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Monthly Archives: February 2010
Sbling Razib and Yudkowsky do bloggingheads.tv
The baby’s sleeping right next to me right now, so I can’t watch this, but I’m looking forward to it:
Continue reading Sbling Razib and Yudkowsky do bloggingheads.tv
Sports and Politics
Why the bad guys are always bad shots….
…. because they always shoot first! And it turns out that reaction is faster than action, so the Marshall can shoot the Varmint Bad Guy, and the Sar Wars Storm Troopers didn’t have a chance.
[Niels] Bohr was seemingly unhappy with the Tinseltown explanation that the good guy, who never shoots first, always wins. Legend has it that he procured two toy pistols and enlisted the aid of fellow physicist George Gamow. In a series of duels, Bohr never drew first but won every time. The physicist suggested that the brain responded to danger faster than it carried out a deliberate intention.
The truth untold
There is a certain religion in which a man utters the same prayer every morning on waking. He says “Thank you god, that I was not born a woman.”
That sounds really bad. But then you read this and it all makes sense: What pregnant women won’t tell you. Ever.
Autism, Narcotics and Lost Language
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: No USD Faxes!!!
Be aware: The USPTO will no longer accept USD (up-side-down) faxes. You are now informed.
What happens when you take away our blogs
… things can get a little tense …
Continue reading What happens when you take away our blogs
LHC schedule change
The world’s highest energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. Officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, had previously planned to run the gargantuan accelerator at 70% of maximum energy this year.
The change raises hopes at the LHC’s lower-energy rival, the Tevatron Collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, of being extended through 2012 instead of being shut down next year.
Ginger Cats Do Have Souls
Will it ever end?
Stellarium is an excellent planetarium for your computer
Stellarium is a realistic looking, feature rich OpenSource planetarium. The default catalog has over one half million stars, but you can get an extended catalog with over 200 million stars. All the usual information you expect in a planetarium is available. For the most part, navigation of the image can be done easily with a mouse or using the keyboard. The software takes over the GUI (like some games do). It can project (via a projector, I assume) for use in an actual planetarium or be used on your computer screen. You can get plugins for artificial satellite tracks and to interface with your telescope (or at least, work with your telescope).
What would Jesus do? Pass or run?
The real conversion is the one that happens under your eyes…
Continue reading What would Jesus do? Pass or run?
Saints Unapologetic about Unusual Hurt the QB Strategy: “I don’t care about no fines, I’m gonna hit him” says big scary guy.
In a recent post, I earned the ire of many poorly informed denialist football fans when I noted an obvious fact: The strategy used by the New Orleans Saints to win the playoff game with the much more deserving Minnesota Vikings, which involved trying as hard as possible to knock the Quarterback out of the game, was unethical, unusual, and intentional. Despite the protestations of commenters on this blog post, numerous sports experts have joined me in this assertion.
For example, Joe Theisman: “Ive been out of the game some 25 years. So, if you take approximately 40 years of professional football, I have never seen one man take the beating that Brett Favre took yesterday.” (source)
Since that game the Saints have been overtly describing their strategy for the SuperBowl: Hurt the Quarterback and knock him out of the game. They make no apologies for this strategy, even to the extent that one of the Saints defensive backs has openly declared that he does not care if his actions earn him a fine.
See for yourself:
Must reads
Somebody is making fun of everybody: Things I Have Learned From Blogging at Science Blogs, Part I
Bad news: Why the denial camp is winning (and we’re all losing) the climate wars
But then again: Rush Limbaugh: How the existence of god disproves climate change
American Missionaries Acting Badly?
Ten American missionaries are charged in Haiti with child kidnapping and conspiracy. There are no accurate details of what happened, but it appears that the missionaries may have been trying to bring 30 or more kinds into some American based adoption system in a manner that was not in accord with Haitian law.
Until further details are available, you might as well read up on missionaries.