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A family opportunity at the Atheist Convention

Are you going to the American Atheists National Convention in Des Moines, Iowa this April? Are you bringing the family? Are you concerned that the kids might get bored listening to Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Matt Dillahunty, Elizabeth Cornwell, me, Greta Christina, and Hector Avalos? There's an option: Camp Quest of Minnesota will take your 8-15 year olds off on a godless adventure for a day. Here are the details: Camp Quest of Minnesota Mini-Camp Event! Join us for a fun-filled mini-camp occurring one day only during the 2011 American Atheist Convention in Des Moines. There…

Vox Day abusing Darwin

Vox Day - who writes for WorldNetDaily - has published a book, The Irrational Atheist which is available for free online. It’s an attack on Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and other "new atheists". Brent Rasmussen over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has taken the book very seriously. So I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t start off very well for Day. Turning to chapter 1, you see the epigraph Vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science attributed to Charles Darwin. Is Darwin actually saying that the "voice of God" is not to be trusted in science? As anyone who…

Why This Universe?

Jim Lippard has highlighted an article in the latest Skeptic which provides a taxonomy (below) of answers to why this universe is the way it is. Jim neglected to mention that the article is freely available online as a PDF. 1. One Universe Models1.1 Meaningless Question1.2 Brute Fact1.3 Necessary/Only Way1.4 Almost Necessary/Limited Ways1.5 Temporal Selection1.6 Self Explaining 2. Multiple Universes2.1 Multiverse by Disconnected Regions (Spatial)2.2 Multiverse by Cycles (Temporal)2.3 Multiverse by Sequential Selection (Temporal)2.4 Multiverse by String Theory (with Minuscule Extra Dimensions…

Polar Bears Resorting to Cannibalism

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea have begun to cannibalize one another according to a recent study in the online publication Polar Biology. The polar bears' main food source in the area, ringed seals, are accessible only across ice shelves. Global climate change has melted these shelves, cutting off the bears from their food and forcing them to turn on one another.What would you do for a Klondike Bar? Polar bears often kill their own kind as a form of population control, territorial dominance and reproductive advantages, but killing each other for food had rarely been witnessed…

NY TIMES ON YOU TUBE AS STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION

In recent weeks, I've weighed in on You Tube as an emerging and important strategic communication tool. (Go here and here.) Now the NY Times adds this to the discussion IN this election, YouTube, with its extant social networks and the ability to forward a video clip and a comment with a flick of the mouse, has become a source of viral work-of-mouth. As a result, a disruptive technology that was supposed to upend a half-century-old distribution model of television is having a fairly disruptive effect on politics as well. "In politics, there is a very high signal-to-noise ratio," said Mr.…

Plant Love

Tragopogon pratensis Edvard Koinberg Herbarium Amoris Through March 16, the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, is hosting a collection of luminous botanical photographs by Edvard Koinberg. The exhibition, "Herbarium Amoris," is a tribute to Swedish-born systematist Carl Linnaeus, whose innovative classification of plants - by the number and gender of their sexual organs - reportedly caused a salacious stir in eighteenth-century Europe. This collection of photos is hardly controversial (Koinberg is no Georgia O'Keefe), but it is stunning. The color is simply breathtaking. Tulipa;…

Renaissance Science and Harry Potter

The National Library of Medicine just opened a new exhibition, "Harry Potter's World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine." "Harry Potter's World" explores the plants, animals, and magic featured in the Harry Potter book series and their roots in Renaissance traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science. The exhibition incorporates the works of several 15- and 16th-century thinkers mentioned in Harry Potter and looks at topics such as alchemy, astrology, and natural philosophy, as well as the ethical issues faced by both the fictitious characters from…

Stephen Hawking explains the universe

I shall have to turn on my television Sunday evening (7 or 8pm, depending on where in the US you are). Stephen Hawking will be on the Discovery Channel to answer the question, "Is There a Creator?" — I'm pretty sure he's going to answer "no." He also tersely answers a few questions online. Q: First, we wonder if you could comment on why you are tackling the existence of God question? A: I think Science can explain the Universe without the need for God. Q. What problems you are working on now, and what do you see as the big questions in theoretical physics? A: I'm working on the question…

