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Kentucky has nothing to complain about

I'm going to be a contrarian here. I think the Kentucky legislature has made a perfectly sensible budget decision. Here's the deal: in the current budget, a couple of interesting decisions have been made. Funding for K-12 education: -$50 million Tax breaks for the Ark Park: +$43 million Highway improvements for the Ark Park: +$11 million See? Almost perfectly balanced: all the money handed over to creationists is taken away from education. And it makes perfect sense, too. It's not as if the next generation might need a high school diploma to take advantage of the employment opportunities…

Somebody explain Colorado to me

I've visited Boulder, Colorado a few times—it's a wonderful place, and at least so far it's got Gary—but usually when I hear about the state it's all about lunatics like Dobson and Coors and about megachurches and our air war for Jesus, and now…some overendowed Christian charity based in Colorado plunks ONE MILLION DOLLARS into Ken Ham's collection plate, donating all that money to his fake museum. One million dollars to fund disinformation and fraud, and this from a charitable institution that claims their "vision is to glorify Jesus Christ by inspiring and enabling personal commitment of…

Creationism evolves!

The existence of Ken Ham proves that creationism changes, therefore proving that it is not absolute, inerrant truth as he claims, therefore Ken Ham disproves creationism. QED. We can all go home now. By the way, that's not a bad diagram for illustrating the relationships of the various versions of creationism, except that the pedigree breaks down for Intelligent Design creationism, which is kind of a weird syncretic hodge-podge that accommodates both of the major branches of the creationist tree. It really ought to be shown as the warped, evil offspring of an unnatural act, an orgy of all of…

AU Documentary Film Professor Helps PBS Put a Human Face on Climate Change

The faculty here at American University's School of Communication include several of the country's leading environmental filmmakers with their work coordinated through the Center for Environmental Filmmaking. One of our faculty Larry Engel worked on the recent PBS NOW film "Waterworld" which documents how climate change is impacting Bangladesh. The film describes the human health effects that climate change is already causing in this developing country of more than 200 rivers and frequent storm surges. You can read a transcript and/or watch the film at the embed above. You will also want to…

Putting the Pew Climate Survey In Context

Last week's Pew survey on American views of climate change generated a sizable amount of speculation and debate from bloggers and other commentators. See for example this round up at the NY Times. In comparison to some of this blog debate, readers will find very useful the discussion offered earlier this week at NPR's Talk of the Nation involving Pew director Andrew Kohut and Yale researcher Anthony Lieserowitz. [Transcript.] For more background on how lingering public disengagement relates to the frames of reference provided by the media, climate skeptics, and climate advocates alike, see…

Tomorrow @ AFI Theater: Discussion of Inherit the Wind

Tomorrow night, watch Spencer Tracy argue in defense of evolution. For readers in the DC area, tomorrow night at 7pm, the NIH Office of Science Education and the American Film Institute are teaming up to sponsor a screening of Inherit the Wind as part of their summer film series "Science in the Cinema." Following the film, I have been invited to make a few remarks on the evolution debate as it plays out in contemporary culture and the enduring themes from the classic movie. The event and film series is designed to facilitate active audience participation and debate, so I expect there will be…

A Rave Review for Star Trek and Humor from The Onion

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable' The only thing missing from the pitch perfect new Star Trek film is a strong soundtrack. The actors have been brilliantly cast and Zachary Quinto as Spock steals the show. The theaters in Georgetown last night were packed, and not by your typical Trekkie crowd. It looked like the film had broad demographic appeal. Expect Star Trek to make more than $70 million this weekend, tops for the eleven film series. Still, as the news clip above indicates, hardliner Trek fans are apparently disappointed that the newest version lacks a heavy handed…

If the Manhattan Project worked like my college group projects do.

