Monthly Archives: August 2010
The Wonderful Wacky World of Windows
Oh sure. Like I’m going to click on THAT!
Continue reading The Wonderful Wacky World of Windows
Sex at Dawn
From Skeptically Speaking:
We talk to author Christopher Ryan about his new book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
. We’ll discuss the most recent science and theories, and how social norms compare to our biological impulses.
This Friday. Details here. I may have to read this book.
Will my congress member vote against my wife?
Or, more specifically, will my rep, Erik Paulsen, vote against the Recovery Act extension today which will fund, in part, Medicade and Education (167 mil in Minnesota)? We need this. But we don’t meed Erik that much. If he votes against it, I may have to do something about that.
Continue reading Will my congress member vote against my wife?
Drowning is not what you think it is
Untrained people (that would be YOU) often fail to recognize drowning. In this way, people often drown mere feet away from those who could rescue them. One in ten children who will drown this year will drown with their parents watching the process, not knowing what they are looking at.
Continue reading Drowning is not what you think it is
Creationist College Prof Will Not Return to Classroom
An adjunct community college professor had a bit of a problem when it came time to teach evolution, according to certain sources:
Student Bryan Jaden Walker wrote on his blog, … that the professor “glossed over the scientific explanation very quickly (less than 20 seconds), then explained Creationism for about five minutes (5,000-year-old Earth, no evolution, etc).”
…
“Evolution was not taught at all in his class,” Weis said. “When he hit that unit, instead of discussing it himself he had a single slide that had both creationism and evolution. When I spoke up and asked him about it, he claimed there was no evidence for either, but they are just different world views.”
Continue reading Creationist College Prof Will Not Return to Classroom
The next tropical cyclone may be ….
A tight little disturbance currently known as “Area 1” in the absolute middle of the Atlantic, and bering a 70 percent chance of forming a nameable feature.
If it does, it will be a “D” … so consulting the list, that would be … Danielle.
Why did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?
Georges Bank is a very large shallow area in the North Atlantic, roughly the size of a New England state, that serves as a fishing ground and whaling area (these days for watching the whales, not harpooning them) for ports in New England, New York and Eastern Canada. Eighteen thousand years ago, sea levels were globally at a very low point (with vast quantities of the Earth’s water busy being ice), and at that time George’s Bank would have been a highland region on the very edge of the North American continent, extending via a lower ridge to eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and separated by a low plain (covered in part by glaciers) to the rest of New England.1
As sea levels began rising around twelve thousand years ago, George’s bank became a narrower peninsula and eventually an island visible from the mainland. We know that people lived on this island because artifacts of early Native American groups have been dredged up here, along with the teeth of Pleistocene elephants and other items.
Continue reading Why did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?
Emacs Sunday Sermon: Making a math worksheet (LaTex)
John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean
Oceanographer John Delaney is leading the team that is building an underwater network of high-def cameras and sensors that will turn our ocean into a global interactive lab — sparking an explosion of rich data about the world below.
Continue reading John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean
“Conversion, Deconversion and Religious Indoctrination” Atheists Talk #78, Sunday August 8, 2010
Conversion is the process through which a person’s orientation on reliigion changes. How do people turn from and to new religious groups, ways of life, systems of belief and modes of relating to a deity or a the nature of reality. Dr. Grant Steves will be with me in the studio to discuss faith, conversion and deconversion with a dollop of religious indoctrination.
Dr. Grant Steves is a member of the Minnesota Atheists. He has a doctorate in Theology, and is an atheist. Mike Haubrich is a director on the board of the Minnesota Atheists, a former Catholic and deconverted evangelical Christian.
“Atheists Talk” is produced by The Minnesota Atheists. August Berkshire is the director and Mike Haubrich is the host for today’s show.
Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists
Podcast and live streaming details here.
Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours
Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.
Continue reading Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours
Google Waves Goodbye to Wave
On Thursday, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Operations, blogged on the official Google Blog (which, funnily enough, is just some blogspot blog, but whatever) that Google would no longer be developing Google Wave. Key elements of the technology are OpenSource so they may continue to be used and developed but Google itself is phasing out the project.
Wanted
Wanted: A bash command that undoes the previous bash command. The name of the command shall be “oops.” It will be written in an object oriented programming language.
See the whole “WANTED” list here.