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gregladen | November 28, 2011The term "Black Friday" is said to refer to the day that so many people shop in US retail stores, the day after Thanksgiving, that retailer's ledgers go from red (debit) to black (profit). But this appears to be a more recent use of the term which has been in use since the middle of the last century to mean something different. It was still used by retailers and other concerned with the hoardes of people shopping on Thanksgiving weekend, but not in relation to the ledger books. Rather, "Black Friday" was a bad day because it was when all those obnoxious shoppers, brats in tow, came into…
gregladen | November 27, 2011Below the fold, because this is NOT going to be pretty.
First, a video:
OK, now established what we are talking about here, let's get down to business,
The blogger named WhySharksMatter is in the running to receive a fairly large sum of money, which he has promised to give to the sharks so that they do not attack any more airplanes. He will also use the money to fund his dissertation research on the relationship between sharks and coral reefs. And, he will use some of the money to support his lab's citizen science project which has taken over 1,000 high school students and teachers into…
gregladen | November 27, 2011The poll asks:
Do children need a mom and a dad? By encouraging men and women to marry, society helps ensure that children will be known by and cared for by their biological parents. Whenever a child is born, her mother will almost always be nearby. But the same cannot always be said of her father. Men, especially, are encouraged to take responsibility for their children through the institution of marriage. Marriage is society's mechanism of increasing the likelihood that children will be born and raised by the two people responsible for bringing them into the world - their mother and father…
gregladen | November 27, 2011I'm looking for a small (will always live in Amanda's purse) point and shoot camera and have so far narrowed the choices down to the following. Anybody have any advice on which one I should get (or an alternative, if you'd like to suggest one)? (Descriptions/details are from Amazon, for consistency)
Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full 1080p HD Video (Silver)
World's thinnest digital camera with a 24mm ultra Wide-Angle lens and 5x Optical Zoom and Optical Image Stabilizer.
Canon's HS SYSTEM with a 12.1 MP CMOS and DIGIC 4 Image Processor improves shooting in low-…
gregladen | November 26, 2011A frail elderly woman would have a hard time walking a few blocks, from her apartment to the subway, then from the subway to the MET, with winds gusting to near hurricane strength. So, the patron of the arts and of archaeology, who happened to be a cousin of my first wife, called around to find a worthy pair to use her tickets to the private opening (for major patrons) of The Treasures of Tutankhamun, the exhibit of King Tut's tomb. The public opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City would be several days later. When it was found that the two only archaeologists in the…
gregladen | November 26, 2011Today is Huxley's Birthday. He'll be spending the day in bed chillin' to some tunes.
jdupuis | November 26, 2011
The scandal of publisher-forbidden textmining: The vision denied
Textmining: NaCTeM and Elsevier team up; I am worried
The Trouble With Bright Kids
Yeah, but who pays?
If I were Dean of Graduate Studies: Rethinking the PhD
Our audience awaits
Is librarianship in crisis and should we be talking about it?
The humanities in the culture of research
An Open Letter to MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal
9 Reasons Publishers Should Stop Acting Like Libraries Are The Enemy and Start Thanking Them
The future in one word: platforms
The Productivity Perplex
NSSE, Peer-Driven Learning, and Getting…
gregladen | November 25, 2011This is not a manual or even a how-to blog post, but rather, what I hope to be a few helpful suggestions that may or may not have already occurred to you. I was motivated to write this because of a series of recent events in which it became obvious that a lot of people, myself included in certain instances, were not managing some of the basic information linked to their on-line identity in the best way.
Let me give you a simple example, which happens to be the first one I came across in this recent series of encounters with eInefficiency. I was working with a group of people at a non-profit…
gregladen | November 25, 2011Several weeks ago, my friend and colleague, Shanai Matteson asked if I'd get involved in a project she was working on along with several other people. If you have been reading my blog, or for that matter, Pharyngula, for a while you'll know of Shanai even if you don't know you know: She was for many years the public outreach coordinator person (not sure of her exact title) for the Bell Museum of Natural History, so it is she who organized the Great Smackdown at The Bell (with PZ Myers, Chirs Mooney, Matt Nisbet and me), as well as several Cafe Scientifiques that I've done, as well as a…
gregladen | November 24, 2011From Google Wave:
More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any…
gregladen | November 24, 2011Time for the thanksgiving story. But first, when you are preparing your Thanksgiving Turkey, you might want to keep this in mind.
And now ... a feast.
The enemy has arrived, in force, outside your village. The men are armed and wearing the symbols of war, which is appropriate because your group and the group milling about outside your walled settlement are at war. One of the men, wearing war garb but adorned also with white flagging to indicate a peaceful intent attempts to enter your village but is stopped by guards. They converse briefly and the guards allow the man to crawl into your…
lborkowski | November 23, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
A special investigative series by several reporters at Center for Public Integiryt/iWatch News and NPR: Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: About Pepper Spray (also see her followup, Fox News Food Products)
and, relatedly:
Judy Stone at the Scientific American Guest Blog: Should pepper spray be put on (clinical) trial?
Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein at Pro Publica: Florida Sanctions Top Medicaid Prescribers -- But Only After a Shove
And just in time for Thanksgiving travel and turkey consumption:
Simon…
gregladen | November 23, 2011If you are looking for some recipes, here are a few suggestions.
Theory and background
Thinking Thanksgiving I
Thinking Thanksgiving II
Homemade Thanksgiving
How to do a Godless Thanksgiving
Cooking Thanksgiving Turkey
What is a turkey, really?
Brining the bird
How to cook a turkey
How to NOT cook a turkey.
The True Meaning of Thanksgiving: Gravy
First, make stock
How to make gravy
Stuffings
Carmelized Onions, Mushroom, and Sausage Stuffing
Obviously, we need more on this list.
Thanksgiving Side Dishes
Squash Ravioli
Grandma Lylah's Cranberry Relish
Ad Hoc Soup
Thanksgiving Deserts…
gregladen | November 23, 2011Lynn Margulis died yesterday at her home in Amherst at the age of 73.
Margulis is best known and best remembered for her endosymbiotic theory. You know what this is because you took basic biology and it is now part of every textbook. Notably, at the time Margulis published this idea, it was rejected and continued to be shunned for some time, but eventually was accepted. Margulis made a number of other important and accepted contributions to evolutionary biology.
Margulis has also pressed forward with a number of other theories (either hers, or as an advocate for others) that are just…
gregladen | November 22, 2011For reasons that are entirely beyond my comprehension, some time ago, people started to deep fry their turkeys. Don't do it unless you know what you are doing. And you probably don't know what you are doing.
Here's what William Shatner has to day about it:
gregladen | November 22, 2011I may or may not have written a blog post called "Manspace."
Its relationship to "Womanspace" and "Womanspacegate" will be only partly obvious.