Break down the oil slick, keep it off the shores: that’s grounds for pumping toxic dispersant into the Gulf, say clean-up overseers. Susan Shaw shows evidence it’s sparing some beaches only at devastating cost to the health of the deep sea.
Continue reading Susan Shaw: The oil spill’s toxic trade-off
I’ve significantly expanded the search domain (or is that range?) of the Evolution … not just a theory anymore Skeptical Search Engine. Click here to give it a try. Look up stuff like “ghost” and “vaccine” and “fluoride” and see what you get. Let me know if you think I’m missing any important sites.
Can you imagine Stephen Jay Gould recast as a tall and lanky Jesuit priest who has an interest in evolution? Can you imagine someone actually attempting the famous experiment of getting a large number of chimpanzees at keyboards to see if you can get any Shakespeare? Eventually? (The experiment is enhanced with the use of carefully dispensed M&M’s.) Did you ever wonder, if a chimpanzee did make the switch to human levels of intelligence (by training, drugs, surgery, whatever) what kind of scotch if would prefer?
Continue reading Evolutionary Biology Geeks: Three must read books for you!
Or, more accurately, it is the rubber-meets the road part of the broader abuse known as religion.
Continue reading Faith Healing is Child Abuse
If the restaurant was being forced closed by the city making dumb tax-related decisions and the public works department acting almost vindictively against a certain neighborhood, as was the case when JP’s closed, I’d be pissed. If it was a restaurant that was really trying to do well but failed because of the economy or because people did not appreciate it, I’d be unhappy. If it was a restaurant that served as the only anchor in a neighborhood at an uncertain tipping point, I’d be concerned. But none of those things are true.
Continue reading My favorite restaurant is closing, but I don’t seem to care.
Unless they are stopped which, frankly, does not seem very likely.
Continue reading Louisiana Parish will Legally Require Creationism in Public Schools, May Ban Evolution
What matters is if he gets an obscene exit deal which essentially rewards him for overseeing the destruction of the Gulf of Fucking Mexico, or if he is tossed out on his ear and disgraced. I don’t expect BP to do the right thing, but they will apparently do something soon.
Did you know that it is a fallacy that poor people have more babies than other people? I’ll be discussing this topic next Friday at 6PM Mountain Time on Skeptically Speaking Talk Radio, with Desiree Schell, in the next installment of “Everything You Know is Sort of Wrong” (This is part of the Falsehoods discussion.)
Speaking of fear, Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
Also, last friday’s show on The Science of Sleep with Kimberly Cote is now up in podcast form, here.
Emacs Column Editing from Mark Mansour on Vimeo.
Wanted: A Firefox plugin that automatically scrolls pre-selected web pages down a certain distance to automatically cover the ubiquitous banner ad. It could be called “curtains.”
The whole Pepsi maneno is over, and we are moving on. But I thought you’d like to see this site just because it is so unbelievably ugly. Be careful. The first time I opened this web page up on one of those old fashioned CRT monitors, the glass broke.
And that time may be now.
There is a beer (a Belgian ale to be exact) which costs over US$700 a bottle. It is 55 proof and looks like this:
Continue reading There comes a time when revolution is the only answer
There are several characteristics that make up a field guide. It should be “pocket size” (and birders have huge pockets, so this may not be as much of a restriction as it sounds). It should cover the geographical region in which you are watching the birds, although in some remote areas of the world you may not have this luxury. During my years working in Zaire, we had only a Southern African bird guide, and made due. And the book should be of the right kind and level for your needs.
The story of Bora and Sci, two bloggers you may have heard of.
OMG, bugs AND cool graphs in the same post.
And, for something quit serious: Exercise and Peripheral Artery Disease