As someone who teaches the occasional university undergrad course, this is more real than you might think. Here an excerpt: TELLER: Right. So, yeah, we split the plutonium atom I guess. And make a weapon out of it. BETHE: When is this due anyway? TELLER: I think tomorrow. BETHE: What?!?! TELLER: I know, right? I mean we shouldn't have put it off, but ... still sucks. BETHE: I have another class with one of the Soviets, and he says theirs isn't due until 1949. TELLER: 1949?!?! BETHE: I know, right? TELLER: I knew we took the wrong section. And no wonder the Russkies were out last night.…

Environment vs Economy vs Space Aliens

Here's a slide I recently made in a lecture on the scientific method, to illustrate how easy it is to produce very different hypotheses for a particular observation. Basically, the backdrop was to consider a scenario where environmentalists had noticed a significant drop in stork population, and also where the government recording its national birthrate dropping significantly (this apparently happened in China in the 80s, although the use of these two observations works nicely because there's also a well known folktale link between storks and babies). Building from a visual that Hadi…

So pregnancy means a total surrender of autonomy?

This is how to handle a depressed person: On December 23, 2010, Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a major depressive disorder, attempted to take her own life. Friends found her in time and persuaded her to get help. Six days later, Shuai underwent cesarean surgery and delivered a premature newborn girl who, tragically, died four days later. On March 14, 2011, Shuai was arrested, jailed, and charged with murder and attempted feticide. Don't get pregnant, ladies! It means that every risk you might take becomes a criminal offense! I always thought it was a joke to…

Urban and Industrial Environments

MIT Press publishes a series called Urban and Industrial Environments. Several of the "author-meets-blogger" books were from that series. The main editor is Robert Gottlieb of Occidental College out in California. I was just made aware of a blog for his Urban & Environmental Policy Institute there, where one can find notices of new books, discussions of current issues in environmental justice, and, you guessed it, matters of urban and environmental policy more broadly speaking. In addition to the well-stocked and premier Urban and Industrial Environments list, Gottlieb also edits a…

On Modern Exceptionalism

"And each generation, full of itself,/ continues to think/ that it lives at the summit of history" -- so ends Affonso Romano de Sant' Anna's poem "Letter to the Dead" (as posted here last year). In the same spirit of questioning Modern Exceptionalism, here is a quote by the German author Daniel Kehlmann from his book Measuring the World (a novel using Humboldt and Gauss as main characters, a novel, I might say, about epistemology): It was both odd and unjust...a real example of the pitiful arbitrariness of existence, that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether…

ScienceBlogs Must-Read: Nisbet on Framing in Terms of Economic Competitiveness

If you haven't read this post by Matthew Nisbet at Framing Science, you really, really should. It shows how framing scientific issues in terms of jobs and economic competitiveness is much more likely to pass funding bills: As I've noted here many times, major funding initiatives for science are mostly likely to be successful in winning support from policymakers under conditions where they can be exclusively defined in terms of economic competitiveness and growth. If opponents are unable to recast elements of the proposal in terms of public accountability (funding in the public vs private…

More on "Libertarian Paternalism"

I wrote about my skepticism about libertarian paternalism before. Here is some more skepticism. Glen Whitman writes about one type of policy advocated by libertarian paternalists -- the opt-out program. In opt-out programs, you are enrolled in what the government says you should do -- such as a savings account -- unless you specifically say that you don't want to do it. The problem as Whitman points out is in how difficult it is to get out. If you make it a bureaucratic maze to extricate yourself from a program, you have essentially made that program mandatory. (He discusses the slippery…

66% of Americans may be Young Earthers ...

... or at least can't think critically about polling questions. Today USA Today/Gallup announced poll results on evolution. The "highlights": "Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life" is probably or definitely false: 44% "Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" is probably or definitely true: 66% 15% said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that did not believe in evolution. The second question is usually…

Today in Science

Events 1969 - The first Internet connection was created when network control protocol packets were sent from the data port of one IMP to another Births 1436 - Regiomontanus, German mathematician 1519 - Andrea Cesalpino, Italian philosopher, physician, and botanist 1580 - Godefroy Wendelin, Flemish astronomer 1850 - Karl Ferdinand Braun, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate 1857 - Aleksandr Lyapunov, Russian mathematician 1906 - Max August Zorn, German-born mathematician 1918 - Edwin G. Krebs, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1933 - Heinrich Rohrer…

Hogzilla II

In this photo released by Melynne Stone, Jamison Stone, 11, poses with a wild pig he killed near Delta, Ala., May 3, 2007. Stone's father says the hog weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. If claims of the animal's size are true, it would be larger than ``Hogzilla,'' the huge hog killed in Georgia in 2004. (AP Photo/Melynne Stone) Apparently, we're supposed to believe that the eleven year old "shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it…

