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A fine example of Christian cowardice

Raving creationist nutbags get shredded pretty thoroughly when they make comments here, I know. Still, that doesn't excuse the efforts of the craven lackwit to hide from criticism by scuttling over to my daughter's blog and whining that I'm a wicked parent who has condemned his own daughter to hell. It's awfully stupid, too, since Skatje and her friends are having all the fun of using their claws and sharp, sharp teeth on him. If anyone wants to join in the evisceration, go on over. Ask for Gustaf.

Beryllium Webcast Today

This afternoon at 2:30pm Eastern time, David Michaels will be doing a Public Health Reports webcast on protecting workers from beryllium. No registration or log-in password is necessary to participate; the link for the webcast will be posted at 2 PM on the Public Health Reports website. David will focus on the Public Health Reports article he and Celeste Monforton co-authored: Berylliumâs âPublic Relations Problemâ: Protecting Workers When There is No Safe Exposure Level. Visit his post about the article for more.

Intervention Denial

Here's a fun one from the archives--Modern Drunkard Magazine's advice on how to beat an intervention. It includes this gem: Counter Attack Now that you've blunted their savage assault, it's high time to launch your own vengeful attack. The only people bold enough to conduct an intervention are those who consider themselves very close to you, so you most likely will know more than a little about their habits. And everyone, even Mother Theresa, has bad habits. Attack these flaws with a strident, yet deeply concerned tone.

John Gravois on Oprah and the Secret

A must read from Slate on Oprah, the Secret, and the American excess of wishful thinking - starting with a lovely story about a woman who stopped taking her cancer meds because of the secret. I find the Secret to be pretty typical idiotic woo, that taken to its logical conclusions becomes dangerous, nasty and ugly woo. Beyond the stupid quantum mechanics fallacy, and the outrageous woo claims which have no credibility whatsoever, If you think about it, they're really just blaming the victims and offering false hope.

Latest carnivals

This week's Grand Rounds is a real treat. Rather than just being a "best of" writing for the recent week, contributors were asked to dig through the archives and send in the posts that best defined their blog, a sample of their best writing (in their own opinion, of course). Check out the results here at Impacted Nurse. A new Tangled Bank is also up today. You can find it at Geek Counterpoint. Just got back from dinner with a bunch of sciencebloggers and other sciencey folks; more on that tomorrow!

Bother

Apologies. I scheduled this post to appear this morning, and it's drawn a few comments. However, it also double-posted for some reason (we underwent an upgrade last night so things have been a bit wonky), and when I unpublished the duplicate, it also took the comments from the site. (I can see them here in the back end, and they say they're published, but they're not showing up to readers). I've alerted our technical guru, because unfortunately I don't have time to deal with this today.

Topical humor

We're going to be seeing more humor like this in the next few weeks, I suppose. I like the tag line: Because Ben Stein is just as qualified to make software as he is to talk about evolutionary biology. And if you're confused about what this "evolutionary biology" thing might be, here's a picture of Stein's understanding of the subject. If that's too much for you, just seek solace by reciting a prayer from the Book of Bon Jovi, Chapter Wanted Dead or Alive. (via some other Canadian.)

Sick kid day

Thanks to the miracles of scheduled posts, I'll have a few things on tap today, even though I'm far away from my computer and dealing with a vomiting child (who hopefully, by the time this is published, will no longer be throwing up all over himself, his bedding, anything else within projectile distance...) So if there are spam comments that get through (or legitimate ones that got caught in the junk filter and are awaiting my approval), my apologies--I'll get to them when I can.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, Trailer 2

tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, film, movie, trailer, entertainment, streaming video Those of you who are Harry Potter fans will LOVE this! This is the second trailer from the penultimate installment of the Harry Potter films; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, which was shown at the MTV movie awards 2010. HP7a will hit theaters on November 19th, 2010 [it's being released in Belgium on 17 November, so guess where I'll go to watch it on opening night?].

R Fizzix Cloggin' Yur Vuvuzela

tags: How Can You Filter Out The Vuvuzela?, World Cup 2010, physics, technology, football, soccer, sports, television, Sixty Symbols, University of Nottingham, streaming video A University of Nottingham video explains the physics that underlies the technology being developed to filter out that annoying drone from 30,000 blasting vuvuzelas in the background of all World Cup football matches. It's interesting to note that this is the same sort of software technology that ornithologists use to record (and "clean up" background noise inadvertently captured by) birdsong recordings.

