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stoat | March 31, 2011I haven't bored you with rowing stuff for a while, you lucky people. But you have to see:
because doing 25 ergs is very very boring. I'll be back next year.
Update: by "popular" demand, here is my list of times. Nothing spectaculr I'm afraid, or even (over such a short period) any real sign of improvement.
MetersTotal TimePaceDate AgeClassSlide?
500019:27.8 1:56.73/31/2011 46Lstandard
500020:27.7 2:02.73/29/2011 46Lstandard
500019:58.1 1:59.83/28/2011 46Lstandard
500020:13.9 2:01.33/27/2011 46Lstandard
500020:39.2 2:03.93/25/2011 46Lstandard
500021:29.5 2…
cwilcox | March 31, 2011GoDaddy.com Chief Executive Bob Parsons feels absolutely no remorse for his choice to engage in elephant hunts in Zimbabwe. He posted this boastful video saying it's one of the most 'rewarding' things he does (warning - strong stomach required), and continues to defend it even after coming under fire for his actions.
Parsons had this to say about his hunts (this wasn't his first):
I spend a few weeks in Zimbabwe each year helping the farmers deal with problem elephants. The people there have very little, many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants, of…
gregladen | March 31, 2011Ralph Langner:
When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead's final target -- and its covert origins. In a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics, he explains how.
krandall | March 31, 2011By Dr. Mark Showalter
Senior Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute
Four and a half billion years ago, a fluffy "snowball" coalesced out of the cloud of ice, dust and debris still surrounding our Sun. Most of the snowballs like it later merged to become the planets we know. This one, however, had a chance flyby with a young planet, probably Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity propelled it out into the far reaches of the Solar System, where it remained in deep freeze, among many others like it, as a member of the so-called Oort cloud.…
gregladen | March 31, 2011"The human voice: mysterious, spontaneous, primal." With these words, soprano Claron McFadden invites us to explore the mysteries of breathing and singing, as she performs the challenging "Aria," by John Cage.
gregladen | March 30, 2011The Anti-Evolution Bills in Tennessee have advanced.
Tennessee's House Bill 368 was passed by the House Education Committee on March 29, 2011, and referred to the House Calendar and Rules Committee, while its counterpart, Senate Bill 893, is scheduled to be discussed by the Senate Education Committee on March 30, 2011. These bills, if enacted, would require state and local educational authorities to "assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies" and permit teachers to "help students understand, analyze, critique, and…
gregladen | March 30, 2011"Puppets always have to try to be alive," says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena's subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage.
gregladen | March 29, 2011I am going to interview Neil deGrasse Tyson this coming Sunday on Minnesota Atheist Talk. Details of the timing and how you can listen to the interview live can be found here. Unlike my recent interview with PZ Myers, in which I literally asked him the very questions you posted on my blog, I've got a handful of topics I'd like to bring up with the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium and widely read author. However, I will be happy and honored to pick one or two (or three) questions among those you may post below. So go ahead and suggest a question or two.
pharyngula | March 29, 2011Aaargh! Dueling events on Thursday night!
Oh, well, they're easy to resolve spatially. If you're somewhere near Minneapolis, you should attend JT Eberhard's talk in Smith Hall at 7. He's going to be talking about "Campus Preachers: An Excuse to Build Forts and Other Shenanigans", so I'm sure there'll be tips on what to do when Brother Jed comes to town.
I can't go! I'm going to be in the Twin Cities on Thursday night, down near the airport, because I'm flying out to speak at Elmhurst College on Friday. But I've got another commitment for this Thursday night. I'm appearing on Virtually…
krandall | March 28, 2011By Dr. Jon Jenkins; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Dr. Jon Jenkins of the SETI Institute is the Analysis Lead for NASA's Kepler Mission. He heads up a group of about two-dozen scientists and programmers who designed and built the software that is the brains behind this dramatic search for other worlds. With a photometric precision of 20 parts per million, Kepler is able to discover planets that are the same size as the rocky, inner orbs of our own solar system. By making an inventory of such worlds, Kepler will answer one of the most…
pharyngula | March 28, 2011It's another godless birthday. March must be a good month for birthing ferocious atheists — so procreate in June/July!
cwilcox | March 28, 2011I have to confess, when I saw a global map of average penis size flying around twitter, I was like a eighth grade boy finding his first nudie magazine - I couldn't help but take a peek. After a brief heart attack (it's in cm, not inches), my inner scientist started asking silly questions. You know, the kind of things that would only occur to a scientist when looking at a map of penis size like, "is this just a stochastic distribution?" "is there any reason why this pattern would occur?" and of course, "does penis size even matter from an evolutionary perspective?!"
Turns out that inner…
gregladen | March 26, 2011Ferraro was from Newburgh, New York and served in the US House. She was a progressive Democrat. She ran for Vice President with Walter Mondale. She was the first woman, and the first Italian American (which in those days meant more than it does today) to do so.
The fact that she was a woman was used against the Democratic ticket by a fairly conservative press (never quite forgave Ted Koppel for being a dick about it all) and, of course, by the Repulbicans.
In those days (and still to some extent, today) powerful men attach themselves to women who will not give them too much trouble by…
pharyngula | March 26, 2011Today is the man's 70th birthday — I didn't see a thread of well-wishers on the RDF site, so let's start one here.
Hey, he and I are both Pisces, there must be something to this astrology stuff.
I've been informed that my knowledge of astrology is deficient, and that his birthdate falls under some other sign. Therefore, astrology is wrong.
gregladen | March 23, 2011You know that movie that came out a few years ago about the horse that lived during the depression and everybody was happy when it won the triple crown? Well that horse, or a horse just like it (fast, famous, dead) was stuffed and on display in a racing museum I visited when I was a kid, and nearby, was the horse's jockey, also stuffed.
However, because the jockey was a person and wore clothing (and, in the case of jockeys, they were special colorful outfits that distinguished them from other jockeys) the actual jockey himself was spared the indignity and inconvenience of having his viscera…
gregladen | March 23, 2011What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.
gregladen | March 23, 2011Following an online petition and a wave of complaints, Apple has removed a so-called "gay cure" app from its App Store.
Launched last month by Exodus International, a ministry that encourages gay people to seek "cures" for their homosexuality, the app triggered a huge outcry from Two Wins Out, a nonprofit group with the stated goal of fighting anti-gay religious extremism.
Read the rest here