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mspringer | September 23, 2009Ideas about the nature of light have been around for thousands of years, but until Newton came along in the 17th century most of these attempts were little more than speculation. Newton himself held to the view of light as composed of huge numbers of tiny "corpuscles", or particles, which bounce of mirrors and are absorbed by dark objects, etc. It wasn't a bad idea, really. It explains shadows very well, for instance. If you stand in the way of particles, they can't go through you and so you'll leave a shadow behind you where the light particles have failed to hit.
Particles weren't the…
gregladen | September 23, 2009OK, I'm taking steps to avoid unnecessary confusion and ensuing chaos on this blog. From now on, if you are going to comment on this blog, the first thing you must do if to fill out this form:
I, [state your name] am a [state your biological sex] and a [state your gender] and a [state your ethno-normative affiliation]. Uh.
[Sign here]
Thank you very much, that is all.
gregladen | September 23, 2009No one will take Muammar al-Gaddafi's speech at the UN seriously because he is generally seen as a raving lunatic. And he might be. However, he made numerous valid points (not all of which I agree with). I loved the part where he threw the book over his shoulder.
Interestingly, MSNBC made the editorial commitment to showing Gaddafi's speech in its entirety, but now of course they are explaining how he's mostly a raving lunatic. No one has mentioned a single actual point that he made, which tell us that the US press is scared to give him even a small amount of recognition.
Obama's…
cortex | September 23, 2009Over at GQ, the excellent Paul Tough* profiles Gregg Gillis, the madcap mixer behind Girl Talk. For those of you who aren't cool enough to know - and I'm only cool enough because my younger sister is cool enough - Girl Talk is a mash-up artist par excellence. He's taken the concept of sampling - the act of borrowing a splice of a song - to its logical extreme, so that his own songs are nothing but a collage of different snippets. Here's Tough dissecting the ingredients of a recent Girl Talk track:
Coming out of his [Gregg Gillis] laptop was an old Wu-Tang Clan song, Raekwon the Chef chanting…
grrlscientist | September 22, 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 recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition will be me. To send your…
gregladen | September 22, 2009Sbling Darren Naish has a book out! It's called Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries.
Publisher's notes:
This elegantly illustrated volume is a journey through more than two centuries of remarkable discovery. Books on dinosaurs are usually arranged by classification or epoch, but this unique work tells the story chronologically, in order of the key finds that shaped our understanding and brought these creatures to life for the public. From the fragmentary remains of giant extinct animals found in the early 1800s to the dinosaur wars in the American West to the amazing near-complete…
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
Even with that experimentation, he added, the ongoing shrinkage of newspapers is likely to create a âgiant holeâ that will not be filled for some time. He said he has a vision of communities of 10,000 people or fewer becoming rife with âcasual endemic corruption,â as newspapers are no longer able to fulfill their traditional watchdog roles.
via dankennedy.net
I live in a town of 8,500, and I'm not sure I buy this. I see Shirky's point. But I think he misses how porous and connected the lines of communication in a town of this size are, and how they can curb casual endemic corruption -- not…
gregladen | September 22, 2009PZ Myers' review of Richard Dawkins' book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, printed in Seed Magazine, is available on line here.
gregladen | September 22, 2009Lucky for Chris Joe wasn't there. He tends to interrupt the interviewee even more than these other guys do.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
via wired.com
Another fine story from Wired Science.
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
nisbetmc | September 22, 2009
Michael Moore is in a class by himself when it comes to generating news attention, advance publicity, and box office for his documentary films. For example, when I was in Canada this past week, I picked up the National Post to read a lead front page story defending capitalism against Michael Moore's latest charges. Tomorrow night, Moore launches his film with a full hour on CNN's Larry King Live.
Yet the growing influence of documentary film is much more than Michael Moore. That's the focus of a special issue of the journal Mass Communication & Society that I co-edited with American…
mspringer | September 22, 2009Every once in a while it's a good idea to remember that even the simplest-looking physical systems can have completely bonkers behavior. The pendulum is certainly one of those systems. It's so simple that it's a mainstay of freshman classes, for technical and non-technical majors alike, though even then we do have make an approximation that's only valid for relatively small angles of the swing.
But the equation of motion that a pendulum obeys is pretty simple. String a few pendulums together and the equation of motion is still not too bad - all you have to do is a little somewhat tedious…
gregladen | September 22, 2009The main reason that a government shouldn't be run like a business is the profit motive. There is a key point here that the "government should be run like a business" people miss. The goal of government is decidedly not profit. The purpose of government is ...
Mike's post at Quiche Moraine is chock full of insight on this question.
gregladen | September 21, 2009An American scientist studying the origins of Black Death has died from an infection linked to the disease.
Professor Malcolm Casadaban was killed by a strain of the bacteria responsible for millions of deaths over the centuries, officials at the University of Chicago revealed.
An autopsy on the 60-year-old professor showed no obvious cause of death, except for the presence in his blood of the bacteria Yersinia pestis.
This strain of the plague is not thought to be fatal. It has actually been used as a vaccine. Obviously, there may have been complications of some kind. There is no known…
grrlscientist | September 21, 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 recently at Lab Rat. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 12th edition.
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 host for the upcoming 5 October edition is me. To send your…
gregladen | September 21, 2009Erik Klemetti notes that Mt. Rainier has been experiencing increased seismic activity as of late. (details)
Overall activity level is up since the last month and the little earth quakes are a little bigger. No particular explanations are forthcoming yet. Current seismic data are here.
grrlscientist | September 21, 2009
Image: courtesy of Bob O'Hara, author of Deep Thoughts and Silliness.
Vote for me here.
gregladen | September 21, 2009Featuring one of our local caribou bou bou.
More about Dark Dark Dark at a later time.