Mystery Bird: Purple Finch, Carpodacus purpureus

tags: Purple Finch, Carpodacus purpureus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Purple Finch, Carpodacus purpureus, photographed at the Perry Nature Area near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours] Image: Terry Sohl, 21 March 2010 [larger view]. You are encouraged to purchase photographs from this photographer. I am happy to email his contact information to you. Canon 50D, 400 5.6L. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Review all mystery birds to date.

Lindau blogger meetup

There are a bunch of bloggers here at Lindau, wearing Press badges, going to Press meetings and generally behaving like Press. Apart from PZ and myself, most of them are German sciencebloggers who are posting their interviews and dispatches on the Lindaunobel blog on Scienceblogs.de (you can filter only English-language posts here) as well as on Page 3.14. Last night we went out for dinner together and had great fun. Most of my pictures turned out, well, pretty bad, except perhaps this one:

Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER

From SCONC: Wednesday, March 25 7 p.m. "Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER," a book reading and discussion by author Paul Austin, MD hosted by the American Medical Writers Association, Carolinas Chapter. Austin, a former firefighter who is now an emergency room physician at Durham Regional Hospital, has written "a relentlessly honest look at modern emergency medicine," in the words of Publisher's Weekly. At the Friday Center, UNC-Chapel Hill. Please RSVP by March 18 to Ellen Stoltzfus (estoltzfus@nc.rr.com).

The Oceans' Shifting Balance

In yesterday's New York Times: Scientists have understood ocean acidification for a long time. But what they are learning now is how quickly it is increasing, in step with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. New studies show that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current rates, shells and corals could begin to dissolve -- especially in the southern oceans -- within 30 years. Observations from many places, including the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, suggest that ocean acidification is proceeding much faster than anyone had thought.

Young Australian Skeptics

Young Australian Skeptics site is an excellent example of supporting other skeptics' writing. There's essays there by several of the 'regulars' of the Australian Skeptics of Carlos Blog Carnival, including: Karen Stollznow of Bad Language/Skepbitch; Kylie Sturgess of Podblack Blog / Skeptic Zone; Jack Scanlan of Homologous legs and Dr Rachael Dunlop of the Skeptic Zone - and will feature even more essays very soon. There is a forum board, opportunities to network and is the brainchild of Elliot, a 21 year old student from Melbourne, Australia.

Guest Posts on A Blog Around The Clock

You all loved it when my Mom wrote two 5-part series of guest-posts. You remember the exciting reports from herpetology survey by Kevin when he was in China. My friend Heinrich wrote two guest-posts about sleep. And most recently Anne-Marie wrote a guest-post about daily rhythms in bats. As you all appeared to like these posts, I thought I'd ask another 4-5 bloggers to write something and post here. The first one will be posted here in a couple of hours, so stay tuned......

Sciblog2008

The London Science Blogging Conference now has a Facebook page for discussions. Perhaps they will also have a FriendFeed room, like the BioBarCamp folks did - it was fascinating following the meeting from afar there these two days. In the meantime, we had a secret meeting about, well, providing some neat surprises for you for the ScienceOnline'09 meeting (a.k.a., the Third Science Blogging Conference), bigger and better than ever - the website and wiki will be up in about ten days or so, watch this space for updates....

SCONC: Podcasting 101

Thursday, July 10 6:00 - 8:00 PM With support from our friends at Burroughs Wellcome Fund, SCONC (Science Communicators of North Carolina) is hosting an introduction to podcasting (think of it as radio over the Internet). National authority Ryan Irelan of Podcast Free America will lead a two-hour session at Sigma Xi on NC 54 in the Research Triangle Park. (click here for directions) Please RSVP to Ernie Hood no later than Tuesday, July 8, or you might go hungry. (bkthrough AT earthlink DOT net)

Obama is brilliant!

Earlier today, here in Raleigh (and yes, he will contest North Carolina, and perhaps all 50 states!) at an "invitation-only" event (so no liveblogging from me, sorry), Obama killed at least three birds with one stone. In one sentence, at the very end, he got himself endeared to the three key groups of voters who are still suspicious of him: women/Hillary fans, Edwards fans, and people who do not like Obama's health-care plan (which is obviously going to change now....).

