Search Content

Displaying results 7551 - 7600 of 87950

Computer Engineer Barbie!

Yesterday was International Women's Day and since I'm a firm believer in International Better Late Than Never Day, I thought I thought I'd add my little contribution to the celebration. Or at least highlight a great post from someone else. Computer Scientist Amy Csizmar Dalal's recent blog post Does Barbie's career matter? has some great things to say about the importance of role models and positive examples for girls who might be interested in scientific or technical careers: I was a somewhat normal (don't laugh too hard) but nerdy kid growing up who loved math and science. And while I had…

Not an “accident”: Emilio Dodd, 55, suffers fatal work-related injury in Lewisville, TX

Emilio Dodd, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, September 6, while working at the Waste Management landfill on Railroad Street. The Lewisville Texan reports: the incident occurred at about 3:30 pm according to Lewisville police, “a resident with an F-350 pickup and dual-axle trailer had brought in a load of demolition debris to dump. Dodd was directing the driver as he backed the trailer up in the dumping area” ”a handle protruding from the trailer became entangled in Dodd’s clothing, causing Dodd to be pulled down. The 9,000 pound trailer drove over Dodd’s chest.” Federal…

Food banks use technology to fight hunger

As many of us indulged in Thanksgiving meals last week, NPR’s Planet Money podcast and WAMU’s Metro Connection shared stories on ways food banks are using technology to improve food distribution. The Planet Money story focuses on how Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, distributes the donated food it gets from farmers, manufacturers, retailers, and government organizations. Until a few years ago, the headquarters staff didn’t know enough about what kinds of food local organizations most needed or could arrange to get – which is why a food bank in Alaska missed out on a…

Do you want an imp under your desk? If it runs Ubuntu?

I might. This is a preliminary look, based just on the web site and some tweets with the developer, of the imp (all lower case), a small computer somewhere in technology and power, perhaps, between a Raspberry pi (which is mainly a hobbiest toy) and the Intel Nuk (which is sort of a non-Mac Mac Mini). It is called by its makers "The Open Source Computer: Made for consumers." It is a Linux-installed device, as is your smart phone and, well, the entire Internet. So the technology is well tested at that level. The imp team describes it this way: imp is a small, yet powerful computer designed…

Go Fund David Weinlick

Some of you may know David Weinlick, especially if you are active in politics in the Twin Cities, or associated with the University of Minnesota. He is well known around these parts for his political activism and important role in the DFL (that’s how Minnesotans spell “Democratic Party”). He was the Party Affairs Director for the Minnesota DFL until 2014, and until recently the Vice Chair of the Fourth Congressional District for the Minnesota DFL. If that does not ring a bell, this might: David Weinlick essentially invented a new kind of TV (now known as reality TV) when he asked his friends…

Putting the Yellow in your Urine

Let me give you a little back story. As many of you know, I'm new to scienceblogs, and one of the first things we get to do is join a message board full of all the bloggers (sciblings) here. Well, suffice it to say, a contentious discussion took place between me and another scibling, which resulted in my being called a total n00b in front of the entire world. So, what better way to make peace than by having me -- an astrophysicist -- answer a question about physiology?! Let's take a look at what I've got, since I'm a frequent solicitor of questions: Why is my pee yellow in the morning, but…

An 'alternative' course of 'treatment' for a kid with CFS. You know where this is going.

There has been a ton of hilarious drama going on with the XMRV fiasco, but I havent been writing about it because I dont actually care.  I 'cared' about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because it was associated with a retrovirus.  Turns out it was all a mirage-- The retrovirus known as XMRV is not infecting humans, and wouldnt be able to even if it wanted to. So Judy Mikovits hiding on a boat and the Whittemores pissing of the Feds and the Mob, while fun for day-time soaps, is not real interesting for me as a science blogger (Note to Mikovits-- your shit was contaminated by XMRV plasmid or…

Four Stone Hearth 7

Dear Reader, welcome to the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival -- in science land! 4SH is about anthropology in the widest (American) sense: nothing human is alien to us, from Homo habilis bones via Early Medieval metalworking debris to on-line gaming subcultures. Aardvarchaeology is my new blog, started only a few weeks ago. Before, I blogged at Salto sobrius, where you may have read entries about archaeology during 2006. Anthro scholars are rare here at Scienceblogs, most of the others being specialised in natural sciences like biology. But I feel at home here. For one thing, my opinion is…

The Right Admits to Anti-gay Bias?

