Search Content

Displaying results 51451 - 51500 of 87947

Kraken Video!

PZ beat me to the punch (I really think he should be penalized for the time zone difference). Japanese researchers, the same group that caught the photographs in 2004, have filmed a live giant squid. The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it, on squid bait, off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo, earlier this month. The squid was a female juvenile of about 24ft which falls shy of the 60ft record. CNN video is here. Video from Reuters (best and no plugins required)

Friday Deep Sea Picture: Ninja Hydromedusa!

From National Geographic's new Translucent Creatures photo gallery: A hydromedusa spreads its luminescent tentacles in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica. Photograph by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures. This medusa is like totally coming at me like a spider monkey with those nunchuk tentacles. Meet some of its friends below the fold! A close-up of a bristleworm's head in Antarctica's Weddell Sea shows the tiny predator's trumpet-shaped mouth. Photograph by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures A transparent larval shrimp piggybacks on an equally see-through jellyfish in the waters around Hawaii. Photograph by…

FFRF Convention

The Freedom From Religion Foundation will hold its 31st annual convention in Chicago, October 10-12. Speakers include journalist Eleanor Clift and Daniel Dennett. Clift has been a contributing editor at Newsweek for a number of years and appears regularly on some of the "political pundits" shows. Professor Dennett is well known for his books, including Breaking the Spell and Darwin's Dangerous Idea. He will receive the Foundation's Emperor Has No Clothes Award. Check out the FFRF website and be sure to take their Bible quiz. It's an absolute hoot!

Jesus on a Pizza It Ain't

Humans have an ability to recognize patterns, even if they're not really there, like the face of Jesus in a pizza or Elvis on the side of a Holstein. Apparently, a local lumberjack recognized something in a certain tree trunk and decided to flip it upside down and paint it blue in order to help passersby see the illusion. This little bit of "found art" is located less than two miles from my house and I had a good laugh when I first saw it: Jesus on a pizza it ain't, but it sure is entertaining nonetheless.

Whip(key) It Good!

A 53 year old Colorado priest faces indecent exposure charges for jogging naked at a local track according to the AP. The priest, Robert Whipkey, claims that he sweats profusely while running, and as he was running in the very early morning prior to sunrise, he didn't think anyone would be around to notice. Why does this sound like an old Monty Python skit? I can just see Terry Jones wearing nothing but the collar and shoes running away from a Bobby (Graham Chapman or John Cleese) who surprises him with a "What's all this then?"

Friday Flower Porn: Sexiness o' the Season

Jingle my bells, baby! Figuring out what plant this floral naughty bit belongs to should be about as difficult as knocking back a hot steaming cup of solstice glog. Here's the full photo of the showy bracts of the Euphorbia pulcherrima which surround small central flowers. The history and diseases of poinsettia cultivars are reviewed here. These euphorbs have ethnobotany going for them since they were used for medicinal purposes by traditional healers in Central and South America. Here's one of my favorite mutant poinsettias. (Photos from my little Nikon CoolPix S9)

Episode CXXXXV: The disturbingly one-handed thread

As the steady paycheck from the old Addams Family series slowed to a trickle, and as the heady days of the Hollywood films ended, the Thing descended to working in porn to support his manicure addiction, performing degrading acts for the jaded, cynical crowd at The Thread. That's creepy as hell. If people get into it, fine; the upside is that no women need to be involved. At all. I just hope they have a disclaimer on the game to let buyers know this is not a training video. (Current totals: 11,532 entries with 1,217,663 comments.)

A New Attitude

After my last few posts, and the tons of comments from thegoodman and Queef, I've started thinking seriously about my approach to this blog. Maybe I am just a little too angry for no good reasons, too often just calling childish names and not solving discrimination. Perhaps I can do better. Perhaps I should start with a new profile photo, something more friendly and welcoming to all. My proposed new profile photo can be found after the jump. Let me know what you think. Thanks to www.cornify.com for super-sparkly picture editing!