Sciencewoman at ISEF 2008

Sciencewoman is in Atlanta, judging this year's International Science and Engineering Fair and liveblogging the whole thing: Going to Atlanta.... First Taste of the International Science and Engineering Fair ISEF 2008: Nobel Laureates Panel ISEF 2008: Day 1 by the numbers ISEF 2008: Full disclosure ISEF 2008: Impressive science by high school students ISEF 2008: Cool science and practical applications ISEF 2008: Special awards and scenes from around the fair Update: Here are the winners: ISEF 2008: The best of the best! And they're girls!

An interesting case of plagiarism

The Purloined Bibliography: My training in medieval history had acquainted me with the practice of identifying dependencies among manuscripts by tracing the repetition of errors. By analogy, I thought, if there were additional idiosyncratic errors on my Web site that also appeared in the book, each instance would be a discrete piece of evidence showing that the volume had lifted material from my work. I found myself in the unusual position of hoping that I had made more mistakes. Could I find more evidence than just two bizarrely placed asterisks?

Don't catch up at Quechup!

Danica: If you receive the invite from friends or anyone to join social networking site Quechup, don't do it! Disregard that Quechup email and don't visit the website. Last night I was caught up by invitation of reputable friend, didn't know for this spam, and this morning I got alert email about this. I tried now to log into the site and delete my account - but I failed. Such a fraud. I don't know how to delete my account as I am afraid that my address book will be spammed by this Quechup site!

Sacked US Attorneys Threatened by Department of Justice

Wow, things are just getting more unbelievable all the time. Now, I find out that the Department of Justice threatened the eight sacked US Attorneys with "retaliation"; A Justice Department official threatened to take the "gloves off" and "retaliate" against the eight United States attorneys who were abruptly removed from their posts if they continued to speak publicly about the circumstances behind their dismissals, according to an email released late Monday sent to the fired prosecutors by one of their colleagues. [story] . tags: Alberto Gonzales, politics, US Attorney General

Blog Carnival Available

Tangled Bank is now available -- and on my birdday, too. How much better can things get, eh? For those of you who appreciate good science writing, this is the blog carnival for you! It is jam-packed with science-y goodness, including one entry from me (I sent them approximately 12 entries, but they decided to accept only one entry per blog -- bummer for me -- so you should go there and figure out which one they ultimately accepted). tags: blog carnival, Tangled Bank

Family

Merganser family hitching a ride. Orphaned Image. Please contact me for proper creditation. I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: duck, merganser, aves, ornithology, zoology

Victory!

Thanks to all of your helpful clicking, I have just received this message from Eric Hovind of Creation Science Evangelism: Congratulations, you logged the most clicks to CreationMinute.com and won an Apple iPod Touch complements of Creation Science Evangelism. Good work, gang! I hope it's full of creationist videos. I'll have to bring it with me on my trip to the Creation "Museum" in August (I'll fill you in on more details on that development later, when they've firmed up a bit more.)

Mountain

Mount Rainier. Orphaned image. Please contact me for proper creditation. I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in those images. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: mountain, Mount Rainier, Seattle, Volcano

Blog Carnivals Available

There are a few blog carnivals available for your reading pleasure, all of which saw fit to include one or more pieces by me; The Tangled Bank, #53, Go Climb a Tree!. The entries are arranged in a story format. Carnival of the Vanities, #191. This carnival has a pirate theme, and my particular contribution was included in Kang's Picks for the Tutu Brigade. Carnival of Education, #66. All entries are arranged under the titles for the five skits from Monty Python's Flying Circus for your ease of locating them.

American Scientist

One of the things I picked up from the hallway tables at Sigma Xi during the ScienceOnline2010 meeting were four latest issues of the American Scientist: Now that I found a moment to sift through them a little bit, I got reminded why I think (and always thought) this is currently the best popular science magazine. Others have closed doors, or gradually declined, or went all sensationalist. But American Scientist keeps on publishing Good Stuff. I really need to support them, so, I promise that today I will subscribe to the print edition.

Schoolhouse Rock: Interjections!

So when you're happy (Hurray!) or sad (Aw!) Or frightened (Eeeeeek!) or mad (Rats!) Or excited (Wow!) or glad (Hey!) An interjection starts a sentence right. Interjections (Hey!) show excitement (Hey!) or emotion (Hey!). They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong. Interjections show excitement or emotion, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah... YEA! This episode is one of several that really sticks out in my mind. . tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video

she's baaack

Björk held an outdoor concert monday night to introduce her new album, Volta I wasn't there, of course, but word is that it was good. Very good. Sounds like some of the songs are as good as her best work, and (not having heard it yet) the album may be excellent, and different, again. That'd be good. Album is out next month, first single is available as a download right now. (Yup, it is up on iTunes, just checked). YouTube snippet No pirate video from last nights concert, yet.

