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mspringer | October 20, 2008
There's famously dozens of ways to measure the height of a building with a barometer. If you're sufficiently clever, you can think of many, many more ways to measure temperature with just about anything.
One of the most visually impressive ways to measure temperature is the Galilean thermometer, which is also sometimes called the Galileo thermometer. It consists of little fluid-filled glass bulbs immersed in another liquid. The suspending liquid is itself encased in a long glass tube. Hanging from each of the glass bulbs is a marker with a temperature label. Look at the temperature on…
gregladen | October 20, 2008.... your Anthropology Posts, for the next Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival. I'll be hosting the next one in Two Days. Email me your links!
cortex | October 20, 2008Dashi, a Japanese stock made from kelp and dried fish, is going mainstream. It's suddenly appearing on the menus of all sorts of fancy restaurants, many of which have little to do with Japanese food. The reason? Umami.
"It's basically water, but fantastically perfumed water," said Eric Ripert, the chef at Le Bernardin. He complements Kumamoto oysters with dashi gelée, finishes mushrooms with the stock, and brushes it on raw fish before layering on olive oil and citrus. "The dashi is invisible," he said, "but it brings more depth."
At Per Se, its chef de cuisine, Jonathan Benno, weds the…
gregladen | October 20, 2008 An Overhead Projector I was recently contacted by Glen Gould, a reader who is also a relative regarding the repeated mention by Republican Candidate John McCain of the "Overhead Projector" earmark for a planetarium in Chicago. Glen, together with my sister, Bunny Laden, are very serious amateur astronomers. For instance, when Bunny and Glen bought a car a few years ago, the first thing they did on considering each possible model was to measure the vehicle to see if it would fit their telescopes. Glen is also an engineer and spends considerable volunteer time in areas of the humanities…
gregladen | October 19, 2008I would like to begin by reminding you to submit your entries to a Special Edition of the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival, which will be up tomorrow morning some time as scheduled. The current edition of that article is here, at Almost Diamonds.
And now, today's carnivals:
Friday Ark #213 is at The Modulator
ABATC's "New and Exciting in PLoS ... real research you can read ... is HERE.
The Carnival of Space, "The space carnival has the biggest tent this election" is at Lounge of the Lab Lemming.
Carnival of Cinema: Episode 97 - Max Mad: Beyond Bloggerdome is at Good News
The…
pharyngula | October 19, 2008Jesse Bering has an interesting article on why many people have so much difficulty holding a realistic view of death — why they imagine immortal souls wafting off to heaven, and why they can't imagine their consciousness ceasing to exist. He's trying to argue that these kinds of beliefs are more than just the result of secondary indoctrination into a body of myth, but are actually a normal consequence of the nature of consciousness. We never personally experience the extinction of our consciousness, of course, except for the limited loss of sleep — and we always wake up from that (at least,…
gregladen | October 19, 2008It is very significant that one of the main reasons Powell chose to endorse Obama is the vicious and untruthful attack campaign being run by McCain and Palin. Bachmann's connection to this is noted in this video (the link kindly sent to me by The Science Pundit).
gregladen | October 18, 2008Minnesota Atheists' "Atheists Talk" radio show.
Sunday, October 19, 2008, 9-10 a.m. Central Time
World-renowned astrophysicist Lawrence M. Krauss joins us for the
entire hour to discuss cosmology and the new Origins Initiative that
he is heading at Arizona State University. Also a discussion about
the upcoming Science and Technology Conference at the University of
Minnesota and the Origins Symposium at Arizona State University.
"Atheists Talk" airs live on AM 950 KTNF in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
To stream live, go here.
Podcasts of past shows are available at Minnesota Atheists or…
mspringer | October 18, 2008The standard Saturday random observations:
Via Adventures in Ethics and Science, a quote from Revere of Effect Measure:
A wag once commented (and I have quoted here often) that to expect a scientist to understand the philosophy of science is like expecting a fish to understand hydrodynamics.
I disagree. Expecting a scientist to understand the philosophy of science is like expecting a professional quarterback to understand the hot dog vendor.
Here's an interesting article from Inside Higher Ed on the economic contraction and college growth. Among its conclusions is that colleges may have to…
gregladen | October 17, 2008What went wrong was exactly the kind of thing that used to go wrong for me almost every time I tried to build something like the LHC in my secret laboratory when I was a kid. The electricity got the better of part of the machine and ... ZAP ... a bunch of parts got ruined.
We now know, from a report dated two days ago and coming to light over the last 24 hours or so, the following:
An electrical connection between two of the all-important magnets arced. Sort of like a fuse blowing, but it was not a fuse and was not supposed to blow. The arcing of the circuit was sufficiently strong to…
grrlscientist | October 17, 2008Friday Ark, issue # 213. The Friday Ark is a wonderful blog carnival that was inspired by Friday Cat Blogging, which is an internet phenomenon that has done more to humanize the blogopshere than any other meme before or since. This blog carnival expands its focus from only housecats to include photographs of all animals.
sb admin | October 17, 2008Iâm repeating myself here, but itâs for a good cause. At the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at George Washington University School of Public Health, weâve launched a multi-part study to understand the current policies surrounding scientistsâ work at government agencies and to create recommendations for policies that support strong science and the appropriate role of scientists and researchers within our health and environment agencies.
Many talented government scientists leaving the federal agencies that protect our health and environment, and one of the ways to attract and…
gregladen | October 17, 2008Your weekend reading is ready!
A totally multimedia version of Boneyard XIV is up at the Other 95%. You must see this carnival.
Carnival of Homeschooling: The Missing Day is at Homeschoolbuzz.com
Carnival of the Recipes: Tricks, Treats & Eats at Everything and Nothing
Good News Film Reviews is at Carnival of Cinema
Gene Genie # 38 is at Sandwalk (Larry Moran)
The Carnival of Evolution is at Clashing Culture
Carnival of Education! The Debate Edition is at eduwonkette
Linnaeus' Legacy #12 - As Much Blog As A Koala Can Bear is at PodBlack Cat
cwilcox | October 17, 2008I have no response to this. Just... wow. Damn.
(thanks, Mike, for the reminder.)
mspringer | October 17, 2008Let's say you have a thousand of your friends in a large field, and every one of them has exactly two coins - one penny and one dime - in his pocket. Or her pocket, as the case may be. No exceptions, they all have those and only those two coins. Now imagine nearly the same situation with a thousand friends, but this time five hundred of them have two pennies and five hundred of them have two dimes. You don't know which ones have which, but you do know for a fact that any given person has two of the same coin.
If you take a random sampling of people and ask them to randomly select exactly…
cwilcox | October 17, 2008OK, I apologize in advance for the general venting that is about to occur. But, in my defense, people really bug me sometimes.
I posted my post 'Take 30 Seconds to Save Sea Turtles' at another website and got this response:
Is there evidence anywhere that any shallow internet poll has ever actually determined any government policy? I donât mean to be rude, just blunt: what possible reason would a foreign government have to respect your wishes?
Itâs mostly the laz-ee-boy attitude that I think gets to me, the idea that it might be possible to stop resource waste or whatever by sitting comfy in…
gregladen | October 16, 2008How often do you see people in the gym doin' it wrong? All the time. Improper use of free weights and exercise machines can lead to poor results and embarrassment.