Figures.
Continue reading Recently deported Russian spy worked at Microsoft →

The world’s population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years — and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you’ll see).

Continue reading Hans Rosling on global population growth →

This could be one of the strangest stories out … well, this week. Prominent Twin Cities lawyer, Aaron Biber, has been charged with getting a 15-year old boy drunk and sexually assaulting him. I don’t know a lot more about the case than that.

In his defense, Biber claims that the 15 year old was in charge of the relationship, and as evidence of this, he has one or more photographs of the youth wearing an Adolph Hitler costume. A judge is current considering whether or not to allow the photographic evidence to be used in court.

Scant details here.

The New Yorkers … they laugh now.
Continue reading Improv Everywhere does Star Wars →

First, strange creature passes in front of BP Oil Spill Cam. Click here to help identify it. Hat TIp Mad Lolscientist.

Second, “Chupacabras in Texas?”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

See Commentary by Joshua Rosenau.

Well, at Gombe, the longest running chimp project, fifty years today!

Continue reading How much research has been done on chimps? →

Here (below the fold) is my new blog roll. If you were expecting to be there and don’t see yourself, let me know. I’m trying to keep my blog roll blog roll-like in that it includes mainly people with whom I exchange linking now and then, and especially whose who’s blog roll I’m on. I’ve deleted seemingly defunct blog as well. It is quite possible that I accidentally deleted a blog that I shouldn’t have.

Continue reading Blog Rolling UDPATED →

Today the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund released results from a statewide survey of what Texans think about the intersection of politics and religion with public schools. We released results from two questions back in May. One showed overwhelming support for putting teachers and scholars, instead of politicians on the State Board of Education, in charge of writing curriculum and textbook requirements. Another revealed that nearly 7 in 10 Texans agree that separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution.

Source: TFN

I’ve actually studied the relationship between storm activities and tree falls in a rain forest, so when I saw this, I thought it was quite interesting.
Continue reading Storms and Tree Death in the Amazon →

A regular cell phone does not do enough, and has a small screen. An iPhone or smart phone is not easy to hold as one might hold a phone, but has all sorts of functionality and an OK screen. An iPad is kind of cool, but it does not have phone capacities. And, if it did, it would be hard to hold up to one’s ear.

But, with a little tweaking ….
Continue reading The perfect cell phone →

National Center for Science Education staff will be featured at two key panels at the Netroots Nation 2010 conference in Las Vegas at the Hotel Rio. Details below the fold.
Continue reading NCSE (Including Sbling Joshua Rosenau!) at Netroots Nation →

Skeptically Speaking’s podcast on Cruelty is now available here. Next week’s show will be Adventures Among Ants, with my close personal friend Mark Moffett. You’re gonna like Mark. Details here.

… in Kruger Park. Waterbuck have a neat adaptation: Nasty tasting subcutaneous fat. It is said that lions and leopards avoid them for this reason. I assure you, however, that they do not avoid them totally. In fact, I’m not sure if it works at all. They seem to be hunted in reasonably close proportion to their numbers in the environment.

But then you have the lions all going “ick, ick … ptui … why do we kill these tings again?”

have decided not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the US to face sentencing for a case dating back to 1977.

from the BBC