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Who'd have ever cared about Johannes Lerle if Dembski hadn't defended him?

A rather unsavory character, Dr Johannes Lerle, was jailed in Germany for violating their laws against neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial. I discussed this earlier this week, and as Gerard Harbison and Andrew Brown have recently pointed out, he was not a very nice man at all…a bit of a kook, really. Dr Lerle is an unabashed and deeply anti-semitic holocaust denier. He takes the view that the only good Jew is a Christian convert. All others are children of the devil: "Jews" with scare quotes round them, to distinguish them from Christians. Those "Jews", his website explains, control the world's…

How to catch the Perseids and beat the almost-full Moon (Synopsis)

"My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky." -Steven Spielberg The full or almost-full Moon might be one of the most familiar sights in the night sky to those of us here on Earth, but it’s also the largest natural source of light pollution we have to contend with. The peak of this year’s Perseid meteor shower…

Discovery Of A Young, Dead Galaxy Creates A Huge Puzzle For Astronomers (Synopsis)

"This new insight may force us to rethink the whole cosmological context of how galaxies burn out early on and evolve into local elliptical-shaped galaxies. Perhaps we have been blind to the fact that early "dead" galaxies could in fact be disks, simply because we haven't been able to resolve them." -Sune Toft How do galaxies form and grow? The theory behind it is simple and straightforward. You start with a collection of normal-and-dark matter, the normal matter collects in the center, pancakes, and forms stars over time. A little later, more gas falls in, and the galaxy continues to form…

Is this what we can expect from Comfort/Cameron?

Frank Tipler claims to have proven the existence of god with phyics. Will this be the sort of answer we'll see in Ray Comfort's promised 13 minute proof? Notice that we don't actually get to see the infamous equation. We see Tipler scribble a few words like "quantum" (does the word "quantum" actually appear imbedded in the formulas describing quantum mechanics?) and a few bits and pieces of math, and then the camera lingers on him writing "= god exists", but there isn't any substance shown. He says stuff like, "If you are using quantum mechanics and general relativity, you are forced to…

Putting the 400 ppm CO2 thing in perspective

Before the release of vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of this gas was about 300 ppm or a bit more. Soon, that number will be 400 ppm. How soon? Let's see ... it is now Tuesday at about 7pm. Maybe mid morning tomorrow? Maybe early next week? In fact, there have been one or two readings over the last few weeks that have registered above the 400 ppm mark. So, this is important because humans have officially increased the concentration of this key greenhouse gas by a third. That's a big deal. Having said that, I…

Crowdfunding a Greenland expedition to gauge increasing wildfire impact on melt

A colleague sent this to me, I'm passing it on to you. Looks important and interesting: Wildfire, increasing with climate change, deposits increasing amounts of light-absorbing black carbon [soot] on the cryosphere [snow and ice], multiplying the existing heat-driven ice-reflectivity feedback [a.k.a. albedo feedback]. The relative importance of increasing wildfire [and changing industrial soot pollution] to cryospheric heating remains poorly known. Snow/ice cores down to the 2012 summer soot layer on Greenland input to new field and lab spectral and microscope technology in concert with…

Best Geek-Friendly Wallpaper for your Computer Desktop

Fusion Wallpaper There comes a time in each person’s life when it is time to change the wallpaper. And the drapes, but we’ll focus on wallpaper here. And by wallpaper I mean the picture on your computer screen that is normally covered by icons and open windows. I came across a few neat individual wallpapers, as well as some good sources, and thought you’d like to see them. Since these wallpapers are from sites run by the artists who designed the wallpapers, it is appropriate that you go to those sites to get them, so here I’ll just show a few thumbnails but mainly talk about topics and…

Only in America Do Haters Hate Like They Hate

Katherine Bagley of InsideClimate News has an interesting commentary on the idea that only in America do climate scientists face organized harassment. She notes: The harassment faced by U.S.-based climate scientists has been well documented in the media—but not the harassment of scientists in Europe, Canada or the rest of the world. That’s because there hasn’t been much to report. While outspoken scientists of human-caused climate change in the United States endure torrents of freedom of information requests, hate mail and even death threats from skeptics, their counterparts abroad have…

Climate Change: Listen to the experts

You all know about CONvergence, and by now you've probably heard about or even seen or heard on the Internet one or more of the many panels that were done this year. But those recordings were impromptu and while useful, they are unpolished. Also, the panels at CONvergence themselves tend to be informal, unmoderated or moderated by helpful volunteers, and everyone has a hangover. People attending the panels drew on important expertise and experience, but most panels were casual, with little preparation. But a couple of the panels were different, most notably two panels on Climate Change.…

Could there be an "Out" Atheist in the US Senate?

