For the first time in ages, the sale of new PCs with Windows as a percentage of the PC market is declining sharply. The new winner is the Mac, but, while no one does a good job of tracking the still-new, pre-installed Linux desktop market, it’s also clear that Linux is finally making impressive inroads into Windows’ once unchallenged market share.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Evolution does have a direction after all
.. according to a forthcoming article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, this paper argues for a trend in increasing morphological complexity, observed in several different parallel lineages of Crustacea. Continue reading Evolution does have a direction after all
Carnival Stuff
I and the Bird # 71 is here. I am covering both Gene Genie and Berr Go Round, so please send me your gene and plant submissions over the next couple of days!
“I can see!!!!”says space robot
New Robot Gets Eyes, Tools in Spacewalk from PhysOrg.com
(AP) — Now that the space station’s new robot is fully assembled, astronauts prepared to attach the giant machine directly to the orbiting outpost for the first time on Tuesday.[…]
Myers and Dawkins Speak Out on Expelled Expulsion
This little video, very nicely done, should be shown in all social studies classes in America, discussed at length, and it should be on the exam. From now on.Source: Richarddawkins.netLord Privy Seals All The Way Down … arf arf.See also:PZ Myers Expelled, Gains SainthoodExpelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup
UPDATE on Expelled-Gate
More links have been added to the ever growing sampling of commentary on the Myers-Dawkins Expelled-Gate Event.As e we move ever closer to the self destruction of the Intelligent Design Movement, I note that the Expelled Gate Even now is now competing for space in the Wikipedia Entry on Irony (but some help may be needed … there seems to be some creationists there erasing themselves whenever the evolutionists add them in).
Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup
There once was a librarian who was an absolute horror, a bitch, a true shit of a person. Her name was Nancy. No one liked her, she liked no one else. Her employees suffered greatly, and the only people who could work with her for more than a few months were Morris and Igor (assumed names) because they were like her. One day an employee who was receiving chemotherapy once a week informed Nancy that she had to start taking chemo twice a week. Nancy fired her on the spot. That was what it was like every day working for her, but because she kept the library running very nicely, her superiors would not listen to the employees or anyone else, and she kept her stranglehold on that library and her stranglehold on the people who worked there for years and years and years.Then one day she accidentally called her boss’s wife a bitch while he was in ear shot. Ooops. She was gone by the end of the week. There was dancing in the street. Dancing. Seriously.Once there was a guy named Ben Stein, who made a movie… Continue reading Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup
Chocolate Rain
And the winner for best music video: “Chocolate Rain.” Tay Zonday morphed from an unknown musician to an Internet superstar who got booked on national TV shows after his song “Chocolate Rain” – an amateur clip of his baritone crooning – went viral last year. Now he’s among the 12 winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards, recognizing the top user-created videos of 2007.[source]
Genie Scott Scores Another PhD
Genie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education and author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, from the University of New Mexico.This will be her sixth honorary degree. Had she known that she would have been bestowed all of these doctorates, would she have bothered with the first, hard earned PhD????(Probably)Congratulations Genie!Details here.
Opposition to Antievolution Bills in Florida
From the National Center for Science Education
The antievolution bills recently introduced in the Florida legislature continue to elicit opposition. The bills closely resemble a string of similar bills in Alabama — HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006 — as well as a model bill that the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of “intelligent design” creationism, recently began to promote. Asked by the Miami Herald (March 13, 2008) whether “intelligent design” constituted “scientific information” in the sense of the bill, a representative of the Discovery Institute equivocated, saying, “In my personal opinion, I think it does. But the intent of this bill is not to settle that question,” and adding, unhelpfully, “The intent of this bill is … it protects the ‘teaching of scientific information.'”
…. Continue reading Opposition to Antievolution Bills in Florida
Robots Advance in Cognitive Domain
New breed of cognitive robot… a puppy? from PhysOrg.com
Designers of artificial cognitive systems have tended to adopt one of two approaches to building robots that can think for themselves: classical rule-based artificial intelligence or artificial neural networks. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and combining the two offers the best of both worlds, say a team of European researchers who have developed a new breed of cognitive, learning robot that goes beyond the state of the art.[…]
pre-Columbian use of rafts to transport goods
Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering….[This] supports earlier evidence documented by Hosler that the two great centers of pre-European civilization in the Americas–the Andes region and Mesoamerica–had been in contact with each other and had longstanding trading relationships. That conclusion was based on an analysis of very similar metalworking technology used in the two regions for items such as silver and copper tiaras, bands, bells and tweezers, as well as evidence of trade in highly prized spondylus-shell beads.
See the press release here. Continue reading pre-Columbian use of rafts to transport goods
This Blog Endorses Ashwin Madia for US Congress
The Third Congressional District from Minnesota, in which I live, has been a Republican seat since the districts around the Twin Cities were Jerrymandered some time ago. The Republican incumbent in this district is retiring this year, and there is a reasonable chance of flipping the district to a Democrat. Ashwin Madia is moving quickly towards attaining the DFL (That’s Minnesotan for ‘Democratic’) endorsement. (I caucuses for him in the Senate Distract convention a couple of weeks ago). He’s an excellent candidate, and will make an excellent member of congress. If you are a voter in the Third District, please consider supporting him this November.Visit Madia’s web site and have a look.
Expelled The Sequel
Many more comments and posts on Expelled, the Sequel.On Richard Dawkins NetPZ Myers gets ExpelledOn Talk Origins. I think in the end, the movie Expelled will have less written about it than The Day They Expelled PZ.And, getchyer LOL PZ and Dawkins Pic’s here!Partial Loss of Face Recognition may be Associated with the ID(C) Locus: A Case Study
Carnival Business: Boneyard
Please note that the Boneyard Web Carnival is looking for submissions RIGHT NOW. HURRY!CLICK HERE