Chris Willett is leaving the discussion about “elevatorgate” or so he says here. I am certain, though, that he is not. Nobody writes a letter like that then really walks away. And as far as I’m concerned he’s more than welcome to stay in the discussion, not that I have any say in who remains in the discussion and who does not.
This happened around midnight or 12:30 in Aurora, Colorado, which is near Denver. There is someone in custody. The mall theater was showing “The Dark Knight Rises.” The shooter fired from the front of the theater, shooting into the audience, after releasing a canister of some sort of gas.
10 people died at the theater, including some very young kids; four died at the hospital; 10 or so are being treated at the hospital; presumably the others said to be injured were treated at the scene. Some are being treated for chemical exposure.
The FBI has claimed that this does not appear to be terrorism. Yeah, I know, I’m heading for the dictionary just now.
Most of the injuries are not gunshot wounds, but from “shrapnel” caused by gunshot wounds, according to an Aurora police spokesperson. That makes sense. We wouldn’t want to blame guns for anything they didn’t actually do.
The police are looking everywhere for explosives: the theater, the parking lot where the gunman was arrested, and the gunman’s apartment.
“Microsoft has apologized and promised to rectify the fact that one of its developers slipped a sexist phrase into Linux kernel code supporting Microsoft’s HyperV virtualization environment. In that code, the magic constant passed through to the hypervisor reads ‘0xB16B00B5,’ or a slightly camouflaged ‘BIG BOOBS.’ After Linux developer/blogger Matthew Garrett criticized Microsoft for the stunt, the predictable debate over sexism in the technology world ensued. Microsoft issued a statement to Network World apologizing and added, ‘We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel.'”
Now, my question is this. What was really being said? Because I think there are two possible interpretations here. 0xB16B00B5 could be parsed as BIG BOOB S for Big Boob Steve Ballmer, or it could refer to the female body parts.
Climate gate involved the criminal theft of computer based data from University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers by global warming deniers. According to Julian Gregory ,Detective chief superintendent, “the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack” and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with UEA was involved in the crime.” However, the criminal perpetrator, we assume a member of the global warming denialist community, was not discovered and the statute of limitations for this particular criminal act runs out in November. Thus, the investigation closed Wednesday.
The world’s oldest functioning bra has been discovered. Details are here at the Smithsonian. The same thing happened to me once: I discovered a secret panel in the big-old house I was living in, and there was a crawl space. In it I found WW I era discharge papers from the Italian Army and a whalebone corset from the same time period. This new bra, though, is much older. It is from the 15th century. I’m surprised that people didn’t think that the bra was that old.
George Zimmerman has made the claim that it was “God’s Plan” for him to kill Travyon Martin last March in Florida, and that he would do the same thing again had the incident been replayed. He said this in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Hmmm…I wonder if that paragraph should have come with two or three trigger warnings…
Chick-Fil-A, which I don’t know what it is, gave millions to anti-gay groups. So, stop buying the clothing they produce. Or is it chickens? Whatever, stop buying them.
Science Debate is an organization that has been trying to get the presidential candidates to directly address important science policy issues. After several months of meeting and convening and conversing among top science organizations and seeking public input, Science Debate Dot Org has nailed down what questions they feel should be asked at a presidential debate. Without further ado, here is the press release from that organization just as it came to me moments ago:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—JULY 19, 2011
Organizations List Top Science & Environmental Questions Obama, Romney Should Tackle
Fifteen of the top U.S. science and engineering organizations today released a list of the most important science policy questions that presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Mitt Romney should be debating on the campaign trail. The group, organized by the non-profit grassroots science advocacy organization ScienceDebate.org, says that because science now affects every aspect of modern life, presidential candidates should develop and release their science positions earlier in a campaign.
The participating organizations include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geosciences Institute, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, The American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, The American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society of Chemical Engineering, the Council on Competitiveness, the US Institute of Electricians and Electronics Engineers, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, ScienceDebate.org, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. ScienceDebate.org’s media partner for the project is Scientific American magazine.
“This should be a no-brainer at this point,” said Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO of ScienceDebate.org and author of the book Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. http://bit.ly/fool2 “Candidates debate the economy even though they are not economists, foreign policy even though they’re not diplomats or generals, and faith and values even though they are not priests or pastors. They should also be debating the big science questions that have equal or greater impact on voters’ lives.”
