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Michael Mann … the Hockey Stick guy … speaks to the deniers

… Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues …

It’s hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called “hockey stick” — work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years — as “fraudulent,” and claiming that it “it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program.”

These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.

Nice.

There is a lot more where that came from. Read it here.

I also recommend the commentary on Class M (and a hat tip)

Even Better than a Halloween Costume: Life Size Cutouts!

i-5416f37bac4a14e72a0f7ce2d58a80fa-Justin_Beiber.jpgI went to graduate school to study Anthropology, so naturally, there was very little funding. Some semesters, I paid the bills working as an administrative assistant for one Harvard Muckimuck or another, often at the Kennedy School of Government, but for a while, at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. There, I was the assistant to the director, a man named Marvin Kalb. There is a chance you’ve heard of him as well as his brother, Bernard. Kalb was the Shorenstein Center’s original director and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy. His brother Bernard is a journalist as well.

Working for Kalb was a blast.
Continue reading Even Better than a Halloween Costume: Life Size Cutouts!

Nobel Prize for Physics: Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess

“In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role. …

“The two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected — this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. … For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

“The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma — perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.”

— the academy

Software Needed: WordPress Linked Comments Plugin

Threaded comments have advantages but they also have disadvantages. I won’t mention the disadvantages because if you don’t know what they are already than they aren’t disadvantages to you. The advantages are: 1) You can keep track of a sub-conversation in a comments stream; 2) You can refer to a specific upstream comment easily (which in non-threaded contexts often uses a reference to a comment number, which has the disadvanage of not being fixed if old moderated comments are inserted prior to the numbered comment); and 3) at least in some cases, you can subscribe to a specific comment (like on you just made) to see only responses to it and not to the entire comment stream.

It seems to me that we can have our cake and eat it too.

What is needed is a convention by which a comment can be linked to a prior comment. So, when you are making the comment. This can be done in several ways, including:

1) You hit “reply to comment” on the comment to which you are replying, and you make your comment. However, visually, your comment will not be threaded under that comment … it will just go at the end of the comment stream as the most recent comment. However, it will have a header that indicates what comment it refers to and you can click that to go right back to it.

2) You simply use a particular bit of text using as standard format referring to the number of a numbered comment. Like [123] for comment 123. Later, if the comments are renumbered that reference gets changed appropriately (or changed to a [comment removed] if it is removed. This code also supplies the data for the linked comment navigation referred to already in 1) above.

3) Some kind of menu that lets you access a list of prior comments.

This would prompt a comment navigation system which would have the following features:

1) User can fold the comments into threaded form or unfold them into sequential form;

2) User can find a link to the next sub comment at the bottom of any comment to which a referal was made, and follow through all the threads this way, using a simple visual navigation system;

3) Since this will get confusing no matter what, the user can mark a comment “read” and thus, later on, look at the comments that are not read in any of the available layouts; and

4) The user can see a visual tree of all comments with the usual annoying ballons popping up out of nodes on the tree.

OK, WordPress coders, let’s see what you can do!

See more Needed Software here.

Florida eases penalties for teen sexting

Before Saturday, a Florida teenager who sent or received nude photos or video could have been charged with a felony and forced to register as a sex offender.

But they fixed it. Now you get community service and a fine, but if you keep getting caught, you eventually get charged with a felony.

In related news, it turns out that a main cause of sexting is “peer pressure.”

Both young men and women experience peer pressure to share sexual images via the new phenomenon of ‘sexting’, preliminary findings from a University of Melbourne study has found.

‘Sexting’ is the practice of sending and receiving sexual images on a mobile phone.

The study is one of the first academic investigations into ‘sexting’ from a young person’s perspective in Australia. The findings were presented to the 2011 Australasian Sexual Health Conference in Canberra

More here

I need your help to CRUSH all the other bloggers!!!!

Remember last summer’s tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region, with a high poverty rate and where the schools are struggling against all odds. One of the schools in North Minneapolis that needs your help is one of the schools damaged by that tornado. So they got a double hit. I’ve hand selected all of the schools based on my interaction with local and regional schools, with a focus on supporting doable project related mainly to science or math. In addition, DonorsChoose carefully inspects budgets and proposals to make sure they are reasonable.

Please Visit My Donors Choose Donation Page!

More information is also available here. Thank you very much.