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for catching this article in the National Review Online, containing this quote: Fox News contributor Mort Kondracke put it best when he said last night, "I think it was totally underhanded -- the outing of Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter.... And it struck me as a low blow designed to weaken the Bush-Cheney team with right-wingers who might not know that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter." While the Democrats have been hurling specious and unsubstantiated charges about Republicans suppressing the African-American vote, Kerry and Edwards are leading their party's…

Links for 2009-12-01

A Good Author Is Hard to Find - Books - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper "Mention the word "slush" to anyone who's worked in publishing for longer than five minutes, and you're likely to get an expression of sheer horror. Slush pile is a term used to refer to the collective mass of unsolicited manuscripts and query letters--novel or nonfiction synopses with a few sample pages attached--that daily deluges the offices of agents and editors throughout the industry. Occasional hits emerge from the morass: Twilight began as an unsolicited query. But far, far more often, the slush pile's…

Montel Williams' blow-up: a symptom of multiple sclerosis or bad judgment?

I was way behind on this story relative to the pharma blogosphere (John Mack's Pharma Marketing Blog, Ed Silverman's Pharmalot, and the WSJ Health Blog), but Montel Williams has created a PR disaster for Partnership for Prescription Assistance of the industry group, PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America). While promoting prescription assistance programs in Savannah on Friday, Williams blew up, as it were, at a Savannah Morning News high school intern. The intern, Courtney Scott, asked Williams, "Do you think pharmaceutical companies would be discouraged from research…

More on FDA risk aversion

Ronald Bailey at Reason has an article about the costs of the FDA black box warning on antidepressants: Excessive caution is risky, too. Back in 1992, Congress, worried about the slow rate of approvals, passed legislation imposing FDA user fees on pharmaceutical companies. Flush with these new funds the agency hired 1000 additional drug reviewers and slashed new drug review time from 30 months to 15 months. Now critics claim that the FDA is in the thrall of drug companies and is endangering the public's health by rushing dangerous new drugs onto the market. As evidence they cite the dangerous…

Breaking the Tyranny of the News Peg in Hurricane Coverage

The NY Times' Andrew Revkin details a study at Nature that finds that in the Caribbean there have been centuries where strong hurricanes occurred frequently even though ocean temperatures were cooler than those measured today. Revkin reports that although the new study does not necessarily conflict with other recent research connecting global warming to more intense hurricanes, it does show that factors other than ocean temperatures can shape trends in the power of storms. Revkin quotes climate scientist Judith Curry, ending the article with an important focus on the policy implications of…

Chimpanzee study reveals genome variation hotspots

Interesting research coming out of Arizona State University: Researchers believe that dynamic regions of the human genome -- "hotspots" in terms of duplications and deletions -- are potentially involved in the rapid evolution of morphological and behavioral characteristics that are genetically determined. Now, an international team of researchers, including a graduate student and an associate professor from Arizona State University, are finding similar hotspots in chimpanzees, which has implications for the understanding of genomic evolution in all species. "We found that chimpanzees have…

4S Day Three

On day three I only made two sessions - and the second was incredibly disappointing (I have serious problems with the study design) so I'll just briefly chat about the first, which was pretty awesome. Monitoring, Modeling, and Memory (II): Methods for the Study of Cyberinfrastructure (and Other Large Distributed Phenomena) This is a pretty big project that stretches over maybe about 10 schools. Christine Borgman is a/the lead for it. David Ribes talked about his work with a large hydrology project. It was interesting how the technical support folks had to negotiate the needs of both engineers…

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks FAQ#1: How did Skloot learn about HeLa cells?

