Rant

I am not a boy scout, but I still believe it is a good idea to be prepared. What to prepare for? Well, in Louisiana, it is the time to prepare for hurricanes and the looming budgetpocolypse. Hurricanes First, the hurricanes and tropical storms. Model image from Weather Underground - best place to track storms (in my opinion). This is pretty simple. Here is what I need to do: Make sure my generator works and I have gasoline Fill up the cars with gas (in case we want to leave) Back up data and stuff Pick up all the toys and stuff in the yard Flashligh Beer That should do it. Of course…

In regards to the recent PepsiCo blog situation (you know the one I mean), I wasn't going to say much. First, because Chad did a good job at expressing my views (without me even telling him ). Second, I am just happy to be at ScienceBlogs - I had been kicked off two servers and had to hitch a ride on a friend's server (thanks Bill) before arriving here. Some other bloggers, were a little more put out. Now I understand why. I came to this understanding by doing a thought experiment. What if it wasn't PepsiCo that paid for a sponsored blog? What if instead it was ESPN's Sport Science? I…

Suppose there was an imaginary university. (is that statement redundant?) Let me call this TIU (The Imaginary University). Also, suppose TIU offers summer courses. Further, suppose there is an instructor teaching 2 sections of lab during the summer. Here is a communication that instructor might have received. Dear Person Teaching a Summer Course: It appears you are teaching 2 sections of lab. One lab only has 13 students enrolled in it. We have determined that it is not financially appropriate for us to give you a full course pay for this partially full lab. We are going to pay you 13/…

Screen capture of the MSNBC website on February 27, 2010 at ~5:30 PM eastern time. Most of you have probably already heard about the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck today off the coast of Chile. This becomes one of the most powerful earthquakes on record and so far, the death toll has been relatively low - in the hundreds - especially compared to the horrific disaster of the Haiti earthquake from earlier this year. My thoughts go out to all in Chile recovering from the earthquake. However, I am a little appalled at some of the coverage I've seen for this earthquake. MSNBC has become the…

Klimazwiebel is on my reader list, but I don't usually bother with the comments. It looks a bit like the septics are disappointed with him. And he with them: And, damn it, give your names, when making strong statements. When you have an opinion, then you should have also a name. Still, there are some good comments over there (Mike Hulme was there, though he had little to say when I looked).

     Goldberg shown here (right) "gangbanging"    with a guy who enjoys making fun of the dead.I must have done something very, very wrong. Jonah Goldberg, that noxious, infected man-tit of a human being, has just praised my work at the National Review. Referring to my series on Deconstructing Social Darwinism Goldberg writes: This is a very comprehensive assault on the prevailing understanding of "social Darwinism." Eric Michael Johnson's essay is a bit too rambling at times, but it is very welcome and good reading nonetheless. Readers of my book might remember that I have nothing but…

Sometimes it is easy to feel overwhelmed by a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti - I mean, how much can someone sitting in their office thousands of miles away do? It isn't really feasible for most people to pull up stakes and go to give first-hand assistance during the recovery - but you feel like you need to do something. The first step is just trying to offer whatever assistance you can in whatever limited way you can. Many of us might not have a lot of money to spare - but that is the key word, "spare". That means "leftover". That means you have money to begin with - so some sacrifice…

Gambling and volcanoes go hand-in-hand? Somehow I didn't pick up on this, but people are gambling on volcanoes now? I mean, I suppose if they bet on the coin toss at the Super Bowl, people will bet on anything. Now, I'm not one to judge the taste in any of this, but here are the current odds for volcanoes to have a VEI 3 eruption: 3/1 Mt Unzen (Japan) 9/1 Mauna Loa (USA) 10/1 Ulawun (Papua New Guinea) 10/1 Merapi (Indonesia) 10/1 Santorini (Greece) 11/1 Colima (Mexico) 11/1 Rainier (USA) 11/1 Taal (Philippines) 11/1 Teide (Spain, Canary Islands) 12/1 Mt Nyiragongo (DR Congo) 12/1…

Here it is, my attempt to recap a year's worth of volcanic events. By no means is this supposed to capture every event, but rather the highlight/lowlights and what most captivated me during 2009. I'll be announcing the winner of the 2009 Pliny for Volcanic Event of the Year tomorrow. Waimangu Geothermal Valley in New Zealand, taken in January 2009 by Erik Klemetti. January The year started out with a trip to New Zealand (well, for me at least) and vistas of the Waimangu Valley, formed in the 1886 eruption of Tarawera on the North Island. We were also still thinking about the late 2008…