The list includes questions about innovation and the economy, climate change, energy, improving science education, protecting food and fresh water, requiring vaccinations, managing the Internet, competing in research, preventing pandemics, improving ocean health, exploring space, securing rare natural resources, and improving scientific integrity in the federal government. It is available online at http://www.sciencedebate.org/questions.html
The group said the fourteen questions are the most important science questions the candidates and voters should consider in the 2012 election cycle.
ScienceDebate.org asked thousands of scientists, engineers and other supporters to submit questions online for a possible science debate to be held among the leading candidates. The group then recruited the science and engineering organizations to help refine the questions and shape them into a fair and nonpartisan list.
Otto said the most impressive thing about the list is the universal consensus. “The fact that these diverse science and engineering organizations came to a universal consensus shows just how important they feel it is that Americans – and the candidates for president – pay attention to these critical problems,” said Otto.
Otto said the group has asked the Obama and Romney campaigns the address the questions by mid August.
John Abraham is a friend of mine who works in climate science. Pretty soon you’ll get to hear him and some other doods talking about climate change, in a special edition of Skeptically Speaking. Meanwhile, you can read an excellent, just posted interview at FutureDude magazine, where some dood interviewed my dood-man John.
This one is a little different. It was an air to air missile, and five guys were thrilled to stand underneath it when it went off several thousand feed above them:
I just got a copy of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction. I read one review of it a while back which was quite positive, suggesting that the book was both really useful and really not boring. Here’s the description from the publisher:
You’ve experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer—now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line.
The Linux Command Line by William Shotts. No Starch Press. Image from the publisher. The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash, the most popular Linux shell. Along the way you’ll learn the timeless skills handed down by generations of gray-bearded, mouse-shunning gurus: file navigation, environment configuration, command chaining, pattern matching with regular expressions, and more.
In addition to that practical knowledge, author William Shotts reveals the philosophy behind these tools and the rich heritage that your desktop Linux machine has inherited from Unix supercomputers of yore.
As you make your way through the book’s short, easily-digestible chapters, you’ll learn how to:
Create and delete files, directories, and symlinks
Administer your system, including networking, package installation, and process management
Use standard input and output, redirection, and pipelines
Edit files with Vi, the world’s most popular text editor
Write shell scripts to automate common or boring tasks
Slice and dice text files with cut, paste, grep, patch, and sed
Once you overcome your initial “shell shock,” you’ll find that the command line is a natural and expressive way to communicate with your computer. Just don’t be surprised if your mouse starts to gather dust.
I will be reporting back on this later, but it looks good so far.
The Olympics are old. The first ancient Greek Olympic game may have been held in 776 BC in the Greek city of Olympia. Almost 1,200 years later, when Greece was being Christianized, Theodosius I decided that the Olympics would not be played any more, so the last games of the original series was probably in 394 AD. These games had their own origin myth, and according to that myth, the first event was a race between two gods.
Apparently, the first actual (as in non-mythical) game was a race among women to decide who would be the Priestess for the goddess Hera. Later, a race was added for men to see who would become the consort for the local priestess. So, the earliest Olympics included foot races and the prize was sometimes one’s role in a sexual liaison. This, I assume, is where the phrase “racy” comes form. Continue reading What was the oldest Olympic sport?→
Derek Muller is the Creative Director of Veritasium, a science video blog with 90 films based off of interviews with Australians about issues such as global warming, seasons and the scale of the universe.
Why can’t a baby bird just hatch out of the egg and fly away, or at least, be able to fly a little and not require weeks of constant feeding and attention? I suspect they CAN do this but just refuse to in order to steal parental investment, which is, after all, a very valuable resources. Baby turtles and crocodiles are born as miniature versions of adults. Some birds do this a little. Baby ducks and chickens s are the mensches of the bird world; they don’t spend all that time sitting there uselessly and constantly demanding attention. Sure, turtles and crocs are tiny and vulnerable and most of them get eaten by monitor lizards, seagulls, big fish, or other predators. But baby birds get eaten by predators too (often other birds), so I’m not impressed with the difference….
