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sorry, it was me

so, as you may have heard, AIG, the insurance giant "lost" $61 billion and change this last quarter... welll, I found it, I think, but I can't be sure, since it could be someone else's $60 billion, I mean one big pile of used $20s looks much like another; anyway, the US taxpayers are going to cover AIG on this one, so "finders keepers", eh? and the tens of trillions in Credit Default Swaps that the major ex-investment banks are carrying on their balance sheets they're also mine, well most of them, I think Goldman Sachs got some too it was such a deal, I mean the odds were ridiculously good I…

Holocaust of the fluffy toys

We took a pile of stuff down the the dump today. I don't like throwing things away (which is a large part of the problem: thngs accumulate because I can't bear to throw them away), but it has become necessary - too much stuff has been piling up. The fluffy toys of the title weren't ours: it was someone we saw there, tipping a whole box of perfectly good toys into the skip. But but but I want to say, there must be someone who wants those... but then again, when the far east pumps out new fluffy toys at such volume at such low price, what margin is there in recycling old ones? The tip does make…

Trump Doubles Down on Immigration; Promises Tacos for Everyone

I was half expecting Trump to soften on immigration. The logic of that? His main supporters, who hate all immigrants and are a bunch of racist slobs will vote for Trump no matter what he says because the are morons. But, the fence sitters, the amoral "Good Republicans" who would vote for him because they have learned to fear Democratic economic policies (this group are also all morons) might vote for him if he was less crazy sounding. But no, that didn't happen. Instead, he embarrassed our nation buy telling the President of Mexico, to his face, that he's going to have to pay for this wall…

Best vacuum cleaner, best place to buy one

This is a blog rant. But first, a bit of blog appreciation to the select number of individuals who suggested to us that the Shark was the best vacuum cleaner for us, in a recent Facebook Discussion. I have to say, that when I saw S.H. suggest the Shark, I figured that the chances were pretty high that we would end up with a Shark, S.H. has always given me the very best advice on everything. Anyway, the main point of comparison for us was between various models of the Dyson and various models of the Shark. Side by side they ended up being pretty similar but the Shark actually has some…

Who's smarter than who?

Oh, no, I'm torn — I'm an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here's a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists'. Actually, I'm lying and I'm not really torn at all. I don't buy it. I think IQ tests are loaded with bias that favors a particular kind of thinking, the kind that signals success in academia, engineering, medicine, and so forth, and doesn't necessarily reflect any specific biological property. It's fair to say that atheist values parallel the values rewarded by IQ tests, but the simple-minded…

Links for 2011-05-10

Shit My Students Write "Macbeth couldn't have loved Lady Macbeth because he was crazy and too busy hallucinating witches and stuff. Also, crazy people can't do it without going crazy midway through." (tags: academia education internet silly blogs literature) Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation's Schools With Enough Money To Properly Educate Students | The Onion - America's Finest News Source "Sources in the Congressional Budget Office reported that as a result of a clerical error, $80 billion earmarked for national defense was accidentally sent to the Department of Education, furnishing schools…

Good Stuff Going to Waste

Somewhere between yesterday's posts about uselesss junk and useful antiques, there's this. The picture to the right is a tragedy in progress, though is might not look that way: It's an FTIR spectrometer left behind by the previous occupant of my lab. It's a top-of-the-line instrument, a Bomem DA-8 spectrophotometer, and a new one will set you back better than $100,000. It's no use to me, though, as it's designed to make measurements of spectra in the far infrared-- wavelengths of a couple of microns or more, well past the 800 nm sort of range where I work. So it sits there in the lab, next to…

An apology...? Not if I ruled the universe.

The reaction to the news that the Irish Catholic Church covered up (thus encouraged) the molestation and rape of children is odd. At least odd to me. Apologize? Quit using the titles 'Father' and 'Your Grace'? Really? The people involved in this disgusting tragedy (perpetrators and those who protected them) should only have two real options. 1-- Spend their remaining lives and the entire fortune of the Catholic Church to right this wrong. Sell the Vatican for whatever you can get for it. Spend all the Churches $$ and all of their man-(nun)-power on the victims of abuse, and any suffering…

Looking for some motivating music

Now that the semester is over, I have no excuse not to do a lot of home-maintenance-y things, like: installing a rainbarrel in my backyard installing a dual-flush mechanism on our upstairs toilet setting up the other dehumidifier in the basement (we had one in each house when we had 2 houses, and hadn't set up the 2nd one in WL over the winter. However, it will soon be the case I need to empty the 1st dehumidifier every 2 days, so time to press #2 into service) picking up everything post garage sale, before the cleaners come tomorrow sorting through boxes unearthed through garage sale prep…