    Wall Street's shadow in New York CityAs the education reformer and philosopher John Dewey once stated, "politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." Unlike other critics of scientific communication, it is my contention that as long as we only address the shadow we will never create substantive change on such pressing scientific issues as health care and the climate crisis. Today James Hrynyshyn at Island of Doubt has linked to an excellent post highlighting this very concern. The post is from an anonymous employee…

Now that the Darwin Reclamation Project collage has been posted, I can confess that I have a few problems with the recent atheist action that sought to counter the dunderhead Ray Comfort and his Creationist propaganda ministry. I'm not sure who originally suggested this action, but I don't think it was well thought out. Having athiests systematically round up as many copies as they can of a work they disagree with (however ridiculous such a work may be) stinks of censorship and creates an impression in the broader public that Comfort's arguments are somehow threatening to evolutionary…

The website Atheism Exposed claims that religion is under attack and that an all out counterinsurgency campaign is needed to defend the godly: Militant atheism should concern all believers. It is a form of fanaticism on a par with extreme religious movements. Like religious extremism it is characterized by intensity and arrogance. Like religious extremism it tears at, and ridicules opposite viewpoints. It is often aggressive, disrespectful, sarcastic, intolerant and, most of all, blasphemous. Its aim to kill faith and hope and to leave as many victims as possible with a psychological vacuum…

The administration are people too. I just want to start off saying that. However, in this case, I just don't get it. The more I think about it, the less I get it. Here is the plan our administration came up with. Faculty will report class absences for every Tuesday and Wednesday course. Absence reports are due online by Friday. I guess the goal here is to try to monitor the health of the student population and see if we have a flu outbreak or something. Here are the first problems I thought of: Won't there be some type of attendance noise anyway? Maybe attendance goes up and down…

Students are starting to get the flu around here - and that means that it is time to debate. Clearly there are going to be some absences in the coming month. The question is: what to do about it? There are two camps of thought here: Camp 1: Excuses are bad This camp of faculty is worried. They are worried that the administration is going to issue a statement something like this: "These are difficult times. Every is somehow affected by the flu. To encourage...blah..blah...blah... please allow students to make up any missed work without any doctor's note." So the faculty in camp 1 say "…

In this WEEK in TECH episode 197 there was a pretty good discussion about education and the university system. In case you are not familiar with TWiT, it is a tech-based podcast with Leo Laporte (from the old Screen Savers show). If you want to listen to their discussion, it starts about half-way through the podcast. Here is what I find interesting - these are mostly tech-oriented people (there was one person in education) but they can clearly see some of the problems with the educational system. I think the following quote sums up their ideas pretty well (can't recall which twit said it…

Announcement: There is a ton of extra money for education of teachers. You should submit a grant proposal. Hey, let's submit a proposal and get laptops for a whole bunch of students. To me, this is like giving morphine to people with the flu. It will make them feel better, but doesn't really fix the problem. A proposal like the above would probably get funded and probably make some people look great, but would it really help?

Satellite image of the island of Tenerife with the main vent of the volcano (El Teide) in the central part of the island. I will be out of town for the next few days, so I thought I'd leave this thread for breaking volcano news that any of you Eruptions readers notice. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to point out some abysmal science journalism before I go. I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised considering this is from the The Sun(UK), but, come on, could you at least put some effort in? The article in question pertains to the recent controversy about the level of danger people…

This post has nothing to do with physics, so if you are only into physicsy stuff, skip this. The primary goal of this post is to list what I need to blog. The secondary goal is to rant about my laptop. I destroyed my laptop (well, not really, but kind of). Basically, I had a tooth pulled on Tuesday. It wasn't bad, really it wasn't. The doctor said I should be ok to teach lab after the pull, so I did. NOTE: DON'T EVER DO THAT. Teaching lab after getting a tooth pulled = bad idea. Really bad. Nothing like not being able to talk while drooling blood. I think I scared my students. After…

I don't know if you noticed, but this blog has been down almost a week. Several things happened. First, I was hosted by Lunarpages. That didn't go so well. They ARE cheap, but maybe that is for a reason. I won't really go into details except to say that they have CPU limits, but you can't really see your usage. The next problem was that I decided to move to slicehost. Slicehost basically gives you a virtual linux server, but you have to do all the servery stuff. I thought I was up to the task, but apparently not. Setting up a linux server (to me) is like trying to put together a LEGO…

Not sure if you know what Jump the shark means. I figured it was a common term. Here is the wikipedia entry. Or maybe you would like a graphic explanation. Here it is: So, why the attack on textbooks? The main reason is that I just posted a rant about forces (or abuse of the word force) and I am going for the combo attack (more points that way). Actually, this has been in my mind for quite some time. There was a post on Uncertain Principles that started me thinking about it again. I have been afraid to really speak my mind on this issue because I don't want to completely enrage the…