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gregladen | April 18, 2013So ...
... If you aren't familiar with Jill Stanek, she's just an awful anti-choicer. She thinks if you murder a doctor who performs abortions, it's wrong, but not so wrong that you deserve to be sent to PRISON! That's for like, bad people, and stuff! ... 1. The man who murdered Dr. Tiller "[did] not get [his] fair day in court." 2. The death penalty is okay and should be applied to doctors who perform abortions.)...
My friend Sarah has some things to say about all of this. CLICK HERE NAO!
gregladen | April 18, 2013The FBI has released an electronic wanted poster for you to look at. Somebody knows these people. Do you? You know what to do:
Wanted by the FBI: Boston Marathon Suspects
(click on the picture of the FBI web site to go through to the FBI web site)
Here's an enhanced video of the scene:
One of the guys might be wearing THIS HAT.
jrosenhouse | April 16, 2013Today's reading is from Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, published in 1943.
Okay, just calm down. Yes, I know, she was crazy. She took some good ideas about freedom and indviduality and took them to absurd degrees. In her novels, characters say things to each other that no human beings have ever said to one another. All true.
But she certainly had her moments! I started reading the novel on a whim, and I was surprised by how gripping and suspenseful I found the story. It's actually pretty hard to put down, as long as you don't mind that the action is occasionally interrupted so the…
gregladen | April 16, 2013Years ago it was pointed out by somebody, probably Tinbergen or Lack or Wynn-Edwards or one of the other great bird-savvy ethologists of the day, that young Pelicans would blackmail their parents by biting their own wings, a very self defeating activity for a bird with a huge and powerful beak. “If you don’t feed me right way, I’m taking off this wing and your reproductive success is done!” they seemed to be saying.
More recently a study of Babblers in South Africa may have demonstrated a similar kind of extortion....
Read the rest of my monthly contribution to 10,000 birds HERE.
The rest of…
kbonham | April 15, 2013Not going to report, since the facts will probably change before I hit publish, but these links should remain useful:
Google people finder - for folks that can't get in touch with friends/relatives
Boston Globe-run form for people looking for or offering places in the city
Lots of folks offering help on twitter via #BostonHelp
Mayor's hotline for people looking for friends/family 617-635-4500 (via the globe)
Anyone with videos/pictures of the route (could be evidence) call 800-494-TIPS (also via Boston Globe)
Red Cross is not looking for blood donations now, but would love you to schedule for…
gregladen | April 15, 2013The book Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories has a mention in Publisher's Weekly:
While Prometheus Books is the grandfather of publishing atheism books, there are two upstarts, another indication of the category’s strength. The newest is Freethought House, founded in 2011 and debuting last August with Atheist Voices of Minnesota edited by the press’s publisher, Bill Lehto. He says the house plans to publish up to four atheism titles a year, the next being Deliverance at Hand! by James Zimmerman (2013), a memoir by the former Jehovah’s Witness. Da Capo Press has…
gregladen | April 15, 2013Once again, the winged monkeys of climate change denialim are writing fake, stupid, made up an absurd reviews of Michael Man's book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines on Amazon.com.
If you've read the book and like it and have not written a review of it on Amazon, please go do so! Help a scientist out.
Thank you very much.
gregladen | April 13, 2013You know about celebrity swatting? It's when 4chaners trick the police into arriving at a celebrity's home under the assumption that there is a hostage situation or something like that. It is incredibly stupid, obnoxious, dangerous, and a famous 4chaner-er (whom you probably know of but whose name I will not mention or he'll do bad things to me) told me he has done several times.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Nice going, assholes.
gregladen | April 12, 2013Maine is my favorite state. If you've not visited then your life is an empty shell and you don't even know it. But it is also true that I've seen and heard some of the strangest things I've ever encountered there. So strange I can't even tell you about it. The story that recently emerge from the Pine Tree State, about a man who became a hermit nearly 30 years ago, is not as strange as all of that, but you will enjoy it:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I hear he's a very good prisoner.
mspringer | April 12, 2013George Takei posted the following thing to Facebook recently:
It got reposted by a bunch of people and provoked a tremendous amount of discussion (for a math topic, anyway), much of which was somewhere in the continuum between merely wrong and psychedelically incoherent. It's not a new subject - a version of the image got discussed on Stack Exchange last year - but it's an interesting one and hey, it's not all that often that the subtle properties of the set of real numbers get press on Facebook. Let's do a taxonomy of the real numbers and see what we can figure out about pi and whether or…
jdupuis | April 12, 2013McSweeny's is brilliant at skewering fads. And there is no bigger fad in higher education than Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs, as they are known.
Now I'm not quibbling with whether or not MOOCs are an interesting and potentially extremely valuable addition to the landscape of higher education, because I think they are. What I find unfortunate is how completely so many in the general public/commentariat/tech guru class seem to have so thourougly fallen under the MOOC spell, seeing all their libertarian free market dreams coming true. Almost like a cult.
Without any further ado:
Welcome to…
carlyo | April 11, 2013Celebrating another Role Model in Science & Engineering Achievement!
Noted Materials Science Researcher Swati Vilas Pol is creating a new green technology that converts plastic bags and plastic bottles into carbon waste material for a wide range of uses -- from water purification to powering electronic devices. Awesome!
To read her full biography click here
gregladen | April 11, 2013They always say they won't spill the oil. Then they spill the oil. And we seem to not mind. We should mind
From here, this:
This was a slow month for oil spills, compared to those moments when a tanker hits the rocks or a retreating army opens the spigots.
gregladen | April 11, 2013Have you seen The Corporation? It is an excellent documentary that runs through the list of psychiatric disorders that seem to be endemic to corporations. It came out in 2004, but is still very relevant. If you've not seen it, you should.
The film has a website, here. In some countries you can watch at least part of the film there (it may also be on YouTube, I've not checked lately) and The DVD costs about 20 bucks to buy or a few dollars to watch on Amazon. It is not on Netflix streaming, but it is available as a DVD.
jrosenhouse | April 10, 2013I'll be disappearing into my little hidey hole for the next week or so, as I try to get past a few deadlines. One of those deadlines is coming this Friday, when I will be giving the banquet talk at the MAA Section Meeting, at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD. Goodness! That's a long drive. Should be a fun meeting, though.
gregladen | April 9, 2013There is a new outbreak of a bird flu in eastern China, referred to as H7N9. The first thing you need to know is that human populations have not been previously exposed (to any degree) to H7 or N9 type virus, so if this virus were to mutate in such as way as to spread human to human, the result could be very serious. Moreover, the "H" component of the virus is thought to have a genetic sequence that is known to readily mutate into form that would be target (bind to) human rather than bird cells.
The virus has been found in chickens, pigeons, and ducks in markets where live birds are sold…
gregladen | April 9, 2013Time to shut down comments on older posts, as we are having a blizzard of spam on those posts. I'll reopen commenting in a few days. Sorry for any inconvenience.