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pharyngula | June 18, 2011Do we really need another wretched Texas governor in the White House? Rick Perry wants to be our president, and he has the backing of Bryan Fischer. What a combination…
Other countries of the world: watch out if this comes to pass. At that point, we'd officially be a pariah nation—your only salvation would be that we'd be in total economic and cultural meltdown, and wouldn't last much longer.
sb admin | June 18, 2011Working backwards through our four reasons to ignore evolution, we have shown that smart people don't necessary converge on the facts of the matter from different starting positions (4) and that reasoning on the basis of design benefits from knowledge about the designing process (3). Here is our next reason for ignoring the E-word (2):
A reasonable research strategy is to study what is, without worrying much about how it got that way. After all, something like the brain is available to be studied in minute detail, whereas how it got that way is more speculative. Why speculate when we can…
pharyngula | June 18, 2011Someone needs to tell Jerry Coyne that I adore calamari. Could he reply in kind if I posted a photo of fricasseed cat? Oh, wait, maybe it should be barbecued.
Now we all know who the truly heartless, callous atheist is.
gregladen | June 17, 2011Research by Gustavo Londoño in the Peruvian Rainforest:
Temp On The Gradient from Ecosite Media on Vimeo.
catdynamics | June 16, 2011I'm at wee bit behind on this here blogging thingie,
but there has been a flurry of physics results which are worth a quick peek:
CoGENT claims CDM result - claim marginal detection of annual modulation, consistent with light CDM particle.
See resonaances for detail
Fermi confirms Pamela - say no more, nudge nudge wink wink
Talking of blind bats: AMS is on
Now for something completely different: Cliff Will explains Gravity Probe B
CMS experiment at the LHC hints unsubtly that they might be seeing stringy quantum black holes - I'll believe it when I see the Earth implode...
Theorists get…
gregladen | June 15, 2011In the process of writing a post on bird evolution, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to re-post something I wrote a couple of years ago covering research reported by Paul Sereno about new fossil material from a theropod known as em>Aerosteon riocoloradensis. When I went to look at my original post, I was reminded that there was quite a bit of other writing on the blogosphere (and elsewhere on the Intertubes) about this find. Here, I'd like to give you the bottom line (insofar as what I wanted people to know when referring back to my repost) and then, in the interest of both…
gregladen | June 14, 2011While I'm busy in Saint Paul doing this, I think you should have a look at this and this, because summer is just around the corner. Later, I'll be working on a post for this because I do one every four weeks. How time flies. I've already done two of them (this and this).
Oh, I bought a bottle of air to disperse some of the dust while I'm doing this, and they wanted my ID! I had no idea that people snorted air.
Don't forget, this is coming up soon, as is this. And pretty soon we'll be doing a new one of these.
And don't forget about the eclipse.
Speaking of which...
sastyk | June 14, 2011In a previous post several of my commenters observed that they lived in places too humid for solar dehydrating, and had been using electric food dryers. We have similar issues here - the summers are very humid, and there is a tendency for things not to dry rapidly enough, while reabsorbing moisture overnight and molding. Fortunately, the great Sue Robishaw, homesteading Goddess, connected me to her variations on Larisa Walk and Bob Dahse's design for the "Midwest Solar Food Dryer"
We have a small version and plans for a much larger one, and have had a great deal of success with this - a…
pharyngula | June 13, 2011I've landed in Chicago. Only about 5 more hours before I'm home.
It does make me sad that US Customs and the TSA work so hard to make me feel like a criminal for traveling abroad.
cwilcox | June 13, 2011 Recently, in a post titled "Ecologists: Time to End Invasive-Species Persecution", Brandon Keim discussed a comment published in Nature which argued that the ecological community unfairly vilifies the various plants and animals we've transported around the globe. In some sense, the authors are right, at least as far as saying that not all alien species should be considered bad or needing removal.
Straight from the beginning, though, the authors attack a dichotomy that doesn't exist. They write that a "native-versus-alien species dichotomy" is counterproductive, and that new, pragmatic…
gregladen | June 13, 2011I agree that a gay judge should not rule on a gay marriage issue. He's biased. He's gay, and in a gay relationship and will therefore be biased in favor of gay rights.
Of course, non-gay judges should never be allowed to rule on issues of straight marriage or other private matters, legislatures should not be allowed to introduce legislation limiting or proscribing behavior related to gayosity or straightosity related to anyone like themselves, and voters should never, ever be allowed to vote on things that have anything to do with individual relationships, sexual behavior, sexuality, or…
cwilcox | June 13, 2011The finalists have been chosen, and they are a fantastic bunch! Here are the top 9 which made it in:
Cosmic Variance: The Fine Structure Constant is Probably Constant
Dr. Carin Bondar: Sacrifice on the Serengeti
Empirical Zeal: Blind Fish in Dark Caves Shed Light on the Evolution of Sleep
Highly Allochthonous: Levees and the Illusion of Flood Control
Laelaps: The Pelican's Beak - Success and Evolutionary Stasis
Oh, For the Love of Science: Prehistoric Clues Provide Insight into Climate's Future Impact on Oceans
Opinionator: Morals Without God?
Scientific American Guest Blog: Seratonin and…
gregladen | June 12, 2011Version 1:
Version 2 (video may not show):
Version 3:
Version 4 (whole camera approach, video cameras)
Version 5:
gregladen | June 12, 2011Even though some time back Netflix fixed their interface exactly as I wanted them to do it, and within hours after I asked them to (see this), they have now developed a new web interface to their site that many people appear to hate. I tend to agree with the haters.
What I found is that when I view it with Google Chrome the site breaks in about a half second and I can't see a thing. Then, when it comes back it looks much like their on-Roku inteface, which is OK, but requires mouse movements that I find unnatural and annoying. And, mostly, impossible to use. At this point, it would almost…
mspringer | June 11, 2011Here is a picture of (I think) Maru the cat playing in a bag. He loves bags.
Here is the same picture of Maru, at half the size:
Now imagine that Maru is a physicist and the pictures are not pictures but instead windows into the universe he occupies, separate from ours with (possibly) its own unique set of physical laws. The only difference between the two universes is that one has the lengths of everything reduced by a factor of 2.
Can the parallel versions of Maru tell which universe they're in - the smaller or the larger? Or if you want to imagine what you might do, suppose that in some…