Tea Party leader South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is stepping down from his position in the US Senate to take on leadership of the Conservative Heritage Foundation. That itself is kind of strange, since being a US Senator is a Big Huge Deal and being the head of some think tank is only a moderately big deal. But no matter. Since he is leaving office, he needs to be replaced, and that job, in South Carolina, goes to the Governor, Nikki Haley, one of those enigmatically female Republicans. One of the candidates she is apparently considering for the job is Jenny Sanford, the ex wife of Mark…

Ingrid is serious. Humberto tries for new record. And Manuel (UPDATE)

Ingrid is serious and is going to hit something. (UPDATE: Ingrid is the second hurricane of the Atlantic Season.) A tropical disturbance of one form or another has been hanging around since around the beginning of the hurricane season in or near the southern Gulf of Mexico, and the latest instance of this phenomenon has finally made use of very warm surface water and sup itself up into a real live tropical storm that is doing to turn into a hurricane by the end of the weekend, and hit the east coast of Mexico. This will not be a real strong hurricane but it will be VERY wet and thus…

Geraldine Ferraro, the First Woman to Run for VP, has Died

Ferraro was from Newburgh, New York and served in the US House. She was a progressive Democrat. She ran for Vice President with Walter Mondale. She was the first woman, and the first Italian American (which in those days meant more than it does today) to do so. The fact that she was a woman was used against the Democratic ticket by a fairly conservative press (never quite forgave Ted Koppel for being a dick about it all) and, of course, by the Repulbicans. In those days (and still to some extent, today) powerful men attach themselves to women who will not give them too much trouble by…

When will this madnes end?

If you live in Georgia, and have a miscarriage, you will be investigated, if recently introduced legislation is passed. The bill proposed ... ... by House Republican Bobby Franklin would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and require miscarriages to be investigated by authorities. ... Franklin's bill would classify the removal of a fetus from a woman for any reason other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus as "prenatal murder." Physicians indicted for alleged "prenatal murder" would have their license suspended until they were found innocent of the crime.…

Prayer: weapon of choice against pandemic flu

Okay, normally I would write this story (Christian Scientists Prepare to Battle Bird Flu With Prayer) off as just some wacky religious folks going about their business. Not my cup o' tea, but to each their own, I guess. But this part is chilling: Then there is the question of what Christian Scientists would do if they were prohibited from going to church. When the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting people from going to churches and movie theaters in 1918, a handful of Christian Scientists challenged the constitutionality of the law in court. The judge ruled in their…

Hiya!

As of today, Seed's new science blogs are open for business. (Be sure to check out the list of other bloggers there--it packs quite a punch). To my regular readers, thanks for following me over here, and expect to see pretty much the same things I've written about in the past. Y'know, constant Brangelina pregnancy news, Britney worshipping, and lots of discussion of the latest fashion trends. Yeah. Or, not. (Don't fear--I search of my previous site brings up zero mentions of either Britney Spears, Angelina, or Brad). What you will find is a lot of science, covering mainly medical/…

The Crowning of the Lion

Deep in a single square metre of trench D at Landsjö castle, on the inner edge of the dry moat, we found five identical coins. Boy are they ugly. They're thin, brittle, made of a heavily debased silver alloy and struck only from one side; they bear no legend and the image at the centre is incomprehensible. But I love them anyway, because they offer a tight date: this coin type was struck for King Valdemar Birgersson c. 1250-75. And the first written mention of Landsjö dates from 1280, so it all works out. Valdemar became king because he had an extremely powerful and ruthless father, the jarl…

Which came first? The chicken or the blue egg?