Aftermath: GeoEye Sees it All

Astonishing GeoEye imagery of bin Laden compound after the raid. GeoEye took a clear 1m resolution image of Abbottabad the day after the raid, with a nice clear image, coincidentally, taken of the bin Laden compound Click for high res image: "Copyright © 2011 GeoEye - Satellite image courtesy of GeoEye." here is the close-up of the compound from GeoEye's portal The dark cross shape in the yard is the special forces helicopter lost in the raid and destroyed on the ground. h/t GeoEye blog and NASAwatch

Which astronomical object are you?

Apple offers a "login picture", and on many of my accounts I have a selection of astronomical pictures to choose from, rather than the default set. Mostly HST images, natch. So... one evening, sitting on the sofa cuddled up with the laptop, the Dynamic Wife leans over and says: "what's that then?". "My login picture" says I. "And what is it?" she asks rhetorically. "er, a supernova..." says I. She looks at me. There is silence. So, now my login picture is a globular cluster... one of the nice old Messier ones.

#1 blog meme

From Chad, statements typed into Google which return this blog as the top hit Skyr Food for Fighting So You Want to Be an Astrophysicist WMAP for dummies King of Tambora Bird 'flu for theorists ok, three of these are for ye olde blogge on catdynamics.blogspot.com, but that's just 'cause I haven't updated the "highlights" link for a long time and couldn't be bothered to search a lot Other hits include: "strange but true pulsars" and "planet around a white dwarf" and of course "iPod iChing" (sorry Sean)

It's a small world after all - with really great photos

If you like cool and unusual photos be sure to take a look at the 2008 Nikon Small World competition site. You can view lots of lovely pictures of things found under a microscope and vote for your favorite ones. You don't even have to focus the microscope! One of my favorites is the tubeworm larva. It looks something from outer space. There's even a contest to identify some of the more unconventional images. I only got three out of five. ;-( You can find them at www.nikonsmallworld.com

toys

NASA Ames is getting some new big iron 245 Teraflop Altix system from SGI to be followed by the Petaflop Pleiades, also SGI architecture with Intel CPUs. Given SGIs bankruptcy and continuous hemorrhage of cash, this will get interesting. Now if they could only settle on a security system that was both secure and enables users to actually use the system... Plan, allegedly, is to scale this up to 10 Petaflops in the surprisingly near future. like 2012. At last, a use is found for the Hanger #1.

Global Prospects: aaarrrrrggghhhhh!

Official, from IMF... global economic prospects suck IMF report: Global Prospects and Policies (pdf large) they predict economic growth in the US in the second half of 2010... IF good policies for recovery are implemented, and recovery in first half of 2011 if poor policies are implemented hmmm... recovery in the third half of next year! oil prices are projected somewhere between $20 and $160 per barrel. That is what we call confident economic forecasting! Forward Looking Cliff Diving (click to embiggen) h/t CR of course

Male Blue-throated Hummingbird

tags: Blue-throated hummingbird, Lampornis clemenciae, birds, nature, Image of the Day My good friend, Dave Rintoul, has just returned from a much-deserved vacation camping in the Chiricahuas and Gila Wilderness area and sent a couple images to share with you. Juvenile male Blue-throated Hummingbird, Lampornis clemenciae, Cave Creek Canyon, AZ. Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view]. For comparison, an adult male of the species -- also read the comments section to learn more about how to identify juvenile males of this species.

Science in Slow Motion

tags: slow motion, streaming video Have you ever seen the details how a lighter lights up? How a face is deformed after a punch or slap? How a water balloon explodes? How a rocket is fired and how a gun is fired? How an apple, banana, golf ball, concrete slab and other things are shot through with a bullet? How an arbalest is fired? How a bomb explodes? All these things and more can be seen on this streaming video. My favorite is watching the pigeon take off from its perch. [6:33]

Carnivalia

Here's the latest blog carnival action in the blogosphere for you to read and enjoy; Carnival of the Vanities. This blog carnival celebrates the best writing in the blogosphere, regardless of topic. Carnival of Education, which has a zillion contributions from people involved with education. Book Review carnival, #20. Are you looking for a few good books to read while you are on the beach? If so, this is the place to look for them. Carnival of Satire, #115. This blog carnival is sure to give you a smile.