I mentioned a while ago that I'll be posting answers to FAQs about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an ongoing series on this blog. I thought I'd start the FAQs with one of the most commonly asked questions: How did you learn about Henrietta and the HeLa cells, and why did they grab you the way they did? Here is the answer, which I also posted about over on Powells.com's book blog this last week as part of a little guest blogging stint: I first learned about Henrietta Lacks in the late 80s, when I was 16 and sitting in a basic biology class at Portland Community College (…

Exploring Oahu: Camping at Malaekahana

This weekend, Barry, Brian, Aziem and I headed up the windward coast to go camping. We went online and got a permit for a site on Malaekahana State Recreation Area, a 37 acre gated park just north of La'ie. Camping is one of my favorite things that I rarely seem to find the time to do, and since Barry and I have our hearts set on hiking out to Kalalau Beach at some point, we figured we'd better try out the new small tent we bought and get some practice roughing it a little. More importantly, I figured I'd give my brand new Canon EOS Rebel T2i a spin. Here are some shots from the trip: Here…

Pandora's Tim Westergren comes for a visit

A very exciting day here in the Southland as Tim Westergren, Pandora co-founder, comes to the area for town hall meetings with Pandora listeners at UNC and in Durham. Have you used Pandora and its Music Genome Project algorithm for listening to music and learning about bands like those you already like? I've got four stations setup, one each for Wilco, Dire Straits, the Avett Brothers, and Modern Skirts. The system then allows you to "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" each song so that the algorithm refines your musical tastes for future selections. Well, the Music Genome Project is on the road…

John McCain was for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act before he was against it.

A little spat that John McCain is having with YouTube has gotten a bit of press lately. Basically, he's not happy because YouTube has been taking his videos down whenever they get a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice from a copyright holder. Apparently, this has happened to McCain fairly often, possibly because his campaign has gotten into the habit of using other people's material without their permission. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an internet service provider (like YouTube) is only immune from copyright infringement suits if they promptly take down…

CNN and atheism - it's boycott time.

Update: It appears that CNN will be re-airing the story at 8 pm Eastern tonight (Thursday, 8 Feb). The original panel will be replaced by an interview with Richard Dawkins. A recent CNN story on atheism has sparked a great deal of outrage from the online atheist community. The story, which was broadcast on the January 31st edition of Paula Zahn Now (transcript) (video) detailed the plight of two families of atheists who say they were ostracized from their communities as the result of their beliefs - in one case, just for having identified themselves as atheists, and in another for objecting…

Silencing the climate deniers: A cautionary tale from LinkedIn

Over at Linked In, the professionally oriented social networking service, there's a discussion group called "Climate Change - I care!" Most of its members are those who share a concern for what anthropogenic global warming is threatening to do to civilization as we know it. Until this week, membership was open to anyone. But the moderator just ejected one member who has, shall we say, a contrarian point of view. Was that a wise thing to do? The member, Leigh Haugen, only posted pseudoscientific rants about the conspiratorial nature of the entire climatology community, and if he does actually…

Science blogging conference

The 2007 NC Science Blogging Conference came off as a great success thanks to the vision, passion, and general butt-busting of Anton Zuiker, Bora, Brian, and Paul and the sharing of wisdom by all the speakers. A fellow health professional-turned-journalist remarked to me that professional meeting planners couldn't have done a better job. Organization, advertising, facilities, securing sponsor support, and publishing a blog anthology would have been overwhelming to a group five times the size. Thank you all! A comprehensive list of posts surrounding the entire conference was put together by…

Perry's Arcana

From 1810-11, architect and amateur naturalist George Perry published The Arcana, a lavishly illustrated, serial natural history magazine. Although Perry intended for the serial issues to be assembled by his subscribers into a book, only thirteen complete copies are known to survive today. More than a third of the known copies are in Australia - perhaps fittingly, as Perry was the first to publish an illustration of the koala (above). Perry's work is not well known; in researching this post, all I could find online were auction listings and occasional references to a recent facsimile…

Grappling With Stigma: Influence of Social Media

A while back, href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2007/11/sherwin_nuland_a_history_of_el.php">Gred Laden and href="http://ectweb.blogspot.com/2007/10/video-of-lecture-on-electroconvulsive.html">Dr. Shock independently linked to a remarkable video.  In it, a famous author-surgeon-professor reveals that he had had an episode of severe depression.  Moreover, he underwent treatment with electroconvulsive therapy.  It worked, he got back to work, and went on to have a distinguished career.  The video can be seen here -- href="http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/189">Sherwin Nuland…