Polar Bears Resorting to Cannibalism

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea have begun to cannibalize one another according to a recent study in the online publication Polar Biology. The polar bears' main food source in the area, ringed seals, are accessible only across ice shelves. Global climate change has melted these shelves, cutting off the bears from their food and forcing them to turn on one another.What would you do for a Klondike Bar? Polar bears often kill their own kind as a form of population control, territorial dominance and reproductive advantages, but killing each other for food had rarely been witnessed…

Lott tries to alter history

One feature of Lott's behaviour in this affair is his refusal to admit that he attributed the 98% figure to "national surveys" and to Gary Kleck. Instead, he told Slate "A lot of those discussions could have been written more clearly." However, in on-line publications by the Independence Institute and the Heartland Institute he wrote: "Kleck's study of defensive gun uses found that ninety-eight percent of the time simply brandishing the weapon is sufficient to stop an attack." This isn't the sightest bit unclear. He is attributing the 98% to Kleck. How…

Getting Started

I am still collecting topic ideas from the prior post, but several people asked how to get started in rocketry, and what is legal in the local neighborhood. Well, if there is no fire involved, it is probably OK, and so the air, water and baking soda+vinegar rockets are probably fine in just about any town. The later category makes for some sour showers though: This thing really pops up fast since it quickly evacuates all of its fuel (>95% of its weight). With a regular camera, the human reflex is not fast enough to capture the rocket in frame (there is no signal before it pops). So I set…

Female Monarch Butterflies on 30-year decline in eastern North America

Female monarchs in the eastern part of North America have declined in number over the last three decades, according to recent research. the female to male ratio for the butterflies east of the Rockies has gradually been changing. In the late 1970s, Davis said, females made up around 53 percent of the Monarch Butterfly population that migrated to Mexico for the winter. Today, that number has dropped to about 43 percent, he said, which paints a dire picture for population recruitment. Davis outlines his findings in a new paper co-authored with Eduardo Rendón-Salinas of World Wildlife Fund-…

The absent parent

It's been a while since I've posted on fatherhood. There's a couple of reasons for that. My wife brought up a disturbing point---she was uncomfortable with our daughter's picture being online. The reasons she listed made me shudder and turn white. I'm not sure whether or not I agree, but for now at least, I'm holding off on further photos until I finish thinking things through more clearly. The next is conflict. Like most working parents I feel terribly conflicted. Last week my daughter asked, "Daddy, will you come to my birthday party?" Cripes, she had to ask? Last night I called her…

Free issues of Marine Technology!

The March 2008 copy of Marine Technology magazine features the "ROV-AUV-UUV" annual report. You can read it online or sign up at Seadiscovery.com for a free subscription. It's probably the best deal in marine science next to student membership in the American Geophysical Union. Beside the ROV review, this month's issue also features the undersea art of Barry Pearson and a story called "Private Idaho" about US Navy submarine testing in the relatively silent water of the lakes in Idaho. Perhaps most exciting is the Saba Bank project highlighted in the feature article! I've been reporting from…

The New York Times may charge for content

That's what New York Magazine is reporting. By spring. I've actually paid for online content before, but generally have let my subscriptions lapse because the net has so much information that it didn't seem worth it. It seems likely that Google News and other aggregators will be the big winner out of this. In many areas The New York Times does have better content (e.g., Carl Zimmer's articles), but the big difference from other newspapers is the breadth of their coverage. It's one-stop-shopping, and most aggregators don't offer much of an advantage. With a price differential they may. All…

One More Reason Why We Need a Financial Transaction Tax: 'Investing' on the Millisecond Time Scale

It might come as a shock to some readers, but I actually don't mind investing--that is, long-term value investing--as long as it's not valued more than labor through the tax code (Got Capital Gains Tax?). But this isn't value investing, but surfing electrons: The most striking periodicity involves large peaks of activity separated by almost exactly 1000 milliseconds: they occur 10-30 milliseconds after the 'tick' of each second. The spasms, in contrast, seem to be governed not directly by clock time but by an event: the execution of a buy or sell order, the cancellation of an order, or the…

Molecular biology in the age of kits

I touched a nerve in another post by mentioning molecular biology kits. Let's face it. Cloning kits, sequencing kits, and their relatives are the laboratory equivalent of frozen cookie dough. With frozen cookie dough, anyone can bake hot, steamy, chocolate chip cookies that taste great. You don't have to read a recipe, do any math, or figure out how to "cream" butter and sugar together. Just spoon the dough on the pan, put the pan in the oven, and 10 short minutes later: ummm, cookies. Lab work and cooking have much in common. At one time, only a few people were good cooks. Now,…

