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Is There Too Much Information?

Despite her corny conclusion, Courtney Martin's article Generation Overwhelmed does make a point: The world became too big and brutal, and we haven't figured out a way to process it all. That is, in essence, her response to Thomas Friedman's recent Op-Ed in the New York Times. Friedman calls the twenty-somethings Generation Q...too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good. What about the climate? What about the deficit? What about social security? Instead of focusing our attention on studying abroad, Friedman says the younger generation needs to light a fire…

What Post(s) Should I Submit to Open Lab?

Every year, the best science blog posts are collected in a book, the Open Laboratory (here are the 2006 and 2007 editions). Last year's edition included my cartoon, The Lab Fridge. It wasn't my best post of the year, but it filled one of the niche categories published in the book. Bora has been soliciting submissions for this year's edition of Open Lab. I've dug through my archives and found a few posts that I think are worthy of submission. Unfortunately, I'm the worst judge of my own writing, so I need some help. I've provided links to the short list of my best blogging of 2008 (up 'til…

Speaking of Technology ...

Linux Installed Base will Double This Year The success of consumer IT products like the ASUS Eee PC will help provide the leverage needed to get hardware vendors on board with open source, according to Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief technologist for open source. He believes the install base of Linux-based desktops could potentially double this year, based just on Eee PC sales.. Speaking at open source conference Linux.conf.au in Melbourne yesterday, Hohndel said commercial pressure will be the incentive for traditionally Windows-centric hardware vendors to begin offering open source drivers and…

Comcast: Cap bandwith?

A while back I complained about an installation misadventure I had when I got Comcast service hooked up to my new abode. Since the misadventure was corrected, things have been generally OK, except that for a while Comcast's digital voice phone service produced an annoying buzz for a couple of weeks that made it almost unusable and that no amount of rebooting the modem would fix. Just as I was about to call customer service, the buzz spontaneously disappeared, and since then things have been more or less acceptable. In my area, at least, as far as I can tell BitTorrent traffic hasn't been…

IP madness

Eventually, enough rich and powerful people/companies will become sufficiently inconvenienced or annoyed at the archaic intellectual property laws under which we now live that change will happen. Or am I being totally naive? A few current stories relevant to this issue: From Slashdot: "As Chicago wages its battle to host the 2016 Olympics, it also finds itself scrapping over a valuable piece of cyberspace: the domain name of Chicago2016.com. The bid team along with the U.S. Olympic Committee are trying to wrest that online address from Stephen Frayne Jr., a 29-year-old MBA student. Frayne…

Reading List for Course on "Communication & Society" Posted; Blog Debate on the Internet's Impact on Community Scheduled to Take Place Between April 26 and May 3

Back in the fall, after hosting a class "blog" debate on the Internet and community, more than a few readers asked me whether I would post the reading list for the undergrad course I teach here at American University. Below is the schedule of readings assigned for the spring semester, along with a course description. As of right now, this spring semester's blog debate is scheduled to take place between April 26 and May 3. COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is an introduction to research exploring the many dimensions of "communication and society." As we will review, mass communication and…

Chipping Away at Healthcare Costs - or Not

Last year, Atul Gawande wrote an interesting New Yorker piece that compares present-day efforts to control healthcare costs with early 20th-century efforts to increase US farming productivity. The quest for more farming productivity succeeded not because of any grand, sweeping reform, he explains, but because the government, through the USDA, invested in pilot programs, scientific extensions, and provision of information to farmers. Gawande summarizes the recipe for success: The government never took over agriculture, but the government didn't leave it alone, either. It shaped a feedback loop…

#CNNFail #youtubefail #iranelection

Follow me on Twitter and you'll see this stream (to see more than one-sided conversation, search me there as well and check if there are comments on FriendFeed): RT @ljthornton Students: Roughly 2 hours of tweets from "student living in Tehran," 22: http://bit.ly/wVpJl #CNNFail: Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence. http://tr.im/osmp (via @jayrosen_nyu) @HowardKurtz Hours and hours of ....talking to the camera revealing no useful information? @HowardKurtz perhaps CNN and its audience have very different ideas of what is reporting, what is useful information, what is coverage. @…

The Friday Fermentable: Real Old-Vine Wine?

