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cortex | January 5, 2009I had a longish article in the Boston Globe Ideas section yesterday exploring some recent research on how living in a city affects the brain:
The city has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.
And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that…
gregladen | January 5, 2009South of the Zambezi River, along the eastern side of Africa, things get dryer and dryer as you go south, until you finally reach the southernmost end of the continent where things become a little bit moister again.
A couple of thousand years ago cattle keeping people speaking Bantu languages and possessing mainly Banutu cultural traits ... the ancestors of the present day Shona, Venda Tswana, Zulu, etc. .... were living in this area, keeping their cattle, and doing all sorts of interesting stuff.
As climate fluctuated year to year and decade to decade, there moved north and south a kind of…
grrlscientist | January 4, 2009I was certain that I would not make it into this year's edition of OpenLab, so it is with great pleasure that I announce to you that I was wrong! An essay that I wrote will be included in OpenLab 2008 -- so I have written an essay that was included in each edition of OpenLab since its inception, amazingly enough! Here's a complete list of all essays accepted for inclusion in OpenLab 2008, as well as the winning poem and cartoon.
grrlscientist | January 4, 2009Wow, I had no idea that the HMS Beagle Project was keeping track of their fund-raising stats, but they are, and even though I added a fundraising widget to my left sidebar in September 2008, this blog was ranked number two for sending visitors to their fund-raising site in 2008! Congratulations to all of you for helping them raise funds to build a replica of the HMS Beagle!
gregladen | January 4, 2009UPDATE: We suck. They're pretty good. We do not deserve to win. If by some chance we do manage to win, we should not accept it. We suck.
... is going pretty well. We are losing by only a small amount.
Mike wanted me to live blog this game, but I assure you that you don't want me doing that. I don't know enough about football and would only embarrass myself.
I will tell you one small football story, though, to keep you amused during half time.
Several years ago, I think the last time the Vike's were in the playoffs, we were up against the Falcons. Now, at the time I lived in Falcon…
gregladen | January 4, 2009I would like to begin by reminding you that the next edition of the Linnaeus' Legacy blog carnival will be hosted HERE In theory, it will come out tomorrow, but I have the sense that a few more submissions (your?) are still to come in, so I may delay posting until Tuesday morning. So you have time (any time today, Sunday, or tomorrow, Monday) to send in your submissions on the diversity of life, it's classification and analysis, and stuff!
Now, on to a listing of some of the current carnivals:
Linnaeus' Legacy No. 14: A Carnival of Diversity
The carnival of sexuality
January Scientiae…
pharyngula | January 4, 2009The Countess has been nominated for various awards for her writing, and she'd like our help in getting the word out.
I warned her that you people aren't a flock of sheep who will just follow the beckoning, nubile arm of any horror/fantasy author who cocks an enticing eyebrow at them, so I twisted her arm a bit. If she wins an award with our help, she will write a story just for us. Isn't that incentive enough? I thought about demanding that it include cephalopods, but decided I'd rather be surprised. So go vote, maybe we'll get a story!
(Does anyone else feel a bit like a Lost Boy now?)
gregladen | January 4, 2009I am NOT hallucinating! I wasn't sure at first, but I checked on YouTube and Game Show in my Head is real! And it's below the fold...
I love the way the wife keeps thinking this nightmare is over, but it isn't until it is....
This is why you can NEVER believe anything you see on the news:
And this, perhaps, is why most marriages fail. Or at least, we see here an explanation for most male behavior:
gregladen | January 3, 2009This is the ONLY documentary I've ever seen that tells it like it really is in the natural world.
Fuck Planet Earthby Nyxem
gregladen | January 3, 2009Or perhaps just the scariest... Game Show In My Head.
(Chances are this has been on TV for years and I've never noticed it, but we just happened to watch it tonight. Not that we ever watch TV ... we just happened to bump into the TV and it turned on and stuff.)