After I cleared up everyones confusion on why chicken gonads are lopsided, and why we have white chickens, I thought I would tackle another one of lifes great mysteries. Admit it. Youve wondered where the hell blue chicken eggs come from. Source: http://www.lespetitesgourmettes.com/recipes/gorgeous/ I 'get' brown eggs. I 'get' white, kinda. BUT WHERE THE HELL DID BLUE COME FROM? 'Well, you see when a chicken lays an egg mid-flight on a bright, sunny day, predators on the ground have a harder time seeing the blue egg...' WAT? No, seriously, whats up with blue chicken eggs? Turns out it is a…

Michael Douglas and HPV

Michael Douglass recently announced that his battle with throat cancer was instigated by HPV. We have known for a long time that males can benefit from the HPV vaccine series. I wrote this back in 2011: CDC recommends HPV vaccine for boys! It would be great, for women, if boys got the vaccine too. Of course, boys cannot get cervical cancer, but they can carry the virus and infect women and give them cervical cancer. Eliminated boys as carriers protects women. BUT… We cannot, ethically, ask boys to get a vaccine that has risks with no/little benefit to themselves just to protect other people…

Help stop Creationism and Anti-Global Warming in Oklahoma schools

So a lot of you saw my recent 'debate' with Pastor Steve Kern. People who do not live in this part of the US often say that religious radicals like Kern, and his infamous wife Sally Kern, dont really exist. When people like me address/confront people like the Kerns, people who dont live in this part of the US like to say that I am misrepresenting Christianity/Christians, a beautiful, elegant, intelligent, thoughtful religion, that Christians take very seriously, spiritually and academically. But, as you can plainly see, spiritual and academic dullards like the Kerns not only exist, but they…

XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome: RETRACTED

Thank you to Bruce Alberts for taking the initiative to do this*. I would also like to thank all of the hard working scientists, from all over the world, who did real research to help resolve this issue. It restores my faith in science. It really does. [Shorter Bruce Alberts: FUS-RO-DAH!!!!] [Bulk of the letter is up at Retraction Watch!] Science is fully retracting the Report "Detection of an infectious retrovirus, XMRV, in blood cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome" (1). Multiple laboratories, including those of the original authors (2), have failed to reliably detect…

Links for 2012-02-16

Problem solving like a physicist | Science Edventures Another way, which looks the same on the surface, is to break the nasty problem into a sequence of steps. "First, find the relationship between A and B. Then, calculate B for the given value of A. Next, substitute A and B into C and solve for C in terms of A..." That's a sequence of smaller problems that will lead to a solution of the nasty problem. But it's not scaffolding: it's spoon-feeding and it teaches none of the problem-solving skills we want the students to practice. I've heard from number of upper-level instructors declare they…

Creationist crooks pilfer Harvard's work

Once upon a time, a company named XVIVO put together a beautiful computer animation of molecular activity in the cell — you may have already seen it. I have some quibbles with it — there is no water shown, and the behavior of the molecules is too simplistic, without enough noise (molecular behavior at the scale shown ought to be rich with Brownian phenomena) — but it's dramatic and spectacular, which was the intent. The whole thing was made to inspire and inform Harvard biology students, so it's actually owned by Harvard and XVIVO. Now for the curious and nefarious part of the story. Fellows…

End of an Era, Countdown to a New Era

This is primarily of note to a handful of family members, but it's the end of an era at Chateau Steelypips: Well, two eras, I suppose, for the two items of furniture. The dresser dates from around 2002, and was bought when I first moved to Schenectady, so Kate would have a place for her clothes. I don't recall if it was before or after we were married-- I think before, but I'm not sure. It moved to Renssalaer and then Niskayuna with us, where it's been sitting in our spare bedroom. The really noteworthy item, though, is the brown chair. My parents got two of these back in the early 1980's,…

Grade Inflation? Blame the Baby Boomers

A lot of pixels have been spent discussing this study of grade inflation, brought to most people's attention via this New York Times blog. The key graph is this one, showing the fraction of grades given in each letter category over the last fifty years: Lots of effort is being put into trying to explain why the number of A's given out has increased so much over this time span, with most of it focussing on the last twenty years or so (see Mad Mike for a plausible but wrong explanation-- the fraction of students going on to graduate school isn't big enough to drive this). I think this is…

