Search Content

Displaying results 53301 - 53350 of 87947

Women's Workstations Germier than Men's

A research team from the University of Arizona found that the average office desktop harbours 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet seat. Additionally, they also discovered that, on average, women have three to four times the amount of germs in, on, and around their work area. The researchers said women's habit of keeping snacks in their drawers could explain why their desks were more germ-ridden. They also warned that make-up and lotions helped to transfer bacteria. But they did find that men's wallets are the germiest thing that they looked at. Cited story. . tags:…

PZ Has Arrived

Well, folks, PZ has arrived and is in fine spirits, although not as fine as me, considering that I have had a beer and already met some people I know from graduate school. I was also told that my dissertation advisor is here, and according to rumor, he is out birding somewhere so he may not show up at the hotel for awhile. I am looking forward with great anticipation to seeing my advisor again since I want to introduce him to PZ and John. Oh, and speaking of John, well, that boy is a slacker, pure and simple, because he is still not here! . tags: SICB, evolution, biology, zoology

Common Green Darner

Common Green Darner, Anax junius, dragonfly in the Big Thicket of East Texas on a NABA field trip, 4 March 2004. Image: Biosparite. 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: dragonfly, common green darner, insect, Odonata, zoology

Medical Blog Awards 2006

The best medical blog writing awards for 2006 are now accepting nominations for a variety of categories, including several new categories, such as "Best Patient's Blog." Now, I am not saying that my nuthouse journaling was written for the purpose of winning such a nomination (it certainly was not), but I definitely would be proud to receive such a nomination if it came my way. Nominations will be accepted until Sunday, December 31, 2006. Polls will be open from Wednesday, January 3, 2007 and will close at midnight on Sunday, January 14, 2007 (PST). Awards will be announced on Friday, January…

Speaking of Genitalia .. Muslim Women are Now Allowed to Keep Theirs Intact

Speaking of genitalia .. muslim women are now allowed to keep theirs intact. Finally, ten of the highest ranked muslim scholars from all over the world met under the patronage of the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Prof. Dr. Ali Goma'a at the Azhar University on 22-23 November. After listening to several international physicians, they pronounced the sensational decision to classify the custom of female genital mutilation (FGM) as punishable aggression and crime against humanity. As a result, female genital mutilation can no longer be practiced by Muslims. Now awareness of this decision has to be spread…

Thank Dog It's Caturday!

Here is a sweet kitty, sunning itself, for you to look at, just in case that spider scared you all, as it did me. Image: Hanneke. 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: cat, caturday

My New Roommate

tags: birds, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, hawk-headed parrot, red-fan parrot, Image of the Day This is a picture of my new roommate, a young hawk-headed (red-fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus. This bird was captive born and raised. This picture was taken when the bird was only seven weeks old, and was growing her(his?) first feathers. (S)he is five months and four days old today. Image: Andrea Wiebolt. When you see this picture appear on my blog, I will be at JFK airport, picking up this bird from the airlines, and heading back home on the subway.

Seminal influences

Zeno mentions a children's book series that had some impact on him: Danny Dunn! Oh, man, I remember reading through every Danny Dunn book my library had when I was in first and second grade—but the excerpt Zeno includes tells me I shouldn't try revisiting them, ever, lest my disappointment in their quality become even greater. Other books I remember well from those kiddie days were the reference books of Herbert S. Zim (which also inspire unfortunate memories now), and of course, the usual suspects: Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Come to think of it, last time I looked at those author's…

Our very own pareidolia

Christians merely get Jesus on pita bread or Madonna's on plate glass windows — we get squid-shaped lightning, which is obviously much more impressive. Alas, no magic squid in the sky for us, though — these are entirely natural phenomena. "Sprites are a true space weather phenomenon," he adds. "They develop in mid-air around 80 km altitude, growing in both directions, first down, then up. This happens when a fierce lightning bolt draws lots of charge from a cloud near Earth's surface. Electric fields [shoot] to the top of Earth's atmosphere--and the result is a sprite. The entire process…

This is how ScienceOnline officially ends ;-)

