here in Minnesota, and it was darn chilly on Saturday. In fact, we had a record low of 21F.
Paul Douglas, of Weather Nation did some digging: He tells us that while that was the first record low since 2004, there have been 42 record highs since Januray 1st of that year. The highs win. The Twin Cities is warming, and in this regard, we are not atypical! Global warming is real, folks.