Among my favorite wines are those made from old-vine zinfandel, defined as vines with an age of greater than 50 years. Immigrants to the US from Italy, as well as Croatia and Eastern Europe, planted vines in various parts of California over 100 years ago, well before systematic irrigation. Most of these old, untamed vines were ripped out when the California wine industry exploded in the 1970s and were supplanted with nicely manicured and trellised vines possessing a more defined genetic heritage (and much greater yields per acre). The wily old zin vines that remain are true survivors,…

From the Archives: Balanced libraries: Thoughts on continuity and change by Walt Crawford

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Balanced Libraries: Thoughts On Continuity And Change, is from June 6, 2007. ======= The library literature. I don't know about you, but those three words strike fear in my heart. When I think library literature,…

More on Charlie Hebdo

Lots of responses to the terrorist attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Some of it reasonable, some of it not. Matthew Yglesias said almost the same thing I did: Viewed in a vacuum, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons (or the Danish ones that preceded it) are hardly worthy of a stirring defense. They offer few ideas of value, contribute little to any important debates, and the world would likely have been a better place had everyone just been more polite in the first place. But in the context of a world where publishers of cartoons mocking Mohammed have been threatened,…

Ten Simple Ways to Increase Your Physical Activity

Photo by pugetsoundphotowalks. Regardless of your shape or size, physical activity has been shown to add years to your life, and life to your years. But believe it or not, the benefits of physical activity are not restricted to exercise performed in the gym. In fact, one of the easiest ways to improve your health may be through increasing the amount of low intensity physical activity you perform throughout the day. For example, simply increasing the number of steps that you take each day is very likely to reduce your risk for diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It's still…

Who knew? My state's vaccine personal belief exemption rate stinks! (Part 2: What to do.)

After yesterday's post on the depressingly high (and increasing, apparently) rate of personal belief exemptions to vaccination requirements for entering school in the state of Michigan, I felt the need to pontificate a bit further. The reason is that MLive.com has posted some followup stories. Also, I didn't have a lot of time last night to write because I had the pleasure of attending the CFI-Michigan Solstice dinner to hang out with fellow skeptics and heathens. Unfortunately, the topic of the high exemption levels in Michigan came up. First up on the follow up story parade is one…

Links 2/25/11

Rainy today. But that's better than SNOW. Let's celebrate with some links. Science: Why You Should Be Jealous of South Korea. Has Ion Torrent Taken A 318-Sized Lead over MiSeq? The Strange Case of Ralph Hall Drying out the cane toad invasion Goodbye academia, I get a life. Other: Standard Washington cowardice Too Bad The GOP Filibustered The Windfall Profits Tax Three Years Ago-- Watch Oil Prices Go Through The Roof Are Climate Deniers and Front Groups Polluting Online Conversation With Denier-Bots? Can't Be Tamed: A Manifesto Thoughts on Teacher Seniority and "Last In, First Out" The Most…

Wednesday Links

It's beautiful out. But if you're stuck inside, here are some links for you. Science: The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash Research suggests flu vaccine doesn't prevent deaths among the elderly Antibiotic Use and Environmental Exposure are Key Factors Affecting Antibiotic Resistant Escherichia coli (E. coli) Carriage in Children in Peru Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds Other: Empathy and epistemic closure Printing Money Despite Push, Success at Charter Schools Is Mixed New Study: Liberals More Open Than Conservatives Online Goners Fiscal Sustainability Facts and Solutions…

The Tree of Life

tags: nature, natural selection, evolution, The Tree of Life, BBC One, David Attenborough, streaming video This streaming video is a beautiful animated clip describing the Tree of Life. Evolution shows how life diverged into the myriad life forms that we see today, and that we know existed in eons past. "The Tree of Life" was part of Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, which was broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday 1 February 2009. Narrated by the incomparable David Attenborough (you lucky, Brits, I am so jealous). [Although, I am told you can supposedly download it for free]. If you can, watch this…

This is not news

The Mirecki case is over. The trail has gone cold in the investigation of a roadside beating reported late last year by a Kansas University professor. Douglas County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Lt. Kari Wempe said Thursday that detectives had finished their paperwork related to religious studies professor Paul Mirecki's report that he was beaten by two unknown men on Dec. 5, 2005, on a roadside south of Lawrence. The office has not identified any suspects and, unless any new leads come in, the investigation is finished. At the time, Mirecki was under fire for comments he had posted online…

phylotaxis.com Nominated for a Webby!