Programming Note: Technical Transition

As you may have noticed, ScienceBlogs has a new look. In addition to the new appearance, ScienceBlogs also in the process of switching from a Movable Type to a Wordpress system, and there have been a few technical glitches. The end result should be a more user-friendly site (and one that will definitely be easier for the bloggers!), but posting may be a little erratic this week, and some recent comments seem to have disappeared in the transition. We apologize for the difficulties and thank our readers for bearing with us.

Worth Reading: McSurance, Dialysis, and the EPA's 40th Birthday

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Robin Fields at ProPublica: In Dialysis, Life-Saving Care at Great Risk and Cost Timothy Noah at Slate: McSurance on Trial: A Senate committee puts the spotlight on the crap health insurance given fast-food workers EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in the WSJ: The EPA Turns 40 Kristen Lombardi and John Solomon at The Center for Public Integrity: Big Polluters Freed From Environmental Oversight by Stimulus Jonathan Chait in The New Republic: How Chipotle is Like the Federal Government

Swansong

My scientific swansong is a paper with Tom Peterson and John Fleck about the famous 70's cooling myth. John and I wrote up a post for this on RC as the global cooling mole, and its now been added to wiki so it must be true :-). Someone there has found but not fully ref'd two Science articles from the 50's that maybe predicted cooling, so there may be further to take this story. And of course, a full analysis of the old media coverage would be interesting.

People Messhall Pickled Cabbage

My wife's from Zhejiang province, and so is this can of pickled cabbage that she bought yesterday. I like the label a lot. It's not quite Engrish: of course, we would say "people's mess hall", but the Chinese characters actually denote an extremely basic canteen-like eatery. A mess hall, a canteen, maybe a refectory; very latter-day Maoist. It's a correct translation. I endorse the pickled cabbage of the Chun'an Qiandaohu Nongxing Food Co., Ltd.. It is by far good enough to be served not only in mess halls.

Restaurant Engrish

"Lie Fallow" means "in your spare time, without a prior appointment" in Engrish. Everybody loves Engrish, the surreal dialect of English found on signs, in menus, on clothing etc. in the Far East. Much of it seems to stem from blind over-use of dictionaries, where the non-Anglophone user picks one of the possible translations of a term at random. Here are a few examples I've caught recently at restaurants. The breakfast menu at our hotel in Hecheng had some fine variations on rice porridge and its condiments.

Blogobooks

Via Miriam, I see that Bad Science (Ben Goldacre's column in the Grauniad) is now a book (pre-publication); so is Tim Worstall's though he may not be so happy with the "31 used & new available from £0.01"! More amusingly (again via M) is Hairy Pooter 7, which although not yet published already has 5 5-star reviews (sample: "I feel that will will be worth all 5 stars when it comes out so I have gave it such") and a sales rank of... yes, you guessed it, 1.

Methane from Dams

The "dams produce lots of methane" arguement has come up again, in Nature (subs req): In the specific case of Balbina, there is now a rough consensus: in terms of avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions, a fossil-fuel plant would have been better. Balbina is a dam in Brazil. Opinions seem to vary on just how much methane it emits from decay of vegetable matter, with (oh dear) people partly funded by the hydro industry getting somewhat lower numbers. But the data appear to be sparse... a clear case for more monitoring.

PIPA on People on Climate Costs

According to a recent poll from PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes), commissioned by the BBC, people world wide are ready and willing to pay more for energy supplies in order to combat climate change. Once again the US is defining "leadership" as "dragging feet, kicking and screaming behind everyone else". The true costs of oil are buried deep in huge military budgets and corporate welfare for the richest corporations in human history. Bottled water costs more. (don't forget to check the details [PDF's, both])

Theocrat Wants to Talk

Some time ago, I posted an essay showing why John Lofton, his website The American View, and the Constitution Party are dyed-in-the-wool theocrats bent on destroying our liberty. I posted it both here and at Positive Liberty. Today I got this comment from Lofton at PL: Call me, please, Mr. Brayton, at 410-760-8885. Thank you. John Lofton. How do I say this politely? "No". If you have anything in my post to dispute, Mr. Lofton, please post it here where everyone can see it.

NSA to Mine Myspace Info

Now it appears that the NSA wants to mine date from sites like Myspace and Facebook. Frankly, I'm not really bothered by this. The more useless information they gather, the more impossible it is for such data mining to find anything useful. The more storage space and processing power they use up searching through vast databases of information like the fact that Mandy in Sioux City, Iowa likes Disturbed and is allergic to peaches, the less likely their surveillance is to do anything useful.