Welcome to the Information Supercollider

The title is a .signature line that somebody-- Emmet O'Brien, I think, but I'm not sure-- used to use on Usenet, back in the mid-to-late 90's, when some people referred to the Internet as the "Information Superhighway." I've always thought it was pretty apt, especially as I've moved into blogdom, where a lot of what I spend time on involves the nearly random collisions of different articles and blog posts and so on. It's also as good a title as any for this tab-clearing post, which consists of pointing out two pairs of articles that, in my mind at least, seem to have something to say about…

The Relics of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins

Reading a good paper by Sten Tesch (in Situne Dei 2007) about porphyrite tiles scavenged from Roman ruins and re-used as portable altar slabs in 11th century Scandinavia, I was reminded of St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins. It's a really good story about relics, up there with the cross of Jesus being tens of meters tall if all its alleged fragments were actually genuine. St. Ursula is most likely a fictional character, but according to legend she was a Christian British princess who went on a pilgrimage to Rome before her planned marriage to the pagan Roman governor of Armorica. Early…

Beijing in October

Third day in Beijing, and I think my internal clock may finally have synched with local time. The past two nights have seen me spinning sleeplessly in bed in the small hours and finally reading Proust in the lobby. I padded around the hotel before four o'clock, listening to the snores of the night man, watching from the roof terrace as a night-shift demolition man in an excavator took down another low old house to build a shop or hotel for us, the tourists. A Hanoi-style temporary sidewalk restaurant had sprouted in our hutong lane near the Gulou bell tower. There was no sign left of it when…

Professor Steve Steve Studies Norwegian Archaeology

I spent most of the past week with Professor Steve Steve at the Internationales Sachsensymposion in Trondheim, Norway. We had two and a half days of paper sessions and one day's bus excursion in the vicinity, all pertaining to post-Roman archaeology. Here the professor is studying a Roman/Migration Period large-scale iron production site at Heglesvollen, a shieling in the mountains east of Trondheim. He's in animated conversation with two of his admirers, Oslo PhD students Ingunn Røstad and Gry Wiker. Here's a piece of production slag that the professor found eroding out of the hillside at…

Awesome Turkish 70s Psychedelia

One of the major influences that combined to form Western psychedelic rock was traditional Asian music. But musicians in Asia picked up the vibe pretty quickly and started to play their own versions of it. Lately I've been listening to a great compilation of the stuff, and I'm particularly struck by the 1975 track "Gönül Sabreyle Sabreyle" (hear it streamed here). The band playing it is the brother trio Ãç Hürel, "The Three Hürels", and the song's title would in English be something like "Oh Sabreyle, my heart, Sabreyle". Reading up about the band on the web, I've learned that the…

Biodiversity in Artificial Wetlands

A recent press release from the University of Lund includes a confusing contradiction. Summarising Dr. Geraldine Thiere's recent doctoral dissertation, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Created Agricultural Wetlands, the release claims that on one hand natural wetlands are not more biodiverse than recently dug ponds, on the other hand that biodiversity in wetlands increases with age. Both statements can't be true. After I had written to Dr. Thiere she kindly clarified the matter for me. It turns out that arguably neither of the two contradictory statements is true. To begin with,…

Swedish Folkie Greets Spring

Spring's finally reached Stockholm! To celebrate, here's a song by one of the city's finest folk singers, Stefan Sundström, off of his 1992 album Happy Hour Viser, "Happy Hour Songs". I translate: Spring Samba By Stefan Sundström One morning when he awoke spring was already here He was bleary, tired and hung over, pretty bedraggled She got in through the window like a crazy samba in April And took him right there, no ifs ands or buts She danced around the room like a stoned tornado Like a fairy there to wake the mountain trolls And she ran up to the window and yelled "Our time is now!" And…

Bookaholics Anonymous

From age 16 to 26 I was an active member of the Stockholm Tolkien Society (est. 1972). This charming association is organised around a schedule of annual feasts and a roster of themed activity guilds. There's the Medieval Dance Guild, the Gaming Guild, the gluttonous Hobbit Guild, the erudite Friends of Daeron and many others. My favourite was -- and is -- the Book Guild. Though I have long since dropped out of the Society's main activities, I still gate-crash the monthly Book Guild now and then. Last night it convened at my place for dinner, tea and conversation about books. Many reading…

The CIA Is Shuttering a Secretive Climate Research Program?