Limbaugh is a turd

1994: Rwandan hate radio compares Tutsis to cockroaches. The director of the human rights organization, African Rights, Rakiya Omaar, was following the events from northern Rwanda. "In Rwanda they referred to Tutsis as cockroaches," explains Omaar. "They were not human beings. This is very important to understand, [there are] very close parallels to what happened in Hitler's Germany. [They said,] 'Don't worry, you're not killing humans like you. You are killing some vermin that belongs under your shoe. You're killing cockroaches.'" 2007: American hate radio compares liberals to cockroaches.

Ryun: It's my volunteers' fault I lost

Ryun dissects election defeat: Ryun, of Lawrence, said his campaign volunteers were lulled into a false sense of confidence because he easily defeated Boyda in 2004. "It was difficult to get them engaged because they said, 'Well, you won by 15 points last time.' " Ryun said. "I want to say this, I knew from the beginning it was going to be a tough race." I guess he would have won if his supporters hadn't held him back. One day, he may realize that his volunteers didn't get engaged because no one really liked him that much.

Where did you all go, Coulterites?

A strange thing, after I clarified my Coulter challenge and requested that her fans get specific and tell me what they supported and why in her book…the e-mail from them all dried up. Pffft. Gone. Maybe they just got bored with me, but it's sad that no one has even tried to suggest a single good paragraph in all of Godlessssss. It's as if they're willing to play mindless cheerleader, but actually committing to thinking and supporting specifically a single thing she says…well, that's just not going to happen.

Microraptor on NOVA tonight

It's times like this I wish I still had television; tonight the PBS show NOVA will have a special called "The Four-Winged Dinosaur" all about Microraptor. You can see a few brief clips from the show and some behind-the-scenes shots in this promotional video; As with any show involving puppets, though, there were plenty of shenanigans that didn't make the cut for the final program; More information about the show can be found at this website, and hopefully some of you who can tune in can blog it for the rest of us.

Photo of the Day #121: Toco Toucans

"Toucan Sam" might be the most famous toucan, but the Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco) is the one you're most likely to see during a visit to the zoo. This particular species prefers more open habitats than other related species which prefer closed forest, and it may be that the toco toucan ultimately benefits from reductions in closed forest. This isn't to say that we should stop caring about South American rain forests, only that some species will certainly take advantage of the changing situation. The pair pictured above were photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

Photo of the Day #75: Edaphosaurus

Today's photo is of the famous sail-backed pelycosaur Edaphosaurus from the Permian red beds of Texas. As if its sail wasn't enough to puzzle paleontologists, the fact that the neural spines bear "cross bars" further adds to the mystery (I know of no other animal that has exhibited such a feature). I picked out this one, though, because today I'm off to the AMNH to meet up with fellow paleo-blogger Amanda (the "Self-Designed Student"), and will have plenty of photos to share when I return this afternoon.

Self-Assembling Dinosaur

This past week I managed to read Peter Dodson's very helpful book The Horned Dinosaurs from cover-to-cover (in addition to finishing some books on Megalania, dinosaur reproduction, philosophy, etc. A massive book review is forthcoming), one of my most favorite sections being where Dodson walks the reader through reconstructing a Chasmosaurus skeleton bone-by-bone. Oddly enough, I came across the a YouTube video of a self-assembling Chasmosaurus skeleton (embedding was disabled for this video), although unfortunately for curators I have not known skeletons to acquiesce to fully leaving their…

Photo of the Day #3: Mhorr Gazelle

Given that the last two "pictures of the day" were of artiodactyls, I figured I'd keep going with the theme for the rest of the week. Today I've picked out a pair of shots of the Mhorr Gazelle (Gazella dama mhorr), taken last January at the Philadelphia Zoo. As you can guess from the scientific name I just mentioned, the Mhorr is a subspecies of Dama Gazelle (Gazella dama) which previously inhabited parts of the Sahara near Morocco in northern Africa. Today, however, the Mhorr is extinct in the wild and the Dama is critically endangered.

