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sastyk | May 30, 2012I try to post this once a year or so, because most of the people who read my blog also play in the dirt, and with playing in the dirt comes minor injuries that you really don't want to turn into anything nasty. So, if you haven't had a tetanus booster in the last decade, or don't remember having one, now is the time to get updated. Tetanus is not avoidable by good health practices, boosting your immune system, etc... - it is caused by a bacteria in the soil entering into your body through a wound - often wounds so small it would never occur to you that it could threaten your life. You…
sastyk | May 30, 2012From The Nation, Laura Flanders has a piece on what happened to all those long-term unemployed people who have given up - with a flattering quote from yours truly (the quote is further along, to give you an incentive to read the whole thing ;-)).
Look around, it’s much more likely that the officially “unemployed” are busy, doing their best to make ends meet in whatever ways they can. Sex work, drugs and crime spring to mind, but the underground or “shadow” economy includes all sorts of off-the-books toil. From baby-sitting, bartering, mending, kitchen-garden farming and selling goods in a…
sastyk | May 30, 2012Hi Folks - Just to let you know, I do know about the disappearing comments, and I'm sorry about it. ScienceBlogs is working on getting the bugs out of the new format. Apologies for the inconvenience - I'm hoping some of them come back one of these days! If it is any consolation, a number of my replies to your comments have also disappeared...;-P.
Sharon
pronald | May 29, 2012Just read some of the comments on Amy Harmon's #GMO labeling story from Friday's NYT. Guess people care about this topic.
Here are some excerpts:
"Unless you are foraging, eating wild-berries, game, etc... then you are consuming GMO food. There is no logical definition of #GMO food"
"Conservatives deny data on global warming; Liberals deny data on #GMO safety Each side discards reason when it doesn't suit their politics"
"The FDA should require stringent testing of GMO products and label only those found to be harmful"
"You think you have pesticides being applied now? Wait until the demise of…
jhalper | May 29, 2012Not many Israelis make it all the way to the South Pole. (In fact, very few people go there, at all. Not only is it really, really cold, it is extremely difficult and expensive to transport people, gear and necessities to this remote and inhospitable corner of the earth.) So when we learned that Dr. Hagar Landsman, who recently joined the Weizmann Institute’s Physics Faculty, has a part-time gig at the IceCube neutrino detector array, we simply had to write about her. Landsman’s specialty is particle detectors, and IceCube has 5,000 of them buried under several kilometers of ice. In her brief…
jrosenhouse | May 28, 2012It's time to stop sulking about the various headaches caused by the migration and get back to blogging. I managed to get the banner the overlords sent me to load properly, so that seems like some sort of victory at least. Alas, there doesn't seem to be much space between the base of the banner and the top of the first post. Does anyone know if there is a simple way for me to fix that?
Anyway, let's dip our toes into the water by getting updated on the big World Chess Championship. We last tuned in at the halfway point. Six games played out of twelve, six draws. Five boring draws.
But…
illconsidered | May 28, 2012Logging 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
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Another Week in the Planetary Crisis
Sipping from the Internet Firehose...
May 27, 2012
Chuckles, Rio+20, COP18+, Bonn, G8, Elgin, Peru
Subsidies, Banks, Cook
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Food Production
Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, ENSO
Solar,…
lborkowski | May 28, 2012Today the United States honors those who died while serving in the military. The Washington Post's "Faces of the Fallen" gallery has photos and other information on the "6,440 U.S. service members have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom." Several entries have been added over the past few days:
Sgt. Jabraun S. Knox, age 23, of Fort Wayne, Ind., on 5/18/12, "Died in Asadabad, Afghanistan,of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with an indirect fire."
Sgt. Michael J, Knapp, age 28, of Overland Park, Kan., on 5/18/12, "Died in Asadabad, Afghanistan,…
gregladen | May 25, 2012I just happen to come across this interesting cameo and snapped this fair use impromptu screen shot...
Who is it, what show is this, and if you are that good, what episode!
___________
posted from my iPad
gregladen | May 25, 2012According to the Dr. Who Fan Site on Google+
Matt Smith will be carrying the Olympic Torch this weekend when it reaches Cardiff in the latest leg of its 70 day trip around the United Kingdom.
