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gregladen | November 1, 2009To me, the Oakland Bay Bridge was always one of those bridges that made you think about bridges when you drove over it. It is very long (one of the longest in the world) and spans an arm of the sea. It is old, and there are earthquakes in the region now and then. So as you drive from one end to the other, it is impossible to marvel that the bridge was even built, and that it is still standing.
A big section of the bridge has apparently needed redesign and rebuild to account for the earthquakes, and this was ignored until the World Series Earthquake of 1989, when planning for a major…
gregladen | November 1, 2009A Russian circus troupe were rehearsing for a performance in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, when the incident happened.
Workers had to drag the bear away during the attack, according to the director of the arena, Kurmangazy Isanayev.
The exits were closed off as staff waited for the emergency services.
Police shot the bear dead at the scene.
Russia has no animal cruelty laws that pertain to circuses.
story here
gregladen | November 1, 2009 "If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will." -- President George Bush, addressing the RNC via satellite feed, September 1, 2008 "I Am The Angry Left." -- T-Shirt seen at demonstration outside RNC, September 2, 2008. * A criminal trial against Eight American Patriots is about to start in Saint Paul. These eight patriots armed themselves with information and guts and planned to attack dogma and repressive politics at the Republican National Convention. They were arrested, treated like animals, and…
grrlscientist | November 1, 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) is almost here once more and it is still seeking submissions for tomorrow's edition of this blog carnival! Can you help by sending URLs for well-written blog essays to the host?
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The…
gregladen | October 31, 2009There appears to be a new blog at Science Blogs, and it is APPLIED STATISTICS!!!!! That's the name of the blog, and that's what it is about, and the blogger is Andrew Gelman. Welcome Andrew. We needed a stats blog, and it is very nice to have you here.
So now, a statistics joke:
Three statisticians go rabbit hunting. They wait patiently in the hunting blind for several hours and finally a rabbit comes hopping into view, and pauses to munch on the carefully laid out bait.
By pre-arranged lottery, Statistician 0 fires his rifle at the rabbit, but the bullet shoots right over the rabbit's…
gregladen | October 31, 2009As promised, the footnotes for A True Ghost Story.
1Unless this statement itself is not true, in which case, how can you know what is true and what is not true? And besides, it can't really all be true because some of it is about ghosts.
2Who wants to be alone sitting in the dark?
3I use the term "non-White" along side the terms "Black" and "White" to signal that there is complexity here. There are three sources of complexity. One is linguistic, one is ethnic, and one is historical. First, the "ethnic" or "racial" issue: to the extent that these concepts are valid at all, which is very…
gregladen | October 31, 2009
The McGregor Museum is a complex building with several wings surrounding an inner court yard, a multi-layered roof, balconies everywhere, and numerous trees in the court yard close in to the building. So, a cat can spend the heat of the day in the shaded crown of a tree, and the cool of the evening up on the building's sun-warmed metal roof.
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The interior of the McGregor museum houses numerious exhibits. The old period rooms and hallways focus on the late 19th century, and other newer areas (not shown) have an excellent set of exhibits on archaeology, human evolution, and "San" rock…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Finally, without any further interruption ...
One morning I was up a bit earlier than usual, and I was in the bathroom shaving. It was an hour or so before sunup. The lighting in the bathroom was poor, but there was a security spotlight outside the window, as I recall, so I had opened the frosted glass pane to let in a little more light, as well as the clean, cold but dry night air, which would keep the fogged over bathroom mirror clear.
As I was just starting to scrape the razor against my face in the bathroom, I heard the ghostly footsteps walking one way down the hall .. away from me…
gregladen | October 31, 2009On July 20, Kevin Lily and two friends (Danielle Katz and Brian Coggan) left Bemidji, Minnesota to travel the length of the Mississippi River. They are raising money for local, national and international charities working to alleviate the global water crisis....
Details here
gregladen | October 31, 2009Since we are talking about geology, I do not want to give up the opportunity to bring up one of the coolest stories of geology ever, given the present day discussion of science and religion. You will be asking for a source for this story. Look it up in Wikipedia, where all knowledge resides, and you will not find it there.
There are things, it turns out, that The Great Knowing Web Site does not know. My source is a combination of primary and secondary documents, written histories, and a documentary that is not generally available.
Barney Barneto nee Barnet Isaacs was a key player in the…
gregladen | October 31, 2009Dan Delong teaches English at Southwester High School in Piasa, Illinois. He has been suspended for assigning an article originally published in Seed Magazine called "The Gay Animal Kingdom." If you are a teacher you know what to do.. download that article and assign it to all of your students as soon as possible!!!!
Here is a press report on this astounding event.
Here is a blog post by Jonathan Turley about The Banning.
Here is Mike Dunford's blog post: Seed Magazine in the Classroom: Grounds for Suspending the Teacher??
gregladen | October 31, 2009One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
This was on the location of an historic hunting reserve, where every one of the buildings where guests were quartered and entertained was built well before World War II. Even the ancient charcoal refrigerator was intact and in use. This was a large cylindrical structure with double mesh walls. When the game was afoot and dozens of buck were killed by sports…
gregladen | October 31, 2009By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right....
Please read this post at Real Climate and pass it on.
grrlscientist | October 31, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Have you read an especially good essay about science, nature or medicine lately? If so, why not share it with the world by submitting the URL for this essay to a blog carnival designed to share excellent writing with others? You don't need to be the author of an essay to submit it for consideration, and this is one way that blog carnivals grow in size and influence: by sharing with others.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published recently…
gregladen | October 31, 2009I spent about 45 minutes yesterday in the local HMO clinic. They had turned the main waiting room into a Pandemic Novel A/H1N1 Swine (nee Mexican) Influenza quarantine area, and I could feel the flu viruses poking at my skin looking for a way in the whole time I was there.
Amanda, who is 8.3 months pregnant, started getting symptoms of the flu two days ago. As a high school teacher in a school being affected in a state being affected (as most are) she is at high risk for this. She was one of the first people around here to get the vaccine, just a couple of days ago, but it takes about 10…
gregladen | October 31, 2009I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I've never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist.
It should not have been terribly surprising that there were graves in this particular patch of land, just across a small road from an existing…