Chemistry-Physics Recruiting Video

Today is show-n-tell day (at least for this blog). Our department (Chemistry and Physics) has recently been focusing on increasing our undergraduate enrollment. One of the steps we have taken is to have the following video created. I think it is pretty good. Southeastern Louisiana University Chemistry and Physics from SELU Chem and Phys on Vimeo. If you are a chemist, the first thing you are going to say is "what is up with the green bubbling liquid?" You are right, that is fake. Sometimes these video people want stuff that looks cool.

100 Things We've Learned This Year

The annual list from the BBC. Here's a semi-random sampling: More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors. The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon's bedroom. Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five litres of cooking oil a year. A common American poplar has twice as many genes as a human being. The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is "superior temporal sulcus". While 53% of households have access to a garage, only 24% use them for parking cars. The egg came first.

A physics-based Scratch game

I already said I like [scratch from MIT](http://scratch.mit.edu). After building a simple rocket model, the kids said it should be a game. I caved. Here it is: Learn more about this project To play, press the space bar. The arrow keys are rocket thrusts. The goal is to get to the red circle in as little time. If you hit the wall or the sides, you start back at the green circle. Please forgive me masters of scratch (I know who you are - you find something to complain about in my program).

The software distribution revolution

Apple's Game Changer, Downloading Now: The way the industry once operated, "Each handset company would come up with its latest iterations and maybe have the hottest device of the season or not," says Ms. Huberty, the Morgan Stanley analyst. "Enter apps into the equation, and that changes. It goes from being a product cycle game to a platform game." "People will look back on the iPhone as a turning point in the industry," says Craig Moffett, a telecom analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein. "The iPhone will be remembered as the first true handheld computer.

Get your rocks off in Wilson, KS

Via Peg Britton, we learn that this Sunday you too could enjoy the Annual Testicle Festival at Al's Bar and Grill in Wilson, KS (right off I-70): For $20.00 you can have all you want to eat from the buffet of Rocky Mountain oysters, fried fish, salads, French fries, beer and music. It starts at noon and goes until they run out of food. Now…that’s something to do in Wilson. Does Al have the balls to pull this off, or is he just nuts? Speculate in the comments.

Free Skeptics' Circle! (A bargain at twice the price.)

The 36th Skeptics' Circle, now posted at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, begins with these gripping questions: To readers who distrust science, knowledge found through experimentation, and the secular truths of reason in favor of simply believing - I ask you - why should affirming belief in something be a virtuous concept if it misleads? Why should demanding proof be soulless and cold if it keeps you from ignorance and victimization? And why do they always want your money? Dr. Charles doesn't want your money, but what he's offering is of great value. Go check it out!

Factchecking the Female Brain

It's a shame that exaggerating the extent of brain differences between men and women can be such a boon for book sales. (Call it the Mars and Venus phenomenon.) This publishing truism has been most recently demonstrated by Louann Brizendine, a researcher at UCSF who wrote The Female Brain. But now the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe ran a nice column dismantling Brizendine's oft cited claim that women use 20,000 words per day while men only use 7,000. It turns she stole that ridiculous fact from a self-help book.

The Elastic Mind

If you're into art, science and the brain, or enjoyed the recent MoMA show on design, then be sure to check out this Seed/MoMA/Parsons event on April 4th. The guest list is pretty fantastic, and includes everyone from Benoit Mandelbrot to Henry Markram to Chandler Burr to Erik Demaine to Greg Lynn. The timing of the presentations is almost comically dense - by my calculations, the "What is Reality?" talk will get about 15 minutes - but that's how I prefer my academic talks: lofty and short.

Art or Wal-Mart?

