Misc
stoat | June 12, 2007At Flickr. And I've been to Hathersage (which is rather a long way from Dinas Cromlech).
ksharpe | June 11, 2007This deserves a read: University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne has published an essay at Edge taking on Republican presidential hopeful Senator Sam Brownback's (R-KS) views on faith and evolution, as expressed in Brownback's May 31 New York Times op-ed.
The Senator, who raised his hand at a Republican presidential debate in May to indicate that he 'didn't believe in evolution,' wrote in the Times that there "cannot be any contradiction" between faith and science. Specifically, he claims to "reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality," even as he accepts…
ksharpe | June 6, 2007Have you ever heard someone claim that a piece of paper can't be folded in half more than seven times?
We had, and we were suspicious. So we thought about putting it to the brain trust, in the form of an 'Ask a ScienceBlogger' quesetion. Molecule of the Day responded immediately with a great anecdote about successfully folding a piece of paper in half not seven, but eight times, to win a bet in college.
He posted about his myth-busting triumph, here.
The upshot: with a piece of paper big enough, a lot of things are possible. Now could someone explain how this legend got started?
Image by…
apalazzo | May 28, 2007Have a great entry on genetics, genes, evolution, cell biology or any other relevant topic? The 15th edition of Mendel's Garden is now requesting entries. You have until June 2nd to send 'em in. Just email me or submit them to Mendel's Garden Carnival Page. The final compilation will be posted here on June 3rd.
vhughes | May 25, 2007Meet Sandra Kiume, the passionate, Canadian hat-crocheter, science writer, and co-blogger of Omni Brain.
What's your name?
Sandra Kiume
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Other forms of writing, reading, crochet (hats and jewelry), cooking, volunteer work, yoga, hiking, kayaking.
What is your blog called?
Omni Brain.
What's up with that name?
Steve Higgins, the founder and my co-blogger, named it. He tells the story in his 3.14 interview. I think it's a fun name, catchy.
How long have you been blogging?
Ten years—a decade of transcribing and transforming life.
Where are you from and…
stoat | May 24, 2007Last night to the Beer festival to... drink beer. And to admire the beer mats, since Miriams company (as in, the one she works for, not the one she owns, sadly) is one of the sponsors. Don't forget to click through to their wonderful website and buy some of their wonderful products. Although you can't, really, unless you're a large corporation. But you can buy a Tosh or Samsung product with their stuff inside. :-)
vhughes | May 23, 2007
"Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil." Oil painted onto a slab of shale that the artist's wife found discarded from a roof in Toronto. Copyright Glendon Mellow.
The Flying Trilobite blog was started two months ago by 32-year-old Glendon Mellow, a Toronto-based painter who's inspired by evolutionary theory and "particularly fond of Naples yellow." Mellow is also fond of ScienceBlogs, especially the "sassy and informative" commentary of Jason and PZ. Here, Glendon gives us his take on science and art in the digital world.
You say your favorite color's Naples yellow. How come?
Most of my…
ksharpe | May 21, 2007Meet Ian Hart, the athletic and self-confessedly "BoBo" author of Integrity of Science, a blog about public policy and the abuse of science—a fan of Caravaggio and detractor of strip malls.
What's your name?
Ian Hart
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I'm the Communications Director for the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan, independent think-tank in Oakland, California, that uses interdisciplinary analysis to develop solutions to threats to sustainability at the intersection of environment, development, and society.
In my free time I paint (oils in a realist style), run marathons, and…
apalazzo | May 19, 2007Well it looks like I'll be helping out Paul and Rich with Mendel's Garden.
I'll also be hosting the next Mendel's Garden at The Daily Transcript on June 3rd. To submit an entry email me or click here.
The July edition (#16) will be hosted by Hsien at her new home, Eye on DNA. If anyone wants to volunteer beyond July please email us.
Also here are some new tags for you to stick on to your blog. First copy & paste the code onto your blog template then erase the three asterisks (i.e. the "*").
