Monthly Archives: November 2011

Culture and Tradition

Science Education Researcher Marie-Claire Shanahan, primatologist Eric Michael Johnson, and I joined Desiree Schell on on Skeptically Speaking to have a conversation very apropos this time of year in The West: The concept of Tradition. We said a number of very smart things which you can hear by clicking here and listening to the podcast.

I should mention that all four of us will be at Science Online 2012 in January.

King Tut’s Tomb Discovered!!!

A frail elderly woman would have a hard time walking a few blocks, from her apartment to the subway, then from the subway to the MET, with winds gusting to near hurricane strength. So, the patron of the arts and of archaeology, who happened to be a cousin of my first wife, called around to find a worthy pair to use her tickets to the private opening (for major patrons) of The Treasures of Tutankhamun, the exhibit of King Tut’s tomb. The public opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City would be several days later. When it was found that the two only archaeologists in the extended family were in town, they (we) were located and given the tickets. And so it was that I was to be one of the very few people to take in the art and artifacts of the most famous Egyptian tomb, which housed one of the least famous Egyptian rulers, without the crowds and long lines, even tough those in attendance were rather overdressed.
Continue reading King Tut’s Tomb Discovered!!!

How to manage and maintain your electronic identity

This is not a manual or even a how-to blog post, but rather, what I hope to be a few helpful suggestions that may or may not have already occurred to you. I was motivated to write this because of a series of recent events in which it became obvious that a lot of people, myself included in certain instances, were not managing some of the basic information linked to their on-line identity in the best way.
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Financial Engagement, a Public Thing

Several weeks ago, my friend and colleague, Shanai Matteson asked if I’d get involved in a project she was working on along with several other people. If you have been reading my blog, or for that matter, Pharyngula, for a while you’ll know of Shanai even if you don’t know you know: She was for many years the public outreach coordinator person (not sure of her exact title) for the Bell Museum of Natural History, so it is she who organized the Great Smackdown at The Bell (with PZ Myers, Chirs Mooney, Matt Nisbet and me), as well as several Cafe Scientifiques that I’ve done, as well as a very interesting Evolutionary Dinner With Beer a year ago or so. Since then, Shanai has left the Bell and with her husband, Colin Kloecker, have started a company, Works Progress, that does some very interesting things, including Financial Engagement, a Public Thing.

Continue reading Financial Engagement, a Public Thing

Lost in (economic) history ….

…These days, when I drive out Route 55, also known as the Olsen Highway, most of the buildings I see were built since I stayed in that run down little motel, which by the way was long ago torn down and replaced with new development. Nothing about that drive is familiar now, except for the Rainbow which had just been built when I stayed there, and an old beat up strip mall from the mid 20th century. There was once wilderness, a few farms, the usual lakes. Then, Boom! Building everywhere.

And the funny thing is that today, many of those buildings are for sale, vacant, for lease. There are even buildings built in the last ten years that are at risk of deterioration through misuse. And that isn’t a particularly depressed part of town.

It seems that civilization, and its economy, are like the proverbial river that you can’t step into twice: It is always there, but never is it the same. This has been true since the Industrial Revolution: Cheap hydroelectric power harnessed by modern turbines under emerging brick mills filled with rural transplants, mostly women and children, losing the occasions finger or hand to the machinery but driving a brave new economy with the production of cloth or flour. But the water allowed only a certain amount of growth, so it was supplemented with coal-powered steam engines running the mill’s machines. Then the coal became the main form of energy. Homes lit by burning tallow and whale oil became brighter with the introduction of gas lines and lamps, and the streets glowed at night in London and New York and Minneapolis, and eventually liquid petroleum found its use to drive more industrial engines, and eventually cars, and eventually furnaces in our homes, and eventually along side coal power stations that produced the electricity that made our homes even brighter….

That is part of an essay I wrote for Financial Engagement, a Public Thing. It is published (in print) as part of a newspaper project. There is a PDF version of the while shebang, which you can get to here.

Wave Google Wave Good Bye

From Google Wave:

More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.

If you need to keep waving, try these OpenSource projects:

Apache Wave
Walkaround