Chatter
tfk | October 15, 2007Just as I was leaving Kansas, I managed to convince the excellent Chris Mooney to head out and give a talk in Hays. He's arrived safely, and will be talking about climate change out there tonight.
tfk | October 12, 2007Many of us here at Scienceblogs are participating in this effort to raise funds for teachers who have good ideas about how to improve education. The projects I'm promoting (in the sidebar), aim to get kids out into nature and nature into the classroom. I hope you'll help these teachers out by giving what you can.
To encourage donations, I've gotten the NCSE to donate a bunch of lovely bumper stickers to the first 20 donors, and now our corporate overlords at Seed are offering an added incentive. Not only have they matched the first $15,000 that our readers donate, they've also kicked in an…
omnibrain | October 12, 2007
It will only take you two clicks to take care of this one (and you could even do it from work, home, and the coffee shop!). Shelley, from Retrospectacle, needs your help to win a $10,000 blogging scholarship. Just think she could pay off her student loans and maybe even have a couple bucks left over for a computer and some beers!
So please head over to the voting site and click on Shelley Batts' name!
Thanks!
j7uy5 | October 11, 2007
Just in case people did not get the allusion in my post about
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/peak_oil_and_health_care_chall.php">peak
oil and health care.
Artist: Prine John
Song: Spanish Pipedream
Album: Great Days: The John Prine Anthology
She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the juke box broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke
Chorus:
Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country,…
j7uy5 | October 7, 2007Finally, a cool way to commute via bicycle!
Actually, it is
not a new idea, but perhaps the cooling aspect has been overlooked.
One thing that has kept me from riding a bicycle to work has been the
concern that I would be too sweaty upon arrival. This
invention might take care of that:
href="http://deputy-dog.com/2007/09/27/7-unusual-propeller-driven-vehicles/">
It could, conceivably, take care of the heat problem while
mowing a
lawn, too, although it would take a bit more engineering:
tfk | October 5, 2007"Zibote" by Ernesto Djedje from the album Le roi du ziglibithy (2001, 5:52).
"Thunder Chicken" by The Mighty Imperials from the album Thunder Chicken (2006, 3:11).
"Ice Is A Solid" by Dorothy Collins from the album Experiment Songs (1:50).
"Angel Flying too Close to the Ground" by Willie Nelson from the album Stardust / One for the Road / Honeysuckle Rose (1978, 4:24).
"locked in the station" by namelessnumberheadman from the album 100,000 subtle times (2000, 3:57).
"In Search Of Skip" by Sainte Chapelle from the album Soon to Fail (2007, 4:03).
"One Step Forward" by Racetrack from the album…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007We got an exciting new banner today from Len the creator of Monster-by-Mail! Head over to his website for some absolutely phenomenal pieces of monster art! (Ohh... and make sure you buy stuff or order your own monster.
Len's banner is now going to randomly rotate with our wonderful old banner done by my cousin Erin (click refresh a couple time to see them both up top).
Here they are :)
The Marauding Omni Brain was created by Erin Higgins who can be reached @ higgsmax2000 -at- hotmail -dot- com
And this wonderful banner (as well as the image above) was created by Len over at Monster by Mail…
tfk | October 3, 2007While searching for statistics on the size of bat wings, I came across this statement:
Anyone who has studied the history and statistics of cricket up to the advent of roundarm bowling will agree that the single greatest controversy that the sport had to deal with pre-roundarm concerned the width of the bat.…
The incident is shrouded in controversy even now.
Controversy, it turns out, means that either "Shock" White or "Daddy" White introduced a "monster bat" into play on the cricket … field-thingy. What madness could drive an 18th century batsman to employ such an affront to nature?…
tfk | October 1, 2007In order to compete in Federated Media's contest, I will be sending an NCSE bumper sticker to each of the first 20 donors to my challenge. One sticker demands that other drivers honk at you if they understand punctuated equilibrium, while the other announces that evolutionists (like the driver) "do it with increasing complexity."
If I get a strong response, I will come up with some new and exciting gifts for later donors. As if the happiness of small children and our underappreciated teachers weren't enough.
tfk | September 27, 2007Take a long drive with me
on California One, on California One
Take a long drive with me
on California One, on California One
And the road a-winding goes
from Golden Gate to roaring cliff-side
and the light is softly low as our hearts become sweetly untied
beneath the sun of California One
"California One" by The Decemberists from the album Castaways and Cutouts (2002, 9:50).
I always enjoyed this song, but until last weekend, it didn't fully make sense.
Some of the Berkeley biology grad students, including my predecessor at the NCSE, organized a camping trip up north on the coast. "…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2007Sorry, no bizarre sex organ photos this time. But
the story is interesting from an evolutionary standpoint.
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070925-bat-bugs.html">Bat
Bugs Evolved Fake Genitals to Avoid Sex Injuries
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
September 25, 2007
For African bat bugs, the battle of the sexes is quite literally a
violent struggle—and now it appears that the bugs are using
gender-bending tactics to defend themselves.
Bat bugs are small, reddish-brown parasites related to bed bugs that
suck the blood of bats and sometimes bite…
j7uy5 | September 22, 2007Some people are amazingly creative...or thirsty.
(
href="http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=854&num=5">Source)
j7uy5 | September 20, 2007The Republican War on Science is not a war on science, after
all. It is
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091907R.shtml">a war
on reality itself.
tfk | September 16, 2007I apologize for not noting this earlier, but the one and only Greg Beck died last week. I knew Greg through his astonishing blog, and had the pleasure of meeting him in person a few times as well. Like the rest of the KC blogging world, I'm stunned and shocked.
There's very little to be said about Greg that he didn't say already. His blogging represented the peak of the form; it was personal, raunchy, opinionated and, without fail, interesting. His years as a bouncer in the nightclubs of Kansas City gave him a wealth of material to work with, and he retold those stories in a voice that…
tfk | September 6, 2007I realize that my ratio of Random Tens to non-music posts is getting dangerously high, but work has been keeping me busy, and I'm still trying to figure out where blogging fits in my schedule. Blame the Discovery Institute.
"Chimes of Freedom" by The Byrds from the album Mr Tambourine Man (1965, 3:53).
"The Whistling Song" by Meat Puppets from the album Meat Puppets II (1983, 2:57).
"Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits from the album Brothers In Arms (1985, 8:33).
"She Caught The Katy And Left Me A Mule To Ride" by Taj Mahal from the album The Natch'l Blues (1968, 3:29).
"Sweet Side" by…
goodmath | September 2, 2007I've now uploaded nearly all of the Yellowstone pictures. There are two additional
photo albums on Picasa: one for the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and one for the Yellowstone canyon. Here are the links:
Yellowstone Vacation, Mammoth Hot Springs area
Yellowstone Vacation, Canyon Area
goodmath | September 1, 2007I'm back from vacation! There was no network access in Yellowstone, and virtually no cellphone service.
Anyway, a bunch of people asked me to post photos. I've got three sets of photographs, for the three main areas of the park that I visited: the Geyser area, the Terrace area, and the Canyon area.
The first (and largest) batch - the Geyser area - is uploaded into an album on Picasa.
The album still needs a lot of work - many things are out of order, mislabeled, etc; but the photos are there, and some of them are amazing! (No credit to me - I'm a mediocre photographer at best, using a…
j7uy5 | August 27, 2007What would happen if you set up a system to automatically
print out all
the spam in the Universe? Never mind the question of why you
would want to.
(link)
j7uy5 | August 24, 2007Someone has to put a stop
to
href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/semantic-stopsi.html">this.