As four contestants during the Saturday banquet knew (or guessed correctly), every year after a successful ScienceOnline conference, Anton and I get a few days of rest, then get together, look at all the feedback you give us in the feedback form and on blogs, balance the books, start planning for the next one and....have a shot of slivovitz, the uber-strong Serbian plum brandy. Well, I just came back home from Anton's house and here is the photographic evidence - see you all next year! Oh, you wanted to actually see us drink it? For that you need to go under the fold:

Schoolhouse Rock: Electricity

Electricity at rest is called static electricity. Like in the winter, wearing a heavy coat, You get a shock off the doorknob. Or you scrape across a carpet And sneak up on your very best friend, And zap 'im on the ear with a shock of- Electricity, Electricity Current flowing to and fro, makes a circuit of Electricity, Electricity Voltage is the pressure that makes it go. It's pushin' uh... Electricity, Electricity... Watts will tell you just how much You'll be usin' Uh... Electricity, Electricity Yet another installment from the Schoolhouse Rock series. . tags: schoolhouse rock,…

Vote for evolution?

This is a somewhat unconventional poll — the site lets you vote on issues, and they've set up one as creation vs. evolution. Vote for one or the other! Creationism   The religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity.   Evolution   A changes in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. First published by a scientist Charles Darwin. This poll has been up since March, and it tracks votes with a chart — maybe we can put a big downward glitch in the line.

Hot NASA News

NASAwatch reports more rumours of Science Directorate turmoil I can not overemphasise how potentially important the top tree of SMD administration is for space science. The fine graining of science priorities, advising and solicitation is done at the level from head of the divisions (at least two of which are vacant or have temps in place) to the AA for science and her deputy. These positions determine which areas get supported in the next few years, within the overall SMD budget constraints, they decide which priorities rank and who gets a say. Likely that big changes are coming, again.

Nature Open Peer Review - Astro paper up for critique

Two astronomy papers are up on the Nature website for open critique, the new experiment with open peer review that Nature is conducting. A new type of massive stellar death: no supernovae from two nearby long gamma ray bursts - Fynbo et al Baryonic sweeping as the origin of the darkest galaxies in the Universe - Mayer et al Fire at will. I think comments are open to everyone, not just subscribers. Someone tell me if non-subscribers are blocked. Comments and commenter IDs are public I believe. Only comment I saw on quick browsing was on one of the squicky bio papers on sex... [sic]

Move yer pointers!

Yikes, Dynamics of Cats is nowhere on the Nature science blog rankings. That, dear folks, is because most of you are still pointing at ye olde catdynamics.blogspot.com, or at least I like to think so... Move those blogrolls and web links. The web values based on connectivity... (ok, I admit, I hadn't moved the pointer on my own home page yet, but I have now, and you don't want to be even bigger procrastinators than me, now, do you?) ok, so I also need to update my own blogroll to move the pointers from ye olde blog to the New Improved Blog. Real Soon Now.

Sad news from Santa Cruz

The newly instated University of California at Santa Cruz Chancellor, Prof D. Denton died saturday in San Francisco in a fall from a tall building. News media are conjecturing it was suicide. There was a lot of media play over senior UC personnel in the last year or so, with a lot of insinuation of petty corruption, in particular over the hiring of partners of senior administrators in high rank, and high pay, university positions. Some of that coverage was motivated by bias, rather than concern over the adminstration of the university. They may have gone too far. InsideHigherEd has a lengthy…

we'll find them for you wholesale

28 new planets announced at the AAS summer meeting it is the Berkeley/Carnegie/Australian group - interesting bunch, including mostly Jovian planets with orbital radii greater than 1 AU. Several are around G-subgiants, which are mostly descendants of A and F stars, somewhat more massive than the Sun (mass estimates can be hard for those stars) , four multiple planet systems and three planetary systems containing a brown dwarf as well as planet. Hm, the most interesting new one seems to be missing from the list... I guess we'll get a separate announcement on that one. Good haul, not done…

AbSciCon '08

After a brief hiatus last year, the annual Astrobiology Science Conference is back, and 650+ assorted scientists of various flavours are gathered in sunny Santa Clara where the SETI Institute is hosting. The meeting just started, and I'll liveblog random snippets and news, as and when I get the chance. The opening plenary talk was given by Sir Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, Astronomer Royal, and a very good talk it was too, covering pretty much everything, cheerfully and provocatively. I will leave you, for now, with a quote from him: "It is better to read first rate science fiction…

Che?