Upcoming Events

For those in the Boston metro area. First up, next Friday, November 9th, there will be a conference being held here at the Medical Campus entitled Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences. Not only is fellow blogger Anna Kushnir part of the organizing committee, but Bora Zivkovic (from A Blog Around the Clock) is one of the invited panelists. Here is the program: "Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences" Friday, November 9, 1:00 - 6:00 pm TMEC Walter Amphitheater, Harvard Medical School 260 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115…

Global Water Dancing is Imminent

It happens on June 25th. This is going to be a little like the Rapture but it's not the end of the world and it really will happen .... Water Collection: Ethiopia from water.org on Vimeo. The Event : Global Water Dances Initiative - "Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere" Global Water Dances is a world event planned for June 25, 2011. On this day, a 24 hour series of dances around the globe will be danced, centered around water issues. Beginning in the Western Pacific Rim, and encircling the globe, the series of dances will also be broadcast online. ... These dances will use dance and music to…

CONvergence and SkepchiCON

Convergence is an annual science fiction and fantasy convention that is held over July 4th weekend in Minneapolis. The Skepchicks organize a "track" at Convergence called SkepchiCON, which is a series of discussions about skepticism and stuff. At the risk of getting into all sorts of trouble, I'm going to be on some of the panels in this track, and I'm planning to attend a few events that I'm not empaneled for. And, just so I'll know where to find it later when I need it, I thought I'd blog my tentative schedule. (Please note: The price to register for the CON goes way up on May 15th, so if…

Tibet Protests Widen in Scope

There is trouble in Tibet. And some reports indicate that things are only going to get worse in the near future. Protests over Chinese Rule, controlled by both police and Chinese military, have spread beyond Lhasa, according to recent reports, and the Dalai Lama has called for an international inquiry into the deaths of many protesters. The clashes in Aba, known as Ngawa in Tibetan, happened around 1200 local time on Sunday, according to Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet.... "According to reliable reports the police opened fire," said Ms Saunders, who is in London but…

And the lovliest of all was a Ceratophrys ornata...

The fungal fate awaiting our amphibian friends has frog-lovers everywhere concerned. Now, a group of biologists from the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago are preparing to help the endangered species the best way they know--providing an artificial habitat: Now scientists are scurrying to collect frogs and put them in temporary tanks in hotel rooms and people's houses until the building's ready, Caballero said. Plans to save 65 species have been downscaled to the dozen or so most endangered--including the beautiful, iridescent Panamanian golden frog. The species is a cultural icon for its people as…

Cheap as chips: 23andMe slashes the price of personal genomics

23andMe is one of three companies currently providing chip-based personal genomics assays, which provide information about up to a million sites of common variation throughout the human genome. These companies provide insight into a limited but informative slice of your genetic diversity, as I discussed yesterday, giving you information about variants contributing to the risk of a number of common diseases and other traits. Since their launch earlier this year, 23andMe and competitor deCODEme have offered their genome scan services for a fraction under $1,000. Now 23andMe has announced a…

ScienceOnline 2010

ScienceOnline 2010 is underway, and for those not lucky enough to be in attendance, there are other ways to participate. On The ScienceOnline 2010 Blog, Coturnix tells us how to keep up with the latest discussion via social networking outlets, and on Discovering Biology In a Digital World, Sandra Porter offers an even more radical alternative. Coturnix writes "a record number of SciBlings will be in attendance" this year, and overall the conference will have over 250 participants. Along with online civility which we covered last week, another topic at the conference will be the future of…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Hope Leman is a Research Information Technologist at Samaritan Health Services. She runs ScanGrants (a free, subscribable (via email or RSS) online listing of grant opportunities, prizes and scholarships in the health and life sciences and community service fields), tweets and blogs on Significant Science. At the conference, Hope will do a demo of ScanGrants. Ernie…

Psychology of Political Ideology

There is a new manuscript online which I will undoubtedly find interesting, I bet, once I find time to read its 52 pages (OK, double-spaced TXT with a long list of references and an Appendix of stats): The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind (pdf) by Dana R. Carney, John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling, Kate Niederhoffer and Jeff Potter. ABSTRACT: Seventy-five years of theory and research on personality differences between political liberals and conservatives has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and…