Smith will bear the torch early on Saturday morning, at the start of its journey from Cardiff, the capital of Wales and home of Doctor Who, to Swansea a few miles along the coast. The day will see the torch visit the communities of Barry, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda and Bridgend.
"To carry the Torch is an honour, one I thought I'd never get, I'm very excited!"
Daleks will be following close behind, saying of…
stoat | May 25, 2012So I don't have to bother saying them myself.
* SpaceX Dragon on its way to the ISS! (and watch more of it - though I'd skip the first ~40 mins of talk if I were you). Note: I'm a bit behind the times here; see the next post.
* The Magistrate's blog - more down to earth: pointing out the stupidity of the press complaining about "unelected European judges" when we don't elect our own either.
* More about the facebook IPO from Timmy.
* Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose - actually this one doesn't fit my title. Its interesting, but so vague on detail as to be not much…
jdupuis | May 25, 2012I've been posting quite a bit recently on the disastrous record of the current Conservative government here in Canada, especially in regards to how they treat information, science and the environment. Sadly, I have way too many posts in the works along these lines.
The other day a post I saw on the Deciphering Science blog that really blew me away. It perfectly captures every important detail about the Harper government and their total contempt for science and disregard for the environment.
And with the author's kind permission I'm reposting it here, from May 18, 2012: An Open Letter to the…
gregladen | May 24, 2012At the moment, Scienceblogs is still undergoing technical difficulties. This is fully expected. The database this network is built on is many gazugabites in size. Despite its power and elegance, the WordPress platform (especailly the multi-user version) is complex and there are all sorts of tweaky things that must happen between the server's system software, the database server, the PHP installation, the core Wordpress software, and the localized version. When FTB.com upgraded a while back it took a few days for the dust to settle and a few weeks for things to top breaking and screwing up…
lborkowski | May 24, 2012As you may have noticed, ScienceBlogs has a new look. In addition to the new appearance, ScienceBlogs also in the process of switching from a Movable Type to a Wordpress system, and there have been a few technical glitches. The end result should be a more user-friendly site (and one that will definitely be easier for the bloggers!), but posting may be a little erratic this week, and some recent comments seem to have disappeared in the transition. We apologize for the difficulties and thank our readers for bearing with us.
gregladen | May 23, 2012As you can see, Scienceblogs.com has a new look. There is no more left sidebar and the right sidebar looks different, the cute banners different blogs had is replaced with a new standardized banner usually with a picture of the blogger. The 24 hour page and some other bits are (depending on when you read this) not functioning yet but will be soon. And, up there in the upper right is the National Geographic Brand.
I no long have an "about" page but pages can be created and I will eventually do that. I think pages will be accessible from a drop down or menu or something on the right sidebar…
denialism | May 23, 2012I can't take any credit for it. Nat Geo has transitioned us to wordpress. Please let me know in the comments if there are any problems with the new format or with commenting and I'll see what I can do to get things up to snuff.
stoat | May 22, 2012Many thanks to commentor Bam who alerted me to A comment by Alex Harvey: CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA by Hans von Storch CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA complete with big shouty letters.
[This is a copy from back-up of a post that was on the old mt site, and didn't get auto-moved to the new wp site. It will have lost any comments made then, sorry.]
Before you read that, you probably need to at least see Junk from von S (especially if you're a von S reader, because he has previously censored links to that post). If you read the comments there, its clear that von S…
stoat | May 22, 2012I'm not the first to say the obvious, but the FT appears to have misunderstood the world:
Some investors accused Facebook of taking advantage of enormous demand to sell at an inflated price it says, commenting on the way FB's shareprice dropped from $38-ish to $34-ish. To which the answer is... WTF do you think FB is, a charity? If you're overwhelmed by people desperate to hand over cash in exchange for your shares, then of course you raise the price.
Back in the dotcom bubble era it was fashionable to IPO at well below what you hoped the shares would trade up to. But, that was a bad thing,…
kbonham | May 22, 2012I'll just leave this post up and edit it as needed when I need to check the features... don't mind me.
Picture:
This is a picture of a buff dude climbing