Understanding the Implications of Libya

Two good recent articles on the implications for oil prices and production of the situation in Libya. First, Tom Whipple's always cogent overall analysis: While the 1.6 million barrels a day (b/d) that the Libyans pumped in January may not appear significant in a world that produces some 88 million barrels each day, we should remember that those barrels are being consumed somewhere in a world where they are consumed just as fast as they are produced. If there is anything that we have learned in the last 40 years, it is that relatively small disruptions in oil production can lead to…

Michael Cortese uses personal vendetta to deprive SSA of much needed funds

As you know, as part of a fund raiser for the Secular Student Alliance, I wrote a novella called Sungodogo, which I've since made available on Amazon for the Kindle (and in other formats ... I'll have a print version in January some time). The book is about a handful of people who travel across the Congo in search of an elusive primate. What they find instead is quite unexpected. Yes, there are elusive primates but not at all what was expected. The story then becomes the origin story for the modern Skeptics and Secular Movements, and explains the rise of anti-feminist haters like those of…

Links for 2010-11-18

Confessions of a Community College Dean: Mini-Me "Fans of cheesy-bad movies will remember Mini-me as Dr. Evil's sidekick/mascot in the Austin Powers movies. Dr. Evil had his share of great lines ("the Diet Coke of evil"), but his true awfulness shone forth in his creation of Mini-Me. Mini-me was exactly how he sounds -- a smaller, but recognizable, version of Dr. Evil himself. I've seen managers hire Mini-me's to help them, and I really have to wonder what they're thinking. It's much smarter to hire your opposites. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Mini-me's have the same strengths and…

Congrats, Phil

First, PZ, now Phil Plait (aka Bad Astronomer) - the science bloggers are starting to invade the pages (online and hardcopy) of Seed Magazine. The lines are blurring. The old media model is crawling slowly towards the ash heap of history....

It's just a Theory....

The new edition (first online edition) of Scope, the MIT Grad Program in Science Writing's student webzine, is out (hat-tip to Tom) with several great articles. Check out, for instance, Words (Just Might) Hurt Me: The Trouble with 'Theory'.

I am Ceiling Cat

tags: Caturday, online quiz My drinking pal and fellow SciBling, John, whom I still would like to see in a speedo, is being a bad boy by posting a silly and nonscientific Caturday survey that you might enjoy (my results are below the fold);

Balko's Column on Gambling Ban

Radley Balko's latest column at Fox News focuses on Frist's ridiculous attempt to ban online gambling. He deftly punctures every one of the false reasons offered in support of the legislation and points out the rank hypocrisy behind the bill.

Tangled Bank #72

The latest Tangled Bank is online at Ouroboros, and it's a big one. I noticed what seemed to be an awful lot of entries whizzing through my mailbox on the way, so I had a suspicion that we were giving Chris a workout with this edition.

Conspiracy theories

The online journal Episteme has a special issue out on conspiracy theories. Examples include God as a conspiracy theory, the 9/11 WTC "controlled demolition" theory and questions of rationality of those who engage in them. Late note: This is a subscription journal.

Free issue of Annual Review of Anthropology

The 2007 Annual Review of Anthropology has just been published, and is freely available online. It includes reviews called The Archaeology of Religious Ritual, The Archaeology of Sudan and Nubia, Genomic Comparisons of Humans and Chimpanzees and Anthropology and Militarism. 

Lessig's Wireside Chat

In Cambridge, at a "Wireside chat" on "Fair Use, Politics, and Online Video" by legal scholar, IP expert and corrupt-government critic Lawrence Lessig. He's comparing the addictivity/potential danger of wifi to smoking. Say it ain't so! I need my wifi!

Emotion Study

Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog is doing another online study, this time on emotions, and he needs participants. So if you have about 10 minutes, and you'd like to participate in some real live research, click here and follow his instructions.

Davies on six studies of deaths in Iraq

Nicholas Davies has an article Estimating civilian deaths in Iraq - six surveys in Online Journal. Critics often point to the Iraq Body Count and the Iraq living conditions survey as contradicting the Lancet study when they do not. Davies explains why.