On saturday I spend a fair fraction of the day seeing a small plane endlessly circling over town, and the local fooball stadium it was towing a large banner, advertisement for a major car insurance company. I was idly wondering for most of that day, just why Geico was using Che Guevara's image to advertise itself... It was the absence of the signature beret that finally clued me in... I am sooooooo out of touch with contemporary pop culture. PS: From comments Too funny. Wish I had thought of it. Viva la evolucion! (looks like several variants available on Cafe Press and similar sites)

So long Francis!

After leading the Human Genome Project and the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH for many years, Francis Collins is retiring. No matter what you think of Francis Collins, he's been successful in getting the genome project done and he's done some amazing things during the 15 years that he's headed NHGRI. My friend, Dr. Joan Messer, told me many times about the hours he spent talking with students at one of the AAAS meetings. I will always remember him from the NWABR fund-raising dinner where he pulled out his guitar and had the entire audience singing about DNA.

Best Science Books 2009: Inside Tech

A nice list of technology/business books: Googled: The End of the World as we Know it by Ken Auletta Inside Larry & Sergey's Brain by Richard L. Brandt The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein The Accidental Billionares: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin Behind The Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler Smasher by Keith Raffel

Best Science Books 2009: The Economist

A good selection from The Economist. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Robert C. Allen Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity by Mike Hulme Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species by Sean B. Carroll The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Graham Farmelo Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham. Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Weston By the way, is anybody else noticing that the Dirac bio is shaping up to be the book of…

an imminent accountability moment

chair of TARP oversight calls for CEOs to be fired Elizabeth Warren, chief watchdog of America's $700bn (£472bn) bank bailout plan, will this week call for the removal of top executives from Citigroup, AIG and other institutions that have received government funds..." "The very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding changes in management is preposterous." No shit. It will be very telling how this will be handled when it comes out, and whether Obama uses it as lever to act radically, or a counterfoil to "play moderate" and demur. h/t CR…

Surprise! McCain doesn't persuade me to switch my vote with his VP choice

So McCain has picked Sarah Palin as VP. Supposedly she has some credibility as a good choice for dealing with energy issues, but near as I can tell she's of the drill-in-marginal-areas school, not someone who's going to pursue alternative energy sources, and is going to be a favorite of the oil companies — Dick Cheney with a less evil face. Worst of all, from my perspective, she also has a history of pandering to creationist ignorance, promoting the bogus 'teach the controversy' nonsense in the absence of any real scientific controversy. Guess I won't be voting Republican this year.

what sort of theorist are you?

D we set D equal to the measured value from A.N. Experimenter et al (2009) we set D = 8π3/2/3 (Stokes 1854) we set D = 8π3/2(1 + ε)/3, where ε = 4.2*10-7 is the Me-Stokes parameter (Me 1973), correcting for second order effects. do you mean a total derivative or a partial derivative? well, the "D"s cancel, so we can approximate it as just δy/δx ~ y/x... if you choose D=2 we can get an exact solution consider the qualitative behaviour of the solution as we vary the number of dimensions you mean ℘? (curse html 4.0 and its lack of proper symbols...) Ð!

Hawai'ian Birds

tags: pets, cutest kitten in the world, streaming video This video is a 5 minute amateur documentary about Hawai'i's endangered birds and the causes of their decline. The filmographer writes; "This was somewhat a difficult topic and we suffered from a lack of suitable footage of native birds as most endangered birds are not seen regularly as they used to be decades ago. Could have done better for sure, in fact if I had the chance I'd do it over for the sake of sharing the issues of the human impact on island birds." I think this is a great start for a conservation filmographer! [5:14]

Meet Me Tonight at NYC's Apple Store!