Seed's daily science news aggregator, phylotaxis.com, has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of 'Best Navigation/Structure.' Designed for Seed by artist Jonathan Harris, phylotaxis is based on the mathematical elegance of the Fibonacci Sequence, and the ordered growth of leaves on a plant stem. The appearance of the phylotaxis represents the integration of science's rationality and order with culture's energy and unpredictability. Result? A stunning visual arrangement continuously gathering and transmitting science news as it breaks on the web. Bestowed annually since 1996, the…

L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Awards

Applications for the UK awards opened yesterday for the 2010 awards, where four women will be awarded a £15,000 fellowship to help with the scientific research. The awards are now in their 12th Entries can be made online, with an awards ceremony held in June. The L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards were the first international scientific awards dedicated to women and have become an international reference of scientific distinction - with two of the 2008 winners, Professor Ada Yonath and Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, going on to win Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Medicine…

I guess I am prolific

I missed it when it happened, but this post was my 1000th since the move to Seed. My average is 8.2 posts per day. How about you? Fortunately, MovableType has the ability to schedule posts for future publishing. Thus, I usually write a bunch of posts at night (it may take an hour or two to write 5-10 posts) and schedule them to show up during the next day (every 30 or 60 minutes until I run out of posts). The longer, more involved posts are usually written during the weekend but appear during the workday mornings. Thus, there is an appearance that I am constantly online while I am…

I Like This Guy

Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Pastor: Sermons like Mr. Boyd's are hardly typical in today's evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq. Interesting, even for the usually conservatively-slanted results on AOL online polls: What do you think of Rev. Boyd's views on…

A data point for net neutrality

Abandoning Net Neutrality Discourages Improvements In Service: Charging online content providers such as Yahoo! and Google for preferential access to the customers of Internet service providers might not be in the best interest of the millions of Americans, despite claims to the contrary, a new University of Florida study finds. "The conventional wisdom is that Internet service providers would have greater incentive to expand their service capabilities if they were allowed to charge," said Kenneth Cheng, a professor in UF's department of decision and information sciences. Cheng and his co-…

CO2 Receptors in Insects

Identification Of Carbon Dioxide Receptors In Insects May Help Fight Infectious Disease: Mosquitoes don't mind morning breath. They use the carbon dioxide people exhale as a way to identify a potential food source. But when they bite, they can pass on a number of dangerous infectious diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis. Now, reporting in today's advance online publication in Nature, Leslie Vosshall's laboratory at Rockefeller University has identified the two molecular receptors in fruit flies that help these insects detect carbon dioxide. The findings could…

Atemporal and ahistorical Google Maps?

Online maps 'wiping out history': Internet mapping is wiping the rich geography and history of Britain off the map, the president of the British Cartographic Society has said. Mary Spence said internet maps such as Google and Multimap were good for driving but left out crucial data people need to understand a landscape. Mrs Spence was speaking at the Institute of British Geographers conference in London. Google said traditional landmarks were still mapped but must be searched for. Ms Spence said landmarks such as churches, ancient woodlands and stately homes were in danger of being forgotten…

ScienceOnline'09 - the WiSE Friday event

As you know, a portion of the Friday program at ScienceOnline09 is organized by Duke WiSE. They have now put up a webpage with additional information. In short, if you have signed up for the conference and checked the "I will attend the Friday evening event" box on the registration form you are fine - no need to do anything else, just show up. But if you are local and want to attend ONLY the WiSE event (and you have not registered for SO'09), you need to register by using this online form. The program? 6:30 pm Registration 7 - 8 pm Networking reception and informational booths with local…

30Threads.com

I got a million and a half invitations to the Big Blogger Bash in Raleigh the other day, but unfortunately I could not make it. At the bash, Ginny Skalski and Wayne Sutton unveiled their brand new project - a website called 30Threads, which will cover all sorts of locally interesting stories and engage the local community. It certainly already has interesting stories and an interesting and novel layout. Looks like the media of the 21st century should look like (especially after all but hyper-local newspapers die out or completely move online). I bookmarked it and will keep an eye - it looks…

Which Movie Star are You Most Like?

