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cortex | November 21, 2007I've been trying really hard not to get excited about I'm Not There, in case it turned out to be a self-indulgent disaster. But early reviews suggest that it's actually rather compelling. That's great news, because I already love the soundtrack. In no particular order, my favorite tracks include:
Ring Them Bells, by Sufjan Stevens
Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, by Cat Power
Simple Twist of Fate, by Jeff Tweedy
Going to Acapulco, by Calexico and Jim James
Knockin' on Heaven's Door, by Antony and the Johnsons
Here's my question: What are your dream pairings for Dylan…
cortex | November 21, 2007Earlier this week, the National Endowment for the Arts came out with a disturbing report:
Americans -- particularly young Americans -- appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.
This report builds upon a 2004 NEA analysis that offered up a bleak assessment of the American reader. It turns out that reading, especially the reading of…
jlynch | November 20, 2007Have fellows of the Discovery Institute been caught plagiarizing? You decide.
Does the Discovery Institute lie? You decide.
Does Behe get owned by a grad student? You decide.
Bad week for the cdesign proponentsists by the looks of it.
Oh, and when’s the last time there was any science coming from these guys? Instead we have yet another version of Pandas from Dembski and Wells, a popular book from Behe (one which appeared still-born), and nothing from Paul Nelson. Remember two and a half years ago when he stated
Bill Dembski and I have been working on a shorter article, with some of the…
cmcclain | November 20, 2007&Here's the list beginning with my thoughts. Hopefully the readers can suggest other ideas and revisions with the goal of this being a central archive for active ways to conserve our oceans.
Start by eating the right fish or not eating fish at all. This is probably the easiest. You yield the greatest power when you make simple decisions at the table. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch makes this easy with downloadable charts to carry with you for every region in the U.S. With respect to fishing, Conservation Magazine also lists 10 ways to save the ocean. The list is comprised of…
cortex | November 20, 2007Ouch. I got my first nasty review today. (For some nice reviews, check out the NY Times, LA Times, NY Post, Amazon, etc.) In Salon, Jonathan Keats takes issue with the basic premise of the book, which is that meaningful connections can be drawn between science and art:
Lehrer's book is worth discussing for this reason: It embodies an approach to the humanities and sciences that threatens the vitality of both. In his coda, Lehrer evokes C.P. Snow, whose 1959 book, "The Two Cultures," has become the standard reference in any discussion about the "mutual incomprehension" (as Snow phrased it)…
cmcclain | November 20, 2007
Speaking of deep-sea posters, Dr. Charles Messing (Nova Southeastern University), who ordinarily works on crinoids and deep-sea corals and just generally a renaissance man, has left the benthos to offer this 25x36-inch wall poster that includes 109 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of pelagic organisms from bacteria to whales and from the surface to the abyss. The drawings are arranged by ecological grouping and depth, with names, taxonomic affiliation and maximum known size. The short is you can be sure the information is accurate and the drawings exceptional.
The poster is available on www.…
gregladen | November 19, 2007There are a handful of street preachers around on our campus. Some are just stoners standing on boxes babbling about Jesus, others are older guys, more typical, telling us we are all going to hell and handing out literature, often somewhat aggressively. There was one who was habitually blocking a major building entrance way with his preaching, and I believe the cops took him away.
There's a piece by a student columnist for The Oracle (more irony), a college newspaper of the University of South Florida:
According to Wednesday's Oracle, a 22-year-old junior sociology major claims that on…
cortex | November 19, 2007The statistics are troubling:
Almost half of all cigarettes sold in the United States (44 percent) are consumed by people with mental illness. This is because so many people who have mental illnesses smoke (50 to 80 percent, compared with less than 20 percent of the general population) and because they smoke so many cigarettes a day -- often three packs. Furthermore, smokers with mental illness are much more likely to smoke their cigarettes right down to the filters.
Obviously, it's extremely important that we encourage people with mental illness to quit smoking. As this excellent op-ed by…
gregladen | November 19, 2007As has been reported in various places, the death toll from Sidr has slowly and steadily climbed, topping 3,000 according to a fairly recent report from the BBC.
The Bangladesh Red Crescent is estimating that the death toll may reach 10,000.
A half million homes have been destroyed, and a couple/few million people displaced.
Aid is getting to many areas though there are concerns of lack of coordination among agencies and between the aid agencies and the government, according to some reports. The southwest has many regions where supplies and help have not yet arrived.
