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jrosenhouse | May 10, 2014Graduation was this morning, and it just so happens that I was the speaker. That I am posting the speech below should tell you that I thought it went pretty well. I'll do a separate post describing some of the reactions, and commenting on a few of the other graduation-speech related stories that have been in the news lately, but this post is going to be long enough without that. As a teaser, I'll just mention that several people in the audience praised me afterwards for giving such a courageous speech. That made me nervous, actually, since I am not really very courageous.
I do need to…
aardvarchaeology | May 2, 2014
The Christian Democrats dropping under the 4% cutoff for Parliament is a thing devoutly to be wished for in itself. But also, I just realised, if they do, then their votes will evaporate, losing the Right coalition a considerable part of their current majority.
I feel really bad for people who don't know what CTRL-Z and ALT-Backspace does.
Elsevier's manuscript submission site is old, creaky and slooow.
TV chef reminds me that I like forehead, not fringe.
Solsbury Hill that Peter Gabriel sang about has a big hillfort on top. This is pretty badass: a local amateur archaeology association has…
esiegel | April 29, 2014“All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” -Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim
Some scientific topics are so far outside my area of expertise that I need to bring in outside help to do it justice. Today, we're lucky enough to have a guest post from Adrianne Stone, who walks us through the history of mercury and its actual toxicity in various compounds and doses.
Image credit: Associated Press, via http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Mercury-pollution-a-step-closer-to….
If you've ever simply heard the word mercury…
egrossman | April 28, 2014Today is Workers Memorial Day. This post discusses one of the thousands of occupational fatalities that occur every year around the world.
On Sunday, April 20th, Shayne Daye, a 27-year old electrician and technician, died as a result of an injury sustained while working at Suncor’s Oil Sands site about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta in western Canada. Suncor is one of Canada’s largest energy companies and credits itself as the first company to develop Canada’s oil sands. Company spokesperson Sneh Seetal said Daye – who’d worked for Suncor for seven years – was working on an…
carlyo | April 27, 2014By Guest Blogger Jason Osborne
Explorer, Innovator, and co-founder of both Paleo Quest™, a non-profit citizen science organization, and SharkFinder™
When most people think about scuba diving, they envision coral reefs and colorful tropical fish. But for me and my fellow professional-amateur paleontologist Aaron Alford, this is not the case. As the cofounders of non-profit organization Paleo Quest, diving is a tool for us. It is a method we use to reach places most people wouldn’t dare to explore.
Imagine diving in a river with zero visibility and heavy currents – and throw in some submerged…
gregladen | April 24, 2014MOST CURRENT INFORMATION WILL BE FOUND HERE: Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
NEW: Very first look at Ubuntu Linux 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta Mate Flavor
See: Books on Linux and Ubuntu
NOTE: This may not be the blog post you are looking for. If you have installed Ubuntu 14.10 and want to tweak that, GO HERE.
Continue on for 14.04.
Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr has just been released, and I’m sure you are about to install it. I’ve put together a few ideas for what to do after installation in order to make it work better for you. You’ll find that below. First, a bit of ranty…
jrosenhouse | April 20, 2014Blogging has been a low priority lately, partly because there's been too much other stuff going on, and partly because I haven't had much enthusiasm for it. The end of the semester is always a bit of a grind. But the long-suffering fans of Sunday Chess Problem should not have to wait another week! So here's a little endgame study I came across, in a terrific book called Endgame Magic by John Beasley and Timothy Whitworth. It was composed by Herbstman and Kubbel in 1937. White is to play and draw.
Recall that white is always assumed to be moving up the board, and black is always…
gregladen | April 19, 2014Here in Minnesota we do things a little different sometimes. Let me splain. First, a little background.