Image: Apple Store (Soho). Tonight, you are all invited to NYC's Apple Store (in Soho) for a free a "Pro Session" panel discussion with some of us ScienceBloggers, including me. This session will be a conversation about the convergence of science, technology, and culture and will discuss how blog writing is driving the global dialogue on scientific topics. We'll talk about everything from global warming to science education and why science literacy is more important than ever. What: Apple Pro Session panel with ScienceBloggers Date: Tonight (Wednesday, 1 October 2008) Time: 7 - 8pm ET…

Yellow-backed Chattering Lory

tags: yellow-backed Chattering lory, yellow-backed scarlet lory, Lorius garrulus flavopalliatus, birds, Image of the Day This image depicts another of the parrot species that I bred and raised when I lived in Seattle, and that I researched before my NYC postdoctoral fellowship ended. How I miss my lories! Sixth in a series of images of lories by this photographer. Yellow-backed subspecies of the Chattering Lory, Lorius garrulus flavopalliatus. This subspecies, distinguished from the nominate race by the yellow patch on its back, is found on the Indonesian island of Maluku. It is…

101 atheists!

The current total of registered attendees for our Invasion of the Creationist "Museum" is now at 101 — and you've only got a few more days to pre-register. You're also welcome to just show up, of course. This is an official Outing — not only are we going on a trip, but you should be a loud and proud atheist, too. I suggested armbands before; if you don't like that, pick up one of these snazzy t-shirts, or wear something from the Out Campaign. Anything that looks respectable, but still makes clear that you are one of those atheists.

Lincoln Center Christmas Tree 2007

tags: christmas tree, holidays, photography Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Christmas Tree, 2007. This tree stands in the plaza between the New York State Theatre, the Metropolitan Opera House, and Avery Fischer Hall -- I walk past this tree twice every day on my way to the library where I get free wifi. It's a lot prettier at night than it is during the day (I think it is very ugly in the daytime). In the background, you can see the lights from a few buildings that look out over the western side of Central Park in Manhattan. Image: GrrlScientist 2007 [really large view]

Another Story for the Huffington Post

tags: Huffington Post, OffTheBus project, presidential campaign 2008 I have been working on another story for the Huffington Post as part of their OffTheBus project. This story is about the upcoming presidential elections (Alas, I am simply a volunteer reporter, no money is entering my pockets). Tomorrow's job? I am calling several Iowa state representatives and interviewing them about the Republican presidential hopefuls, because we're interested in learning more about how the Republicans are organizing throughout Iowa and we want to learn more about their position on the candidates. The…

Luminescence Deep Under the Waves

tags: luminescent marine animals, Deep Sea, Deep Blue, streaming video Scenes and music are from the movie "Deep Blue", rearranged to make this little video, which shows mostly luminescent creatures that are living in the deep sea. These animals are bioluminescent, but to see that, you'd have to turn the lights out, and then they'd glow a bluish-white. However, these animals glow with rainbow colors due to diffraction by their bodies of the light that is being shown onto them for the purposes of photography. Imagine: we know more about the moon than we know about the deep sea! [1:15]

Mastodon Skull Sold to Save Creationist 'Museum'

tags: creationism, mastodon skull, Mt Blanco Fossil Museum, fossils The Mount Blanco creationist "museum" in Crosbyton, Texas managed to raise the funds to save their facility from extinction by selling their 40,000 year old mastodon skull at auction. The skull, named "Lone Star", was estimated to be worth $160,000 and sold for $191,200. The "museum", which claims that humans and dinosaurs co-existed and that the universe, the earth and everything on it were created six thousand years ago, will use these funds to continue spreading lies to the public regarding the nature and origins of life…

Dramatis Personae: Lord Hernshead

tags: red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, birds, NYC, Central Park, Image of the Day My good friend, the published author Bob Levy, has sent me eight images that document the lives of a little family of red-winged blackbirds living in Central Park, NYC. These images will appear as the Image of the Day beginning on the 6th of January and running through the 13th of January. Male Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, Central Park, NYC. Lord Hernshead peers down from his favored lookout post. Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George. [wallpaper size].