Have you seen it?
grrlscientist | January 3, 2009tags: NYC events, announcement, evolution, NYC Skeptics, Don Prothero
Great news, my peeps! My friend and "scientific sibling" (courtesy of AMNH), Professor of Geology and author, Don Prothero, will be speaking in NYC for the New York City Skeptics about evolution and his book, Evolution: What The Fossils Say And Why it Matters [my review]. Even though we're email pals, I've never before met him in real life, so I am really looking forward to this. [Note: rumor has it that we shall explore the pubs of the UWS while he is here, too]
Who: Donald Prothero
What: public presentation, "Evolution…
drorzel | January 2, 2009
Refuted economic doctrines #1: The efficient markets hypothesis at John Quiggin
"I'm starting my long-promised series of posts on economic doctrines and policy proposals that have been refuted or rendered obsolete by the financial crisis. [...] Number One on the list is a topic I've covered plenty of times before (in fact, I was writing about it fifteen years ago), the efficient (financial) markets hypothesis. "
(tags: politics economics social-science society)
Robert Donoghue - 'This guy gets a blanket'
"I discovered Donald Westlake in high school, when I was randomly raiding the local…
pharyngula | January 2, 2009This is a rough situation: a graduate student from New Zealand, working here in the US, got that sorrowful phone call telling her that her father had died. You know how graduate students are — poor. So she needs some help, and is asking for donations. There are a lot of us, you know, so if we each chipped in just a little bit, we can help her through these difficult times.
I was a grad student once, and I also got that same sad phone call on the day after Christmas, 15 years ago. At least I didn't have to fly to the other side of the world to say farewell.
grrlscientist | January 2, 2009Here's the latest carnivalia for you to enjoy;
Friday Ark, issue 224. This blog carnival links to images of animals -- just animals, no people.
Just Write blog carnival. This blog carnival links to writing and book related essays, so be sure to visit!
cortex | January 2, 2009Baby strollers have become the latest bougie status symbol, but it's worth noting that one of the most important stroller features is almost always ignored. Here's VSL:
According to a new study, babies who sat in strollers that faced their parents during their daily walks had twice as many conversations, laughed ten times as much, and suffered less stress than babies who were in the more common, front-facing models.
The researchers studied 2,722 infants and found that kids who faced their parents had lower heart rates and fell asleep twice as easily as babies who faced forward. So along with…
gregladen | January 2, 2009With the increased seismic activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, it is likely that there is some increased interest in in the geology of the area. Here are some resources that should be of interest.
First, we have a fairly recent peer reviewed publication on the "Super Volcano" known as Yellowstone, including some discussion of just what a "Super Volcano" is.
The largest scale of volcanic eruptions, the so-called super-eruptions, can
destroy all living beings and infrastructure over tens of thousands of square
kilometres, can disrupt agriculture over millions of square kilometres and can…
mspringer | January 2, 2009The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion DebateAdam Frank
Adam Frank is an astrophysicist and a man on a mission. It's a brave mission, one which cuts strongly against the grain of the science vs. religion zeitgeist. It's probably a mission which won't succeed.
Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate is the book's subtitle, and in fact if you ignore the first word you'll be expecting a very different book. Frank feels that all of the sound and fury behind the debate either misses the point or accomplishes nothing. It is not about the debate, and if you're looking for that kind of…
sb admin | January 2, 2009...and I'm just itchin' for a fight. The medical "De-lightenment", that movement to marginalize the role of science in medicine, has just made a strategic error. Like other weak movements, they've formed unwise alliances. Orac reports that so-called mainstream altmed folks like Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra have now made friends with the more obviously wacko altmed gurus, such as Gary Null.
Perhaps "friends" is pushing it, but these supposedly educated physicians are actually citing HIV-denialist Null as a reliable source for health information. I'm tempted to coin a new internet Law…
gregladen | January 2, 2009Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team.
story here
grrlscientist | January 2, 2009My gmail account has been completely inaccessible for more than 24 hours now, and I have been able to access it only sporadically during the previous three days. In short, any time I try to access my gmail account, I get a white screen that reads;
Bad Request
Error 400
Am I the only one this is happening to? Does anyone know what is happening with gmail and how long this will continue into the future? I mean, there are some emails on my account that are very important, such as those from my upcoming conference that I cannot respond to, for example .. *panic*
Worse, there is NO WAY to contact…