Bird parental investment is intense, or at least it can be. You all know the stories. A bunch of carp are regularly fed in a pond, so they learn to come to the edge of the water when they detect a presence there, and stick their big round mouths out of the water to beg for bits of bread. A mother or father bird has just started to feed the little hatchlings, who beg for food with their gaping maws. A windstorm. A weakened branch. Some bad luck. The bough breaks and the nest, with…
gregladen | April 17, 2014The following is a selection of Google search terms that brought people to my sit today that I think would make good song titles, or perhaps, in some cases, a good name for a band.
what happens if you eat mold
vocal fry
fish bigger than a whale with a m
witches in europe
if you hit a brick wall at 45
killing spiders
indian women doodh feeding child with boobs
is blood blue
a bittersweet history
things the same in every culture
do we have blue blood
holocene brain shrink
richest man in d world
smiling chimp
killed by grizzlies
boobs word origination
what can cause green poo?
nude nuns
i…
gregladen | April 17, 2014One of the most important realizations of climate change research is exemplified in this graphic from Weather Uderground:
Caption from original: "Rate of temperature change today (red) and in the PETM (blue). Temperature rose steadily in the PETM due to the slow release of greenhouse gas (around 2 billion tons per year). Today, fossil fuel burning is leading to 30 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere every year, driving temperature up at an incredible rate.:
The point is this. The PETM (Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, millions of years ago) was a period of high levels of…
gregladen | April 15, 2014Check out my latest post on 10,000 Birds.
That is all, thank you very much.
carlyo | April 15, 2014True to its mission of helping to advance STEM education in dynamic ways, the Northrop Grumman Foundation, a major sponsor of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, will take visitors up close and personal this April with one of the most ambitious projects today in space science: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
At Festival Expo 2014, get ready for fascinating updates on this endeavor from two Northrop Grumman leaders who are ushering in the Webb Telescope — the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The Webb Telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the…
gregladen | April 8, 2014From NBC:
... Mohammad Musa Khan appeared in court in the city of Lahore last week, charged with attempted murder along with his father and grandfather after a mob protesting against gas cuts and price increases stoned police and gas company workers trying to collect overdue bills.
"Police are vindictive. Now they are trying to settle the issue on personal grounds, that's why I sent my grandson to Faisalabad for protection," the baby's grandfather, Muhammad Yasin, told Reuters, referring to a central Pakistani city.
The baby is on bail and due to appear at the next hearing on April 12 but…
jrosenhouse | April 5, 2014I guess it's been clear that I haven't been in a blogging mood lately. There's plenty of fodder out there, but somehow every time I sit down to write about it I suddenly remember I had something else to do. But that doesn't mean that fans of Sunday Chess Problem should suffer! So this week I have something exotic for you. For the first time in this series we shall consider a retrograde analysis chess problem, or retro for short. It was composed by Raymond Smullyan. Have a look at this position:
We are to imagine that this position occurred in the course of an actual game of chess.…
gregladen | April 3, 2014The 538 comment system appears to not be working, probably because of my current highly suspicious location, so I figured I'd put my comment here (since I spent a whole minute writing it):
"Long-range forecast models have come to a consensus recently that a minor to moderate El Niño pattern may develop six to nine months from now.
That just isn't true. Forecasts suggest a 50-50 chance of El Nino, but this is hard to predict. There is no consensus that an El Nino will develop among forecasters who are always super cautious about this prediction and there is only a 50-50 chance.
Also, I see…
pgleick | March 31, 2014The end of the rainy season in California is arriving in a few weeks, and the April 1st snowpack measurement, which is a key indicator of water conditions, is tomorrow. As we approach the dry spring and summer months, the scope and severity of California’s drought will become more apparent, but it is already clear that California is faced with extraordinarily dry conditions, with impacts to all sectors and every corner of the state.
As part of the Pacific Institute’s Drought Response efforts, here is the March 31st update of the key information and graphics that characterize the current…
jrosenhouse | March 30, 2014Well, it's eleven o'clock at night and I just remembered I forgot to do a Sunday Chess Problem for this week. So I guess we'll have to go with one of those charming lightweights whose main point is a shocking key. This one was composed by Gerhardus Goethart in 1952. White is to play and mate in two.
Remember that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled a--h from left to right, while horizontal ranks are labeled 1--8 from bottom to top. So, in the diagram, white's king is on f6 while black's king is on d4. When we write down…