In 2008, the Democratic Nominee Will Be the Evangelical

The irony of the 2008 presidential race is that this time around, the Democratic nominee is by far the more religiously devout candidate, promoting a born again language and professed faith. In a match up with John McCain, it's Barack Obama who can genuinely speak the language of evangelicals, softening some of the Democratic party's "God problem." Indeed, news reports are speculating that many young Evangelical voters might break for Obama in the general election, a proposition that fits with some of the recent polling data that I have spotlighted at this blog. The Obama campaign is already…

#1 in Football and Basketball, But Left Behind in Research?

Florida and Ohio State face off tonight in the Men's NCAA basketball championship, a re-match of January's national title game in football. Both schools feature the best athletics programs that money can buy, as they each spend an astounding $100 million dollars annually on their sports programs. Yet, as I wrote back in January, though these schools might be "turning pro" in athletics, they are quickly being left behind by the elite universities in terms of investment in science and research. Ohio State will invest more than $1 billion over the next ten years in athletics. In comparison,…

From blogger to blogginghead

I'm going to be appearing this weekend on the strangely addictive show bloggingheads.tv. If you're not familiar with it, it's a show composed of two talking heads staring out of your screen at you, holding forth for an hour on whatever topic they choose (politics, television, science...). Actually, each speaker is staring into a computer camera and talking on the phone to his or her partner in chat. On Saturdays, two of our most provocative science writers, John Horgan and George Johnson, take to the tubes. Horgan asked me to join him this week. I've known Horgan for several geological eras,…

askjohnlott.org makes the Washington Times

The Washington Times has a story about a Lott related Internet impersonation, but it's not about Mary Rosh. The Washington Times considers the Lott parody site askjohnlott.org to be a more important story than Mary Rosh. That site contains answers like this: Q: I want to get roughly ten hand guns for my friend's 50th birthday party, but I really don't want the police to know about this. Is there any way for me to do this without getting reported? A: Hopefully, you haven't saved this for the last minute. By law, licensed gun dealers must report to federal…

Greenpeace Chides Retailers for Buying Bad Seafood

Yesterday, Greenpeace-USA released a report criticizing supermarkets for buying unsustainable seafood. Greenpeace-Canada also released a similar report, which I spoke about this morning on CTV news. As I said in the interview, if we want sustainable seafood to become something more than just yuppie food, we're going to have to affect behavior on a big scale and supermarkets (where, in Canada, for instance, two-thirds of seafood is sold) are one medium for doing this. One way to motivate supermarkets to change their buying behavior is through affecting their reputation with negative…

A bosom boost when you need it most?

Occasionally, I come across interesting new technologies that are just too...well, too something, not to post about them. Take, for example, Lisca lingerie's newest model: The Smart Memory Bra. The special memory foam bra reshapes under the influence of heat to give a woman more cleavage when she gets warmer. The theory is, since attraction can cause a woman to rise her temperature a bit, that the bra will enhance her best assets when the time is right. Of course, I'm not so sure I buy that. There are any number of reasons why a woman's body temp might rise, the least of which is interest in…

The "Tax Cuts For Healthcare" "plan" screws the poor more than I thought:

I made a fairly large error when I wrote my previous article on the health care "plan" that Bush will announce during the State of the Union Address later today. When I did my back-of-the-envelope calculations of the tax breaks that different people would receive under the plan, I missed an important consideration. When I initially read the press release, I thought that everyone would get the $15,000 income deduction. I wasn't reading carefully enough. In reality, only those who have health insurance will get any sort of tax break. This means that unless the uninsured poor can scrape…

The Standing of Science in America

In my latest Science Progress column, contemplating declining funding levels for university-based scientific research, I ask where science stands in America today. The answer, not surprisingly, is complicated--but also worrisome. On the one hand, people really respect scientists. But on the other, the appreciation appears to be only skin deep--there isn't the sort of engagement that would really allows them to draw upon science to better their own lives in all aspects. As I put it in one passage: ...consider a very important question for most people: Where should I buy a home? Amid the…