According to the Movies.com Which Movie Star Are You Like? quiz, you're .. .. most like George Clooney Everyone loves you, and you're only getting better (and better-looking!) with age. You're a generous, loyal and fun-loving friend, and you also seem to really care about your politics, consistently putting yourself on the line for your beliefs. We wish there were more of you out there. Take this quiz at Movies.com I thought this quiz was trying to match me to the movie star whom I most resemble, instead of whom I'd be most likely to allow to drop potato chips in my bed. Thanks, Dawn…

Favorite Life Science Blogs? Where Are the Women on This List?

The Scientist has just published an online version of an upcoming print story on their site. This story asks the question, What are your three favorite life science blogs? I noticed that they asked seven men this question (not one woman, hello??!) and predictably, nearly all of the top blogs that they listed were written by .. men! Quite frankly, I am offended. Are women life science blog writers really second-class citizens, undeserving of recognition and top honors? If you think that women have something of value to say about the life sciences, get on over there and be sure to let the…

My Blogging Style

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is! What's Your Blogging Personality? Well, this is true, but .. I am surprised: this quiz only relied on four questions, each with only two possible answers, to determine that! How many possible "blog types" were there? In this…

DENSA Test

While we are on the topic of intelligence, or lack thereof, I thought you might enjoy this test (I certainly did). The DENSA test is a response to MENSA, I suspect. Unfortunately, this test doesn't give you a cute graphic to add to your blog, but it is a rather fun test, so I stole the site logo and posted the link to the DENSA test anyway. What was your score? My score was 11 out of 12 - I am above normal! (Question 1 gets them every time!!) .. and indeed, it was question 1 that got me, even though I knew it was a trick, even though I knew the answer was "yes", mysterious forces caused my…

Around the Web: Distraction in the classroom, Reading Instrumentally, Outsourcing higher ed and more!

The False Security of Technology? What Might We Be Missing? Reading Instrumentally Why blogging still matters Outsourcing Plus (Partnering to provide more online ed choices) Long Road to Open Access The Down-side of Technology? On Class Time Wikimedia: Power, Leadership, and Movement Roles Gaming as Teaching Tool Blogs in higher education - some ideas about their benefits and downsides Portrait of the Scholar as Blogger 7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College Principles for Open Bibliographic Data The Web Parenthesis: Is the "open Web" closing? Rebuilding an Academic Law Library Part…

Around the Web

Has the Future of the Internet come about? A virtual counter-revolution: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it How a watch works (via) On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography (via) Institutional repositories and digital preservation The decline of studying: How university students are spending less time hitting the books while earning better grades than ever Science publishing: the humorous side Obsolescence in the CS literature and Confronting the Myth of Rapid Obsolescence in Computing…

I got an Essay Published on SEED!

Good news: yesterday, I wrote an essay about Arthur C. Clarke for SEED magazine and it was published on their on-line site today. I am so pleased that something I wrote was finally recognized as being worthy of publication "for reals", although, now that I read it today, there are a dozen things that I'd like to fix and change (this is why blog writing is superior to other forms of writing: we are allowed to edit our pieces until they satisfy us). On the other hand, I wrote that piece in only a few hours -- devoting two hours to an essay that I threw away after I'd finished it, and another…

What's Your Holiday Personality?

tags: holiday personality, online quiz This quiz is an example of being told what you want to hear. I mean, who wants to be told they are a holiday grinch? Well, after playing with it for awhile, I don't think that's one of the answers, but do let me know iof any of you get to be a grinch. My results are below the fold; Your Holiday Personality is Caring You like to reach out to people all year long, but you're especially giving during the holidays. Make those you love homemade presents (like cookies or scarves). Call someone who might be feeling a little down. Give to your favorite…

