Uncategorized
gregladen | May 25, 2013This guide covers most of the commonly heard vocalizations of American Teenagers. The text accompnaying the audio-video guide is here.
jrosenhouse | May 24, 2013A while back I did a post about counterintuitive math problems. However, I deliberately held one back, since I was using it as my Problem of the Week for that week. So here it is:
Suppose a steel beam, one mile long, is fastened securely to the ground at each end. As the
day heats up, the metal expands. Let us assume that at the hottest part of the day, the metal
is actually one mile and one foot long. Let us further assume that the beam is fastened in such
a way that it can only buckle upward, and not side to side. Your problem is to estimate how
high the beam will rise above the ground.…
gregladen | May 24, 2013Recent reconfiguration of federal funding for STEM education has resulted in important programs at the NIH losing their funding. Below is information on Health and Biomedical Science Education Programs Aimed at
Grades K–12 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
_________________________________
In the proposed FY 2014 budget, President Obama has set a policy that all STEM education funding be consolidated into three institutions, the NSF for graduate and undergraduate training, the Dept. of Education for K-12 STEM and the Smithsonian for informal education. Justification for this…
jrosenhouse | May 23, 2013Number theory is chock-full of easily stated problems that are very difficult to solve. One such is the twin primes conjecture, which asserts simply that there are infinitely many twin primes. I'll assume you know what a prime number is. Twin primes are primes that differ by exactly two, such as 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and 13, 17 and 19, or 101 and 103.
Of course, everyone knows there are infinitely many primes. If you have not seen it before, here's one easy way to prove that fact. We assume for a contradiction that there are only finitely many primes, let's say k of them. Then we can…
gregladen | May 23, 2013The Boy Scouts have ended their ban on openly gay members. Gay scout leader still have to pretend they are not gay.
gregladen | May 23, 2013Don't make a move until you've CLICKED HERE.
Then you can continue on to this post. Thanks.
___________________
I think the accusation that I've "stalked" fellow blogger Abbie Smith have been made one too many times. But I'm not sure. Is this the point where I lay out the exact sequence of events of what happened between us? What do you think?
OK, here's the story.
Abbie Smith had created an informal group of people who were to eventually become known as the Slyme Pit, mostly Mens Rights Activists, who had come together to object to feminist writings by various bloggers and others,…
jrosenhouse | May 22, 2013Pope Francis said some interesting things at mass yesterday. From the Vatican Radio website:
Wednesday's Gospel speaks to us about the disciples who prevented a person from outside their group from doing good. “They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the…
gregladen | May 22, 2013From Wikipedia:
"Illuminati" refers to various organizations ... links to the original Bavarian Illuminati or similar secret societies, and often ... conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations to establish a New World Order and gain further political power and influence. ... the Illuminati ... lurk... in the shadows and pull... the strings and levers of power in dozens of ...
They are well documented in this book.
And now, there is incontrovertible evidence of involvement of Hollywood and music industry stars in the…
gregladen | May 22, 2013You can't!
There's a fungus among us—a hundred different species in fact—and nearly all take up residence on our feet, according to a study that appears in the journal Nature this week.
Only a few fungi species were found on other body parts known to house fungi—such as behind the ears and on palms—according to the most thorough analysis to date of our fungal "landscape."
Ha. You're probably better off leaving most of them alone. Click through for the details.
_____
Other posts of interest:
How to get rid of spiders in your house
Why is your poop green?
How many cells are there in the…
gregladen | May 22, 2013This is the question everyone eventually asks themselves. The answer is no. They live all over your body in the follicles of your hair.
But, the situation is much more complicated than that, and in fact there is a lot we don't know about these mites. But, there is a scientist who may be willing to scrape some of the mites off your face in order to advance our knowledge ... of something many people would probably not really want to know about.
We’re interested in studying the evolution and diversification of Demodex mites ...we want to use the information encoded in Demodex DNA to map the…
jrosenhouse | May 21, 2013Eric Hedin, an assistant professor of physics at Ball State University, has come under fire for an honors course called, “Boundaries of Science.” The problem: the course appears to be little more than thinly veiled Christian evangelism. From The USA Today:
“BSU appears to offer a class that preaches religion, yet gives students honors science credit,&rdqu; foundation attorney Andrew Seidel wrote to Gora. “BSU appears to have a class with a non-biologist undermining genuine science and scholarship of the Ball State biology department by teaching creationism, a religious belief ...…
gregladen | May 21, 2013There are good reasons to believe that global warming leads to more storminess, but the exact nature of that transition is unclear and hard to measure. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that a given type of storm may become more likely under certain conditions caused by climate change, while a different kind of storm may become less likely, with the "storminess" overall increasing but doing so indifferent ways across time. Also, the most severe, and thus possibly the most important, weather events are infrequent so it is difficult to see changes over time with any statistical…
jrosenhouse | May 20, 2013Nate Silver provides the antidote to some dubious statistical reasoning on the part of certain conservatives. He was replying in particular to this column from Peggy Noonan. A column, mind you, that opens with, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” Goodness! Then she presents evidence like this:
The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal's Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who'd donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney…
illconsidered | May 20, 2013Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom
May 19, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, Arctic Council, Consensus, Warren
400 ppmv, Ventus Project, Red List, Bottom Line, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, New Weather
GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols,…
gregladen | May 17, 2013Hahaha
Ha.
This is about solar energy being repressed by energy interests in Arizona.
gregladen | May 17, 2013You might be interested in the latest Skeptically Speaking podcast:
This week, Skeptically Speaking looks to the stars that light up the night sky, and fuse hydrogen and helium into the elements that make life possible. Science writer Jennifer Ouellette examines the possible evidence of ancient supernovae in bacterial fossils. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains the controversy surrounding the so-called black hole firewall paradox. And astronomer Pamela Gay of CosmoQuest discusses the impact of U.S. sequester budget cuts on her research and outreach.
gregladen | May 17, 2013Genie Scott of the NCSE gives a talk on Creationism.
Executive director Genie Scott talks about the history of creationist legislation, including bills that allow teachers to "critically analyze" evolution or present the "full range of scientific views of origins". Strategies, tactics, and more. When: 12/1/2012. Where: Eschaton 2012, Ottawa. Video courtesy of www.youtube.com/user/AtheismTV
(Don't be put off by the audio problems in the beginning it gets fixed.)
gregladen | May 16, 2013
Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: OFA.BO/gJsdFp
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013
gregladen | May 14, 2013This is the time of year, spring, when a lot of people switch to drinking bottled water instead of tap water. They do this because in their particular area the tap water seems to "go bad" ... usually it is a mild smell or a slightly icky taste. This makes people fear their tap water, so they go to the store and buy bottled water. What has happened in many cases is that the local municipal water supply has done everything it can reasonably do to clean up and make nice the water that comes out of your tap, but there is this slight taste or smell because in the spring, that is what water does…
gregladen | May 14, 2013Vote with your wallet. Tired of the Koch Brothers ruining everything for everybody? Prefer to buy products from companies that contribute to Sandy relief? Do you just want to know which major megacorporation produced the item you are considering putting in your shopping cart?
Wouldn't it be nice to have an app that allowed you to scan the product's bar codes and quickly determine which evile empire you are supporting, or avoiding supporting, with your purchasing decision. Well, there is, and it is called Buycott. Click here to see iOS version
From the app developers:
How Buycott works
-…