Your brain - on Van Aelst

Kantor Set Kevin Van Aelst Several readers have suggested I blog about photographer Kevin Van Aelst in the past weeks. If you've missed out on his work, Kevin is the sort of artist who can portray cellular mitosis in the legendarily difficult medium of Krispy Kreme, or chromosomes in gummi worm, fingerprints in non-dairy creamer, or the Kantor Set in egg yolk. His work is clever, funny, and meticulous to a fault. Circulatory System (Heart On Your Sleeve), 2009 Kevin Van Aelst Here's what the artist has to say: While the depictions of information--such as an EKG, fingerprint, map or…

The Sunday Night Poem - W. B. Yeats

[Editor's note: The narrator has been begging me for months to let him post some poetry on this site, using the argument that unless we promote the world's greatest poems, the collective I.Q. of this country is going to drop to the level of people who buy books by O. J. Simpson. Out of respect for his opinion and feelings I have decided to allow the C. O. to share a poem every Sunday night. Here is his first offering.] He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light…

Mystery beast washes ashore in Devon, UK

The Sun and Mail are reporting the discovery of a mystery beast washed ashore in North Devon, speculating that it could be the fabled Beast of Exmoor. By most accounts, the Beast of Exmoor is a big cat such as a puma that escaped or was released onto the remote moors in the 1970s and has lived there ever since, preying on livestock. No real evidence has ever been found, save blurry photographs and unconfirmed sightings. The Sun reported this new development: The Sun rubbishes claims that this might be a seal, pointing out: "The Marine Conservation Society and the National Seal Sanctuary…

RIP Planktos

Some days are really good and today is one of them. Rick at MBSL&S informs us today that PLANKTOS is no longer. Ah Planktos, we hardly knew ye. Last week, the board of directors for San Francisco-based Planktos, a company selling carbon credits through the dumping of iron filings into the ocean, indefinitely postponed activities. Which is press release-speak for it folded. Their website is down, and one can only assume the Planktos team is selling their Aeron Chairs on eBay. But man, if the arrogant bastards at Planktos didn't get off one last salvo at the scientific community that didn'…

Those who forget history…

Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary explain How the Darwinists help the ID guys, citing the example of Paul Mirecki (as described by Johnny Wells): Anti-Christian zealots are often in the forefront of attacks on intelligent design. In 2005, the chairman of the University of Kansas Religious Studies Department, atheist Paul Mirecki, proposed to teach a course titled “Intelligent Design Creationism and Other Mythologies.” Mirecki boasted on a web site that “fundies” would see the course as a “slap in their big fat face.” He also endorsed a description of Pope John Paul II as “a corpse in a funny hat…

Space, the forgotten frontier

The End of the Space Age: It's important to recognize, though, that the decision in question belongs to all of us, and not just to Barack Obama. The administration wouldn't be cutting the manned spaceflight program if Americans were still enthusiastic about going to the stars -- if space exploration still occupied a privileged place in our imagination, if our jocks still wanted to be astronauts and our nerds still wanted to build rockets. Obama is simply bowing to our culture's priorities: Our geeks want to build a better XBox, and our jocks want to buy it to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare…

Identity Politics

We shouldn't be surprised when every presidential election - even an election between two candidates committed to some vague post-partisan future - veers into identity politics and the culture war. I can't help but watch these conventions through the lens of Jane Goodall, as a gathering of social primates affirming their role within the tribe. Politics is an emotional sport, defined by teams with visceral identities, and not some rational arena in which issues and analysis take center stage. Of course politics always degenerates into some version of Us versus Them: that's just human nature.…

The digital future, freedom & control

Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four: The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have. Here's one way around this: Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it. (Sony and Interead--makers of rival e-book readers--didn't immediately respond to my inquiries about whether their devices allow the same functions. As far as I can tell, their terms…

NSF AST: we hear ya, bro

Anyone want to buy some telescopes? Heavily used. Free to a good home. The NSF has issued a preliminary response to the NSF Astronomy Portfolio Review. Game on. NSF MPS/AST Response to Portfolio Review Report (pdf) This is a 4 page response from NSF Astronomy Division Director Ulvestad to the Portfolio Review, from August 31st 2012. Implementation is pending current budget negotiations for next fiscal year budget and plan. Implementation requires acting by end of 2013. Small Grants: "...Given the constrained budget scenarios and the explicitly higher-priority recommendation for AAG and…

A Chateau Steelypips Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving advice from Making Light got here too late to do us any good, but we had a fine first Thanksgiving anyway. My parents, sister, grandmother, and one of my great-aunts came up from New York, and Kate's parents came up from Boston, so we packed nine people into our smallish house, along with more food than we really needed. But then, Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday: built around excess. What other country would come up with a holiday whose principal observation is gorging to excess, and then watching football on tv? So the turkey was a little too big-- that…

Amway sells genetic tests?