LiveScribing #scio12 ... SciScribing = Art ~ Science ~ Culture ~ Pen ~ Ink

Live Scribing is like live blogging or note taking but it is done in the form of drawing. To get an idea of what this is all about, check out this blog. Science Online 2012 was "Live Scribed" which meant that for most (all?) sessions, someone was making a drawing which built a stylized visually rich picture of the concepts being developed in the room. The results are here. Maggie Pingolt took those pictures, but I think someone else also photographed the boards. Next step: Developing the metadata, presentation, archive and access for this project; Also, I want to see parallel…

20 Years On The Web

I got access to email through the SöderKOM BBS in 1994. In early 1995 I got a dial-up connection to the Internet via Algonet, an ISP started by my childhood buddy Ragnar. And in June of that year I put up a web site. It was a hand-coded static HTML page. A clearly recognisable version of it is still on-line after 20 years! But I haven't updated it since 2009. My site was one of the first to mention archaeology in Swedish, so for many years it had an absurdly high search-engine rank despite its rather modest contents, beating out the National Heritage Board and most of the country's…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The thirty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Hominin Dental Anthropology. Archaeology and anthropology in honour of Maximiliano Gómez. He was the leader of the Maoist Movimiento Popular Dominicano (MPD), a militant organization opposed to the JoaquÃn Balaguer government and to U.S. presence in the Dominican Republic. Commended by some, repudiated by others, the controversial figure of Maximiliano Gomez is part of the political heritage of the Dominican Republic. The next open hosting slot is on 18 June. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer…

Chris at Highly Allochthonous Gets It

Yay, for once somebody at Sb except me is writing about European archaeology! SciBling Chris at Highly Allochthonous offers a long thoughtful writeup of a recent geology paper on the post-glacial flooding of the Black Sea basin and its possible effect on neolithisation. With a beautiful colour map of the European neolithisation wave! Note that all the radiocarbon dates in Chris's entry are uncalibrated ones. 8300 BP is the raw radiocarbon date for the flood event, but that isn't equivalent to 6300 BC, it's more like 7400 cal BC. (The Maglemose era, for you Scandies.) Free on-line radiocarbon…

Welcome to Bittercon

There's a popular science fiction convention going on this weekend in Madiscon, WI. Of course, not everyone can make it to these things, so some people in LiveJournal Land have put together BitterCon, and online event for those unable to attend WisCon. Kate's jumped right in, providing space for a bunch of panels in the form of comment threads: The Napoleonic Wars in SF/F Risky Narrative Strategies Levels and Limits of Metafictionality Thieves Guilds and Other Criminal Societies Wish Fulfillment (She's got a convenient BitterCon tag as well, in case she adds more stuff later...) So, if you…

Not Just Outside the Box, but Orthogonal to It

One of the many after-hours events contributing to my exhaustion this week was the annual Sigma Xi award and initiation banquet, at which some fifty students were recognized for their undergraduate research accomplishments. The banquet also featured a very nice presentation on visualizing a four-dimensional cube by Prof. Davide Cervone of the Math department here. He went through a bunch of different ways to picture a four-dimensional object through analogies to lower-dimensional objects. It was as close as I've ever come to feeling like I understood how to think about higher dimensional…

Not-So-Casual Wednesday

Via a pseudonymous LiveJournal, an online study that combines the fun of clicking radio buttons with the thrill of doing SCIENCE! * The study URL is: http://www.homeport.org/~kcat/study3/ * It takes about 15 minutes. You listen to 8 short clips and answer questions about how the people sound. It is easily as fun as a quiz. * For participating, instead of finding out what muppet tarot card you are, you can choose between being entered into a drawing with a 1 in 10 chance at a $30 iTunes gift certificate, or having $5 donated to Doctors without Borders. Go help advance the sum of human…

Physics Blogging in the Media

The January issue of Physics World magazine has just hit the electronic newstands, and they're doing a special issue on physics on the web. Among the free on-line offerings, they have a discussion of blogs and Wikipedia with various comments pro and con, and an essay about physics blogging by Sean Carroll. Oh, yeah, and they also profile some blogger guy... (By a weird coincidence, I already had posts scheduled for today that cover most of the range of stuff I post here, so new visitors will get the full Uncertain Principles experience, as it were...) (Also, the specific post quoted in the…

