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gregladen | December 9, 2009
Now, if you would like to examine the significance of this new math, check out this post on Denialism at TUIBG
tqa | December 9, 2009
If your face is regularly complimented with goggle rings and you spend hours every week following the black line, this review might just interest you. If don't know what I'm talking about, it won't.
I like to swim. This is a good thing, since I'm currently employed as a head guard, and spend more than 40 hours a week at the pool. I'm required to swim at least 500 meters every workday, and I usually go well beyond that. And I really, really enjoy it - far more than I've enjoyed any other form of physical exertion.
But - let's face it - a long workout, especially distance sets in a 25…
agelman | December 9, 2009A journalist contacted me to ask what I thought about this article by Marshall Burke, Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath, John Dykema, and David Lobell:
Armed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we [Burke et al.] undertake the first comprehensive examination of the potential impact of global climate change on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We find strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate…
cortex | December 8, 2009In the latest Mind Matters, Adam Waytz (an old college friend, co-author of my favorite book on basketball, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, and now a post-doc at Harvard) writes about a fascinating new paper by PJ Henry on social status and aggression. If you've read Gladwell's excellent Outliers, then you're probably familiar with the work of Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen. They argued, in an influential series of papers, that landscapes more conducive to herding were more likely to have a "culture of honor," which led to increased violence. Here's Waytz:
The story goes that…
gregladen | December 8, 2009This video does not show the tomato incident, but talks about it. More interesting is the depicted assembly line:
Here's one of our local news reports:
The following is the closest thing I could find to a Japanese simulation of the event:
grrlscientist | December 8, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published at Mauka to Makai. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica 17: The EPIC Edition. The current host, Kelsey, author of Mauka to Makai, deserves our gratitude and appreciation for her super efforts to publish this edition despite the fact that she only had one submission on the Friday before the carnival was published -- due to the malfunctioning online blog carnival submission form.
Scientia Pro…
gregladen | December 7, 2009This is police dash cam video of a cougar just across the Mississippi from my place, in the town of Champlin. The Cougar was spotted heading towards the river. Strangely, a few hours after this cat was spotted by Champlin cops, there was a report of another cougar a few miles east on the other side of the river. This is either a very active cat or a publicity seeking copy cat (or confused person).
We are expecting snow tomorrow. Cougar tracking season begins!!!!
source
gregladen | December 7, 2009Jeremiah Wobbe, of Saint Paul, chucked tomatoes at Sarah Palin ... at the mall of America ...
... He missed. He threw two tomatoes, and both missed Palin, but one did hit a cop in the face. Apparently a second police officer was hit as well. Mr. Wobbe was arrested with the help of angry citizens who were standing nearby at the time.
Jeremy was still holding two unexpended tomatoes when he was arrested.
source.
Thanks Emily Cassidy for the heads up on this one.
gregladen | December 7, 2009For the US, World War Two started today, 68 years ago, when the Japanese wiped out much of the US Pacific Naval fleet and President Roosevelt declared war.
The dissenting vote was by Jeannette Rankin, of Montana (House), who also voted against engagement in WW I. Her statement on casting her dissenting vote: "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else" ... supposedly.
pharyngula | December 7, 2009It was the classic scam. An elderly couple are told they've won the lottery, and millions of dollars are theirs…they just have to pay a few taxes and fees first in order to free up the cash. First it was a few thousand dollars, than a few thousand more, than a few tens of thousands, and finally, their savings account stripped dry of about $78,000, they catch on: they're being conned. It's a monumental personal tragedy that has impoverished them, and there's nothing that can be done—the scammers are gone.
There is a lesson to be learned, although these victims haven't learned it.
"We were…
cortex | December 7, 2009I found this minor anecdote, from Peter Baker's authoritative NY Times article on Obama's decision-making process for Afghanistan, to be quite fascinating:
On Oct. 9, Mr. Obama and his team reviewed General McChrystal's troop proposals for the first time. Some in the White House were surprised by the numbers, assuming there would be a middle ground between 10,000 and 40,000.