Mystery Bird: Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna

tags: Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Probable Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, photographed in Seattle, Washington. "[T]his [bird] has almost a yellow stripe from behind the eyes, down the side of the head and down the back. [A]lso the same yellow appears on about the center of the outer wing. It is much smaller than the Anna's that usually come [to the hummingbird feeder]", writes the photographer. Image: Julie, 23 February 2009 [larger view]. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Review all mystery…

Cephalopod frenzy!

Several readers have alerted me to this artful cover from Play magazine. Why must the videogames always be about the nasty wicked violence? Put away the weapon, young lady! The mysterious creature only wants to play. But it does remind me…Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is on TV in about an hour and a half, and I need to get ready. What snacks are appropriate for such a movie? The traditional popcorn and soft drink? Or is this more of a large jug of cheap hootch sort of event? And should I start drinking now, or wait for the absurdities to start?

Five Good Psychedelic Pop Albums

Junior's buddy expressed an interest in psychedelic pop. Here's a selection of good albums, one for each decade. There is of course also heavier psych rock with prominent blues guitar in the tradition of Hendrix. 60s. Beatles, Revolver 70s. This decade produced a treasury of psych rock, prog rock and space rock, but I haven't got a recommendation for something both poppy and psychedelic. 80s. Stone Roses, The Stone Roses 90s. Olivia Tremor Control, Music from the Unrealised Film Script 'Dusk at Cubist Castle' 00s. Of Montreal, Aldhil's Arboretum 10s. Tame Impala, Lonerism See also my blog…

New Paper On The Wreck Of The Rikswasa

A few years ago I did some fieldwork at Djurhamn, a peripheral naval harbour of the 15th through the 17th centuries (and blogged much about it: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H, and published a paper on it in an anthology). Now maritime archaeologist Jonas Wiklund has published a paper on the sad fate of the Rikswasa, a nearby shipwreck that was salvaged by a diving firm and made into coffee-table ornaments in the 1960s with permission from the National Maritime Museum. Jonas has kindly allowed me to make his paper (in Swedish) available here on Aard. Wiklund, J. 2013. Rikswasa -- från…

Check Out Scientopia for Old and New Favourite Blogs

There's a new science blogging network, Scientopia, it's full of ex-SciBlings and other good bloggers, and it has no ads! Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science is there, as is Grrlscientist, Krys also of Anthro in Practice, the Voltage Gate, Drugmonkey, Christina Pikas, Mark of Good Math/ Bad Math, the Questionable Authority, Scicurious formerly of Neurotopia, Zuska, PAL MD and others. The site is open to applications from new bloggers. Good luck, guys! Anybody on Scientopia who has written something about archaeology and/or skepticism, and who'd like a share of my traffic, just…

A Deadly Find

What's the most dangerous find an archaeologist can make? Some fear anthrax spores in sealed burial caskets. Others the asbestos used to temper certain types of North Scandinavian pottery. But German construction workers are on a whole other level than us. They regularly find Allied bombs from WW2. One weighing 500 kg was recently found six metres below ground level in Göttingen, Germany, during work on a sports arena. And when the bomb squad set to work on it two days ago, the bomb exploded, killing three and injuring six. They're civilian casualties in a war once fought by their…

Monday Miscellany

Web gems have been sent my way. ASPEX, makers of scanning electron microscopes, offer to scan your sample for free and post the image on their site. Finally you can learn about the micro-structure of your tear-duct sleep gunk! Pablo Zalama Torres makes lovely replicas of archaeological pottery. An amateur volunteering for the Stardust @ Home project has probably discovered "the first known sample of matter ever collected from the local interstellar medium". Space dust! James Randi has come out of the closet. Congratulations, Randi! Your houdinesque escape will make it easier for other gay…

Whale Bones Trawled Up From Bottom of Baltic Sea

I've written before about a recent whale vertebra that someone had dropped into a lake far from the sea in northern Sweden. This past summer, fishermen trawling off the country's southern coast caught two old whale bones, and they've turned out to belong to a grey whale, a species that's been extinct in the Atlantic since the 17th century. An unidentified whale beached itself and died in the area in 1709. Radiocarbon will tell if the newly found bones are likely to belong to that animal. [More blog entries about whales, balticsea, Sweden; valar, Ãstersjön, Ystad.]

