Announcements
illconsidered | September 21, 2012NSIDC has (preliminarily) announced the new record low ice extent for 2012.
On September 16, 2012 sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year. In response to the setting sun and falling temperatures, ice extent will now climb through autumn and winter. However, a shift in wind patterns or a period of late season melt could still push the ice extent lower. The minimum extent was reached three days later than the 1979 to 2000 average minimum date of September 13.
This year’s minimum was 760,000…
illconsidered | September 11, 2012There is a blogstorm raging these days for those of you with inadequate workplace supervision. Check here for the latest post from ground zero.
The synopsis is: scientist releases paper showing strong correlation between belief in conspiracy theories, free market ideology, anti-science attitudes and the rejection of climate science; climate skeptic blogger community sees conspiracy and scientific fraud. (To their credit, I have not yet seen the accusation of "socialist".)
I don't have much to say about it, I am as embarrassed for these folks as I am amused by the irony of it all. I should…
illconsidered | September 7, 2012(click here for a higher resolution image)
While thinking about the image above from EarthTrack.net a "sign this pettition" request from Avaaz.org landed in my mail box. (Fair warning, I have not checked this out very carefully. Please do say so in the comments if this issue is being misrepresented). Read below:
Climate change is accelerating, but there’s a massive ray of hope: clean energy is booming, producing nearly 20% of the world's electricity! Incredibly, the US and EU are threatening to stifle this breakthrough -- but together we can stop them.
In the last decade the Chinese…
oracknows | July 12, 2012I was thinking of doing a quickie post about the silliness that's erupted in the antivaccine cranksophere over the IACC hearing that I mentioned yesterday. (Of course, a "quickie" post for me is usually only 1,000 words long, as opposed to the usual 2,000.)
Then disaster struck!
My hardy, reliable MacBook Air, my main traveling companion for all trips in which I need to do work and/or give a talk died. It died hard (although not like the movies; there were no explosions or fires). It would not boot. Given the craziness at work with grants in the weeks leading up to TAM, I didn't have the talk…
oracknows | July 11, 2012Here we go again...
Yes, I'm off to The Amazing Meeting, a.k.a. TAM, where I'll commune with a bunch of fellow skeptics, help do a workshop on science-based medicine, and participate in a panel discussion of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine." Things have been so crazy the last couple of weeks that it turns out that I don't have my talk completely finished, which means I'll be doing what I frequently do for talks, scientific, skeptical, or otherwise: Putting the finishing touches on it during the flight there. Good thing it's a four hour flight.
To those of you who are going,…
illconsidered | July 10, 2012Just a quick note to say that the Science Blogs move to NGeo has changed the RSS feed so any AFTIC subscribers who want to keep following the rare posting of mine and/or het's weekly news round-up should resubscribe using the links to the right -->
(Yes, that notice is more than a month overdue and probably obvious by now, but better late than never, right? I mean if we did not believe in "better late than never" we would not still be agitating for climate change mitigation, would we?)
oracknows | July 9, 2012Something came up that made me think it would be a good idea to mention a couple of features of the new WordPress template, just in case anyone missed them when I mentioned them before. I apologize to any who might find this repetitive, but there do appear to be some newbies here; so I think it's worth a quick repeat.
A commenter who borders on trollish wrote:
One thing I forgot. I wanted to congratulate you and the team for closing ‘Evolution and Medicine’ just when you did, leaving the impression that I am EXTREMELY dangerous. Well, I’m not in the least little bit dangerous, but it’s…
oracknows | July 5, 2012A couple of years ago, I gave a talk to a bunch of Chicago skeptics that was co-sponsored by the Chicago Skeptics and the Women Thinking Free Foundation. At the time, I had no idea that the organization was that new, but I did know that I was very impressed by the turnout to my talk and the camaraderie demonstrated by the two groups, between which there was a lot of cross-pollination. In the interim between then and now, WTF distinguished itself in skeptical activism, but its members are probably best known for its Hug Me I'm Vaccinated campaign.
The other day, Elyse announced that Women…
oracknows | June 22, 2012I just thought I'd give a brief update on the transition to the new blog platform. After nearly a month, things have finally settled down, although I'm still bugging the powers that be about some of the problems that still exist. One thing I have noticed over the last day is that one of our "favorite" trolls has been trying to crash the party. Thanks to my turning on the setting "Comment author must have a previously approved comment," sockpuppet activity is way down because every time someone invents a new sockpuppet I have to approve it.
And, of course, I don't approve sockpuppet comments;…
oracknows | June 10, 2012I felt a brief update on the blog status is in order because the National Geographic overlords have actually rolled out some improvements on Friday.
First, the Last 24 Hours feed is reportedly working again, although, quite honestly, when I just checked it it appeared not to be working. The funny thing was, it did appear to be working yesterday. Oh, well.
One good thing that is working is that the tags for the number of comments, Facebook "likes," Tweets, etc., are showing up on the main page of the blog, as they should. I am much happier about this now.