Mooney seminar at Crooked Timber

Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin has organised an on-line seminar on Chris Mooney's War on Science. Lots of interesting reading, including two guest posters: someone called Tim Lambert and Steve Fuller. PZ Myers wasn't real impressed with Fuller's contribution.

No interracial marriage guy video

He makes the argument that what he does is legal. It probably is. But he is still a dickwad. Watch CBS News Videos Online Being mixed race = being drunk or being on drugs. Oh, and Bobby Jindal proves himself a moron once again.

Bernie Madoff on Frontline

You can watch the new Frontline documentary on Bernie's fraud online. If you're a Madoff-junkie, like I am, absolutely nothing new in terms of substance. But, it is really striking how much Fairfield Greenwich was run by total bullshit artists.

What 'Bout Them Libertarians?

Hmmm, after a whole week of fantastic traffic, it has suddenly gone down through the floor today, so I better act quickly and post something really provocative - an old anti-Libertarian screed that is bound to attract trolls (and traffic).... Much of the stuff on this blog is based on the bimodal (bipolar?) view of the world: there are Conservatives and there are Liberals, and that's it. Lakoff, Ducat, Frank and the like spend much time explaining the two, or just trying to explain the strange Conservative animals to the Liberals. But, as I stated before, only about a third of Americans are…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Leah D. Gordon

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Leah D. Gordon from MEASURE Evaluation to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your…

How can global health funding be better coordinated?

It seems simple enough – a proliferation of donors in global health means more money to solve some of the world’s most pressing health issues. Right? Not exactly. A lot of new evidence is coming out that suggests that the lack of coordination of different funding sources can be a burden and perhaps a detriment to global health. And the way that traditional funders think about the locus of health spending in countries to which they donate may not even be entirely accurate. As a recent report from the Center for Global Development In fact, as the report finds, most funding for health is…

"Science" kits that teach stereotypes.

It's the time of year when the mailbox starts filling up with catalogues. At the Free-Ride house, many of these are catalogues featuring "educational" toys and games. Now, some of these toys and games are actually pretty cool. Others, to my mind, are worse than mere wastes of money. For your consideration, three "science" kits targeted at girls: Archimedes got scientific insight from a bathtub, but he wasn't required to wear eye-makeup to do it. Spa Science The kit offers itself as a way "to cultivate a girl's interest in science" through the making of "beauty products like an oatmeal…

Friday Fractal XIX

The other day, I put up a small question about history. What better place could there be to put my answer, but in the form of a fractal? Patterns seem to almost repeat themselves. Sweeping changes result from a single, initial circumstance. Each point is connected to another, within the same set. Are these descriptions of events in history, or the rules defining a rippled Julia set? Or perhaps the rings of a tree? The trunk of a cottonwood tree, showing rings formed over many years. Cottonwood trees (below) line the bank of Walnut Creek, which appealed to Sarah H. Church when she arrived…

AAAS 2010 meeting - the Press Room....why?

I arrived in San Diego on Thursday night and checked in my hotel that was 6 miles away, almost in Mexico - I could see the lights of Tijuana from the hotel. I had to take a cab each morning and evening. On Friday morning, I got up bright and early and came to the convention center, lugging my huge and heavy laptop with me. And that was the first surprise of the day - there was no wifi anywhere in the Convention Center, and almost no power outlets anywhere: something I am not used to as the meetings I tend to go to are pretty techie and take care of such details. Not even speakers/panelists…

Birds in the News 167

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter The only egg known to be collected by Charles Darwin, recently rediscovered. Image: University of Cambridge. Birds and American Law The American Federation of Aviculture Inc. (AFA), the Avicultural Society of America (ASA) and the National Animal Interest Alliance (NAIA) issued an action alert together that opposes H.R. 669, a bill banning most nonnative animals in the United States. "H.R. 669 is an 'anti-animal bill'. There is no amendment that can fix this bill," states the action alert. H.R. 669 is a bill that…