Here's a good test of your critical acumen. This site has a quiz comparing the priceless designs of Donald Judd against cheap furniture from Ikea and Wal-Mart. It's often surprisingly hard to tell the two apart, although I take this less as an indictment of Judd (who I've always admired) and more as an affirmation of capitalism, which has a knack for turning masterpieces into mass-produced kitsch. (Nobody does this better than Target. Adorno is rolling over in his grave.) Here is the one item that I got wrong on the quiz: via VSL

Habermas on Rorty

A lovely appreciation: I received the news in an email almost exactly a year ago. As so often in recent years, Rorty voiced his resignation at the "war president" Bush, whose policies deeply aggrieved him, the patriot who had always sought to "achieve" his country. After three or four paragraphs of sarcastic analysis came the unexpected sentence: " Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida." As if to attenuate the reader's shock, he added in jest that his daughter felt this kind of cancer must come from "reading too much Heidegger." via 3qd

The Tour

It's nice to be back home. I had a really wonderful time on the book tour, but it's nice to return to my boring routine. I'd like to thank everyone who came out to hear me talk. To be honest, I expected to be speaking to empty rooms. After all, why would anyone want to listen to me? So I was incredibly flattered and gratified by the crowds. My favorite part of the tour, without a doubt, were the questions from the audience. They were always thought-provoking, challenging, and insightful. I only wish I had better answers. Photo by Lori Duff

The Perfect Yawn

Can you engineer a yawn to become perfectly contagious? A number of studies found that a medley of ordinary yawns on video played to a classroom for five minutes would induce a responsive yawn in 55 percent of the audience. So that was his starting point: could he design a yawn powerful enough to move from a 55 percent response right up to Total Yawn-ness? He tried. Our story (just push on the icon up above and cover your mouth) describes what happened next. Listen to the whole thing. And yes, studying the spread of yawning has a real practical application.

Eruptions suggestion thread

I'll be busy for a couple days when I'm off at University of Iowa, so I thought I'd leave this thread available for you to talk. Specifically, I'm interested in what you might be interested in seeing (or not seeing) on Eruptions. I've tried a number of features (Mystery Volcano Photo, Q&A, Volcano Profiles) - do you want to see more/see less of these features with the usual volcano news? More/less coverage of volcano research from the literature? Let me know what you think and how things might be better. See you next week!

Coulter Challenge status, day 8

I hopped out of bed this morning, certain that someone would have bravely answered my challenge to support Coulter's 'science'. But no, the Coulterites have completely vanished from my mailbox, and the official tally of entries stands at 0 Maybe I just haven't given them enough time. It takes a while to read a book when you have to slowly sound out each word, and when you're constantly tempted to close it so you can gaze rapturously at the cover, drooling. I'll report back when we hit the one month mark. Will that be time enough?

Mixed results for the Aleutians

The folks up in Alaska have a lot to watch these days in the Aleutians, with three volcanoes erupting right now. Just a quick update on the current activity:   Kasatochi: The eruption that started Thursday and produced 45,000 foot ash columns has quieted by Saturday, but there are still moderate (M=5) earthquakes being recorded near the island (above, before eruption). Okmok: Ash from the month-long eruption is falling on islands near the caldera. Cleveland: Activity at Cleveland has quieted to the point that no ash column was spotted on Saturday.

Cleveland Volcano erupts in the Aleutians & Okmok Update

Just when you thought it was exciting enough in the Aleutians, word comes in that Cleveland Volcano is erupting as well. Cleveland is a very noisy volcano on Chuginadak Island, having last erupted in February (although it hasn't been updated on the GVP page). Aircraft have been warned about both eruptions in the Alaskan island chain. Along with the eruption of Okmok Caldera, the AVO has their hands full watching these volcanoes. The latest on Okmok has a 24,000 foot ash column continuing to be emitted from the new vent.

