Uncategorized
gregladen | August 3, 2009Olbermann's special comment on heath care politics
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | August 3, 2009Dave and I were sitting in the back yard of the cabin on Cape Cod, having a beer and watching something get cooked on the grill. Dave was an architectural engineer, and the cabin was in an interior location probably in Dennis or Harwich (can't remember ... I spent a lot of time in cabins on Cape Cod doing archeology and stuff) and we were so close to the town water tower that we had to crane our neck back to read it.
So I said to Dave, "If that sucker fell over in our direction, we'd get wet. And dead."
Dave said, "No way, man. Big things like that don't fall over. They fall down.…
gregladen | August 3, 2009Photo Synthesis is a rotating showcase of the best science photography on the web....
B.N. (Bobbie) Sullivan has a strong affinity for the sea and everything in it. She first learned to dive in 1970 and has since logged thousands of dives. A wish to document the marine life she encountered prompted her to learn underwater photography more than 20 years ago. More recently, she began to write about the marine life she has photographed. A research psychologist by profession, she approaches her subject matter with the mindset of a scientist, but targets her writing to a general readership in whom…
grrlscientist | August 3, 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…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2009tags: Antarctica, humor, funny, streaming video
My friend, Richard Carter, made this very sweet little video to help publicize my desire to go to Antarctica as your official penguin whisperer [0:33]
Please vote for me to go to Antarctica as your official blogger.
tqa | August 3, 2009
It's been a very long month or so. Family matters of various sorts have kept me running around through most of the Eastern Seaboard for the last several weeks. Fortunately, things have finally started to settle down.
We've got pretty much everything unpacked in our new digs in family housing at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. It's the first time - at least to my knowledge - that I've lived somewhere named after a Confederate, but I'm drawing some comfort from the knowledge that at least one very well-known liberal spent some time living here.
Over the next few days, I'll start catching up on…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2009
I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog.
Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever (NYC: Little, Brown and Company; 2009). Review copy.
Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World by Jeff Schweitzer and Giuseppe Notarbartolo-Di-Sciara (Jacquie Jordan Inc.; 2009). Review copy.
Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife…
cortex | August 3, 2009I had an article in Boston Globe Ideas section on the psychology of grit. For more on the subject, check out the incredibly interesting work of Angela Duckworth. You can also take the grit survey here.
It's the single most famous story of scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside Cambridge, England - he was avoiding the city because of the plague - when he saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the apple hitting Newton on the head.) This mundane…
sb admin | August 3, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
There's a swine flu pandemic well underway and efforts are being made to reconstruct how it started. But almost everyone who has been following this knows it's not the first time a swine flu virus has transmitted from person to person. In 1976 in Fort Dix, New Jersey there were a couple of hundred cases, with 13 hospitalizations and one death from an H1N1 swine flu virus. The public health response was the infamous vaccination campaign that reached 44 million Americans before being ignominiously halted in the face of two facts: the feared swine flu…
grrlscientist | August 2, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 3589 - 1734 - 1457 - 1269 - 1230 out of 404 candidates registered. I am now in fourth place so 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-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am…
gregladen | August 2, 2009Solar energy customers are worried a new fee proposed by Xcel Energy would punish new customers for getting solar panels.
The monthly fee, which would pay for distribution and transmission of energy, would go into effect in April 2010 and would have to be paid to Xcel, regardless of whether the solar customer used any electricity that month....
details
gregladen | August 2, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | August 2, 2009From Peep Research:
We all know that Peeps are light, fluffy, and filled with air. This of course begs the question, "What happens to Peeps in a vacuum?" (Surely you were about to ask the same thing, right?)
Details here
grrlscientist | August 2, 2009tags: Antarctica, humor, funny, streaming video
My friend, Richard Carter, made this very sweet little video to help publicize my desire to go to Antarctica as your official penguin whisperer [0:33]
Please vote for me to go to Antarctica as your official blogger.
grrlscientist | August 2, 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 | August 2, 2009The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 3562 - 1601 - 1439 - 1263 - 1228 out of 401 candidates registered. I am now in fourth place so 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-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am…
gregladen | August 1, 2009AlaskaReport has learned this morning that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage have confirmed the news.
source
UPDATE: Meg Stapleton, Palin's spokesperson, totally denies divorce rumors.
And to commemorate almost one year of being annoyed by Sarah Palin, have a look at this:
This is a very fun video to watch for so many reasons, originally posted on this site on August 31st, 2007...
Hat Tip DNLee