Uncategorized
gregladen | March 29, 2013Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue is a new book by William Stolzenburg. I've not seen it, but Desiree Schell interviewed the author on Skeptically Speaking:
This week, we’re looking at invasive predators, changing ecosystems, and the ethical questions raised by killing one species to save another. We’ll speak to science journalist Will Stolzenburg, about his book Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescue.
Also in that edition of Skeptically Speaking, Bug Girl talks about insect conservation.
Click here for the podcast…
jrosenhouse | March 28, 2013Over at Lapham's Quarterly, John Jeremiah Sullivan has
an excellent article on the subject of animal consciousness. Here's the opening:
These are stimulating times for anyone interested in questions of animal consciousness. On what seems like a monthly basis, scientific teams announce the results of new experiments, adding to a preponderance of evidence that we’ve been underestimating animal minds, even those of us who have rated them fairly highly. New animal behaviors and capacities are observed in the wild, often involving tool use—or at least object manipulation—the very kinds of…
carlyo | March 28, 2013Celebrating Women's History Month with another STEM Role Model!
Dr. Anita Roberts was one of the most cited scientists in history and she served as an inspiration to many cancer patients when journaled details of her own battle with cancer- a disease she spent 25 years researching.
Read the full biography of Dr. Roberts here.
gregladen | March 28, 2013Don't miss this excellent Skeptically Speaking:
This week, we’re looking one orbit outward, at the little red planet that’s inspired so much science and science fiction. Guest host Marie-Claire Shanahan talks to University of Tennessee geologist Linda Kah, about her work as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, analyzing the images sent back by the Curiosity rover. And she’ll speak to geologist Chris Herd, curator of the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection, about using rare meteorites from Mars to study the planet’s composition and atmosphere.
CLICK HERE
jrosenhouse | March 27, 2013It has not been a good week for those who oppose same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court heard two relevant cases this week, and to judge from the questioning they seem likely to render a decision far more favorable to same sex marriage advocates. Of course, the questioning is not always a reliable guide. After all, Obamacare seemed to be circling the drain after the oral arguments. Still, it was a pretty rough day at the office for the lawyers advocating for discrimination. Meanwhile, politicians are tripping over each other in their rush to come out in favor of same sex marriage. It wasn…
gregladen | March 27, 2013Rhett Allain at Dot Physics has proposed that we stop using the terms "Hypothesis", "Theory", and "Law" because people so abysmally misunderstand them. He proposes replacing them all with the term "model".
Take out all three of these “science” words from introductory texts. They do more harm than good. The problem is that people have firm beliefs that they mean something other than what they are supposed to mean. I don’t think we can save these words.
We do have a word to replace them. Are you ready? It’s the model – or you can call it the scientific model if you prefer.
I'm not sure if the…
jrosenhouse | March 26, 2013I only have time for a quick post tonight, so let me direct you to one of my favorite math videos. It's of Arthur Benjamin, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College in California. Art is also a professional magician, and is especially well known for his skill as a lightning calculator. The video is fifteen minutes long, but very enjoyable.
Just so we're clear, his calculations are not tricks. He really is doing what it looks like he's doing. The only portion of the video that could be described as a trick is the part where he determines the missing digit of a seven-digit number after…
illconsidered | March 26, 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
Another Week of Climate Chaos News
Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
March 24, 2013
Chuckles, Equinox, COP19+, WWD, Earth Hour, Marcott, Grinsted
World Bank, Cook, Weathermen
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather…
jrosenhouse | March 25, 2013Occasionally I rant about the general awfulness of mathematics textbooks. If I were to express my major objection in the most charitable possible way, it is that most textbooks are written like reference books. They are usually very good at recording the basic facts of a subject and proving them with admirable rigor. If you just need to look up some elementary theorem or formal definition, then by all means consult a textbook. The trouble, though, is that textbooks are seldom written from the perspective of a student encountering the material for the first time.
If I were to express…
jrosenhouse | March 25, 2013Edward Feser has replied to my earlier post about some of the responses to Thomas Nagel's new book. Feser took exception to my remarks. Let's have a look.