So gushes Mother Jones, adding the enticing word "exclusive" to the story. But - weirdly enough, for a confection of spying and science reporting, both of which are normally so reliable - this appears to be a bit garbled. Firstly, the "climate research programme" looks to be more like the CIA had allowed civilian scientists to access classified data—such as ocean temperature and tidal readings gathered by Navy submarines and topography data collected by spy satellites. So, not CIA research at all: just data sharing. And presumably not CIA data mostly; if this is stuff routinely gathered by…

SIZZLE: Revisited

Im mad about SIZZLE. I didnt like it. I thought it was dumb. Like, genuinely *dumb*.** But I liked Randy. I liked what he is/was trying to do. So rather than write a one word review ('ugh'), I tried to make some positive points, and push him in the direction of the aspects of SIZZLE I thought were good. Sure SIZZLE might stink, but maybe his next one will be awesome! YAY! No yay. Randy and the Framing Company dont give a crap about any of our reviews. They sent out screener copies to ~50 bloggers, and they dont care what we wrote. And so I'd like to make a suggestion: Could it be that,…

Most useless profession: Science/Medicine Journalism

I dont think science/medicine journalism will ever catch up with 'clergy/ministry/missionary' for the title of 'most useless profession', but man, some days theyre certainly giving the Godbots a run for their money. I opened up Google News this morning and checked out my 'HIV' category, and found this wonderful, educational article: Global AIDS epidemic is a myth admit world experts Starting with the title, there are so many erroneous conclusions in this article, I dont know what to call it. Its not 'news'-- Its like a chimera of 'news', white noise, and a Denyse O'Leary word salad. ... I…

Steve Fuller gets reamed

Steve Fuller, the smug sociologist who testified for the creationists in the Dover trial, has a new book out. Who cares about the book, though? You want to read Norman Levitt's review, "The Painful Elaboration of the Fatuous". Wow. Fuller gets deconstructed. Here's a small taste. A similar farce plays out when Fuller tries to address the larger question of the supposedly contentious nature of evolutionary theory within the scientific community itself. In the World According to Fuller, evolutionary theory never really got past the stage of being a "well evidenced ideology" rather than a "…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 63

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 62 Table of Contents Chapter 64 The Atlas, August 16, 2058 When I got home today, the Electronic Atlas was sitting on the kitchen table. The Atlas was one of six prototype devices for a project a business buddy of Matt's had abandoned. It was a thin display surface half a meter square in the centre of which was a slowly rotating image of the Earth. If you touched any part of the planet, it would get larger. You could flip through different views: topographical, political, meteorological, agricultural and so on. More detailed statistics on…

Bush knew?

You've got to read this account of the intelligence that led to the Iraq war. On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy." Now two former senior CIA officers have…

Alan Keyes Loses His Mind

One of my readers left a comment on my post about Alan Keyes with links to two articles on Keyes' Renew America website. Holy cow, you gotta see these. The first is from David Quackenbush about the Schiavo case and the second is an interview with Alan Keyes, wherein we see that the religious right has now gone from criticizing the courts to believing that they may simply be ignored whenever the executive (meaning President or Governor) thinks they're wrong - and they do so in the exact same words in both: And in this particular case, with the other branches ranged against them, the judges…

Reason on Dennis Hastert

I've always wondered how on earth Dennis Hastert became Speaker of the House of Representatives. He isn't very bright and he has all the charisma of a pine tree. Along comes Charles Oliver, writing in Reason magazine, to explain it all as basically dumb luck. He was only elected to the Illinois state house because the opponent that beat him out in the primary had a stroke and he got the seat by default. 6 years later, he was picked to fill a US House seat when the sitting Republican congressman went into a coma. And 12 years later, he was elected Speaker of the House in the aftermath of sex…

The Smithsonian Responds

Some of you are aware, I'm sure, of the controversy that has been raging throughout the right side of the blogosphere concerning Richard von Sternberg and the Smithsonian. Based solely on an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, everyone from the Discovery Institute to the Worldnutdaily and a thousand blogs have picked up on the story to scream "PERSECUTION" at the top of their lungs in the fervant hope that their martyr complex had been proven true. Well, not so fast. I didn't bother to write about it a week ago because there was simply no information to go on other than the accusations…

