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gregladen | October 21, 2011Although one can not be certain, all the evidence points to the fact that William Shakespeare smoked pot. This is not a new story. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Francis Thackeray, who has never smoked pot in his life but who has acted in Shakespeare's plays numerous times, led a research team that put 2 and 2 together and came up with narcotic literary munchies. In Shakespeare's time, land owners were required to grow pot in order to provide fibers for making the rope needed hoist the sails and flags over the increasingly powerful British Navy and merchant vessels. One of the better…
catdynamics | October 19, 2011The following is brutal, do not watch if sensitive
Small child hit by car, twice.
Apparently footage from security camera.
Same story on TV news, with followup reporting.
Child survived, obviously severely injured.
This appears to be something that actually happened.
Graunaid cover of story
gregladen | October 19, 2011My sister won the science fair with a "frictionless puck" using CO2, two jars, and two hockey pucks. This is not that:
More here.
gregladen | October 18, 2011The real question is, if sea levels rose due to melting glacial ice, what percentage of the word's population would get their feet wet? There are several problems with addressing this question, including the fact that it depends on how high sea levels rose. Most studies or calculations are based on what most people consider to be a large rise in sea level of about 10 meters/30 feet. Given this sort of consideration, the number of people living in the global food zone is significant. Here are a few tidbits from the Intertubes:
Three-quarters of the world's mega-cities are by the sea.*
By…
sciencepunk | October 18, 2011A Louisiana farmer was fed up with feral pigs trashing his rice crop. Usually farmers hire hunters to deal with the problem. But this isn't easy:
Hunting big angry pigs in rice that is as tall as your belly button is HARD. Seeing them at anything other than 10 feet away is nearly impossible, you have to walk, listen, stalk, and kill. Then chase the survivors for hours. Sometimes you could waste all night looking in the wrong places or maybe the pigs decided to not come out at all.This year I decided to work smarter instead of harder. With our own little UAV up there I could spend a lot less…
gregladen | October 18, 2011Below the fold, of course ...
Wow. The first one sounds like a Tardis. The second one looks like an old Alka-Seltzer commercial in combination with an episode of The Time Tunnel. Then its just a bunch of dizzy 70s stuff. With bad hair. Glossed over the 8th transition. I had to stop watching then because I think I've not seen that one ... it must be in one of the movies or something.
gregladen | October 18, 2011Tonight, Tuesday, October 18th, the Final 16 will be revealed.
7 central time.
Here's LeRoy's performance, on which he'll be judged:
You can go HERE and "like" it!
gregladen | October 16, 2011Below the fold (it starts automatically)
LeRoy's Audition and video diary:
gregladen | October 16, 2011From Rob Pike
Dear Rob--
As Dennis's siblings, Lynn, John, and Bill Ritchie--on behalf of the entire Ritchie family--we wanted to convey to all of you how deeply moved, astonished, and appreciative we are of the loving tributes to Dennis that we have been reading. We can confirm what we keep hearing again and again: Dennis was an unfailingly kind, sweet, unassuming, and generous brother--and of course a complete geek. He had a hilariously dry sense of humor, and a keen appreciation for life's absurdities--though his world view was entirely devoid of cynicism or mean-spiritedness.
We are…
gregladen | October 14, 2011In the past, we've covered how to live trap a mouse. And, how to live trap a squirrel. For those, I've got considerable experience and was able to give you good advice. But for live trapping a Godzilla, it is best to seek professional advice.
catdynamics | October 13, 2011NESCent is offering a travel award for the best blog post on current or emerging evolutionary research.
Award is $750 for travel support to attend ScienceOnline2012
There will be 2 winners, chosen by 15th Dec 2011
Blog entries must mention NESCent contest, and are nominated or self-nominated by emailing travel.award@nescent.org like this - but for 2012, obviously
gregladen | October 13, 2011But then, they came up with this, which simply CAN NOT BE TRUE:
No way is there a Cyclops Shark!
gregladen | October 13, 2011It is said that this happened:
"When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big. The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. "Those are air bubbles,"…
gregladen | October 13, 2011You may not know Dennis Ritichie but you are using his work right now. He was instrumental in developing Unix (which is ultimately related to developing Linux, which you are using right now because this web site is delivered via a Linux server) but he's more well known, probably, for his work developing the C language.
Every time an old computer language is mentioned for some historical reason, we learn that even thought we thought the language was dead, or obscure, or irrelevant, it turns out to be used in some wide range of functions and life itself would be impossible as we know it…
gregladen | October 12, 2011A spammer using a domain provided free by GoDaddy, which sends people to a domain hosting service (which in turn advertises GoDaddy) has been putting spam on this site at a very high rate over the last few hours (many have gotten through).
Does this mean that GoDaddy, the internet service provider, is spamming mysite, or merely that GoDaddy is funding the spamming of my site? Do you use GoDaddy? If you do, then YOU are spamming my site, then, aren't you?
All of you stop it.
gregladen | October 12, 2011I've shown you this before but I thought you might like to see it again.
Click Here to Buy your Sea Level Rise due to Global Warming Mug!
gregladen | October 11, 2011Skeptics and atheists and freethinking folk are supposed to be smart, and they are supposed to be inquiring and, well, skeptical and freethinking and stuff. But they very very often are not. Between skeptics being politically conservative (mainly with respect to social issues) and often not as inquiring and smart as they are fond of telling the rest of us they are, I am sufficiently annoyed by the movement(s) as a whole to reserve calling myself, for instance, a skeptic. If anything, I'm a skeptical skeptic. A godless freethinking skeptical meta-skeptic. That's me.
The latest example of…
catdynamics | October 11, 2011Our big questions, at least.
And the winners are...
How would we recognise evolution on other substrates? How would we detect life on another planet?
Are there genetic grammars common to all of life?
What do we need to know about law in biology to explore questions in astrobiology?
Can we conceive of evolution beginning with an excess of complexity? Evolution by reduction?
How to build a minimal living thing?
...and we breakout into working groups, and get to work.