Uncategorized
mspringer | August 17, 2009The wave. We've talked about it before. It's where people in a stadium stand up and sit down in sequence so that a wave of standing people travels around the circumference of the stands.
They have a typical speed of around 12 m/s, though it is by no means entirely universal. You could certainly imagine a crowd being instructed to go much faster or slower when doing the wave, and though I never done seen it I don't think it would be very difficult.
If you had a truly enormous imaginary stadium, maybe one with hundreds of thousands of miles of bleachers and an audience to match, you could…
gregladen | August 17, 2009From scratch!
If you follow all the instructions here, you'll have built your own Apple Computer.
It will be an Apple I.
gregladen | August 17, 2009I (compulsively?) read the Letters to the Editor of the Greenville News. They are, in my mind, a frightening window on the psyche of a particular, vocal segment of the US population. Filled with accusations of Obama-led socialism (though, so far, absent of birthers), Al Gore hypocrisy, and general looniness of all kinds, it's like Fox News filtered through the League of the South.
.... read this interesting post here
bleimanb | August 17, 2009We here at Zooillogix do not usually promote the work of other websites unless it is to mock the "guys" over at DeepSeaNews for getting aroused by images of Alvin, the submarine. The fact is that we believe animal readership on the internet is a zero sum game, and we're not about to lose readers to some "nerd" with a thing for taxonomy.
We must, however, doff our caps to Arkive, quite possibly the sweetest website on the whole world wide websphere. It has something to do with Sir David Attenborough and the English and blah blah blah. Take a looksy yourself at the 1,000,000+ pics/videos of…
grrlscientist | August 17, 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…
mspringer | August 17, 2009Let's say there's an interesting but somewhat obscure book I'm interested in. Say, Electromagnetic Pulse Propagation in Causal Dielectrics. It's a very technical work about a very specific subject, so the total print run was probably very small. Maybe a few hundred or a thousand or so? I have no idea, but it can't be very large.
The library has it, but of the few thousand people in the world who are interested in this sort of thing, a few dozen are here at Texas A&M. The book is already both checked out and recalled; for all I know there's recall requests stacked several deep. Now…
pharyngula | August 17, 2009This year, Texas will require its students to take a Bible course. In the supposedly secular public schools.
This could be a bad thing if all the schools bring in their local Southern Baptist minister to teach fundagelicalism…but it would be a great thing if the teachers brought a properly skeptical attitude towards it. Well, except for all the teacher lynchings that we'd be seeing around October.
A correction from the Texas Freedom Network:
Just a quick note about your post on Bible classes in Texas public schools. Unfortunately, the article you linked to in your post got it wrong - public…
gregladen | August 17, 2009A skepchick is that rare creature, the skeptic who is both female and desirable. She is generally quite popular, usually due to her appealingly large intellect, her quick wit, or just her ability to stand everyday interaction with skeptical men.
"Skepchick" is updated in the Urban Dictionary. Interesting but a bit dicey in spots, IMHO. (Click Here to see it)
Hat Tip Elyse
cortex | August 17, 2009One of my favorite aspects of the modern cognitive sciences (and a big part of the reason I can't stop writing about them) is the way they shed new light on old rituals. Why, for instance, are so many games for young children centered around impulse control? (Consider "Simon Says" or "Duck-Duck-Goose" - these activities are all about being primed for action but still finding a way to exercise restraint. You have to be ready to be the goose and run quickly around the circle, but chances are you're going to be a duck. If that's the case, then you have to sit still.) As I explained in this…
grrlscientist | August 17, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 3823 - 1634 - 1374 - 1128 - 1113 out of 486 candidates registered. I am now in third place, and sloooowly creeping up on second place. But I need your votes more than ever to recapture first place, so please ask your friends and relatives to vote for me now!
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about it for the public on a blog. Here is my 300-…
gregladen | August 16, 2009Betul was never hideous. In fact, she's quite un-hideous in every measurable way. And she now has to change the About Page of her blog because she has completed her thesis defense! Congratulation!!!!!! Visit and say hi.
revere | August 16, 2009Here's some more while we fish. Some things are worth repeating and some people worth celebrating. Quiet Heroes of Public Health was a 2005 post which included a bow to the Environmental Research Foundation's Peter Montague, whose last (and 1000th) issue of Rachel's News was in February of this year (2009). Click through.
We're looking forward to the book, Peter.
grrlscientist | August 16, 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 "…
gregladen | August 16, 2009 Elvis In 1977 I drove from Nashville down to Memphis with no particular plans regarding Memphis. It was just a place to stop on the way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I had the name of a cheap motel and a vague idea of where it was. But I kept getting lost. Every time I came to about where this major street was supposed to be, there was a different street there. What the hell was going on?
About the fifth time I came to the right/wrong location, it dawned on me ... "Elvis Presley Boulevard" must have just recently been named as such ...
That, I realized, could also explain another…
grrlscientist | August 15, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 3809 - 1624 - 1358 - 1121 - 1113 out of 486 candidates registered. I am now in third place (the second place candidate mysteriously disappeared from contention sometime yesterday). But I need your votes more than ever to recapture first place, so please ask your friends and relatives to vote for me now!
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about…
mspringer | August 15, 2009Today I bought a sandwich at Subway. 12" ham on "Italian herbs and cheese" bread, American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers, sweet onion sauce. After tax, the cost was $5.41. I handed a $10 bill to the young guy behind the register. By young I'm guessing 18ish.
As such I was going to get $4.59 in change. His change drawer was pretty much empty, and so while he was getting more change I fished around in my pocket for another penny so as to keep the number of coins to a more manageable 3 total. I offered the penny.
By now you've heard the story before. He apologetically said he'd…
gregladen | August 15, 2009
I personally decided to not trust Mac software when I lost a few days of photos like this guy did. Field photos, photos that cost thousands of dollars and the risk of lives to obtain. Not walk in the park photos.
gregladen | August 15, 2009Step 1: Make sure the cable is good. If it is, seek help elsewhere, because that's all I've got for you today on this issue.
So I have this windows computer and it was no longer reading the iPod. So I did two things, and each of these things exemplifies a different operating system.
I went to the Apple web site for help. This is a PC running Windows, but an Apple iPod and Apple software (iTunes). And I decided it was time to uninstall the scanner software that says "seeking scanner" for two minutes every time any USB device is plugged in, figuring that maybe that was a problem. I…
gregladen | August 15, 2009I guess this guy was not from any of my generations, but you can read all about it here.