A New Review of Taking Sudoku Seriously

Writing in the online statistics magazine Significance, Angie Wade, of University College London, has posted a review of Taking Sudoku Seriously. That's the book about the mathematics of Sudoku puzzles that I cowrote with my JMU colleague Laura Taalman, published by Oxford University Press, for those not in the know. Anyway, did Wade like the book? In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and do not have any criticisms to make. The authors have produced a lovely addition to any budding or practiced mathematician’s bookcase. Well-presented and readable for both the novice and the maths…

Uncertain Dots 19

In which our hangout turns nineteen; we may need to look into a special guest for the 20th, or something. Or maybe save guest stars for the one after that, when it can drink. Anyway, Rhett and I chat about grading, lab reports, why Excel sucks, and an online experiment that we really ought to do if we only had the time. Some links: -- Why Does Excel Suck So Much?, and "Line Plot" is Never the Right Choice. Perennial favorites on the blog. -- How Do I Kill the Squirrels Who Are Eating My Car?, another constant source of a small amount of traffic. -- Rhett's elevator video post. -- My soccer…

Self-promotion

And now, a little self-promotion. I have a piece up on Seed's online magazine, "The Anthropogenic Trap," in which I examine the warnings of some scientists who say we're taking the whole guilt thing too far. Here's the opening. This year may be remembered as the year the weight of climate change finally began to sink in. It only took climate scientists two decades of banging their heads against the wall to accomplish it. While most observers call that cause for celebration, a few researchers are worried the climatologists have been too successful. They point to an increasing tendency to blame…

Celebrate Acupuncture Awareness Week with a poll

Apparently, someone decided 27 February-4 March is Acupuncture Awareness Week. I'm happy to help out. You should be aware that acupuncture is total bollocks. There. Is that enough? No, it is not. We must also crash a stupid online poll. Devastate it, please. It's on a site run by dishonest quacks, so I think we have the potential to smash their poll so thoroughly that either they a) shut it down in embarrassment, or b) start faking the numbers. Do you think acupuncture should be made more widely available on the NHS? Yes 79.3% No 20.7% Somebody tell me why they have a gigantic picture of a…

Darwin's "Historical Sketch"

The prefatory "Historical Sketch" to Darwin's Origin of Species has traditionally been taken as a later addition that sought to deflect claims by individuals such as mathematician Baden Powell that Darwin plagiarized his ideas. Now, a study by Curtis Johnson of Lewis and Clark College argues that Darwin's personal correspondence shows that the sketch was actually written prior to the first printing of the book and had actually been begun as early as 1856. As Johnson notes, "Darwin was not reacting to hostile criticism" but why he eventually omitted the preface is a mystery. Johnson's paper is…

The Aging Brain Meets The Future of Social Networking

A while back I mentioned I've gotten a Facebook page and a Myspace page. They've been fun to toy around with, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're a harbinger of how we will all trawl for online information in the future. But to those who are asking to be friends at Myspace, leaving messages for me, or just wondeirng why the page is just so lame, I'm sorry to report that I haven't been able to log in for a few days. If my kids were just a couple years older, I'm sure I'd have all the tech support I needed to deal with this. But for now, or at least until the MySpace minions come to my aid,…

Psi. A debate.

When everyone thought extrasensory perception had disappeared into the same embarrassing past as phrenology it came back with a vengeance. In a recent article by Daryl Bem titled Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect evidence was presented that some have found very hard to ignore. Others have completely trashed the experimental methods and statistics (obviously... it IS science after all). There are a number of available pdf's of both the article and the commentary floating around the internet if you do a google search.…

Comcast stinks

One of several reasons that my posting frequency has been low lately is that my internet connection has been miserable. As in dial-up speed miserable. As in so slow that the online tools that measure connection speed have been showing me that I'm getting download speeds that I haven't had to experience since I upgraded to a 28.8k modem back in the mid-90s. So I call Comcast. Yes, their tools also show a big connection speed problem. No, there's probably not anything I can do on my end to fix it. Yes, they can set up a service call to have the problem fixed. They'll be able to squeeze me in…