From Emily Singer's article yesterday in Technology Review: A number of companies offering direct-to-consumer genetic testing have cropped up in the past two years to capitalize on these advances, from 23andMe and Navigenics, which offer genome-wide scans to identify specific disease-linked genetic variations, to Knome, which offers whole-genome sequencing to the wealthy. Any doubts that personal genomics is making its way into the mainstream can be assuaged with a look at Interleukin genetics, a startup that sells genetic tests for heart-disease risk, B vitamin metabolism, and other factors…

Science Mag on Science Blogs

You know what they say about great minds. In the April 14 issue of Science Magazine, two environmental scientists opine that scientists can, and must, become active bloggers and readers of blogs, for two main reasons. First, hard-blogging scientists will ensure that sound scientific information makes it to a wide public audience (while by shunning blogging, the scientific community will cede the conversation to other voices and other interests). Second, scientists have, in the blogosphere, an unprecedented tool for sharing and soliciting ideas, data, and hypotheses. A blog-literate scientific…

Local blogging - what's new

On Thursday night I went to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro blogger MeetUp. Actually, I did not plan on going - my wife was out of town and I had kids on my hands on a schoolday, so I told Anton in advance that I would not be coming this time. But, the previous day both of my kids bugged me about some online stuff, asking me how certain things are done and I had no idea how to help them! I promised I'd ask my blog friends. But then, I had an Eureka moment and asked my kids if they would rather ask my blog friends in person! They were quite enthusiastic about it so we went all three of us to Open…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants: SciBlings

Continuing with the series of posts introducing the participants - you can see the whole list here. A couple of dozen SciBlings will be there, but here are five I picked for today: Janet D. Stemwedel (aka Dr. Free-Ride) is a Philosopher and a Chemist. She is a Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University in California and she blogs on Adventures in Ethics and Science and can also be found on Twitter. Janet is the veteran of our conferences - one of a handful to attend her fourth, and one of only two people who did something - a talk, presentation or session - every single year. I…

Framing Global Warming

NPR has started a year-long series on climate called Climate Connections. The other day, they broadcast the first in a series of their educational segments, starting at the very beginning: the carbon atom. You can read the intro here and watch the video here but just listening to the audio in the car was absolutely fascinating (the video is close, but much shorter and not identical to the first quarter of the audio segment for which the podcast is at the "listen" button). The science was very basic yet completely correct and the entire segment was so fun to listen to. It was fast and…

Why so few posts?

In the beginning, blogs were mainly collections of links. With the development of blogging platforms, many bloggers moved on to long-form writing. But blogs were still places for a lot of linkfests, or link-plus-one-liner posts as well. My blog has always been a mix of both styles. Thus, my average of 8.2 posts per day. But recently, you may have noticed the most definite reduction in the number of posts per day. Why? First, because I heard some complaints about my blog being a firehose of stuff that is "boring, just links" (although others said that my role as a trusted filter was…

Crowdsourcing Honesty and Trust

Three thought-provoking reads (even more thought-provoking taken together than each in isolation): Crowdsourcing Honesty?: In short, we are far more likely to be honest when reminded of morality, especially when temptation strikes. Ariely thus concludes that the act of taking an oath can make all the difference. Craig Newmark on the Web's Next Big Problem: And what is that? The question of who to trust online, according to Newmark. To solve it, he believes that what the web needs is a "distributed trust network" that allows us to manage our online relationships and reputations. I just…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 6

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 5

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 4

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 3

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 2

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 1

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

planning

bloomin' heck, it is snowing! Actually it is not the snow, it is the 40 mph gusts of wind on top of the steady 20-25 mph brisk breeze that drove me into a spot with hot cocoa and free WiFi (this entry brought to you by PANERA - large cups of hot chocolate and unlimited WiFi, at a college town near you)! So, when I left of this trip, I very carefully took out all the gloves, scarves, hats and other woolly wam things. 'Cause its spring, y'know. Silly me. At least I though to take proper boots. Actually, I've been pondering how reliant on always being "on" I've become. In Ye Olde Days, making…

