UPDATE Sept 9, AM Note that tropical storm force winds may start hitting southern Florida around 1 or 2 PM today, Saturday, and will reach central Florida by about 8AM Sunday. The eye of the storm should be abreast southern Florida at around sunup on Sunday. The storm may remain a major hurricane as it … Continue reading Hurricane Irma: Important changes in intensity, changes in track
Roger Moore just died, and you will hear that he was the third, or second, or fourth, “James Bond.” He wasn’t. Here is the list of James Bond actors: Barry Nelson, who played in “Casino Royale” in 1954. This was an episode in the “Climax!” TV anthology series, like they used to do a lot. … Continue reading James Bond Incarnations In Order
Right in the middle, between the Trump-inspired March for Science, and the Trump-inspired People’s Climate March, the New York times managed to come down firmly on the side of climate and science denial, in its editorial pages. This week sees the first NYT installment by the ex Wall Street Journal columnist and author Bret Stephens … Continue reading Out of the gate, Bret Stephens punches the hippies, says dumb things
The New York Times has a history of supporting a certain degree of climate change science denial, while at the same time supporting some very good journalism in this area. Just now, the Times jumped over one big giant shark by adding Bret Stephens to its opinion page staff. Stephens comes to the Times from … Continue reading The New York Times Bites It With New Climate Denier Columnist
Hi there, folks. This post should have been a tweet in response to Roger Pielke Jr (@RogerPielkeJr), professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder, the guy who got fired by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight for, as I understand it, his anti-science positions on climate change. This is a response for a tweet by … Continue reading Roger Pielke Junior, I forgive you for this one thing
Yes there are Nixon-Trump similarities. But in the end, probably not many. (A lot of Congresspersons boycotted his second inaugural, by the way). Also, for those who are not familiar with Watergate, I’ll tell you this: The medium to worst case scenario of Trump’s election, which would include Russian Hacking and possibly the Trump Dossier … Continue reading Sitting in Richard Nixon’s Chair
Here is my selection of the top science books from 2016, excluding those mainly for kids. Also, I don’t include climate change related books here either. (These will both be covered in separate posts.) The number of books on this list is not large, and I think this was not the most prolific year ever … Continue reading Top Science Books: 2016
… until you have cleaned house and stopped embarrassing yourselves. And by clean house, I mean, take are of this deeply offensive bullshit your people are now spewing out. You have turned a very bad situation into something ten times worse. As background, this comes from a meeting of national level evangelical leaders who got … Continue reading Fundy Christians: Shut the Fuck Up
This is a piece I wrote in 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (Originally posted here.) I believe that the sauntering I refer to has diminished. But instead of sauntering, our local and county police departments seem to have taken up a different hobby: Shooting unarmed people of color. I think the … Continue reading Generation 9/11. History will be embarrassed by us.
I have no idea if this will be of interest to this community of science oriented and smart readers, but a group called The Republicans is having a big convention this week. Here’s the basic schedule: Mon 18 July 1:00 PM EST: Convention Opens Tue 19 July 5:30 PM EST: Resume convention Wed 20 July … Continue reading Republican National Convention: Info, Live Blog, Open Thread
Certain things that come across one’s desktop, on the internet, are hard to turn away from. Train wrecks, for example. For me, this list includes commentary about grammatical errors and proper language use. I find this sort of discussion interesting because I’m an anthropologist, and probably also because I’ve spend a lot of time 100% … Continue reading 16 common grammatical mistakes or problems
The Great San Francisco Earthquake(s) On October 8th, 1865, the “Great San Francisco Earthquake” hit south of the city of San Francisco, magnitude 6.3. On October 21st, 1868, the ‘Great San Francisco Earthquake” hit near Haywards, east of the city, across the bay, magnitude 6.8. On April 18th, 1906, the “Great San Francisco Earthquake” hit … Continue reading Earthquake Time Bombs by Robert Yeats
I have often made the argument that religiosity, a personal belief in god, spirits, the supernatural, etc., would emerge in human societies on its own if it wasn’t there already. Imagine taking an entire generation of people in a geographically isolated region, and wiping out their memory of religion, and also, removing all references to … Continue reading Why I would believe in God if I wasn’t an atheist.
One mouse to rule them all I had previously reviewed the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse, suggesting it as a replacement for the Apple Magic Mouse. Now, I’ve tried it on my Linux machine (don’t know why that took so long). It turns out to work very well, better than most, possibly all, mice I’ve used. … Continue reading What is the best mouse for a Mac, Linux, or Windows?
I’m on my way to a taping of the Humanist Views with Host Scott Lohman. I do these now and then and have done so since I first moved to Minnesota back when it was still cold here. We’ll be talking about science knowledge, and why basic science knowledge is important. We’ll also be talking … Continue reading How To Evaluate Science Stories