The biggest…
gregladen | November 19, 2007Intelligent design. Creationism. Evolution. Fossils. Controversy. Charles Darwin. The Controversy, and Teaching the Controversy. The Dover Trial reconstructed with Oscar Winning Performances.
Thank you VERY much NOVA and PBS for making "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" available on line.
It is unfortunately that it is not available in formats that everyone can use easily In any event, it is here.
[Hat Tip: Pharyngula]
petnoyer | November 19, 2007A friend of mine from Japan used to like to begin his grad school seminar talks with a favorite recipe for preparing whale meat. His first slide would feature a steaming hot bowl of soup with sliced layers of meat dangling over the side. He was not a joker. He did these things to shock students into a new perspective. My friend wasn't ready to begin any discussion of Japanese fisheries policy until people understood that whales are a cultural resource in Japan, a downright delicious cultural resource. His approach was provocative. It stole the high ground on the whaling issue, and put…
gregladen | November 18, 2007An 18-foot minke whale ran aground on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle some 1,000 miles from the ocean, Brazilian media reported Friday. Globo television broadcast images of dozens of people gathered along the Tapajos River splashing water on the animal, whose back and dorsal fin were exposed to the hot Amazon sun. Sea creatures rarely venture so far into fresh water.
[source]
Wow
Oh, and this:
The whale is not the only animal to get lost in Brazil this week.
On Thursday a young reptile - which was 1.5m long - turned up at a popular beach in Rio de Janeiro and had to be rescued by firemen.…
grrlscientist | November 17, 2007
Image: orphaned.
It seems that I am really having some strange but memorable Thanksgiving holidays in NYC. For example, since I arrived in NYC, I spent my first three Thanksgivings at a local natural history museum (whose name I am not allowed to mention on my blog) where I was employed as a postdoc, wandering among the ornithiscians and sauriscians while the last of the giant Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons were inflated outside the windows, floating on the breezes in a vaguely threatening way. Honestly, those three were the best Thanksgiving celebrations I've ever had.
My next…
cmcclain | November 17, 2007Before this marine-based life I worked in a hospital. One thing that scared the @#$% out of me was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. When I left the hopsital for graduate school I was glad to leave that behind. I never thought that MRSA and my new life would meet. A group of UK scientists recently discovered a bacterium from the seafloor off Japan with the ability to kill MRSA.
gregladen | November 17, 2007A report accepted by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental on Climate Change but not approved in detail
Summary of main findings
Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.
A global assessment of data since 1970 has shown it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems.
Other effects of regional climate changes on natural and human environments are emerging, although many are difficult to discern…
cmcclain | November 17, 2007One of my visions for the future is my wife and I enjoying full-bodied French and Italian wines in our villa overlooking the Mediterranean. In contrast, if you are shark or ray the Mediterranean is more like hell. Globally, many elasmobranch species are endangered due to anthropogenic effects. In the Mediterranean, the IUCN reports that 30 of 71 species are close to extinction from over-fishing and habitat loss. This and low reproductive output (a few pups a year), slow growth, and late maturity, combine to doom most species. Only the Portuguese dogfish, a deep-sea shark, is doing better…
gregladen | November 17, 2007Last August, Dan Egerstad, of Sweden, hacked his way into secret email accounts of government embassies, various NGOs and corporations. It was easy, partly because it was not a secure network. He then posted a very large number of email user names and passwords.
The way he did it was simple.
There is a piece of software that acts, more or less, as a "caller ID blocker" that can be put on a node on the internet, including on your own computer.
This software, called "TOR" was developed by the Navy on the premise that "loose lips sink ships." They wanted Naval personnel to be able to…
gregladen | November 17, 2007
Corpus Collosum shows us this graph of search frequency on Google for the word "Science."
And asks "What could it possibly mean?"
What it means is this: The following is a graph of search frequency on Google for the word "Santa."
The graphs are from Google Trends. Just in case it is not utterly obvious, the steep annual dip in science is exactly correlated with the Santa Spike.
What is not entirely evident is why are there two Santa Spikes per year? The larger one in December makes sense, but this later one in Feb/March does not. Unless you know that this is the time each year of the…
sb admin | November 16, 2007Exactly one year ago today, we published our first post here on The Pump Handle. Itâs been an eventful year, to say the least.
By far, our most popular post was David Michaelsâs âPopcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesnât Want to Know,â which publicized the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a consumer and the pathetic reaction from public health agencies. Of course this is just one piece of the larger butter-flavoring story, which weâve been following since our inception, mostly focusing on OSHAâs superficial responses to a hazard thatâs robbing workers of their…