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gregladen | October 11, 2011By signing this petition:
A new report from Green For All found that we could create nearly 1.9 million jobs and inject over a quarter of a trillion dollars into the economy by fully upgrading America's aging water and stormwater infrastructure.
Every year, 860 billion gallons of raw sewage spill into our waterways - enough to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania one inch deep. Fixing that problem creates jobs.
Green For All's report, available here (http://bit.ly/WaterWorksReport), shows that making the EPA's recommended $188 billion investment - enough to manage stormwater and preserve…
gregladen | October 11, 2011L'enfant sauvage, the 1970 movie by Truffaut, depicted a plausible case of a "wild child" ... a person left at very young age in the wild, who then grew up in the absence of human culture. Such wild children are rare, and most of them are not real, or at least, not as wild as originally claimed.
A team of psychologists who were interested in the phenomenon and related questions (like, how is language learned?) attended the opening of that movie during the same week that they were informed of the existence of another wild child of sorts, Genie. Genie, later depicted (very indirectly) in the…
gregladen | October 10, 2011This is why you should always back up to cliffs that you want to stand on top of, so you can run away faster!
gregladen | October 10, 2011I know a lot of you will be interested in this and may want to comment on it. It is obvious to me that Netflix pays close attention to this blog, so your comments will matter a great deal. It is almost like you were on the board of directors or something:
Dear Greg,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password...in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price…
gregladen | October 10, 2011Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims have won the Nobel Prize for economics for their work on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.
Sample their work here.
gregladen | October 8, 2011The magazine:
Biomedical researchers have lost a respected source of information--and science journalists have lost yet another publication for which they can write--with the news that The Scientist will stop publishing immediately. The news comes just after the magazine celebrated its 25th anniversary with a special issue.
Wow, that was unexpected. In a totally expected sort of way. Story here.
stoat | October 8, 2011 Listening to the Feynman lectures on CD (the one on electromagentism is quite a challenge on CD :-) we got to gravity, and I was rather struck by a historical note he made, concerning the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism - essentially, the process of working out how the planets really moved, and why.
The first I've heard elsewhere: that once you have some idea of momentum, then you realise that the invisible angels you need to push your planets around suddenly change direction: instead of pushing from behind the planets to make them go round in circles, suddenly they are pushing the…
gregladen | October 8, 2011And other things....
Episode 31:
INTRO: Belinda, Jason, Jack and James. New panelist, James Cooper, TAM 9, Belinda's Masters studies.
ON THE STREET: Martin Pribble at Think Inc. 2011.
INTERVIEW: Eugenie Scott.
NEWS: Faster-ââthan-ââlight neutrinos, Blackmores' pharmacy deal, secularism in the Israel/âPalestine conflict.
gregladen | October 8, 2011You know you want to! This is just one of the many project you can help out:
My Students: Kids love to find out what's happening inside them! From their blood to their bones, we study the human body. Our health book is a good resource for students, but having a model for them to look at and touch would make connections for those struggling students who are not strong readers.
We are a small, rural school in Minnesota. We have a surprisingly diverse population that comes from many different socio-economic backgrounds. The students are excited and eager to learn. Our students sometimes…
gregladen | October 8, 2011is ... here, at Kevin Zelnio's blog at Scientific American. Go read it, click on stuff, and pass it around!
gregladen | October 7, 2011Check it out:
OK, you have fought hard to deny or challenge the realities of climate change, perhaps because you are afraid of the policies that might have to be put in place; or are afraid of the possibilities of increased government intervention; or you don't think it will be that bad; or you think it will be too expensive to do anything about; or you don't understand the science; or you don't trust scientists, including, by the way, every national academy of sciences and every professional scientific organization in the geosciences... or whatever.
Read the rest of this piece by Peter…
gregladen | October 7, 2011The Republic of the Marshall Islands is now home to the world's largest shark sanctuary. The Nitijela, the Marshallese parliament, unanimously passed legislation this week that ends commercial fishing of sharks in all 1,990,530 square kilometers (768,547 square miles) of the central Pacific country's waters, an ocean area four times the landmass of California.
Details
It's huge. You could see it from space. If you could see it.
gregladen | October 7, 2011Three women who have worked for peace and women's rights in Liberia and Yemen have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, it was just announced at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee and Yemeni protest leader Tawakkul Karman are being honored.
source
gregladen | October 6, 2011I'm very excited to have the opportunity to interview Don Prothero this coming Sunday on Atheist Talk Radio. If you are local to the Twin Cities, you can listen in on AM 950. If not, you can get there via the Minnesota Atheist web site (where you will have to pretend you live in a twin cities zip code, such as 55433). Also, AM 950 is available on at least one digital radio station server ... I seem to be able to get it on my Roku.
Prothero is a palaentologist who has been featured on the Discovery Institute web site (they don't like him) as well as several podcasts (see below). He is a…
gregladen | October 6, 2011How do we search for alien life if it's nothing like the life that we know? At TEDxUIUC Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research into artificial life -- self-replicating computer programs -- to find a signature, a 'biomarker,' that is free of our preconceptions of what life is
Timing is everything.
gregladen | October 6, 2011First, the version by the Eagles:
And now, LeRoy Bell (and some other people):
Yeah, they've all got notes, but LeRoy can sing!
HERE is where you can go to make a positive comment about LeRoy, if you want.
gregladen | October 5, 2011I'll be interviewing Don on the radio in the AM, then, later that day:
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011, 1:30 p.m.
Party Room of Larpenteur Estates
1276 Larpenteur Ave. W.
St. Paul, MN 55113
(Park in the back of the apartment complex and go to the gap between buildings near the east end. Signs will point to the Party Room.)
Minnesota Atheists is pleased to host Prof. Donald R. Prothero, who will give a presentation on "Science Denialism: The Holocaust, Evolution, Climate Change, etc."
Prof. Prothero is the author of the popular book "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters." He is a…