KITP: habitable worlds

Finding and characterizing habitable exoplanets. Enric Palle on Earth as an exoplanet. Drake Deming on using JWST to find exoplanets Then Lisa Kaltenegger on biosignatures Jim Kasting on habitability and 3D GCMs. Missed Palle's talk. It is online... Talked about transmission spectra, reflectance, variability, polarization, red edge. Caught the discussion, some interesting banter. On the "red edge" - there will be something like it on any efficient biosphere because plants must absorb efficiently near the peak transmission spectrum of the star, and there must be some heat rejection at some…

links for 2009-01-27

We Need a Civilian GI Bill :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "Unlike the original bill, which rewarded service, this new bill would be a rescue measure. As in the past, a primary goal would be to decrease pressure on what today is a shrinking job market and limit growing unemployment rates. But another equally important goal would be to prepare the more educated labor force the nation needs for economic development and global competitiveness at a time when a dwindling number of jobs are available to individuals without a college education and its…

Lecture on Emerging Media & Science at Mt. Sinai

If you are in the NY area, you might want to consider coming to this talk that is being organized by Kate. The title is "DISCUSSION ON THE ROLES OF EMERGING MEDIA OUTLETS IN COMMUNICATING SCIENCE." It is taking place tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 pm in the Mt. Sinai East Building Seminar Room. (The East Building is located at 1425 Madison Ave. @ 98th St.) The discussion features among other fellow ScienceBlogger Carl Zimmer, of the NYTimes. Kate and I will also be there, and SEED is sponsoring. So come on by. More information below the fold. UPDATE by Kate: Yes, folks, Jake Young will…

Catherine Moody, Second Life Pianist

Second Life isn't a game, exactly. Some call it that, and indeed it is sometimes compared to various massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs). Really, though, Second Life is a virtual online world— it's not really a game, and there aren't a lot of default "gameplay" elements. Some call it "Web 3.0," but I think that sort of misses the point; it's not really the next version of the web. Of course, what with it not being a game, one thing that people ask is, what do you do there? There are a lot of things to do. I enjoy building stuff. You can talk to friends, just like…

Got a study? Want to be in a study? This is the place.

More and more studies are online these days, which means that researchers can find a whole new array of participants for their studies, and anyone who's interested can become a real part of cutting-edge research. But how can researchers find interested research subjects -- and how can people who want to participate find the studies that are interesting to them? We think we might be able to help. If you're conducting an online psychology study, or really any study that can be conducted remotely, just put all the vital details in a comment below. Your study will appear in the "recent comments"…

Virtual Epidemiology

In 2005, there was a plague.  It started inadvertently, as most do, but spread rapidly, resulting in many deaths.  Officials scrambled to find a solution.  Eventually it was contained.   The plague was caused by a miscoded spell ( href="http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/gadgets/index.blog?entry_id=1230071">Corrupted Blood), in the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game ( href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG" rel="tag">MMORPG), href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml">World of Warcraft.  The people who died were not real people.  Nonetheless, it may be that the…

On-line abuse

Last year Graham Young, accused me of being blatantly dishonest for writing that Peiser had admitted to making multiple errors, even though Peiser had confirmed this in an email to Young. He ended up writing 20 comments denying Peiser's admission. Now Young has lashed out at me in a post at On Line Opinion. He calls me a "bully" and a "tick" and claims I use "brown-shirt tactics". (If you don't know what brown-shirt tactics are, see Sturmabteilung.) My crime? Lambert, through his blog Deltoid promulgates whatever the current orthodoxy happens to be, but he does not restrict himself to his…

Decisions

I need to lift the iron curtain between this blog and my workplace. I beg your indulgence for one post. As those who read Bora's interview with me know, I discontinued my previous blog Caveat Lector because I was informed that it was causing significant distress to individuals in my workplace. In my best judgment, I could not continue to blog there in any capacity without it appearing that I had simply brushed off the problems I caused. I took those problems very seriously indeed, as the closure of CavLec bears witness. When I came to ScienceBlogs, I intentionally structured Book of Trogool…

Book Progress #31

It was slow going, but I was able to write the first three pages of the new iteration of the dinosaur/birds chapter. (It is called, for good reason, "Footprints (and Feathers) in the Sands of Time." At least for now, anyway.) Although it contains some of the same points as my previous attempt, I have added a lot of new material. The mythological introduction is a little circuitous, but I think it works. I had planned on working on a number of other, smaller projects over the next few months, but I think I am going to primarily concentrate on getting my proposal for this book together. I'll…