Uncategorized
mspringer | March 5, 2009ScienceBlogs' own Chad Orzel has on a number of occasions discussed the photon concept in relation to physics pedagogy. He thinks (as I do) that it's a good concept to teach early even though formally speaking photons are considerably more complicated than the "particle of light" idea that's often presented as an intuitive concept. But even that billiard-ball model is in a lot of ways not so far from the truth.
Since we're speaking of intuition, it's worth noting that the photon model is not necessarily something that at first seems to have a lot of connection to everyday reality. When was…
gregladen | March 5, 2009A unique ecosystem of plants, birds and monkeys thrives in the treetops of the rainforest. Nalini Nadkarni explores these canopy worlds -- and shares her findings with the world below, through dance, art and bold partnerships.
gregladen | March 4, 2009Richard Dawkins came to Minneapolis and gave a talk, sponsored by CASH, the primary atheist/humanist group on the UMN campus, on "The Purpose of Purpose."
Before the talk, several of us got together at Annie's Parlour. It was harmonic convergence, in a sense, of numerous independent groups all planning to go to Annie's and ending up at the same table, including but not limited to Amanda and myself, PZ and his wife and daughter, Stephanie, Mike, Mr. and Mrs. Linux in Exile, Lynn, and a few others who don't have links. After the talk, we spent close to an hour hanging around with Amanda and…
clock | March 4, 2009There are 26 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Mating First, Mating More: Biological Market Fluctuation in a Wild Prosimian:
In biology, economics, and politics, distributive power is the key for understanding asymmetrical relationships and it can be obtained by…
gregladen | March 4, 2009...My friend Carl and I went out to the Berne Grange Hall, up on The Heldeberg, one evening to see them. I remember my brother, in his white lamé suit, holding up a Jimmy Hendrix album and saying, "If any of you can tell me who this is, you win the album." (Silence.) "OK, now we're going to play a song by this guy." (Silence.) They play the song. No one knows. Adrenalin gets to keep the Hendrix album for one more week. At least....
at quiche moraine dot com
illconsidered | March 4, 2009Michael Tobis is famous.
(Okay, just until the rabid dogs of the right wing noise machine find another bone to obsess over.)
For the record: Michael Tobis is an intelligent, thoughtful and concerned man who does not deserve to be ridiculed, but rather read closely and contemplated. Pielke is a **** ****** and ******** ****. (Sorry, I violated my own comment policy) who is simply playing a very different game than the rest of us.
Morano and Beck (why that last name??!!) and the rest of the echo chamber are not worth much more than a guffaw.
Maybe there will be something to learn or achieve by…
gregladen | March 4, 2009...The war has just ended, both are finding their way home on foot, still in uniform, bedraggled, soul-weary. The only thing keeping them putting one foot ahead of the next is the thought of home and family. Meeting on the road, they recognize each other through the grime and dust for the brothers they in fact are. There follows a reconciliation, joyful that each has survived, each forgiving the other for taking the part they did in the war. United, they return home to their family....
Read The Picture, at Quiche Moraine.
gregladen | March 3, 2009
"We'll be in the Hudson." Holy crap. I've been in the Hudson. But not like that.
moleculeoftheday | March 3, 2009There was a nice interview on the Daily Show with former NIH director and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus. Good on Jon Stewart for having him, he got to make the kind of points you wouldn't usually on a book tour. He touches on some interesting points regarding just how science funding works in practice in the States, as well as the broad range of constituencies agencies like NIH have to satisfy.
Sorry, the video is from Comedy Central and, likely, US-only.
*/
The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Harold Varmus
Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things With Demetri Martin…
gregladen | March 3, 2009Kim Hannula is a 40-ish geology professor at a public liberal arts college in the Rockies. Her New Year's resolution is to reduce stress by changing her rheology, or maybe by walking to work and looking at the pretty mountains.
Go visit and say hey. If you can get the comments on Kim's blog to work (there may be a glitch).
"All My Faults..."
gregladen | March 3, 2009...Here's the main point of our disagreement. Alden is a strong Christian who thinks that modernism has had a disastrous effect on our culture and our individual abilities to determine the answers to important questions. As an atheist, I am unable to see where religious belief and faith yield any sort of objective understanding of the nature of life and origins. ...
Posted at Quiche Moraine Dot Com
grrlscientist | March 3, 2009There's some blog carnivals available out there for you to read. Here's just a few;
Grand Rounds, a medical blog carnival, which is one of the first I ever contributed to, and the second blog carnival I ever hosted. They are asking me to host again ..
Book Review Carnival, 12th edition. This is a huge book review carnival, filled with many many books that will tantalize and delight you.
Anything Goes and General News, 48th edition. This blog carnival links to the best recent writing in the blogosphere, regardless of topic.
gregladen | March 3, 2009The Vatican is sponsoring a five day conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.
The subject is the compatibility of evolution and creation.
More at the BBC
mspringer | March 3, 2009It occurs to me that I still haven't scored and posted the winners of the BoF 2008 Election Prediction Contest. Formally I still can't, because the Minnesota senate race has not legally been resolved. For all practical purposes it has, but I like to be sure about things before I go and award the contest to someone.
But while we're waiting, how about another contest? Here it is:
Predict the lowest close of the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurring on or before January 1, 2010. Trading during the day doesn't count, and it doesn't matter on which day the minimum occurs. Just the value at…
sb admin | March 3, 2009I know it doesn't feel like spring on the East Coast of the US, what with the big snow day yesterday. But it's been in the 60's here for the past three days, and in the 50's before that. At my elevation (6800 feet), the snow is gone except in the shade and on north-facing slopes. It's nice, but worrisome: my mountains are the headwaters of the Rio Grande and part of the Colorado, and our snow is the water supply for cities and farms from Texas to California. March is supposed to be the big snow month here. We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm watching spring arrive. And this year, I'm going to try…
pharyngula | March 3, 2009What a horrible world that would be, although the deal with the puppies is tempting.
nisbetmc | March 3, 2009
It's out today, U2's latest album, rock like only they can do it. Check it out from the recent Brit Awards.
cortex | March 2, 2009In the Times Science section today, Natalie Angier discusses a fascinating-sounding new book, by the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. The book, "Mothers and Others," argues that humans evolved a powerful set of moral instincts - a set of instincts that far exceed those of our primate relatives - because we depend on others to help us rear our helpless infants:
As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, "Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding," which will be published by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for…