Daily Archives: January 15, 2011

Current Carnivals in Nature and Science

A blog carnival is a moving periodic blog posting collecting current entries in a particular topic, designed to give blog readers a list of things to do that they really do want to do. Current carnivals of which I’m aware are Berry Go Round, which is about plants; Carnival of the Blue, which is about stuff in the ocean; I and the bird, which is about birds, Festival of the Trees, which is about, you guessed it, trees; and Circus of the Spineless, which is about invertebrates such as insects and slugs and so on.

Visit these carnivals, click on the links therein, and enjoy.

Interesting technology news items

Virgin Mobile’s “unlimited broadband” will be limited, as the communication company goes back on its deal with customers. “Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices…” I don’t see that as a difficult choice at all. Drop Virgin Mobile, or, if you don’t use it, don’t consider it. Details here.

The first computer that stored apps to run on itself, EDSAC, will be rebuilt at Bletchley Park. “The EDSAC was two metres high and its 3,000 vacuum tubes took up four metres of floor space. It could perform 650 instructions per second and all data input was via paper tape.” Details here.

Steve Chang, the Chairman of Trend Micro, is a moron. He makes the stupid old and disproved claim that Open Source is inherently insecure.

Don’t mess with Sarah Palin or you will be sent to prison. “A man who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail has been imprisoned – despite being told he might be spared jail… David Kernell, 23, was found guilty last year of illegally accessing Mrs Palin’s e-mail during the 2008 presidential campaign. At the time, a judge suggested he should serve his year-long sentence in a halfway house.” But he’s going to the big house anyway.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the political spectrum, the JFK library will release the largest on line digital presidential library ever. Details.

Interview with Tom Clark, Center for Naturalism

Tom W. Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism and author of Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses, will appear on Atheist Talk radio Sunday Morning.

Free will, as you know, does not really exist, and this has important implications for thinking about morality and so called “world views.” Naturalism is a philosophy that addresses this seeming difficulty. The interview will be conducted by Atheist Talk Radio producer and host, Mike Huabrich. With Miked in the interview seat, Scott Lohman will host the show. Details are here.