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gregladen | August 12, 2012I just wanted to remind you to check The X Blog.
Being Sunday, there are Sunday Funnies.
Also, a post-Mr. Paul Aints commentary is HERE.
gregladen | August 11, 2012Two days ago, according to the NCSE, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 2 which protects the right of citizens to pray and express religious beliefs, which was already the case because of the US Constitution. However, the Amendment will have other effects that were not mentioned at the voting booth. For example, "no student shall be compelled to perform or participate in academic assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs." What do you think THAT is going to lead to?
gregladen | August 10, 2012Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories, a book that I have a chapter in, is now available for the Kindle and the Nook.
aardvarchaeology | August 9, 2012I don't like the loud rattle of dice or the way they careen across the table, scattering game markers and ending up on the floor. And so I've been thinking about buying a dice tray. With low walls and a soft interior surface, it solves both problems. When my friend Foaad gave me a huge gift certificate at Dragon's Lair, one of Stockholm's best board and card game stores and the only one to my knowledge which offers gaming tables, I decided it was time.
Check out my beautiful new handmade dice trays! Per Landberger makes these without even being an underpaid Third World sweat shop worker. And…
sastyk | August 9, 2012I don't think I really recognized how much stuff I've avoided dealing with by only having boys until I read _Cinderella Ate My Daughter_ by Peggy Orenstein. You see, despite the fact that I joke about living in the testosterone house, or being the only female in a house of guys (until C. and K. recently returned to their family, there were 8 males and me - now we're down to a mellow six males), my boys are growing up in a household without much in the way of rigid gender roles, or their toys. Given the combination of no girls and no tv, I am only vaguely aware of phenomena like Miley…
sastyk | August 9, 2012Hi Folks - So I had so many responses to the free book giveaway (between here, facebook, private email and the other site, 149 unique entries) that I decided to give three signed books away. The boys had an awesome time picking names from the hat, and the winners are:
JRB (entered at www.sharonastyk.com)
Johanne Perry (entered at Science Blogs)
and Khadijah (entered at Science Blogs)
Please email me with your address at jewishfarmer@gmail.com and I'll get them in the mail to you ASAP!
Didn't win? All is not lost, you can order one, or I would also consider bartering (and I also have a…
gregladen | August 7, 2012If corporations are people, there is an argument that Scripps News Service should have a restraining order placed on it. The news service repeatedly took down the hourly postings by NASA, made by NASA, on the NASA YouTube channel, because they thought somehow, by mistake, that NASA was violating Scripps News Service's rights. Later, Scripps News Service apologized, but that is not enough. No apology can undo the fact that an ongoing real time event was repeatedly disrupted by what can only be seen as a grave error.
Imagine that there is an event happening where getting certain information…
gregladen | August 5, 2012OK, I only have a minute to watch while I'm having lunch.
A women's basketball game has just ended.
Americans playing Olympic basketball is like kids pulling the legs off grasshoppers.
"So, are you ready for your next game, do you have any strategy?"
"I don't even know who we're playing. I only need to know who the next team we're playing is."
"So, do you know who you're playing next?"
"No, I don't even know that."
"You'll be playing Canada."
"OK, whatever."
Hahaha. The American Women's basketball team just beat whomever they were just playing (nobody can remember) by 46 points. In games…
gregladen | August 5, 2012This evening, Skeptically Speaking will have Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements and The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code. Details here.
The Sunday Funnies are here.
And while you are over there, check out Atheism 101 and the latest crazy from our friends on the other side of the culture war that they imagine exists.
gregladen | August 5, 2012A newly-published paper reveals how highly-reactive Fluorine Gas has been found in nature, due do a process which takes place within fluorite.
gregladen | August 4, 2012Researcher and science writer Jesse Bering delights in being provocative. From the description of his new book, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: And Other Reflections on Being Human:
Why do testicles hang the way they do? Is there an adaptive function to the female orgasm? What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? Does “free will” really exist? And why is the penis shaped like that anyway?
In Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?, the research psychologist and award-winning columnist Jesse Bering features more than thirty of his most popular essays from Scientific American and Slate,…
gregladen | August 3, 2012There is a novel strain of swine flu of the H3N2 type with a lot of infections in humans over a short period of time but over a large geographic area.
