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pharyngula | May 27, 2009Some days, I think other people must be aliens. Or I must be. For instance, there's a lot of noise right now about this article analyzing the future of information and media that, if you read the comments, you will discover that people are praising to an astonishing degree. I looked at it and saw this graph:
And my bullshit detector went insane. It's supposed to be saying something about where people are and will be getting their information, but there's no information about where this information came from, and it's meaningless!
Way back in high school, I had this excellent chemistry…
jwilbanks | May 27, 2009As noted on the Creative Commons blog, the folks at Digg have converted to CC0 (replacing a multiyear use of a different public domain legal tool).
This is very cool on lots of levels. But Daniel Burka of Digg said it best, so I'll make this a short post by simply quoting him...
This is good for the internet and good for society.
He's talking about the public domain, and he's right.
sb admin | May 27, 2009by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
Yesterday New York reported two more swine flu deaths (a 41-year-old woman from Queens and a 34-year-old man from Brooklyn). CDC and just about everyone else who knows anything about influenza have been telling people to expect this. The influenza virus kills people all the time. We don't know exactly how many but we know that many people die of various immediate and underlying causes that wouldn't have died at that time if they hadn't become infected with the influenza virus in the period prior to their demise. Influenza is like heart disease or…
gregladen | May 27, 2009Two years ago, I attended my best friend's wedding. I made the cake. When I got married a year earlier, she was my best man. Last Sunday, a bunch of people were going on and on about my cakes (I make about one every two years but they are very famous and frightfully expensive) and this reminded me of her and the amazing times we've had and toilets in Japan.
Let me explain.
Read the rest at Quiche Moraine Dot Com
grrlscientist | May 27, 2009
I will be your host for the 101st edition of I and the Bird on 28 May. This blog carnival collects the finest writing, photoessays and photography in the blogosphere about bird watching and wild birds. Please send submissions -- yours or other people's -- to me or to Mike as soon as you can, so I can do the best job possible in assembling this blog carnival for you.
nisbetmc | May 27, 2009Most of the world will be watching today's Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona, one of the most eagerly anticipated finals in recent memory. I'm picking ManU to win 3-2. Messi doesn't match up well against the bigger, tougher Premier League squads and look for Ronaldo to dazzle with at least one goal and setting up Wayne Rooney for another.
gregladen | May 26, 2009But it would be a cool name for one. No, it's a Sci Fi book just out. I've met the author, and I assure you he's the kind of guy who would write good book. As they say. Check it out.
pharyngula | May 26, 2009Now she has been awarded the first ever Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution.
The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould.
The winner of the 2009 Stephen Jay Gould Prize is Eugenie C. Scott. Dr. Scott has devoted her life to advancing public understanding of evolution. As the executive director of the…
sb admin | May 26, 2009Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka the Waxman-Markey bill), which sets up a cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. It also includes other provisions to promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and green jobs.
As Paul Krugman noted in a recent NYT column, this isnât the legislation weâd ideally want, but itâs the best weâre going to get right now â and this isnât a problem that can wait. A bill with more ambitious targets and fewer giveaways to polluting…
pharyngula | May 26, 2009The California court ruled today on the constitutionality of proposition 8, the measure that prohibited same sex marriage. Unfortunately, the court upheld the ban.
California should be embarrassed. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Vermont allow or will allow same-sex marriages, and New York and New Hampshire are working on it. The trend is going one way, towards recognizing the civil rights of all individuals. Californians better get to work, you don't want Mississippi to beat you to the 21st century. (Although I will be quite pleased when Mississippi legalizes gay marriage,…
mspringer | May 26, 2009It's 10pm on a Sunday night, and I'm driving west on Interstate 10 right through the middle of downtown Houston. Focused on getting to my destination safely, I obey the traffic laws and proceed through the comparatively deserted interstate at the maximum speed allowed by law. To experimentally do otherwise is a bit hazardous, so instead of trying this in reality I follow Einstein's lead and imagine an experiment:
I jam on my brakes and swerve to the left across several lanes of traffic. I floor the gas and spin the wheel to the right, overshooting my starting point. Driving like a lunatic…
gregladen | May 26, 2009... with respect to commenting on this blog. Let me know if you have any problems.
... And I'm back in Minnesota after a brief trip. Details at 11.
cpikas | May 25, 2009What happens when you
href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/quotes">cross the
streams?
Or, norms in online communities, how journal commenting is different,
and waving the flag on potential issues when aggregating web comments
with journal articles.
There have been a couple of interesting discussions on friendfeed
recently about commenting on journal sites vs. commenting elsewhere and
about commenting anonymously, with an established online persona, or
with the name on your drivers license.
(I'm intentionally not linking to them, because the threads ended up in
some less than…
pharyngula | May 25, 2009I got home late, and have just tuned in to The Link, the grossly overyhyped History Channel documentary on Darwinius masillae. I haven't seen much of it so far, but there is good and bad. The good: lots of long closeups of the fossil itself. The bad: it's kind of slow and talky. Fortunately, I haven't seen any grand pronouncements that it's going to change the universe, although the title is a bit annoying.
Those of you who have seen more of it can leave your comments and opinions here.
mspringer | May 25, 2009It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
- George S. Patton, June 7, 1945.
On this Memorial Day, we remember those members of the armed forces of the United States who have given their lives in the service of this, our Republic. We are and will always remain thankful for their service.
Now, a few links and thoughts as we enjoy the holiday. The Department of Defense has a fairly new podcast called Armed with Science, discussing the ever-present symbiosis between science and the art of war. For a few hours a while back the…
gregladen | May 24, 2009For the time being, I will be blogging here, on my own blog, and of course, as Quiche Moraine. Please drop over. Not that there is a lot going on now, but it looks like it is going to be a while before this strange commenting problem is fixed.
tlambert | May 24, 2009OK, Greig, you have your own thread. Please post all of your comments here. And everyone else, please post any responses to Greig here. The blog software does not allow me to move comments to another thread, so I will delete comments that don't obey these rules and it will be up to you to repost them.
gregladen | May 24, 2009One of the things that struck me in travels through Scotland and the Canadian Maritimes was the monument in every town. Most of them were tiny, just a handful of names from each war-not because few died, but because the town was that small. The memorial at Edinburgh Castle, on the other hand, is of a scale and a simplistic majesty that imposes awe, a trick more church designers would like to have up their sleeves, I imagine.
Whatever the size, most memorials are central and public and impossible to overlook. That isn't something we do well here.
Read the rest here at Quiche Moraine
edyong | May 24, 2009The big story this week was obviously the unveiling of Ida (Darwinius maxillae), the fossil that would CHANGE EVERYTHING!!!!11!11!!!!1! Everyone's pitched in with their take on the fossil, but if you had to pick any sources to watch, choose Laelaps and the Loom. Brian produced the first detailed analysis of the paper, while Carl's kept tabs on the story's timeline, including the amusing furore over whether Darwinius's name was actually rightly assigned.
Steven Novella at Neurologica gives a great account of the pseudoscience of spontaneous human combustion.
Miriam from the Oyster's Garter…