Satellite stupidity

As Atmoz noted, its a bit of a slow season, but via Deltoid comes probably the most stupid ever explanation for GW: yes, its the microwave radiation from satellites warming us up. This is blindingly obviously nonsense, but John Mashey provides some numbers if you're in any doubt. Mind you, the basic lack of power isn't the sites only mistake, there's When a microwave transmission is sent to a receiving satellite dish the transmission is sent in a spherical direction or Earths atmosphere is made of water as well as many others. However, overall its just stupid rather than entertaining :-(

Study debunks 'global cooling' concern of '70s

Just a quick post, since I'm at work, to note our appearence in USA today. This is an upcoming BAMS paper, but clearly making USA today is far more important :-) It grew from http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ but Tom and John finally did what I never managed to do, which was to put it into coherent paragraphs with a storyline. Mind you, I'm not sure its up there with As climate change warms the nation, giant Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the USA.... [Update: http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080225/cm_thenation/769288601 is nice]

The inherent contradictions of greenyness

In the course of Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change Robin McKie says: The Observer's travel desk already gets hate mail merely for highlighting interesting destinations that might seem to encourage carbon-producing air travel Well no. Without condoning the hate mail (which probably isn't) the grauniad and observer frequently (almost always) runs travel sections on places you can only plausibly get to by air. They do this because their readers want them to. They run these alongside articles bemoaning the rise of CO2 from air travel. Its a contradiction they would do better…

Great wikipedia edit comments

Coming back from the pub, I find the edit comment Someone added a bunch of none sence. First of all, it's not a giant beaver the creates the wind. Second, it's impossible that the people you mentioned knew about beavers. If that makes no sense (and should it?) this is the edit in question. Kind of puts RP's problems in perspective :-) Although its a possible new avenue for tornado research! More thought provoking is The Coriolis force does not affect insects or ships since its clearly false; but in the case of insects its negligible. And for supertankers? I'm not sure.

Science: False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All

From Science 17 November 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5802, p. 1064 DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5802.1064a: A closer look at the Atlantic Ocean's currents has confirmed what many oceanographers suspected all along: There's no sign that the ocean's heat-laden "conveyor" is slowing. The lag reported late last year was a mere flicker in a system prone to natural slowdowns and speedups. Furthermore, researchers are finding that even if global warming were slowing the conveyor and reducing the supply of warmth to high latitudes, it would be decades before the change would be noticeable above the noise.…

CO2: just in case you thought some thiings are too mad to consider

One of the things that just about no-one bothers contest is that CO2 is rising from anthropogenic contributions. There are good reasons for this; CO2 is well measured since Mauna Loa; it tracks (scaled by 50% for absoption) the known human sources... and so on. However, its a wide net out there and some people will challenge anything, so we have High CO2 in the 1940's atmosphere, contrary to IPCC science. Tim Lambert and Jim Easter took this apart before; as far as can be told, the recent post (see fig 1 of the Beck thingy) is just the same mistakes all over again.

Hank Fox WANTS!

Coral Ridge Ministries is pushing hard to promote their pet causes, and Hank Fox suggests that they give him a few goodies from their list of crazy literature and DVDs. They say they'll send it out in return for a voluntary donation, but so far, it looks like the "donation" is less than voluntary. I recall taking a stab at this a year or so ago with another Christian organization that was trying to sell creationist books while calling it a giveaway, with a completely independent and entirely optional opportunity to donate a few dollars to a worthy religious cause. I never got my books.

Political Fallout from Foley

Holy cow, if this report is true the Republicans are in serious trouble: House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned. "The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss." On the other hand, it could well have been leaked intentionally by someone who wants Hastert's job, like say John Boehner.