Science Literacy and Pseudoscience

This afternoon there was a symposium on "Science Literacy and Pseudoscience" that I had intended to attend but eventually missed. According to this AP story, it was revealed there that "People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens." So, science literacy is clearly increasing (from 10 to 28% according to one measure) but at the same time pseudoscientific beliefs are also increasing. It strikes me that…

"You have a board in Kansas that is so extreme"

Reuters is reporting: The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday threw out science standards deemed hostile to evolution, undoing the work of Christian conservatives in the ongoing battle over what to teach U.S. public school students about the origins of life. The board in the central U.S. state voted 6-4 to replace them with teaching standards that mirror the mainstream in science education and eliminate criticisms of evolutionary theory. Predictably, the Discovery Institute is not happy: "You have a board in Kansas that is so extreme," said John West, senior fellow at the Discovery…

Do you feel a tremor?

 It has been a while since I posted some science-related material (October 22nd to be precise ... you can blame the recent election if you like), so here goes ... The little yellow dots you seem above are a series of minor earthquakes that occurred last week in southern California, overlayed on the 3D surface within Google Earth. The data is provided by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program and is easily accessible in real time using the following KMZ file which will automatically load in GE. Give it a try, it's mucho cool. On a related note, I played around a little with Microsoft Virtual…

SciBlogger Tag Line: The Death Penalty and War Mongering

So, similar to how the guys over at the World's Fair have posed us ScienceBloggers with a couple questions, I have one of my own that I hope my brethern will undertake to answer: "Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?" This question was a spawn from a real conversation I had today w/ a friend, and I can't wait to see the answers this might generate. Readers, please also chime in! I'll probably post my answer as well as the others out there…

Oh noes! The Irish have abandoned Mother Church!

Y'all remember Michael Voris, the Catholic Dominionist who wants America to make the Pope King of the United States? He's nuts, obviously, but now we get to see him make his sad face. He visited Ireland, at the invitation of some diocese to babble about "the sacred heart of Jesus", and while he was there, he did some man-on-the-street interviews. He is horrified to discover…most of the Irish have left the Catholic church! Also, there are gays! I think he should have also asked all those people if they believe in leprechauns. I think he would have been even more disillusioned. Here's a…

Monster Toad Captured!

"This bounty hunter is my kind of scum: fearless and inventive." Cane toad, Bufo marinus The environmental group, Frogwatch, caught one of the largest specimens of toad ever discovered in Darwin, Australia on Tuesday. The apprehended toad is the size of a football and as heavy as a small sack of potatoes. Cane toads are a highly poisonous, non-native species in Australia and have been wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem for decades. Frogwatch's "Toad Buster" project launches "raids" on small ponds, blinds the toads with bright lights and nets them by the dozens. From there they are killed…

GLOBAL WARMING LOSES AN ADVOCATE: Ted Haggard Was Leader of Creation Stewardship Movement, Moral Duty Frame Has Potential to Engage Republican Base

Overlooked in the Ted Haggard scandal is that the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals was also one of the leaders of the "creation stewardship" movement, framing the issue of global warming in terms of moral duty. Polls show that Republicans are far less concerned with global warming than their Democratic counterparts, and framing the "old" issue of global warming in a new way around moral duty is a very viable strategy for engaging the Republican base, showing Evangelicals why the complex and "uncertain" topic was personally relevant. (See this post from Spring 2006.)…

Toxoplasma: Bet On Boys

Toxoplasma, that mind-altering, cell-manipulating, all-around awesome parasite that sits in the brains of billions of us, is back in the news. Infection with the parasite raises the chances a woman will have a boy from 51% to 72%. The average ratio of boys to girls at birth is 51%. Women with high levels of antibodies to Toxoplasma, scientists found, have a 72% chance of having a boy. While many effects of Toxoplasma probably have something to do with adaptations that allow the parasite to thrive and spread successfully, this one seems more like a side-effect, albeit a dramatic one. Source:…