Rumblings at San Cristobal

Some news of a series of small eruptions at San Cristobal in Nicaragua. Ash from the small explosions drifted to a town near the volcano, however officials for Ineter in Nicaragua say that there is little chance of a large eruption. San Cristobal is one of the seven active volcanoes in Nicaragua. It has a long record of small eruptions, with at least one every year in the 21st century (and beyond). The largest eruption in recent times was in 1999 that produced lahars and an explosive eruptions (landing us at VEI 2).

Strombolian activity at Fuego

Things have quieted down on the volcano-news front lately. I did catch a report that Fuego (Guatemala) is having small explosions (stombolian eruptions; link in Spanish), producing small (100s m-tall) ash columns along with some throwing incandescent blocks 30-50 meters from the vent. Just the typical noises expected at an active volcano. In the meantime, you can check out the volcanic hazards information that the Guatemalan survey (INSIVUMEH) has posted on their website. I'm always a fan of a country trying to educate their citizens of the real dangers of volcanoes and how to prepare.

New Indonesian eruption: Mt. Soputan

A few reports this morning that Mt. Soputan, on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, is currently erupting. The reports indicate that there has been a lot of seismic activity and some ash emitted from the volcano. As with many volcanoes in the densely populated nation of Indonesia, there are people living on the slopes of Mt. Soputan and the authorities are preparing to evacuate them, if necessary. The last eruption at Soputan was way back in ... 2007 (see photo above), so it seems like the volcano is another one of many active Indonesian volcanoes.

Chaiten Eruption Update

Update 5/3/08: SERNAGEOMIN (the Chilean Geologic Survey) is now concerned that the eruption of Chaiten may be a the precursor of a larger eruption, mostly owing to the long (~9,000 year?) repose time. This could be the beginnings of a southern Andean Pinatubo. The towns around Chaiten are more or less deserted now as the volcano continues to spew ash and pumice - upwards of 15 cm of ash in some places. Edit: fixed link (thanks Mark) Edit 2: fixed date of last eruption from ~7,000 years ago to ~9,000 years ago.

Simple questions for stupid questioners

Disco. president Bruce Chapman wonders: It is not clear why the number of academic freedom cases seem to be increasing. Is it because the iron hand of ideological conformity is squeezing professors more tightly? Or is it because more subjects of attack are fighting back in court? Or is it because he's making numbers up from thin air? Might it be not clear that the number of academic freedom cases is increasing? Could Chapman's staff be ginning up meritless claims of academic freedom violations so he has things to blog about?

Brazilian science literacy

Even though there's a huge digital divide in Brazil, as many people use the Internet to gain science knowledge as use museums. And no other source approaches either of those. If I had to pick one lesson from this morning's session and the afternoon session, it would be that the internet has arrived, and scientists should do a lot more to take advantage of that. The challenge is getting science content into unexpected contexts, so that people who don't know they want to learn about science still encounter some of it now and then.

Attention nerds

I've finally gotten around to reading through hundreds of comments on my posts about truth claims and ways of knowing and whatnot, and posted replies to as many commenters as I could manage (hopefully touching on themes raised by some commenters I didn't respond to by name). I'll be monitoring those threads more closely now, and hope to have a few new posts up on related topics tomorrow. Sorry for the delay, but I've been working and catching up on stuff from my laptop-less stretch. Unread blog posts: 9997. Whee!

Heinlein, pulp & greatness

Peter Suderman asks, Is Robert Heinlein Our Best Pulp Novelist? I suppose this hinges on what you mean by "best," but it seems like Heinlein is probably at the front of any list. Form Isaac Asimov's memoir in regards to Heinlein: ...From the moment his first story appeared, an awed science fiction world accepted him as the best science fiction writer in existence, and he held that post throughout his life. Certainly, I was impressed. I was among the very first to write letters of praise for him to the magazines.

Are the HapMap samples representative?