Vikram Amar on the Steven Williams Case

The legal scholar weighs in on the issues in the Steven Williams case and says that the real issue is whether the school administration has the authority to put reasonable limits on what a teacher can say to their classes: But even assuming his proposed lesson plans that make reference to religion would not violate the anti-establishment idea (and we don't have enough facts to answer this question one way or the other), the school authorities could still be within their legitimate power to prevent Williams from doing what he wants to. The crucial, if underappreciated, point is that a public…

Saturday's Visits

I had a wonderful day on Saturday visiting with old friends and new ones. First, I had lunch with Dan Ray and his lovely wife, Kim, and got to find out what busy really is. You think your life is hectic? How about having two pre-teen children, working full time Monday-Friday and going to law school on the weekends, as she does? If I go to the bank and the post office in the same day, I need a nap. We had a nice lunch with lots of good conversation that ranged from Robert Bork's judicial theories to neo-formalism to telling rude jokes and stories from my comedy days. After lunch, I did some…

Alabama Does It Again

In the race for the designation of American's dumbest state, Alabama is Carl Lewis and the other 49 might as well be Stephen Hawking. Already home to the cosmically ridiculous Judge Roy Moore and the outrageously stupid Gerald Allen (the state senator who wants to ban all books that even mention gay people), now they've got state Senator Hank Erwin as well. And Erwin is joining the ranks of cretins and halfwits claiming that hurricane Katrina was sent by God as punishment for our sins: "New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness," wrote…

Ridiculous Creationist Lawsuit

A federal lawsuit has been filed by an association of Christian schools against the University of California system accusing them of discrimination because they won't recognize the validity of some courses at Christian secondary schools that use creationist textbooks: The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include "Christianity's Influence in…

Roy Moore for Governor?

Fans of political absurdity, rejoice! Defrocked judge Roy Moore may be running for governor of the great state of Alabama. And that may cause quite a national stir: Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he wins, some party strategists speculate, he could defy a federal court order again by erecting a religious monument outside the Alabama state Capitol building. With the 2008 presidential race looming, President Bush would then face a no-win decision: either call out the National Guard to enforce a…

Zell Miller vs Zell Miller

From his speech three days ago: Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than 20 weeks of campaign rhetoric...For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure...As a senator, he voted to weaken our military. From his speech 3 years ago: My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders - and a good friend...John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public…

Mauna Loa is a Volcano

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: CO2 levels are recorded on top of Mauna Loa...a VOLCANO!! No wonder the levels are so high. Answer: Yes, it's true, Mauna Loa is an active volcano.  In fact it's the biggest volcano on earth! So, should we suppose that Charles Keeling didn't know that? Well, no, he did know this. And using subtle scientific indicators like "wind direction" he was even able to ensure that his readings were not contaminated by any out gassing when it was…

"New Atheists" Are Cheap Bastards

At least, that's a conclusion a cynical person might be tempted to draw from the fact that the ScienceBlogs Leaderboard for the DonorsChoose challenge is dominated by us "Neville Chamberlain" types... At present, the ScienceBlogs participating in the Challenge have raised more than $14,000 to help schools and school children. The Seed Media Group (publishers of Seed and backers of ScienceBlogs) have pledged to match up to $15,000 in donations, so that's really $28,000, and not too shabby. Looked at another way, though, it's pretty pathetic. That $14,000 has come from at most 138 donors (some…

links for 2007-10-04

Stopping atoms A "coil-gun" method for slowing atomic beams without lasers, from the Raizen group at Texas (tags: physics low-temperature science atoms) Confessions of a Community College Dean: An Open Letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley The Dean Dad is less polite to Hizzoner than I was (tags: academia stupid education) Finance Blog - Market Movers by Felix Salmon: Blogonomics: RSS Feeds - Portfolio.com The economic case for full-text RSS feeds. Cory Doctorow has been pushing this for years. (tags: blogs economics RSS) Next steps for physics graduates - Physics World - physicsworld.com…