I get email

I almost thought this note was from George W. Bush, and had to double check to see that the author was actually some random guy named Richard Williamson. Didn't your mommy love you when you were younger... Did she tell you be careful what you say to strangers !!!!! Remember, those you can DO, those you can't TEACH !! Semper Fi I'm trying to puzzle that phrase out. So if I can't teach you, I get to do you? This is a novel disincentive that will immediately set my students to improving their grades. What must it be like to go through life with such incoherent thoughts? I don't know, and I'…

Swarthmore Evolving

This Wednesday, I'll be coming to Swarthmore College to give a public lecture about human evolution. I had originally planned to focus on some of the cutting-edge discoveries I include in my upcoming book, from brain genes to enigmatic hobbits. But now that the big creationism trial is scheduled to get underway a couple hours away in Dover, Pa., on Monday, I'll talk about that as well--in particular how scientists continue to find evidence of human evolution, despite what some op-ed writing politicians may claim. Scroll down for information on my talk here. It's at 7:15 at Scheuer Room,…

The Hobbit War: An Indonesian View

The Guardian has a long but disjointed report about the dispute over Homo floresiensis. Articles like these rarely give a very good picture of scientific disputes, since all parties involved only get a couple catchy quotes apiece. I've been particularly puzzled by Teuku Jacob, the elderly Indonesian paleoanthropologist who sparked the controversy by taking possession of the bones and locking them away from the Indonesian and Australian researchers who found them. So I was pleased when my brother, a linguistic anthropologist who does research in Indonesia, passed on this link to a translation…

I'm not going back! You cant make me!

Since GrrlScientists asked: You Belong in Dublin Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions. You're the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl... or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town. What European City Do You Belong In? And the irony is, of course, that Dublin is where I escaped from in 1994. And changing one answer gives me: You Belong in Paris You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris. You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris…

Last word on Deutsch (unless he vents again, in which case ...)

As PZ notes, George Deutsch has finally come out from under his rock. Avowedly uncontrite for lying in his vita he has the following to say: Mr. Deutsch said he resigned of his own volition because he was unhappy with the negative publicity he and NASA were receiving in the news media. "I was just sick of it," he said. "I was being smeared. My integrity and credibility was being questioned. And as a human being, as a human being, I just could not take it anymore." (source) Kid. You had - and have -  zero credibility when talking about science. Leave it to the pros, 'mkay? And while you are at…

Surprising numbers from Britain

My experience of Europe in the 1980's was that creationism was a particularly American phenomenon - and frankly, I still think it is. However, the following poll from the UK gives one pause for thought: Over 2000 participants were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life: 22% - creationism 17% - intelligent design 48% - evolution 15% - did not know While this would appear to be similar to the situation here in the US, there is one important difference. When asked what should be taught (versus their own belief), 69% wanted evolution as part of the science…

And there's more ...

With my move over to ScienceBlogs I have been thinking about the direction I want to take my blogging. Readers of my old blog will remember that I spent a lot of the time their ranting about intelligent design, politics, ASU sports, etc. I have decided to continue doing so over there, so if you are new to me, you may want to check it out. This site will just be me on science, history of science, and the teaching of both of those. Occasional cross-postings may occur from the other site as needed. I expect to probably blog in the region of four or five times a week here, and who knows how…

Is There Nothing E. coli Cannot Do? Part Three of a Continuing Series...

Blogs are abuzz with the news that E. coli can solve classic math puzzles like the Burnt Pancake Puzzle. The paper itself is available for free here. Judging from the Frankensteinian anxiety this news seems to be triggering, people must think that life is normally not capable of the logic that we're familiar with in computers. In fact, however, E. coli was carrying out a natural sort of computation long before some undergrads starting tinkering with it. In Microcosm, I show how the genes that build E. coli's flagella act like a noise filter circuit. (Here's a new paper on the digital control…

Michael Shermer at next Alliance for Science Public Meeting

The Alliance for Science, in an effort to further dialogue between the science, religious,and business communities, is committed to bringing in a diverse network of speakers to its public meetings in the DC Metro area. Last year we had Dr. Peter Folger from the American Geophysical Union, Reverend Henry Green, ScienceBlog's own Chris Mooney, NCSE's Eugenie Scott, and AfS co-chair Paul Forbes to name a few. Now we're looking to a whole new year of fun with evolution education (yes, we're on an academic calendar...). Next Thursday, October 12th, is speaker Michael Shermer. He will also have…

A good science teacher?