Geographical Affinities of the HapMap Samples: The CHB and JPT are readily distinguished from one another with both autosomal and Y-chromosomal markers, and results obtained after combining them into a single sample should be interpreted with caution. The CEU are better described as being of Western European ancestry than of Northern European ancestry as often reported. Both the CHB and CEU show subtle but detectable signs of admixture. Thus the YRI and JPT samples are well-suited to standard population-genetic studies, but the CHB and CEU less so.

Dispatches from bizarro world!

Afghan Schoolgirls Under Attack: One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question. "Are you going to school?" Then the man pulled Shamsia's burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia's eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

The neuroscience prosopagnosia

A few years ago I blogged about prosopagnosia, "face blindness." Nature Neuroscience now has a new paper finding some correlates with brain architecture, Reduced structural connectivity in ventral visual cortex in congenital prosopagnosia: Using diffusion tensor imaging and tractography, we found that a disruption in structural connectivity in ventral occipito-temporal cortex may be the neurobiological basis for the lifelong impairment in face recognition that is experienced by individuals who suffer from congenital prosopagnosia. Our findings suggest that white-matter fibers in ventral…

Democrats doing better in richer regions?

Earlier this week Andrew Gelman suggested that it looks like Barack Obama's election had less to do with "realignment" then an overall tilt in the electorate, which just managed to "tip" a few borderline states. This is rather clear when you look at maps of the results from 2004 to 2008. But today Gelman reports data which suggests that the gains in 2008 were disproportionately in wealthier regions. This makes sense when you inspect the McCain Belt, those counties where Republicans actually did better in 2008 than they did in 2004.

Vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?

Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…

Scumbag Animal Rights Villains Harass Children for Father's Speech

This post is off-topic for this blog, but there are some things that I just can't keep quiet about. Via my friend and fellow ScienceBlogger Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, I've heard about some absolutely disgraceful antics by an animal rights group. To be clear, in what follows, I'm not saying that all animal rights folks are scumbags: I'm pointing out that there's a specific group of animal rights folks who are sickening monsters for what they're doing. The background: There's a neurobiologist named Dario Ringach. Professor Ringach used to do research using primates. Back…

Iterated Zero-Sum Games

The games that we've looked at so far are the simplest case of basic games. In these games, we've got a payoff matrix, and both players can see the whole matrix - the players have equal information, and nothing is secret. The players move simultaneously - so neither player can wait to see what his opponent does before making his own decision. Finally, the game is played exactly once - there are no repetitions. The first complication we can add is to make it an iterative game - that is, instead of each player going once, they'll repeat the game 10 times in sequence. Everything else stays the…

Mathematical Constructions and the Abstraction Barrier

There was an interesting discussion about mathematical constructions in the comment thread on my post about the professor who doesn't like infinity, and I thought it was worth turning it into a post of its own. In the history of this blog, I've often talked about the idea of "building mathematics". I've shown several constructions - most often using something based on Peano arithmetic - but I've never really gone into great detail about what it means, and how it works. I've also often said that the underlying theory of most modern math is built using set theory. But what does that really…

L-System Fractals

In the post about Koch curves, I talked about how a grammar-rewrite system could be used to describe fractals. There's a bit more to the grammar idea that I originally suggested. There's something called an L-system (short for Lindenmayer system, after Aristid Lindenmayer, who invented it for describing the growth patterns of plants), which is a variant of the Thue grammar, which is extremely useful for generating a wide range of interesting fractals for describing plant growth, turbulence patterns, and lots of other things. The main difference between an L-system and a simple grammar…

Cliques, Subgraphs, and a bit of biology

Today, I'm going to talk a bit about two closely related problems in graph theory: the maximal clique detection problem, and the maximal common subgraph problem. The two problems are interesting both on their own as easy-to-understand but hard-to-compute problems; and also because they have so many applications. In particular, the two are used extensively in bioinformatics and pharmacology for the analysis of complex molecular structure. As I mentioned back in the definitions post, a clique is a complete graph: a graph where all vertices are adjacent, where any pair of vertices has an edge…