Two Developments in DTC Drug Marketing

Jeanne Whalen of the Journal reports that European officials are taking a step towards allowing drug marketing: The European Commission proposed legislation Wednesday that would let drug companies give consumers "objective and nonpromotional" information about their medicines in print and online. Currently, drug companies can't provide any information to European consumers, except on leaflets found inside drug packaging. The legislative proposals must be approved by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers before becoming law, a process that could take years. Meanwhile, in the US, it…

PLoS Medicine is Five

Five years ago, PLoS Medicine, the second journal in the PLoS stable, sent its first call for submissions. It has quickly gained reputation as one of the top medical journals. In the editorial published last night, the Editors look back at the five years so far, and also look forward into the future: In the age of the Internet, five years can seem like an eternity. PLoS Medicine issued its first call for papers five years ago and the inaugural issue went live online five years ago this October--for those of you who are nostalgic, check out the original call for papers [1]. Anniversaries often…

ScienceOnline09 - arts and humanities

Let's look at few other sessions on the Program - on topics that are rarely seen at either tech or science meetings: Art and science -- online and offline: This session is moderated by Jessica Palmer and Glendon Mellow: Art is not just illustration. And it is not the opposite of science ("Two Cultures"). How can the two work together and help each other? Web and the History of Science: This session is moderated by GG, Brian Switek, Scicurious and John McKay: Why is History of Science important for scientists? How to blog about it. How does Open Access and the Web in general (Google Books in…

Tweetlinks, 9-21-09

Seven keys to building healthy online community Is your work cited in journals which are not ISI listed? Publish or Perish God And Prosperity - Ronald Bailey sums up a new paper by Gregory Paul in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Why the news media became irrelevant--and how social media can help UCLA Art | Sci Center & Lab - UCLA Art/Sci Center promotes Third Culture: collaboration between (media) art & (bio/nano) sciences. How Bad Papers Get Published in Good Journals Begging meerkat pups Sea Stars Grow Faster as Water Warms AT&T 1993 "You Will" Ads - In 1993, you couldn't…

Let's meet in New York City next week

I will be on a panel, Open Science: Good For Research, Good For Researchers? next week, February 19th (3:00 to 5:00 pm EST at Columbia University, Morningside Campus, Shapiro CEPSR Building, Davis Auditorium). I am sure my hosts will organize something for us that day before and/or after the event, but Mrs.Coturnix and I will be there a couple of days longer. So, I think we should have a meetup - for Overlords, SciBlings, Nature Networkers, independent bloggers, readers and fans ;-) Is Friday evening a good time for this? Or is Saturday better? Let me know. You can follow the panel on…

Call for Action: guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

In the USA: Effective this week, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have proposed FY08 spending bills that direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that NIH-funded researchers are required to deposit copies of NIH-funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine. This is big step toward making the policy a success -- we need your help now more than ever. The bills now go to the full House and the Senate for approval. To help ensure success there, we ask that all supporters contact their Representatives AND…

Coyne on Unscientific America

An important tip to book authors who want to decry the ability of others to engage a consensus: don't alienate the literate, thinking part of your readership yourself. Mooney and Kirshenbaum make much of the fact that those wicked "New Atheists" are going to drive away support for science, a fact not in evidence, but they seem oblivious to the fact that their recommendation to hush up a significant element of the public voice of science is going to alienate us, and it's working to bite them in the ass right now. In other words, Jerry Coyne's review of their book is online. I'll start with my…

Personal DNA test

This test is a little more involved than most, and probably takes 10 minutes to complete, unless your neighbor's wireless connection that you are piggybacking crashes on page eight, as happened to me. In that case, it will take a little longer to complete. So what are your results according to this test? Do you agree with these results? What did you think of the questions? I found many of the questions very difficult to answer because the situation causes me to react differently to a similar scenario. For example, the question regarding a familiar/new dish at a familiar/new restaurant…

Are You an Evil Genius?