2011 Nobel Prize for Medicine: Beutler, Hoffmann, Steinman for work on the Immune System

i-37d58446840f6aec692e3a9bf6cd5c28-Nobel_Prize-thumb-300x300-69628.jpgThe prize went to Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann, and Ralph Steinman for their work on the immune system.

Beutler and Hoffmann’s work enhanced our understanding of the activation of innate immunity in humans. In other words, the link between cytokine and swelling and related issues. Among other things, this work resulted in the development of Etanercept, a treatment for Psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn’s disease.

Steinman discovered dendritic cells and the role they play in adaptive immunity. These are part of the mammalian immune system. They mediate between antigens (molecular clues carried by invading or unwanted objects such as bacteria) and other immune system cells. Among other things, this is part of the process that ultimately causes your lymph nodes to swell up.

So the whole Nobel Thing this year as all about swelling up!

I need your help to CRUSH all the other bloggers!!!!

The competition is fierce. This isn’t only Free Thought Blogs vs. other blogging networks. This is also blogger against blogger. I need you to visit my donation page and GIVE MONEY TO WORTHY SCHOOLS.

Remember last summer’s tornado in North Minneapolis? North is one of the more challenged neighborhoods in the region, with a high poverty rate and where the schools are struggling against all odds. One of the schools in North Minneapolis that needs your help is one of the schools damaged by that tornado. So they got a double hit. I’ve hand selected all of the schools based on my interaction with local and regional schools, with a focus on supporting doable project related mainly to science or math. In addition, DonorsChoose carefully inspects budgets and proposals to make sure they are reasonable.

Please visit my donations page and give a few bucks to one of these schools. Or more than one. The X Blog is already behind some of the other blogs in donations! Get in there and show them we aren’t going to be left behind!!!!

Thank you very much. Please pass this on to rich people you may know.

The Three Best Halloween Costumes

With a science connection. OK, I admit not much of a science connection, but really, it’s hard to find them.

i-a2fc49baaf989cf8c2687d5a15fda273-man_in_ape_suit_halloween_costume-thumb-300x616-69617.jpgI’m trying to cover all the bases here, so I’ve got a suggestion for an adult, a child, and a dog.

For the adult, the obvious choice is this “Man in a Cage” costume, wherein a gorilla holds you in a cage. I’m not sure how much you have to pay the gorilla or if there are other options such as, maybe, an orang-utan. I’m sure this can easily be adapted to be a “Woman is a Cage” as you wish.

It is called the Man in a Gorilla Cage Costume and is available in fine costume stores on the east and west coast but probably not in the middle.

For the dog, the obvious choice is the Animal Planet Raptor Dog Costume. This will probably cause the other dogs to totally freak out. And cats. The cats will totally freak out. Or, even better, put this costume on your cat and see if the dog freaks out!

i-4442d9b76d03bc8ec2993f18a3327e3c-dog_halloween_costume.jpg

i-1f5b04bddca2b287b8a3660b6fbefaa0-infant_halloween_costume-thumb-300x281-69620.jpgAnd for the little one, this frog costume should do the trick. It is called the Little Frog Infant Costume, but really, it should be called the Little Infant Frog costume because as far as I can tell it is a costume of a frog to be worn by the little infant. But perhaps I’ve got that wrong.

For intermediate age children, you don’t need a costume. Do what I did when I was a kid, ever year and year after year: Get a cork and burn it. Let it cool down. Get your dad’s oldest and most beat up jacket. Smear the black stuff all over your face to make you look like you have been out in the woods too long and haven’t shaved, and wear the coat. If some wise-ass adult asks you what you’re supposed to be, you say “Your worst nightmare. Just give me the damn candy!” and you’ll be fine.

This Sandwich has a Subtext

I like to go into Subway and order a BLT.

“What would you like, sir?”

“A BLT on Italian.”

“Would you like bacon on that, sir?”

“Yes. This is a BLT.”

“What kind of cheese?”

“No cheese. Just a BLT.”

“Toasted?” (Read: “Cooked?”)

“Ah…yes, actually, that would be good.”

Wait for a minute while the BLT is “toasting” in the preternatural Subway oven.

“Lettuce?”

“Yes. B-L-T.”

“Anything else on it?”

“Ah, yes. This is a BLT, so tomato would be good. BLT.”

“Anything else on it?”

“No, just mayo. That’s all.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“BLT.”

Continue reading This Sandwich has a Subtext