Unfortunately, still missing in action…
oracknows | June 2, 2012The day is here. Time to throw the switch.
What do I mean? I've been mentioning that I wanted to turn on the option that states, "Comment author must have a previously approved comment." What that means is that any new commenter's first comment will automatically go to moderation. I'll approve it (unless it's spam or I suspect it's a sockpuppet), and then you'll be able to comment normally. The reason I want to turn this option on is to make it more difficult for morphing sockpuppets to disrupt the conversation. I'm also tired of so much spam getting through.
Never having used this option…
oracknows | May 27, 2012My American readers don't need this reminder, but, because I'm continually humbled at how many international readers I have, I thought I'd just mention it anyway. We here in the States are in the middle of a three day holiday weekend for Memorial Day on Monday. As a result, I'm taking it (mostly) easy, although yard work still calls, as do my grant and paper that need to be submitted. Given that, I thought this lazy Sunday would be a good time to provide a blog status update about the ill-fated transition to WordPress that began on Monday. I'll try to have a "real" post tomorrow or Tuesday.…
oracknows | May 23, 2012Why, oh, why is it that it is seemingly impossible for any sort of significant change to the ScienceBlogs collective to occur without major problems? It happened a a few years ago when we underwent the first major template upgrade. Given that experience, it was with great trepidation that I faced the upcoming migration of ScienceBlogs to WordPress. It began yesterday and thus far has not gone particularly smoothly. I was locked out of my account for a period of time, and, as of this writing, I've lost at least a couple of months' worth of comments dating back to before the original date that…
oracknows | May 21, 2012...the long-awaited migration to WordPress, promised ever since NatGeo took over:
Notice: ScienceBlogs.com will be migrating to a new publishing platform starting on the evening of Monday, May 21 at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. Please do not add any comments or posts between then and Tuesday afternoon. We will update this page when maintenance is complete and normal blog activity can resume.
More recently, we were informed:
Please plan to make any posts on the Moveable Type platform before 7 pm ET; otherwise they are unlikely to be moved to the WordPress platform during tonight's "catch-up"…
oracknows | April 2, 2012Blogging might be a little sketchy for the next couple of days, because I'm at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting (AACR) in Chicago, all to to imbibe the latest and greatest in cancer research. I'm sure I'll manage to get a post or two in while I'm here, but I doubt there will be any Orac-ian epics before Wednesday (other than, perhaps, a recycled blast from the past) or Thursday because, well, there's just not a lot of time, and Internet access can be dicey at times while I'm traveling.
In the meantime, until I get a chance to post something later today or tomorrow, it's…
oracknows | December 24, 2011I can't believe I forgot to post this, particularly since I actually got to see Tim Minchin perform this song live three months ago. It was very, very good, and it's one of the best Christmas songs I've ever heard:
Unfortunately, not being in Australia, drinking white wine in the sun appears not to be in the cards today. However, visiting family is. See you all next week.
oracknows | December 24, 2011Because there's only one way for Orac to wish his minions, shills, and fans a Merry Christmas:
Well, maybe not. There's also this:
Both via Skepchick.
For those of you who celebrate the holidays, whatever they may be, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Festivus, or whatever, have a happy one. Be of good cheer. And, as our illustrious leader Lord Draconis would urge us, stay frosty, my friends. You will be needed. Orac shall return next week, and the the minions, shills, and flacks of pseudoscience, particularly antivaccine pseudoscience and quackery (for instance, in the comments after this…
oracknows | December 16, 2011Seeing Martin's mention that he's hit the sixth anniversary of his entry into the awoke a vague sense of unease in me. It was that sort of unease that one gets when one realizes that he's forgotten something but can't quite remember what it is that he's forgotten.
Then it came to me.
Somehow, some way, I had missed my very own seventh anniversary of starting this blog, which was last Saturday. Yes, seven years ago, on a gray and dismal Saturday in December, something possessed me to start a Blogspot blog (these days, if I were to start a new blog, it would be WordPress) and then to generate…
jhalper | December 13, 2011The Weizmann Institute's Prof. Eilam Gross is currently the ATLAS Higgs physics group convener. He originally wrote this piece in Hebrew for the Yediot Aharonot daily.
The Best There Is - For Now
"The God Particle," as the Higgs boson is often called, comes from the title of the book by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman that deals with the search for the elusive particle. This particle, according to the Standard Model of Particle Physics, is responsible for giving mass to all of the elementary particles in nature.
The mass of an electron determines the size of a hydrogen atom; ultimately the size…
oracknows | April 21, 2011
I demand the sum of.....ten MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha!
Yes, I know I did that bit before--twice, three times, even!---but I liked it so much that I wanted to do it again, at least until my readers run screaming away, annoyed that Orac, of all people, would recycle the same old joke over and over.
Of course, after 3,000,000 visits, I basically gave up even noticing at each new million visit mark; so it's been nearly three years since I recycled this particular joke. This time's different, anyway, even though it's been six years, four months, and ten days since December 11, 2004 that I've…