"Why wasn't there a 25 number?" one senior administration official asked in an interview. He then answered his own question: "It would have been too tempting."
General McChrystal, it turns out, is a shrewd student of…
sastyk | December 7, 2009Ok, those of you who know me know that I am not much of a consumer. If I can buy it used, make it myself, or make do with something I've already got, I'm pretty good. I hate the frenzy of shopping that accompanies the "Holiday" season, and I think the most awesome thing about being Jewish is that Chanukah is a minor holiday, and generally I'm sitting around with my feet up while everyone else is racing around.
I'm a big fan of homemade gifts - this year most of the grownups in my family got homemade jams and such, and a bunch of meat chickens, raised at home at my house. Now I realize…
grrlscientist | December 6, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The blog carnival submission form has been having problems sending submissions to the proper blog carnival email addresses, so Scientia pro Publica has ONE submission so far -- and it publishes TOMORROW!! If you have sent a submission to this carnival, PLEASE resend it immediately! I am hoping all of you come through my sending at least one science-y submission (yours or other people's) to this carnival ASAP to help out the host so she doesn't pull all her hairs…
pharyngula | December 5, 2009Back in October, I sent you off to vote in an online poll that pitted real social workers, SozialHelden, against homeopaths, in a contest that actually had consequences: the winner would get a "Dedication Award" for their work.
We just got word from SozialHelden on the outcome of the poll:
haben gerade den Deutschen Engagementpreis 2009 gewonnen. Danke für Eure Stimmen!
They've won the German Engagement Prize for 2009. Thank you for your votes!
gregladen | December 5, 2009Digital Rabbit is a web site that focuses on conservation and social justice issues related to H2O. The next 12 days of gift suggestions from Digital Rabbit should prove interesting. Check it out.
agelman | December 5, 2009Tyler Cowen writes:
Breaking a three-day stalemate, the Senate approved an amendment to its health care legislation that would require insurance companies to offer free mammograms and other preventive services to women.
The vote was 61 to 39, with three Republicans joining 56 Democrats and the two independents in favor.
This happened directly after the release of evidence showing that many mammograms do not pass a comparative effectiveness test. Once the test became a public issue at all...well, now you see what happens.
It's a problem when one branch of the government recommends less…
agelman | December 4, 2009A few months ago I read Charles Seife's excellent book, "Sun in a bottle: The strange history of fusion and the science of wishful thinking." One thing I found charming about the book was that it lumped crackpot cold fusion, nutty plans to use H-bombs to carve out artificial harbors in Alaska, and mainstream tokomaks into the same category: wildly-hyped but unsuccessful promises to change the world. The "wishful thinking" framing seems to fit all these stories pretty well, much better than the usual distinction between the good science of big-budget lasers and tokomaks and the bad science…
agelman | December 4, 2009Tom Ball writes:
Didn't know if you had seen this article [by Jason Richwine] about political allegiance and IQ but wanted to make sure you did. I'm surprised the author hasn't heard or seen of your work on Red and Blue states! What do you think?
I think the article raises some interesting issues but he seems to be undecided about whether to take the line that intelligent Americans mostly have conservative views ("[George W.] Bush's IQ is at least as high as John Kerry's" and "Even among the nation's smartest people, liberal elites could easily be in the minority politically") or the…
cwilcox | December 4, 2009Surf's up - literally! The North Shore is getting some monster waves here in Hawaii right now (as high as 50 feet!). I want to go check out the killer surf, so I'm gonna dive head first into Carnival of the Blue #31 so that I'll still have time to go catch the waves!
First up: Wanderin' Weeta had a heck of a time with a terrible twosome of mollusc-eating flatworms. Read all about her adventures into the platyhelminthes!
After you're done digesting that little tale, swim on over the Sea Notes and read all about what it's like behind the scenes at the seahorse exhibit at the Monterey Bay…