Maggie Koerth-Baker is a Twin Cities based journalist and science editor at Boing Boing. She has bee a guest along with me on Atheist Talk Radio,and I hope to interview her early next year in relation to her forthcoming book, which I am very excited about. Meanwhile, you can see Maggie on Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour. That show will be at 6 central TODAY.
You can see Dr Kiki a number of ways. I watch her on Twit network on my Roku.
Finally we hear from the 1%:
Continue reading Occupy Main Street
Many religions claim to hold the answers to life’s big questions: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? From where do we get our morals? Some say it’s all because of God, and that leaves us atheists throwing our hands in the air.
But now Alex Rosenberg has written a book just for us. In The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, Dr. Rosenberg walks us through the science that succeeds in providing these answers without having to fall back on supernatural explanations. He celebrates scientism, embraces “nice nihilism” and takes us on a fast-paced, wild journey through the physics, chemistry and biology that explain our past, present and future. He shows how science influences our politics, ethics, and how we think about ourselves and the world around us.
Well, now’s your chance to put him on the spot!
Jim, who is famous for his book on the Physics of Superheros and more recently The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World, though I knew him originally because of his work with emergent properties in complex systems, will be Desiree Schell‘s guest on Skeptically Speaking.
Seriously, if you have not heard or seen Jim speak you have missed something very enjoyable. If you have, I know you are simply going to tune in if you hear him once you’ll be a fan. And, if you’ve not ever heard Skeptically Speaking then you are merely living life as an empty shell, so get on that, it’s easy to fix. Here are the details:
This week, we’re looking at the mindbending physics that happens on the smallest imaginable scales. We’re joined by physics professor James Kakalios, to talk about his book The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-Free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World. And on the podcast, we’ll speak to physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger, about the ways that quantum physics buzzwords are misused to support some not so scientific claims.
We record live with James Kakalios on Sunday, October 30 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, November 4.
Below the fold
Continue reading HPV Vaccine Recommended for Boys
According to this press release:
Scientists have proven that the fungus Geomyces destructans causes white-nose syndrome, a fast-spreading and highly lethal disease of bats.
Research published today (Wednesday, Oct. 26) in the journal Nature provides the first direct evidence that this fungus is responsible for a disease that is decimating bats in North America.
Research at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and other institutions, showed that 100 percent of healthy little brown bats exposed to G. destructans developed white-nose syndrome while hibernating in captivity.
The study fulfilled established criteria for proving that a microbe causes an infectious disease: A pure culture of a suspected pathogen is able to infect a host plant or animal, which then develops the clinical signs of the disease, and then the pathogen is re-isolated from the experimentally infected host species.
White-nose syndrome is a skin infection that often begins around the muzzle, but the exact mechanism of mortality is unknown.
“By identifying the causative agent of white-nose syndrome, this study provides information that is critical for developing management strategies to preserve vulnerable bat populations and the ecosystem services that they provide in the U.S. and Canada,” says study author David Blehert, a microbiologist at the Wildlife Health Center, and a honorary fellow at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison.
Wednesday, October 26 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm
The Mann Theatre Maple Grove
13644 80th Circle, Maple Grove, MN
Maple Grove, Minnesota
Come hear an Atheist and a Pastor share their thoughts on the subject of Christs death. You don’t want to miss this special event! Speakers will be August Berkshire and Pastor Martin Bownik. This is event is being sponsored by KKMS radio 980 am and The EDGE Christian Fellowship Church
I have a friend who wants to know about her birthmother and family in India, and is seriously considering going to India to check into her own background. I assume she is not the first person who was born in India, adopted by a US family and then got interested in her own past. If you have experience or knowledge in this area, could you help her? I would appreciate that.
Wrong. Of course you can. You can even link specific weather events to climate change if you are willing to adapt the way your brain works to match reality more than most people do. But the specific question of “extreme events” in relation to climate change is not only tricky, but subject to analysis, because it is all really just a matter of how numbers work, statistically. And, a current paper in PNAS manages to do a good job at linking weather and climate. The paper is here and a writeup at RealClimate is here.
Here’s a blog post discussing tooth wear and diet from Dmanisi. I haven’t written much about Dmanisi other than to note that Julia has been hanging out there (did field work this summer). Someday I will. For now, read that blog post by Lawn Chair and then consider the difference between the Australopith diet and the essential Homo erectus diet. (Those last two links go to PDF files)
Mike has some nice pictures of Cheetahs.
This is the funniest comment on the internet ever.
And yes, LeRoy Bell, my nephew, made it through the latest cut on the XFactor!
Please note, the whole “left side right side” brain thing is WRONG and we’ve known it has been WRONG for a very long time. Very. Long. Time. The reality is complex and interesting, but it is probably not what you think.
The following video on this topic is pretty good:
Continue reading Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain
Update: LeRoy Went Through To The Next Round!!!!!11!!
… assuming there is voting of some kind.
More of his music HERE