Monthly Archives: November 2007

Orlando Students May be Exposed to Evolution

November 18, 2007UncategorizedCreationismGreg Laden

There is an ongoing effort to change the standards for teaching science in Orlando Florida so that the students are taught actual science (as opposed to creationism, apparently) in an effort to bring the next generation’s work force into the 21st century. And the public meetings are apparently getting interesting.The new standards are widely opposed among both parents and teachers, who feel that creationism has a place in the science classroom.

Dave Finnigan, an educational consultant who lives in Celebration, said the Scopes trial should have settled the issue. Intelligent design, he said, is a thinly veiled religious theory that doesn’t belong in public schools.[source]

Dave obviously has not read his history. The evolutionists lost the scopes trial. But, his intentions are good: Continue reading Orlando Students May be Exposed to Evolution →

Baylor University and Intelligent Design

November 18, 2007UncategorizedCreationismGreg Laden

There is a poll on the home page of “The Lariat”, Baylor’s on line newspaper. It asks if Baylor should encourage, discourage, prohibit, or support Intelligent Design. The Creationists are winning by a landslide.The poll is here just in case you are interested in voting.[hat tip Pharyngula]Oh, and by the way … I went over to Pharyngula to see what PZ’s readers were saying about the poll, and I get the impression that many of them are voting to Encourage the research. Holy crap, I thought they were a smarter lot. I’m sure the readers of my blog will know what to do. Right?

Blame, Jail, and Torture The Victim

November 17, 2007UncategorizedPoliticsGreg Laden

This is the kind of story that makes it difficult to remain culturally relativistic. it also makes it hard to look at women who are in purdah walking around in a “free” country like the US and not, in part blame them for compliance.A woman was gang raped in Saudi Arabia. Fourteen times. Seven men are now in jail, convicted of rape and serving sentences up to five years. In Saudi Arabia, I think five years is a lot for violently raping a woman.The woman who was raped, however, was sentenced to be tortured for being in the car of a “strange man.”In this case, the torture would involve 90 lashes. She appealed. The court, because of her appeal, changed the sentence from 90 lashes to 200 lashes. The courts punished the girl because she, allegedly, tried to “aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.” The victim’s lawyer was also punished.Obviously, the Saudis, their government, and their society, are totally fucked. That is my considered anthropological opinion of the matter.But don’t worry. If anything bad threatens Saudi Arabia, the United States is there to protect them with the full strength of our military.

Get Your Own Genome Sequenced

November 17, 2007UncategorizedGeneticsGreg Laden

Today, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their consumer genotyping service, deCODEme. deCODEme is the first personal genomics company to launch, and will provide sequencing information about 1 million SNPs for the introductory price of $985. The service has two components:[source]

From deCODEme (Man, I’m siCK of these miXEDcase companynames.):

“Through your subscription to deCODEme, you can learn what your DNA says about your ancestry, your body -traits such as hair and eye color- as well as whether you may have genetic variants that have been associated with higher or lower than average risk of a range of common diseases. This information will be continually updated as new discoveries are made.”

Cool. They’ll tell you what color eyes you have and everything.See the decode.com webcast. They are very professional looking, I must say. But I could only get through the first two minutes, so don’t take my word for it.

IPCC Summary of Fourth Report

November 17, 2007UncategorizedClimate and weather, Climate Change, Global WarmingGreg Laden

A few tidbits — just to give a flavor — from the Summary for Policymakers, which is available here. (Good luck downloading this file! You may want to wait until everyone is asleep…) Continue reading IPCC Summary of Fourth Report →

Bees Teach Techies a Trick or Two

November 17, 2007UncategorizedTechnologyGreg Laden

You all know about the honey bee waggle dance. A bee finds some nectar, returns to the hive, does a dance that communicates information about where the nectar can be found to other bees, and off the workers go to get the nectar.Techies at Georgia Tech have applied this method to developing a better way to run servers. Continue reading Bees Teach Techies a Trick or Two →

For the kids: Narrow Income Gap

November 17, 2007UncategorizedRace and RacismGreg Laden

According to research just out from the University of Nottingham, lowering the differential between high and low incomes can have a more positive effect on child wellbeing than simply growing the economy in countries that are already wealthy. Continue reading For the kids: Narrow Income Gap →

What’s the 411 on Goog 411?

November 17, 2007UncategorizedTechnologyGreg Laden

[hat tip: Joe]

IPCC Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change

November 17, 2007UncategorizedClimate Change, Global WarmingGreg Laden

This report covers six topics:

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends
Mitigation in the short and medium term, across different economic sectors (until 2030)
Mitigation in the long-term (beyond 2030)
Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change
Sustainable development and climate change mitigation
Gaps in knowledge.

This link will eventually get you to the PDF file of the summary for policy makers.The full report is here.

IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

November 17, 2007UncategorizedUncategorizedGreg Laden

A report accepted by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental on Climate Change but not approved in detailSummary of main findings Continue reading IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability →

IPCC Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis

November 17, 2007UncategorizedClimate Change, Global WarmingGreg Laden

The following is quoted from the Working Group I report Continue reading IPCC Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis →

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is here

November 17, 2007UncategorizedClimate Change, Global WarmingGreg Laden

Actually, here.There are three parts from three working groups. “The Physical Science Basis,” Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” and “Mitigation of Climate Change.”I shall presently post excerpts summarizing the reports.

Dan Egerstad, the “Hack of 07” Hacker Arrested

November 17, 2007UncategorizedUncategorizedGreg Laden

The way he did it was simple.

There is a piece of software that acts, more or less, as a “caller ID blocker” that can be put on a node on the internet, including on your own computer.

This software, called “TOR” was developed by the Navy on the premise that “loose lips sink ships.” They wanted Naval personnel to be able to use email and otherwise access the internat without spies using this “traffic” info to infer global naval operations. But then one day it dawned on the Navy that TOR left a signature. Thus, anyone could tell that a TOR-marked communication was always a Navy-connected communication.
Continue reading Dan Egerstad, the “Hack of 07” Hacker Arrested →

Dan Egerstad, the”Hack of 07″Hacker Arrested

November 17, 2007UncategorizedUncategorizedGreg Laden

Last August, Dan Egerstad, of Sweden, hacked his way into secret email accounts of government embassies, various NGOs and corporations. It was easy, partly because it was not a secure network. He then posted a very large number of email user names and passwords.The way he did it was simple.There is a piece of software that acts, more or less, as a “caller ID blocker” that can be put on a node on the internet, including on your own computer.This software, called “TOR” was developed by the Navy on the premise that “loose lips sink ships.” They wanted Naval personnel to be able to use email and otherwise access the internat without spies using this “traffic” info to infer global naval operations. But then one day it dawned on the Navy that TOR left a signature. Thus, anyone could tell that a TOR-marked communication was always a Navy-connected communication. Continue reading Dan Egerstad, the”Hack of 07″Hacker Arrested →

Santa’s War on Science

November 17, 2007OtherUncategorizedGreg Laden

Corpus Collosum shows us this graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Science.”And asks “What could it possibly mean?”What it means is this: The following is a graph of search frequency on Google for the word “Santa.”The graphs are from Google Trends. Just in case it is not utterly obvious, the steep annual dip in science is exactly correlated with the Santa Spike.What is not entirely evident is why are there two Santa Spikes per year? The larger one in December makes sense, but this later one in Feb/March does not. Unless you know that this is the time each year of the Santa Barbara Athletic Round table. … Ah, THAT Santa…