Browsing biology on the web: NextBio

Last year p-ter put up a post pointing to useful online tools such as Haplotter. One of the great things about biology today is that so much of the data from genomics is being thrown out there within reach of the plebs. And a lot of value is being added through user interfaces which smooth the connection between you and these databases. So check out NextBio; from the FAQ: NextBio is a life science search engine that enables researchers and clinicians to access and understand the world's life sciences information. With NextBio, in just one click you can search through tens of thousands of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Microbes Compete With Animals For Food By Making It Stink: Microbes may compete with large animal scavengers by producing repugnant chemicals that deter higher species from consuming valuable food resources, a new study suggests. Ecologists have long recognized microbes as decomposers and pathogens in ecological communities. But their role as classic consumers who produce chemicals to compete with larger animals could be an important and common interaction within many ecosystems, according to a paper published this week in the journal Ecology Decoded Sea Urchin Genome Shows Surprising…

SciAm on Expelled

First Fox News, now Scientific American gives Expelled both barrels. They dedicated a fair amount of space to ripping into the movie, and you might be wondering if it isn't giving the movie more publicity than it deserves, a question I'm getting asked a lot, too. Of course it is! The controversy is exactly what they want, since it will help put butts in seats. However, this is bad publicity, and what serves our ends is that people see the movie skeptically, and are made aware of the fundamental dishonesty of the makers. John Rennie notes this problem: Rather, it seems a safe bet that the…

Scientific Red Cards: a good idea or opening a hornet's nest?

From The Scientist: Flagging fraud: A team of French life sciences grad students has launched an online repository of fraudulent scientific papers, and is calling on researchers to report studies tainted by misconduct. The website -- called Scientific Red Cards -- is still in a beta version, but once it's fully operational it should help the scientific community police the literature even when problems slip past journal editors, the students claim. The database might also prevent researchers from citing papers that they don't even realize are fraudulent, said Claire Ribrault, a PhD student in…

A useful confession

This week's Nature has a short report on the Gonzalez tenure affair. It has an interesting admission from Gonzalez. Gonzalez, who has been at Iowa State in Ames since 2001, was denied tenure on 9 March. He is now appealing the decision on the grounds that his religious belief, not the quality of his science, was the basis for turning down his application. "I'm concerned my views on intelligent design were a factor," he says. His "views on intelligent design" were his "religious belief"? OK, that's good enough for me. No tenure. It also includes comments from Bob Park, which reflect my own…

Attempt at Human Bird-Like Flight

John Childs is the very first person to fly in America. He did it in 1757, on September 13th, from the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston. This is the same church from which Sarah Palin hung some lanterns to direct Michel Bachmann on her ride to Concord New Hampshire to warn the British that we were "Not going to take it any more." Childs tied himself to a glider made of bird feathers, and he did it a three times in a row, firing off guns the third time, but he caused such a distraction that he got banned from doing it again. Based on the description of the event, Childs was really…

New Open Access Journal

From a Press Release: Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association and Cambridge University Press launch new Open Access journal The Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) and Cambridge University Press announced today the launch of the APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing - a groundbreaking new Open Access journal that will serve as an international forum for signal and information processing researchers across a broad spectrum of research, ranging from traditional modalities of signal processing to emerging areas. APSIPA…

I Thought We Solved This NSA Thing Long Ago

Or, at least, I'm surprised that this earlier implemented solution has not been mentioned in all the discussion about NSA spying. Richard Stallman invented an approach to obviating the NSA's attempts to spy on email. He included it in emacs, the world's greatest text editor. Here how it works, from the manual. The "M" is the "alt" key (for all practical purposes) and "M-x followed by a word implements the command attached to that word. 32.6 Mail Amusements M-x spook adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that…

Alsengem Found in Sweden

Lund Alsengems are little multilayered button-like discs of coloured glass with incised human stick-figures on one side. Archaeology became aware of them in 1871 when one was found on the Danish island of Als. These gems are pretty coarse and ugly compared to the exquisite agate and intaglio ones of Classical antiquity, but they nevertheless have their place in an archaeologist's heart. Sigtuna On the Continent, Alsengems are found as part of church art of the 11th through 13th centuries such as reliquaries, book covers and altar crosses. Their core area is the Netherlands, Lower Saxony and…

Arsenic poisoning from kelp supplements

From a news release by the University of California at Davis: The new study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives - available online at www.ehponline.org - was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UCD Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-year history of worsening hair loss, fatigue and memory loss. Seafood is our primary source of arsenic in the food supply and we all have detectable arsenic in our blood after a plate of oysters. But this case was particularly disturbing: Over a period of several months, the woman's short-…