Uncategorized
gregladen | July 28, 2011A proposal has been made to remove beloved Archaeopteryx from the bird family tree and push it over to some non-avian dinosaur subtree. This is not the first time that the ancient species has had its position on the tree of bird life threatened, but this time it may be for real. The proposal is reasonable.
I've talked about this issue before, but I'm bringing it up now because there is a new paper, just out. Lets get right down to business and start with the abstract:
Archaeopteryx is widely accepted as being the most basal bird, and accordingly it is regarded as central to understanding…
gregladen | July 28, 2011Atheists are trolls it turns out!!!! Jason has it covered.
Hey look, I won an award!
Some bad news from the Death from the Skies front:
a half dozen meteors all seemed to come from the same spot in the sky, indicating they all had a common origin. ... they probably come from a parent comet with an orbit that's at least 53 years long. Moreover, the orbit of this comet crosses that of the Earth
Read the details here.
As has been said before, Pre-school kids reveal their instincts for science.
Hey look, scientists are funny!
Made you look!
gregladen | July 28, 2011Speaking of shrews, some new ones just got discovered. Pics and details here. They are said to be cute. I dunno.
gregladen | July 27, 2011MN 350 is planning an event for September 24th, and would like you to help get it off the ground, or at least, show up!
This September, people all around the world are joining together for Moving Planet--a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis. In Minnesota we'll gather on the State Capitol lawn to send the message: It's time to move beyond fossil fuels.
We'll come on bikes. We'll march with our faith communities. We'll rally with our neighbors. And we'll send a strong message that we stand for climate justice.
Details here.
gregladen | July 27, 2011Two things have been known for some time now: Human brains get bigger as you go north, and the volume of the primate eye and the primate brain are correlated.
This COULD mean, and this may not be true, that as you go north in human populations you'll get larger brains (for thermoregulatory reasons) and you'll therefore get larger eyes (because eyeball and brain size is somehow correlated). But a new paper suggests a different model: Large eyes evolve at high latitudes because there is more dark, and the larger eye demands a larger brain.
Maybe, but I doubt it. the largeness of high latitude…
gregladen | July 26, 2011CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Juno spacecraft is set to launch toward Jupiter aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Aug. 5. The launch window extends from 11:34 a.m. to 12:33 p.m. EDT (8:34 to 9:33 a.m. PDT), and the launch period extends through Aug. 26.
The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016, on a mission to investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed views of the planets' poles.
NASA will host a prelaunch news conference in the News…
gregladen | July 26, 2011I've spent a fair amount of time in Goma Congo (Zaire), trying hard to stay out of trouble, and I've flown around this mountain and driven around this mountain or its sister volcanoes, and the very existence of this volcano field has a lot to do with some of the research I've done. Oh, and for a while I had a truck with seats fitted to it that were taken from one of the many aircraft that had met its demise on the slopes of these cinder cones.
The reason I mention this at all is because NGS has a feature article with some amazing photos on Nyiragongo Volcano. Go have a look.
Looking back…
gregladen | July 26, 2011Butter Milk Creek is a Texas archaeological site and an archaeological complex located rather symbolically a couple of hundred miles downstream from the famous Clovis site in New Mexico. It is the most recently reported alleged manifestation of a "pre-Clovis" archaeological presence. The most important thing about this site is probably this: It is well dated (though the dates need to be independently verified or otherwise run through the gauntlet of criticism dates of important sites are always subjected to) and there are a lot of artifacts at the site. The importance of the number of…
gregladen | July 26, 2011Cool Planet is a community science-oriented organization located in Edina, Minnesota which "... strives to strengthen and empower the community of Edina by providing fun and engaging opportunities for citizens to join together in local homegrown solutions to climate change."
Interesting idea. If you are in the Edina Area or are just interested in local community organization and science, check out their home page.
gregladen | July 26, 2011Henry Reich is developing a YouTube channel for one-minute-physics presentations. Below the fold is one of the more recent productions.
Here is the minute physics channel.
gregladen | July 26, 2011Michele Bachmann doesn't really care about bullies, or if bullying leads to really bad things happening to children, because there is no bully bill in the US constittuion and it's natural anyway. Here's the audio of her senseless yammering about how an anti bulling bill could lead to the boys all turning gay.
Move over TED, make way for BILL.
Don't drop the anchor of a ship that is running if you're just some drunk guy on the cruise. Like this:
Hat tip Kevin
Interesting graphic on the deficit and what has made it as large as it is.
RIP, Len Sassaman: cypherpunk and anonymity hacker…
gregladen | July 26, 2011Pop the champagne corks. The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In 14-0* vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers--and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.
Read More
mikethemadbiologist | July 26, 2011I probably shouldn't read two excellent and critical genomics posts back to back. But this excellent post by Daniel MacArthur about the issues surrounding the sequencing using Ion Torrent of a human genome got me thinking about this post by Marian Turner about the pettiness issues surrounding publication of the outbreak strains (italics mine):
The collaborative atmosphere that surrounded the public release of genome sequences in the early weeks of this year's European Escherichia coli outbreak has turned into a race for peer-reviewed publication.
A paper published in PLoS One today, by Dag…
gregladen | July 25, 2011Cut a hole in a watermelon! Brilliant!
I think Rebecca Watson makes a great skeptic and spokesperson for the skeptics community, but I think her real calling is in giving dating advice.
(From here)
You may also enjoy this bloggingheads:
gregladen | July 25, 2011President Barack Obama shut down dozens, possibly hundreds, of web sites of members of US congress moments ago when during a moving oration about the US Budget Crisis he suggested that people contact their members of congress immediately. In particular, Obama stated that it has become the norm to consider "compromise" to be a dirty word in American politics.
We've been checking on all the sites for our local representatives and they are all down.
gregladen | July 23, 2011I don't know if I should worship my backpack or drive a wooden stake through its heart and shoot it with silver bullets. For three days I obsessively looked through every pocket knowing my keys were in there somewhere, and never found them. Today, I was looking for something else and guess what popped out. I had the same backpack in Mexico a couple of years ago, and stuck a bottle of some cool looking hot sauce I picked up in a small market in one of the pockets. Forgot about it. That backpack then traveled with me, Julia, or Amanda to four cities and three or four countries over the next…
gregladen | July 22, 2011First, have a look at this video of Huxley dancing.
Now, have a look at this email I just got from YoutTube:
Dear gregladen,
Your video, Dancing, may have content that is owned or licensed by SME.
No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.
Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team
Hahahahaha....
.... ah ... nope ....