A recent TED talk
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYwAMccbhYs&w=425&h=269]

Continue reading Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence →

UNCLAS SARAJEVO 001879

SIPDIS

COMMERCE FOR 4232/ITA/MAC/EUR (BURGESS AND SAVICH)
DEPARTMENT PLEASE PASS TO USTR (MORROW, YANG)
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SCE, EEB/IPE, EUR/PPD (HANNAN),
EUR/PPD-PA,IIP/S
TREASURY FOR LINDQUIST
COMMERCE PLEASE PASS TO MCCAFFREY AND SMITH AT USPTO
JUSTICE FOR CARL ALEXANDRE
MOSCOW FOR REGIONAL IPR ATTACHE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ECIN KIPR BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA: MICROSOFT AND PM SPIRIC SIGN STRATEGIC
PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

REF: SARAJEVO 1351

¶1. On December 18, the BiH Council of Ministers and Microsoft finally signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement for access to legal Microsoft applications for all state-level government ministries. Prime Minister Nikola Spiric signed
the agreement on behalf of the BiH Government. The agreement
obligates the BiH Government to use licensed software, but is
only the first step in strengthening the state government’s
intellectual property regime. Microsoft will now begin
negotiations with BiH to purchase licenses for the software
applications under the state’s purview. This marks a huge success for the U.S. Embassy, which has been working with state-level officials for three years to push for action to ban pirated and unlicensed software from ministry offices.
(Note: Federation and RS-entity governments signed separate
strategic partnership agreements with Microsoft in 2006. End
note.)
ENGLISH

A few essays. You are not alone. These are previously posted items, just follow the links to read them in their entirety.
Continue reading In support of biology teachers … →

This is the claim being made:

Oh, I can’t believe she’s never going camping again because she saw an alligator! Personally, I like running across this sort of animal.

I hope there is an actual scientific investigation of this. I’d love to know if this creature could possibly have wintered over. This is a rather large beast to haven not been in the wild for about a year, though I suppose it is possible that someone fed it up in their basement.

Here are a few books that those in the education biz should have on hand. If you are a parent with a kid in school, consider giving a copy of one or more of these books to your school’s life science teacher and a key administrator or two.

Continue reading Back to school: Books for teachers and administrators →

A few suggestions for books you can use at home to enhance, prepare for or catch up with various topics.

Great Physics Book: Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette.
Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather
Home Chemistry: A New Guide for Hobbyists and Home Schoolers

You have to tell your child’s life science teacher (or, any science teacher for that matter) that your family does not support creationism, does not want to see anyone “teaching the controversy” and that you know that “Intelligent Design” is a form of creationism. I promise you, the creationist parents of your child’s peers, and some of the creationist kids in the classroom, are not keeping their mouths shut. Why should you?

So, pursuant to this, I have composed a template for you to use as an email or letter to send to your child or ward’s life science teacher:
Continue reading Back To School: Your Letter to you Child’s Life Science Teacher →

Two videos from the NCSE …
Continue reading Back to school special: Teaching Evolution →

Recommended reading

… Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group. This can occur in societies ranging from the communist regime of Soviet Russia to the capitalist free market of modern day England. Given this commonality, perhaps the collective violence of a riot can be best understood as a biological event in which evolved cognitive responses encounter a unique environmental threat. And if that is the case, do individuals caught up in such incidents have any choice in the matter? …

Read the entire essay by Eric Michael Johnson here.

Was Michele Bachmann’s campaign sabotaged as part of an insidious plot? Maybe.

Should 9/11 really be represented in a child’s coloring book with racist overtones? I’m thinking not.

Has Fox News finally become an honest and reliable source? Ah … well, no, apparently.

A small “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” means that there is not enough real information (signal) compared to the background noise to make a definitive statement about something. With a sufficiently high Signal-to-Noise Ratio, it is possible to make statistically valid statements about some measure or observation. This applies to a lot of day to day decisions you make in life.

Climate change denialists understand this principle and they use it to try to fool people into thinking that “the jury is still out” on Global Warming, or that scientists are making up their data, and so on. Here, I want to explain very clearly what a Signal-to-Noise Ratio is and now it works in a totally understandable way; What this means for understanding Global Climate Change (in particular, warming); and to point you to an excellent paper (“Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Timescale”) about to be published by Ben Santer and several other authors. Sander’s paper effectively puts an end to Climate Change denialists misuse of data which has come to be known as “cherry picking” but that I prefer to call “dishonesty.”
Continue reading Global Warming: Separating the noise from the signal →

As you know, I’ve started a bit of blogging at The X Blog. Please check out my latest post …

Evolution is real. Creationism is not. Why are emails from creationists often published in respectable newspapers? There is a reason, and I’ll tell you what it is below. (Preview: It is your fault.)…

Read More