If I had to decide what makes a good science teacher, it would be the ability to demonstrate how experiments fit into the proverbial "scheme of things". Nothing kills interest in science faster than 1. not being able to accurately relay the structure of the big picture and 2. just tossing a bunch of apparently random experiments at the students and expecting them to figure out how the pieces fit together. You wouldn't attempt to put a jigsaw puzzle together in the dark, would you? A second skill that can make a science teacher go from great to outstanding is the ability to motivate…

Pepsi Has Been Defeated

In what was probably the worst idea since Crystal Pepsi, the corporate sponsored advertiblog has met an early and decisive end. The announcement was made this morning: We have removed Food Frontiers from SB. We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way. My hat's off to all the writer's at ScienceBlogs who put their principles ahead of their page hits. I guarantee you, however, that this…

The Difference is Jesus

ScienceBlogs has the funniest ads sometimes. This image adorned the right hand side of my screen this morning (maybe now it's there twice). Intrigued I wanted to know more: Compassion believes it takes more than education, healthcare and social programs to make a difference in the life of a child and help nations escape from poverty. Finally, someone's advocating the abolition of all third world debt. Or they're suggesting that there needs to be a nonviolent civil uprising to remove authoritarian regimes throughout the Global South and expose the multinationals who support them. Exposing…

Experimental Biology 2016 - Day 1

Today marked the official start of the Experimental Biology meeting for the American Physiological Society! The highest award the society offers a scientist is named in honor of Dr. Walter B Cannon, the physiologist (and 6th President of the society) who came up with the term 'homeostasis' in his 1930 book The Wisdom of the Body. This year's award recipient is Dr. Amira Klip from the University of Toronto. In her presentation she described her research on how poor nutrition can activate the immune system to cause insulin resistance in muscle. Fascinating! This was a grand way to kick-off the…

Cone snail's unique weapon: insulin

A new study published in the Proceedings of  the National Academy of Sciences shows that cone snails use a pretty neat tactic to capture prey. They release insulin to lower blood sugar (i.e. hypoglycemic shock), which immobilizes fish for an easy meal. The venomous insulin is molecularly different from molluscan insulin and was actually found to be similar to fish insulin. Sources:  Safav-Hemami H, Gajewiak J, Karanth S, Robinson SD, Ueberheide B, Douglass AD, Schlegel A, Imperial JS, Watkins M, Bandyopadhyay PK, Yandell M, Li Q, Purcell AW, Norton RS, Ellgaard L, Olivera BM. Specialized…

The original tree hugger

Infrared image of a koala (from S. Griffiths) New research sheds light why koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) spend so much time hugging trees. As shown in the infrared image above, the trees stay cool on hot days. Since koalas do not sweat, hugging trees is another method to keep their cool in addition to panting and licking their fur. The research also shows that the animals who hug trees lose less water through evaporation that those that do not hug trees. I think I might need to start hugging trees this summer. Source: Briscoe NJ, Handasyde KA, Griffiths SR, Porter WP, Krockenberger A,…

Fluorescent millipedes on Alcatraz

Fluorescing millipedes. Image credit: Robert Kimsey Alcatraz is even more exciting that I had previously thought! Early last year the National Park Service had baited rats on the island with a non-toxic fluorescent food dye so they could track the animals as they left behind fluorescent droppings. Volunteers from the UC Davis entomology club along with workers then searched the island using black lights to find evidence of the rodents. Finding fluorescent millipedes instead was quite a surprise for the UC Davis entomology group! Dr. Robert Kimsey and his student Alexander Nguyen are…

Feather pattern indicates health

Figure 1 from Pérez-Rodríguez L et al., 2013. A new study shows that the feather pattern on the chests of some birds (i.e. the bib) may be an outward sign of how healthy the bird is. The pattern the study refers to is called a fractal dimension, which is used to describe the complexity of the pattern (see image above). Researchers, Pérez-Rodríguez et al., discovered that red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa) who were well-fed had more complex patterns than those who were food-restricted. Moreover, food-restricted animals weighed 13% less and had weaker immune systems. Source: Pérez-…