Code:
<*a title="Mendel's Garden" href="http://mendels-garden.blogspot.com/"><*img height…
stoat | May 15, 2007March was wet, it rained all the time; April was dry (2mm in Cambridgeshire, I think); May is very wet again (though we had a lovely afternoon in Ashridge for my mothers birthday). Will the pattern keep up?
hrynyshyn | May 10, 2007I'm off on a family extended weekend, and may not have the opportunity to lambaste the forces of darkness until next week. Meanwhile, I'll point you in the direction of two precious posts elsewhere in the blogosphere. First, there's "Fun with correlations" at Real Climate, in which Gavin pokes fun at climate change denialists who have a rather underdeveloped grasp of statistics and math. Second, and still on the denial front, our latest addition to ScienceBlogs, Denialism Blog takes on an op-ed essay in (where else?) the Wall Street Journal, in which Al Gore gets blamed for 9/11. I kid you…
ksharpe | May 9, 2007
Looking at religious and monumental architecture the world over, you might be tempted to assume that a high ceiling has always been correlated with feelings of expansiveness and grandiosity, and more confined spaces with homelier contemplation.
Nevertheless, no one had investigated the effects of ceiling height on human emotion and cognition until now.
University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management marketing professor Joan Myers-Levy will publish research in the Journal of Consumer Research that links higher ceilings with freer, more abstract thought, and lower ceilings with thought…
ksharpe | April 26, 2007How do copyright and fair use laws, framed before the internet was a twinkle in the eye, apply in the world of blogging? The answer, as a case that unfolded on ScienceBlogs this week demonstrates, may be "not so clearly."
Ergo, we've asked a few experts and stakeholders to weigh in on the issue of copyright and open access. How ought fair use to be interpreted today—as the blogosphere grows, changes, and searches for a mutually satisfying way to coexist with the traditional publishing world? We'll be adding commentary to this post periodically all week. Stay tuned.
Johannes (Jan) Velterop,…
tlambert | April 25, 2007Josh Marshall suggests that Karl Rove was getting his allegations of voter fraud that lead to the U.S. Attorney firing scandal from an article by John Lott.
He doesn't have a link to the article, but here it is, posted to Freerepublic by Mary Rosh.
ksharpe | April 25, 2007Blacksburg, says ScienceBlogger Benjamin Cohen in Tuesday's issue of The Morning News, has a "bucolic town" reputation so entrenched as to almost have become a cliche. Cohen spent 11 years in Blacksburg—long enough to know the area's natural beauty deeply, and also to know that no town is simple enough to be reduced to a one-word tag. He writes:
I went to Virginia Tech because its application didn't require an essay. When I graduated, I had no idea why I'd chosen my major (chemical engineering), and I wasn't even particularly fond of the school itself. But Blacksburg was significant to me. In…
apalazzo | April 24, 2007This past weekend was gorgeous. Sunday we were hanging out at Plum Island taking in the sun, when a pair of Piping Plovers, an endangered species, came near our beach towel. Here are some pics:
I also shot some interesting pictures of various sand patterns - I'll have to post them one of these days.
apalazzo | April 21, 2007A phenocopy of Maradona's great goal by Lionel Messi.
Here is Messi's recent goal:
Here is Maradona's famous goal:
And now here ther are, side by side:
tlambert | April 20, 2007Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" writes about some of the dubious numbers used by both sides on the debate about guns.
This one should be familiar to my readers:
Another number that has emerged from the antigun-control camp ties multiple-victim public shootings to restrictions on carrying concealed weapons. John Lott Jr., visiting professor at SUNY, Binghamton, and University of Chicago economist William Landes counted references to multiple public shootings -- more than one killed or wounded at one time -- in the Lexis/Nexis news database for a 2000 book. They matched…
tlambert | April 19, 2007The editorial in the Australian today stated:
With memories of the 35 killed at Port Arthur still raw, many Australians would be shocked to learn that the gun lobby in the US pounced on the Virginia Tech massacre to call for extending the right of citizens to carry concealed weapons.
Not those who get the Australian, because today they also printed an op-ed by John Lott calling for just that.
Lott writes:
Bill Landes of the University of Chicago law school and I examined multiple-victim public shootings in the US from 1977 to 1999 and found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, the…
hrynyshyn | April 17, 2007[This post is rewritten to reflect a clearer state of mind.]
The front-page editors of the local newspapers here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina had a tough time deciding on today's banner headline. Should it be the shootings at Virginia Tech or the damage wreaked by Monday's windstorm, which left much of this part of the state without electricity and destroyed what was left of the economically vital apple orchards not killed by last week's freezing temperatures. There's no way to spin any of it into the good news ledger, and I don't have access to my own computer files…