EvolutionBlog’s Jason Rosenhouse tells us in a recent post that he hasn’t read philosopher Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. And it seems obvious enough from his remarks that he also hasn’t read the commentary of any of the professional philosophers and theologians who have written about Nagel sympathetically -- such as my own series of posts on Nagel and his critics, or Bill Vallicella’s, or Alvin Plantinga’s review of Nagel, or Alva Noë…
gregladen | March 23, 2013I've been waiting for people to die before I told this story on my blog, but certain people seem to take forever to do that so I'm not waiting any more. Besides, it happened a long time ago. The story I'm telling you happened to me a long time ago (about 1990) and the thing that happened to me really amounted to someone telling me a story, which in turn happened a long time before that (about 1977).
There had been some kind of thing, a barbecue, at the home of Scotty MacNeish. If you don't know who Scotty is, you should. He is the archaeologist who discovered and documented the origins of…
jrosenhouse | March 22, 2013Sadly, the big basketball game went the way everyone expected. Which is to say that we lost. Badly. Indiana 83 -- JMU 62. Ouch!
As it happens, my former academic home, Kansas State University, also lost. This one was a big upset, since, despite being the 4th seed, they lost to 13th seed La Salle. So, a bad day all around.
In more important sporting news, at the halfway point of the event, Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian have a big lead over the pack in the big chess tournament to determine the next challenger for the World Championship. The action is happening in London. The chess…
gregladen | March 22, 2013'In 1645, the twenty-seventh year of the Thirty Years War, Swedish armies inflicted a devastating blow to the Imperial forces in Bohemia and swept into Austria with the aim of capturing of Vienna. The Imperial capitol, was not prepared to give up easily. The Swedes soon found themselves digging in for a long seige, negotiating with allies for support, and building fortifications around the occupied countryside. Upriver from Vienna, in the Krems district, while digging trenches, a group of Swedish soldiers discovered the bones of a giant....
Discover the teeth of giants. And say Happy…
gregladen | March 22, 2013This just in from Jason at 350.org:
Friends,
The moment is here: about an hour ago, some of big oil's best paid Senators filed an amendment supporting construction of Keystone XL to the Senate's budget bill.
Our goal today is to keep the Senate from forcing Obama to approve the pipeline. The oil industry is using all their money and might to push Keystone, but we've stopped them before, and we can do it again.
Many of us called our Senators once already this week to stop the pipeline, and it made an impact on big oil's vote count. One of the people that big oil needs to support this bill is…
gregladen | March 21, 2013National Center for Science Education climate change policy director Mark McCaffrey talks about the history of climate change--and of climate change denial, doubt, and dismay at the Climate and Energy Literacy Forum, Washington, DC.
gregladen | March 21, 2013...there is a new study that has significant advantages of the Bumpus study, though the latter will still be useful in teaching about evolution because of its limitations and the questions it raises. The new study is about Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) in southwestern Nebraska.
As you know, a lot of birds are killed in the U.S. because of collisions with vehicles. About 80 million, according to the Cliff Swallow study by Charles Brown and Mary Bomberger Brown. Brown and Brown examined the possibility that birds in a population subject to this particular form of mortality would…
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2013Check it out!
Of course, now we have to play Indiana. Considering that it was a minor miracle that JMU made it to the tournament at all, while Indiana is among the favorites to win the whole thing, I'm not optimistic about our chances. History is against us, since no 16th seed has ever beaten a 1st seed in the history of the tournament. Then again, everything never happened prior to the first time it happened, so maybe we have a chance after all!
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2013The math department here at JMU has a Problem of the Week competition, and it just so happens that, this semester, I am running it. Every week I choose a problem for the consideration of all who choose to participate. (Well, I actually bribe my students to participate by offering them a bonus point for each problem they get right, but whatever.) A randomly selected winner from among the correct answers gets a five dollar gift card to Starbucks. Mostly it's just a way to get the students thinking about amusing mathematical brainteasers outside of their regular coursework.
Anyway, I am…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2013Philosopher Thomas Nagel recently published a book called Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. The general consensus was that the book delivered considerably less than it promised. H. Allen Orr's negative review from The New York Review of Books was pretty typical of the response, if somewhat more polite than some.
I have not read Nagel's book, so I don't have a strong opinion about it. Based on what I've read about it, however, I suspect I wouldn't like it. For example, here is part of a quote from Nagel, as presented by Orr…