So one of my blog siblings and fellow evil genius, Janet, poses a simple question; what are you going to do with your idiocy/genius? She then proposed this test as a means of quantifying this. Considering that I am unemployable, and therefore, doing nothing worthwhile whatsoever with my energy, rumored brain space or heck, with my life (well, except entertaining you, dear readers!), I decided to give her proposed test a go. I am 59% Evil Genius. Evil courses through my blood. Lies and deceit motivate my evil deeds. Crushing the weaklings and idiots that do nothing but interfere in my…

Friday Fun: 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror

Continuing my strange obsession with lists of books... Locus Magazine is the bible of the sffh business -- both in print and online. Every year they poll their reviewers and various other industry people and come up with a pretty extensive recommended reading list for the year. Their categories include: sf novels, fantasy novels, YA books, first novels, collections, original anthologies, reprint anthologies, best of year anthologies, non-fiction, art books, novellas, novelettes and short stories. I'm obviously not going to reprint all their lists here -- just the sf novel one to give you a…

What Pet Would You Be?

tags: pet, online quiz I actually could be either of two pet types (the second pet type is below the fold); You Would Be a Pet Bird You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance. You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them. You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a…

A little justice in Wisconsin

Last year, Kara Neumann died of juvenile diabetes. Her death was slow and painful, and entirely unnecessary — her parents believed in the power of prayer and allowed her obvious symptoms to go untreated except for entreaties to an invisible and inert god. They weren't opposed to technology in general, since they did sent out an email to an online ministry requesting 'emergency prayer', but they did neglect the only technology that mattered, a simple injection of insulin. There was some concern at that time that there was actually a loophole in Wisconsin law that seems to say that Christianity…

Not an “accident”: Eric McClellan, 55, suffers fatal work-related injury in Chesterfield County, Virginia

Eric McClellan, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 25 while working at Reynolds Metals in Chesterfield County, Virginia. WTVR reports: Mr. McClellan was “caught in a machine.” His widow said her husband worked for Reynolds Metals for 25 years and was a seasoned machinist. The incident occurred at the company’s packaging plant on Reymet Road. Reynolds Metals is a subsidiary of Alcoa. Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Virginia OSHA has conducted an inspection at this Reynolds Metals facility, at least going back to 2000. A Reynolds Metals plant…

Not an “accident”: Gary Keenen, 26, and Kelsey Bellah, 27 suffer fatal work-related injuries near Colgate, OK

Gary Keenen, 26, and Kelsey Bellah, 27 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, December 19 while working on a drilling rig two miles west of Colgate, OK. News reports provide some initial information on the workers’ deaths: The explosion and fire occurred at a rig owned by Pablo Energy. A representative of the State Fire Marshall’s office indicated that three other workers were injured. “Two were transported to trauma centers in critical condition, while another sustained burns to his hands." Current reporting does not indicate whether the deceased and injured victims worked for Pablo…

Speaking at TEDxAlbany, December 3

I've known this for a while now, but they just announced it officially: I'll be speaking at TEDxAlbany this year, on "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning": You might think that the bizarre predictions of quantum mechanics and relativity– particles that are also waves, cats that are both alive and dead, clocks that run at different rates depending on how you’re moving– and only come into play in physics laboratories or near black holes. In fact, though, even the strangest features of modern physics are essential for everything around us. The mundane process of getting up and getting…

Sea ice: oh no, not again

Yay, more nonsense about sea ice: the traditional "US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 201x", where this time x=6. Does anyone actually believe this rubbish? If so, I have money just sitting around, bored, twiddling its little green fingers and waiting to take your bet. If "summer ice free" means "oh yeah, not actually ice free, but less than 1 million square km" then please form an orderly line. Even odds, let's say £1k. Who's first up? Do I see Nafeez Ahmed there? Or Wieslaw Maslowski? No? How odd. Found by the lost [*]: * Ed Hawkins @ed_hawkins: Brave prediction by Maslowski for…

links for 2008-01-31

Jacks of Science â Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory "Ever since I saw the painting shown above, I've wanted to suffocate birds in my very own home laboratory. As I got older, the desire to destroy life subsided, but the desire for a home laboratory remained." (tags: science biology chemistry silly gadgets) The Washington Monthly "Congratulations then, cold and flu, on prevailing over typhoid and cholera." (tags: US politics silly) Confessions of a Community College Dean: Administrative Personae Academic adminstrators as movie characters. (tags: academia education movies silly)…