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gregladen | July 9, 2014How ironic is an advertizing partnership between the worlds largest toy company and Shell, a fossil fuel corporation, whose profits depend on destroying the very future of those toy buying children? Amelia Urry at Grist writes about this nonsensical arrangement which has been in place since the 1960's and has grabbed the attention of Greenpeace, which is hoping to bring an end to the lunacy.
Read about it here.
jrosenhouse | July 8, 2014As happy as I was to salvage the half point in my fourth round game, I was still pretty down about missing that fork. I decided a nice meal would cheer me up. So I hopped on the Metro and went into DC, to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Tono Sushi, conveniently located across the street from the Woodley Park stop on the red line.
It worked! I felt much better, shrugged off my three bad games in a row and showed up for round five ready for a fight.
But it was not to be. Fifteen minutes after go time my opponent was nowhere to be found. The rules say that you get an hour…
jrosenhouse | July 7, 2014Hello. I'm still here. Let me get you caught up on some things.
In graduate school I was required to take a battery of four qualifying exams before I could be “advanced to candidacy.” These exams were conducted orally, meaning you had to stand in a room with two faculty members and answer questions for as long as they cared to fire them at you. The exams were in Algebra, Analysis, Topology and a fourth area of the student's choosing, which in my case was Number Theory. These were very stressful, high-stakes exams that entailed many weeks of intense studying. I saved topology for last,…
gregladen | July 2, 2014Earlier this week a dude driving a truck while texting meandered off the road and ran over a woman, killing her. More horrifically, she was on a bike towing a child trailer occupied by her two children, one and four years of age, so they got to watch their mom die. The man who apparently killed this woman, on a road in southern Minnesota, is Christopher Weber of Madison, South Dakota. Apparently he was texting. Assuming this happened as reported, we have here a case of someone being a complete moron and a lot of other people paying a terrible price. "A person who ... causes the death of…
gregladen | June 30, 2014The Constitutional Accountability Center has released it's annual report The Corporate Court.
...Let’s begin with the numbers. This Term, the Chamber was involved in 17 cases overall—directly representing one of its member companies in Canning, litigating as a party in UARG, and filing amicus briefs in 15 other cases. The Chamber’s 17 cases represent just under a quarter of the total cases set down for argument this Term.
All told, the Chamber racked up a record of 11 wins and 5 losses—or a 69% winning percentage. (One of its cases—Mt. Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action—…
gregladen | June 30, 2014Maybe yes, maybe no. Good chance, yes.
It is too early to call, but the blob I mentioned the other day has turned into a spiral and is starting to get organized. Forecasters at NOAA think there is an 80% chance this low pressure phenomenon will be a tropical storm by the 4th of July. They are also, somewhat vaguely, saying that it will move south, then northward, then northwest, which puts the storm off the coast of the US Mid-Atlantic or Southeast somewhere. Given that the storm is not moving in a consistent direction steered by well defined one directional forces, this should be very…
gregladen | June 28, 2014I propose that there are four five categories of TV series distinguished on the basis of how long they run and the quality, or lack thereof, of the show more or less objectively defined (to the extent that one can do that).
1: Shows that jumped the shark
These are shows that become redundant, lose their writing quality, or for some other reason reach a point where they get bad. That point is, of course, the "Jumping-the-Shark" moment. The phrase "Jump the shark" of course comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie, water skiing, jumps over a shark. That was apparently a bad episode…
judyhalper | June 26, 2014The last lecture of the last session was by Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is one of the architects of "nudge" thinking. He is a law professor, but he works with behavioral economists to develop his ideas and policy proposals. He has worked with the Obama government to develop "nudge" policies and his ideas are being copied all over the world, especially in the UK, which has a nudge unit.
Sunstein thinks of the policies he develops as "paternalistic libertarianism," a label that could ruffle more than a few feathers. I think one needs to approach Sunstein and his fellow nudgers with an open mind.…
judyhalper | June 26, 2014Yesterday was policy day, as far as keynote speakers were concerned. Lidia Brito is the UNESCO director of science policy and capacity building. Among the usual points about the need to change, building capacity and recognizing stakeholders, here is what I believe is her take home message: Science is changing, and that's a good thing. We need to keep going in this direction, but change it even more.
Collaborations across countries and continents, the rise of science in China and India, and yes, MOOCs. In other words, we need to actively help create equality in science education and science…
judyhalper | June 25, 2014Peter Krause, the ever-friendly and patient press officer for ESOF, says the best thing about the organization is that it began ten years ago as a grass-roots idea: scientists who wondered why Europe had no equivalent of the AAAS and decided to create one. Since then, it has grown in all directions, but it still retains the flavor of scientists creating spaces for scientific exchange on a pan-academic level.
