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gregladen | October 31, 2011
The McGregor Museum is a complex building with several wings surrounding an inner court yard, a multi-layered roof, balconies everywhere, and numerous trees in the court yard close in to the building. So, a cat can spend the heat of the day in the shaded crown of a tree, and the cool of the evening up on the building's sun-warmed metal roof.
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The interior of the McGregor museum houses numerious exhibits. The old period rooms and hallways focus on the late 19th century, and other newer areas (not shown) have an excellent set of exhibits on archaeology, human evolution, and "San" rock…
gregladen | October 31, 2011Finally, without any further interruption ...
One morning I was up a bit earlier than usual, and I was in the bathroom shaving. It was an hour or so before sunup. The lighting in the bathroom was poor, but there was a security spotlight outside the window, as I recall, so I had opened the frosted glass pane to let in a little more light, as well as the clean, cold but dry night air, which would keep the fogged over bathroom mirror clear.
As I was just starting to scrape the razor against my face in the bathroom, I heard the ghostly footsteps walking one way down the hall .. away from me…
gregladen | October 31, 2011Since we are talking about geology, I do not want to give up the opportunity to bring up one of the coolest stories of geology ever, given the present day discussion of science and religion. You will be asking for a source for this story. Look it up in Wikipedia, where all knowledge resides, and you will not find it there.
There are things, it turns out, that The Great Knowing Web Site does not know. My source is a combination of primary and secondary documents, written histories, and a documentary that is not generally available.
Barney Barneto nee Barnet Isaacs was a key player in the…
gregladen | October 31, 2011One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
This was on the location of an historic hunting reserve, where every one of the buildings where guests were quartered and entertained was built well before World War II. Even the ancient charcoal refrigerator was intact and in use. This was a large cylindrical structure with double mesh walls. When the game was afoot and dozens of buck were killed by sports…
gregladen | October 31, 2011I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I've never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist.
It should not have been terribly surprising that there were graves in this particular patch of land, just across a small road from an existing…
gregladen | October 31, 2011Well, we were living with this ghost who would walk up and down the hall in the middle of the night, invisibly leaving behind only the sound of its footsteps. But before I tell you how this all came out, I want to tell you a related side story.
As I had mentioned, I had the "hallway extension" room. Let me explain.
To get into the apartment, you would walk up a set of stairs and through a lockable doorway. Then to the right was a bedroom, and to the left a bathroom. Moving on ahead were two more bedrooms on the right for a total of three. On the left side past the bathroom was a…
gregladen | October 31, 2011So there we were in the Haunted Guest Quarters of the Old Infirmary, and I had already heard the ghost once. In the morning, my colleague and BFF Lynne who was staying with us for a couple of days noted that she had heard the mysterious footsteps as well....
"Greg, one, maybe both, of your students are really afraid of ghosts," she said.
"Why were they even talking about ghosts?"
"They've talked about little else since finding out that the ghost tour business is the biggest thing in town! And sooner or later they're going to hear whatever that was."
"Nah, they'll just get drunk and pass…
gregladen | October 31, 2011Everything I'm about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it may span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
Kimberley South Africa is said to be the most haunted city in the world, and it certainly is a city with a remarkable and dark history. The culture of Kimberley is constructed from the usual colonial framework on which are draped the tragic lives of representatives from almost every native culture from thousands of kilometers around.
The city's very existence is highly questionable…
gregladen | October 31, 2011I received the following email and urge readers to call your Senators and encourage them to support the National Science Foundation! Here's why. Having worked in a Senate office, I can assure you that every call matters. The details:
Call your Senators by 5:00 ET today to urge them to support the House Appropriations Committee funding level of $6,859,867,000 (same funding level as for FY 2011) for the National Science Foundation (NSF) in fiscal year (FY) 2012.
Details here.
gregladen | October 31, 2011... the cast and crew special for the end of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor.
gregladen | October 30, 2011What they say we get:
What we actually get:
1) 35% of every viewable surface of everything is an ad. Including the sky and the moon.
2) The technology pauses for several seconds every now and then because, well, it never works like on the ad.
3) A new EULA pops up several times a day asking you to approve a 43 page document and re-enter your passwords.
4) Passwords have become a minimum of 64 items long with a least 7 numbers, 7 symbols, and 7 difficult to remember hand and foot gestures.
5) The entire interface changes half way through and the rest of the video is people contacting each…
gregladen | October 29, 2011More and more, nations are waging attacks with cyber weapons -- silent strikes on another country's computer systems that leave behind no trace. (Think of the Stuxnet worm.) At TEDxParis, Guy-Philippe Goldstein shows how cyberattacks can leap between the digital and physical worlds to prompt armed conflict -- and how we might avert this global security hazard.
sciencepunk | October 28, 2011
I've covered the work of Semiconductor before on these pages: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt are responsible for a series of visual and acoustic sculptures that intersect art and science. Previously they brought magnetic fields to life for Channel 4, and recaptured minerals squeezed into existence deep inside the Earth's crust..
This time Ruth and Joe have turned their eyes skyward, where solar winds rasp against the upper reaches of our atmosphere, stirring huge geo-magnetic storms.
20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected…
gregladen | October 28, 2011Physiatrist and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system -- improving motion, control and even feeling. Onstage, patient Amanda Kitts helps demonstrate this next-gen robotic arm.
kcollins | October 28, 2011Be sure to check out this great new page by Oxford University graduate student April Le about hot careers in science & engineering! It can be found on the USASEF web site under 2012 Festival/School Programs.
The recent atmospheric and geological developments in the news provide an opportunity for the budding geologist or earth scientist in your family to explore a topic that imparts a clear and direct impact on their daily lives. Whether he or she enjoys "build and destroy" activities or virtual simulations of earthquakes volcanic eruptions, there are many ways for students of all ages…
gregladen | October 27, 2011... But he could have. Our local Young Earth Creationist group does run a dinosaur excavation in South Dakota and they do local field trips. But, Don does talk about this experience in a different city:
the 2010 meeting last year in Denver took the cake: there was a whole field trip run by YECs who did not identify their agenda, and pretended that they were doing conventional geology--until you read between the lines.
Read about it here.
krandall | October 27, 2011By Dr. Gerry Harp, Senior Astrophysicist, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Trained as a quantum mechanic, Dr. Gerry Harp was deeply interested in possibilities for using the multiple telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array to generate steerable "beams" on the sky -- beams that could be far smaller than any single antenna could produce. Such beams don't emit anything, but work in reverse by capturing only energy that comes from the sky in a certain direction. Gerry joined the SETI Institute in 2000, practically at the telescope's inception and uses the telescope for…
gregladen | October 27, 2011Have you ever had a large lobster? I mean, a really large one, like five pounds or more? They are hard to get these days. Most of the good Maine Lobsters (and all lobsters are Maine Lobsters unless otherwise specified) come from Maine in the US, and Maine has a rule that you can't harvest large lobsters. But back in the old days, when I was buying lobsters off the boat or occasionally eating them on the boat, you could still get them. And you can still get large lobsters from New Hampshire and Massachusetts but a) they are not as good and b) they are too expensive to even consider for…
gregladen | October 27, 2011Maggie Koerth-Baker is a Twin Cities based journalist and science editor at Boing Boing. She has bee a guest along with me on Atheist Talk Radio,and I hope to interview her early next year in relation to her forthcoming book, which I am very excited about. Meanwhile, you can see Maggie on Dr. Kiki's Science Hour. That show will be at 6 central TODAY.
You can see Dr Kiki a number of ways. I watch her on Twit network on my Roku.