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grrlscientist | September 5, 2009
Image: Sneer Review.
The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 5860 - 1841 - 1667 - 1218 - 1118 out of 568 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With less than 4 weeks remaining, things are heating up and voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. Many tens of thousands of votes have already been cast in this competition, so if the people who have cast their votes already decide to change them, they can significantly affect the outcome of this competition. The…
gregladen | September 5, 2009Well, tonight we had a modest little party at the lake to celebrate Amanda's completion of the last requirement of her Master of Biological Science Degree. This is what teachers call a "content area" degree. In other words, it is not an education degree, but a degree in the actual real world content, in this case, biology (as the name of the degree strongly implies). This is a fairly impressive thing for a teacher to do, and she did a good job of it.
Ah, I remember well, that on our very first date we talked about the idea of her getting this degree, and I encouraged her to do it. (You…
grrlscientist | September 5, 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 a 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. To send your submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (sometimes that widget doesn't upload when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include the URL or "…
grrlscientist | September 5, 2009test
test
test
testosterone!
dangnabbit, is this thing broken AGAIN??
gregladen | September 5, 2009To the extent that one would have booted such a machine.
Britain's oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley where it is to be restored to working order.
The computer, which was designed in 1949, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973.
Details here at the BBC
gregladen | September 5, 2009Missing laptop and panda bear!!!! If you are at DragonCon Read This Now!!!!! Please.
grrlscientist | September 4, 2009
Image: Sneer Review.
The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 5815 - 1838 - 1662 - 1209 - 1117 out of 561 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With less than 4 weeks remaining, things are heating up and voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. Many tens of thousands of votes have already been cast in this competition, so if the people who have cast their votes already decide to change them, they can significantly affect the outcome of this competition. The…
gregladen | September 4, 2009The other day when I was not hacking my kindle, I discovered that it ran on Linux. Or at least, when I went to "status" and typed in 411, the OS details came up and that is what it indicated.
So, should I really be impressed buy this?
I love this punchline:
ejohnson | September 4, 2009
Below, Edward Einhorn answers the second of our three questions.
I have long wanted to work on a project I have called The Neurology of the Soul. I have conceived of it as a theater piece, as I do a lot of theater about neurology, but I think conceptually it is an exploration that could happen across many mediums. I am fascinated with the research on the neurology of love, the brain activity of attraction. How do the neurological processes mesh with the poetics of love that humankind has written about over the millennia? And how do those expressions of feeling feed back into the…
zooillogix | September 4, 2009For centuries, the Narwhal was the great mystery of the sea. With the body of a whale and the horn of a Unicorn, many people believed these fascinating creatures were harmless inhabitants of the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean. Recent studies, however, have exposed the secret agenda of these mysterious mammals and the true purpose of their extraordinarily long pointy tusks...
Comes with four Magical Tusks and three adorable animals to impale: Penguin, Seal, and Koala Bear. I guess these came out a while back, but they are my Xmas gift of choice for 2009.
grrlscientist | September 4, 2009Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter, I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, all candidates must publish a picture of themselves and write an essay explaining why we think we are the best choice, and solicit votes from the public. Whomever receives the most votes wins…
sb admin | September 4, 2009by Ruth Long
Yesterday, a friend and neighbor told me that she was chastised for nursing her daughter in a DC public library. She had placed herself in a discreet corner and covered herself and her child who was nursing, while she read a book to her older child. The librarian then confronted this woman and told her to âcover up.â At what point in human society did the notion of seeing a mother nursing her child become vulgar? This is one of the most basic human rights that we are all entitled to.
According to the DC Code D.C. Code Ann. § 2-1402.81 et seq., âbreastfeeding is part of…
mspringer | September 4, 2009What do we think about nuclear power? Benjamin Cohen of The World's Fair is not a fan. I am.
Modern nuclear power has a lot going for it. In no particular order, here's the reasons that appeal to me.
It's reliable. No worrying about solar or wind availability, and it works anywhere.
It's safe. Modern nuclear plants designs are extraordinarily safe, and frankly even the old first-world designs are very safe. The worst accident - Three Mile Island - didn't kill anyone. The spectre of Chernobyl haunts the public discourse, but Chernobyl is to modern nuclear power as bloodletting is to…
gregladen | September 4, 2009... is more of a cave in according to Stephanie Zvan. Read her post at Quiche Moraine.
grrlscientist | September 3, 2009
Image: Sneer Review.
The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 5768 - 1838 - 1652 - 1208 - 1117 out of 553 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With less than 4 weeks remaining, things are heating up and voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. Many tens of thousands of votes have already been cast in this competition, so if the people who have cast their votes already decide to change them, they can significantly affect the outcome of this competition. The…
mspringer | September 3, 2009"Why is the sky blue?"
It's one of those questions that most people don't know the answer to, while others know at least the basic explanation that the atmosphere scatters blue light more strongly than the other visible wavelengths. Ask why that happens and you'll enter the realm of some interesting and somewhat complicated physics. We'll do that later, and do an easier one today.
Kids sometimes also ask why water is blue. The most common answer is that it isn't - the blue of the ocean is attributed to reflected sky or something similar, while the water itself is clear. There's some truth…