That feeling was certainly present yesterday evening, at a session on science communication. The speakers were three communicators in very different fields. The first, Angel Rodriguez…
egrossman | June 25, 2014When a widely used chemical is identified as an environmental health hazard and targeted for phase-out and elimination, among the most challenging questions for those involved with using and making such a chemical are: What to use instead? and Will the replacement be safe? The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) report identifying alternatives to the flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) illustrates how difficult those questions can be to answer. It also highlights how important it is to consider the entire life-cycle of finished products when looking for hazardous chemical…
judyhalper | June 24, 2014I have definitely reached information overload, which is unfortunate because I am missing Brian Schmidt's talk. However, of all the things I have heard and seen today, there is one talk I need to write about: Ice cores in Greenland.
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is one of the most cited scientific authors. period.
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
That is probably why she can get away with lecturing in this wonderful T shirt.
Dahl-Jensen goes to Greenland with a large team to drill ice cores. And those cores, of course, contain precise records of the climate going back tens and hundreds of thousands of years. From…
judyhalper | June 24, 2014The sun came out and I was called out of a session, so I took advantage of the sunshine, after three days of grey and drizzle, to see the outdoor booths set up all around the buildings in the Carlsberg complex, here. In fact, in conjunction with this main festival of science, the city of Copenhagen is hosting a "Science in the City" fair here and all over the city. Here's what I saw:
The point of this 3-D printed head is to create better devices -- eg. hearing aids. Several 3-D printers on display.
Here's my favorite:
They are working on a "family" solar car. Not sure how a family will fit…
judyhalper | June 23, 2014Aside from the actual science, I am learning that 1) Copenhagen can be quite cold in the summer and 2) that the natives here are quite friendly. More than once people on the street have stopped to help me find my way. And the streets are full of people -- walking, riding bikes, taking buses. It seems to be a fitting place to have sessions on urban planning. From what I can see, Copenhagen has adopted some of the better ideas.
After a morning of biology, I went for physics and aerospace in the afternoon. The subject was the Google LunarX prize. To get the $20 million, the winning team will…
judyhalper | June 23, 2014Today we get to the science and the issues surrounding it. Karl Deisseroth gave the first keynote lecture. For anyone who's been asleep the past few years, Deisseroth's lab at Stanford is at the cutting edge of a new kind of brain research. They invented optogenetics -- turning brain circuits on and off (in mice, at present) with fiberoptic lasers. Their lab is putting out new methodology at an astounding rate. Their latest is Clarity: a way of making the brain tissue clear, so you can see all the neurons at once. In other words, you can get an image of the whole brain. I know I am not the…
judyhalper | June 22, 2014 Fabiola Gianotti
I should start with the ESOF 2014 opening ceremony, but instead, I need to go back to the rest of the journalists conference. Specifically to the prize - yes there was a prize. It went to a guy with dreadlocks down past his waist who stages science events in Christiania -- the still-existent hippie/anarchist community in the middle of Copenhagen. Among other things, he could talk about deconstructing academic while listing things that suck. Instead of describing, I'll tell you to visit his website: Science and Cocktails (scienceandcocktails.org). (Sorry, the iPad idea has…
judyhalper | June 22, 2014Today is the "First" European Science Journalists' Conference. So far, we are in the midst of the usual: Is there a crisis in science journalism? Clearly the business is changing, and those who work for the print media feel the pinch, and yet people have access to more reporting on science than before. Kathryn O'Hara says that we are contracting in a funny way. Again, this blog is a good example. I expect people who already interested in science in some way to be reading it.
The speaker before O'Hara, Jan-Olov Johansson, pointed out that in Sweden, at least, science is rated very high in the…
judyhalper | June 20, 2014In less than 24 hours I'll be going through security checks, hoping my stopover in Warsaw will go smoothly. Nothing is packed yet, but the credit card that was eaten by a voracious ATM at the beginning of the week has been replaced, gifts have been purchased for various people, included the couple who will be hosting me for three nights, pants have been hemmed. Still not convinced that the new card will work in Danish machines. My cell phone company has just replaced my trusty old "dumb" phone with a brand new "smart" one in hopes I'll use lots of apps and internet services. That smart…
gregladen | June 18, 2014THIS IS BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT, I SAY!
Andy Revkin, time to sell your guitar!
Oh, and this one too:
(Hat tip Get Energy Smart)
gregladen | June 17, 2014There has been a glitch in the data processing process at NASA and the word was sent out that they may be revising the May data. Stay tuned.
Please note May 2014 GISTEMP LOTI numbers preliminary due to a glitch with Chinese CLIMAT data. Update to follow pic.twitter.com/1hRF4iJA55
— NASA GISS (@NASAGISS) June 17, 2014
Thanks Chris Mooney for pointing this out.
For the period of the instrumental record, going back to 1881, May 2014 was the hottest May on record. See this post for more details.