Clever cockatoo caught using tools

Check out this picture of a captive cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana) in the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna using a tool: Image from: Scientific American Figaro (shown above) was observed by a student using a piece of bamboo to try to retrieve a dropped pebble. This was the first documented evidence of a Goffin's cockatoo attempting to use a tool so the researchers decided to try a little experiment. They placed a cashew just outside of Figaro's cage and observed as Figaro attempted to retrieve it using a stick he found on the floor of the aviary. When that was…

Can abstinence make you more sexy?

If you are a blue-footed booby, the answer is yes. Female blue-footed boobies find males with bright-blue feet pretty sexy. The problem is repeated mating comes with diminished foot color and attractiveness as the males get older. What is a male with dull feet to do? Apparently the solution is easy. All they have to do is skip a breeding season and their feet become brighter again the following season. What could contribute to the diminished color with breeding? Males boobies are actually attentive fathers and actively participate in raising their offspring. Therefore, researchers think this…

Brief Observation on SLA's money troubles

Just about everyone coming back from the business meeting commented on the dire shape of the association's financials. First, times are tough everywhere and association memberships are down across the board. Librarians are being furloughed so there's no extra money there to pay for expenses if their organizations can't. Second, there's an elephant in the room that no one is mentioning in regards to membership renewals and meeting attendance: some of us haven't gotten over the name change vote and how disaffected we feel as a result of the entire mess. This isn't the reason I didn't go. I did…

Struggling with how to blog the proposal

When I joined ScienceBlogs, I was halfway done preparing for my comprehensive exams. That involved a lot of reading, re-reading, and then practice essays. I blogged that to stay honest - you could see weeks that I didn't accomplish as much as well as pretty productive weeks. I also got some great feedback from readers on some of my reactions to some of the articles. So now I'm working on my proposal, and I have been for a while... with nothing really to show for it. I'm trying to work out a way I can blog the proposal so you all can keep me honest again (since you were so good at it last time…

Neutrino observatory in India

The INO project is still in 'seeking approval' stage. I had hoped to go see it while here in India but guess am out of luck. The observatory would be located in disused mining(?) tunnels in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. Tunnels are good because that way we can eliminate cosmic rays and background radiation from messing up the observations. As for detecting the neutrinos themselves, it will help us understand the obscure stuff that this world is made of. What's more, the observations will aid in solving world's climate problem, will resurrect free market capitalism to it's heady Enron days…

Why 42

A discussion about why 42 is the answer to everything at the BBC: ...The answer can be interpreted in two ways. One is that it is a bad joke, implying that there simply is no answer, no meaning, no sense in the universe, and you would be no worse off if you jumped into the nearest black hole. But the other interpretation is that the joke was wise. It shows that seeking numerical answers to questions of meaning is itself the problem. Digits, like a four and a two, can no more do it than a string of digits could represent the poetry of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's work was the product of a life,…

South India's Thaleevuru in Robot movie

If you aren't a Tamil, you probably didn't get the title. i09's got a post about a Indian sci-fi movie along with a ravishing image of Thaleevuru (a.k.a Rajnikanth, a extremely popular tamil movie star. Thaleevuru is a Tamil slang for Da Man, which is a slang for...never mind). The movie to be made in Hindi will be directed by Shankar, a popular director hailing from Chennai. The movie would probably do well if it comes out, as Shankar is a good kalyana samayalkaran (another Tamil slang for someone who satisfies everyone's tastes). I wouldn't expect any real science, though. There has been…

How I record the essays published at TheScian.com

I must apologize for the poor quality of the audio recording of Once upon a time in a queue essay published on the 24th. It was recorded at 6:30 in the morning while I was half asleep. I've done a new recording today and have replaced the original audio files now. For those who are curious and interested in how I record and the equipment, I use a Samson C01U USB Microphone purchased for 100 dollars. It is a condenser mic and works very well with Apple Powerbook running Audacity for audio capture. -From the September Newsletter. Have you subscribed to the Newsletter? It's a good way to keep…