The CDC reports 12 cases this week, 1 in Hawaii, 10 in Ohio, and one in Indiana. Seventeen more cases were reported since about one year ago. Most of the cases are found in individuals who had direct contact with swine, but some cases appear to be person to person transmission.
A large number of the recent cases seem to have been in individuals who had contact with swine at a fair. This is fair season across much of the US, and apparently…
lborkowski | August 3, 2012by Kim Krisberg
To the long list of hard-to-pronounce bacteria and viruses that threaten people's health can now be added one more threat: sequestration. Except sequestration isn't a disease — well, unless you'd call Congress' chronic inability to deal with the national debt in a fair and balanced way a disease.
Of course, if sequestration were a real disease, the public health system might actually be immune to such budget-slashing illnesses by now, considering its near-constant exposure rate. But come this January, if Congress doesn't act, the public health system will absorb another round…
gregladen | August 3, 2012The Mars Science Laboratory Mission has piles of cool equipment on board Curiosity Rover, which is closing in on Mars as we speak. The landing is expected to be next Sunday/Monday, 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5 PDT (1:31 a.m. Aug. 6 EDT, 05:31 Aug. 6 Universal Time) plus or minus a minute.. But not really, because the event is happening a it far away in spacetime; those are the times that the signals from Mars will arrive on the planet Earth, about 13.8 minutes after the event has happened. The mission is expected to last one Martian year, which is close to two Earth years. The weather at the landing…
gregladen | August 2, 2012I am skeptical. Which is perfect because The Disappearing Spoon byKean and The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code author Sam Kean will be the guest on the next Skeptically Speaking. Details of that show, which will be recorded live before an Internet Audience and released later as a podcast, are HERE.
gregladen | August 2, 2012First, Kudos to Twin Cites Kare 11 News for having a weekly spot called "Simply Science." For the last few years media outlest have been dropping science spots, features, sections, or segments. It is nice to see one added.
And now on to the flies. A Minnesota company called Ecolab, features on Kare 11, has device that kills flies. There is a smell that attracts females that humans supposedly "can't really smell" (we'll see about that). Males hang around because of the females, of course. Flies are also attracted to slightly shiny things (the original "Ooo Shiney" then you die effect)…
sastyk | August 2, 2012So I somehow forgot to mention when I went on maternity leave and promised to post on Thursdays that I meant I would start this Thursday, since I was on vacation last week. Sorry 'bout that. I will shamelessly blame the baby and sleep deprivation again.
We spent much of last week visiting family near Boston, which was lovely - the transition with K. and C. really took it out of us. I'm not a high-stress person, I tend to be pretty relaxed, but we really needed a break after two very hectic weeks and a lot of emotion. Among other things, we had sent K. and C. home two days before the movie…
sastyk | August 2, 2012I somehow forgot to draw your attention to Kurt Cobb's wonderful essay on the difference between oil and "liquids" - he does a better job than anyone I know in making clear what most Americans simply don't know about our energy - all liquid fuels are not equivalent. We have been told by implication that they are, and most people are not technically literate enough about oil and energy issues to understand the difference, so it looks like there's plenty of oil - but of course, this isn't oil at all. We could just as easily call it "oil."
But first, an important question. Why do government…
sastyk | August 2, 2012Let us begin with the clear statement that asking whether you have to believe in climate change in no way alters the fundamental scientific consensus, or the tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers. I personally think the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is very clear. But that doesn't change the fact that global warming at this point is viewed as an ideological issue, rather than scientific one, and that many people do not believe that it exists, or that humans cause it. In fact, while recent extreme weather has shifted the culture somewhat, it seems safe to say that a solid…
gregladen | August 2, 2012This is what I posted on the second anniversary. Yesterday was the fifth.
Two years ago today, on a weekday afternoon during rush our, the Interstate 35W bridge, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsed into the Mississippi river. Thirteen people died and about 145 people suffered injuries.
At the time this happened, Amanda, Julia and I were in the Green Kalahari in South Africa, at Augrabies Falls.
Finding out about the incident was interesting. My BFF Lynne had just heard from her husband, Chris, that "the bridge in Minnesota went down." We asked if more details could be obtained,…