Greg Laden's Blog

Friday the 13th Dark Dark Dark and Brute Heart with Fashion Sabboth

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:16:23 -0500

Friday the thirteenth is a day. This Friday

Dark dark dark is a band.

Brute heart is another band

Fashion Sabbath is a fashion show featuring the works of a bunch of people I don't know and one person I know quite well.

At The Bedlam on the West Bank in Minneapolis. Ten bucks, starts s at Ten PM.

See you there.

Read the comments on this post...

Happy Birthday Carl Sagan

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:35:14 -0500

I could watch this video billions of times.

Read the comments on this post...

How to cook a turkey

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:12:33 -0500

This isn't the only way, but it is a good way. It is also the hardest way that I've done it.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

w00t!!!! Rebecca and her book written up in Publishers Weekly

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:31:39 -0500

Rebecca Skloot found a story of immortality and faith in a young woman's tissue sample.

The book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The author is: Rebecca Skloot. And the PW paper is here:

Check it out!!!!

Read the comments on this post...

Has swine flu peaked, and it if has, what does that mean?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:31:17 -0500

Have you seen the movie "Speed"? Great action flick if you haven't. One of my favorite scenes in that movie is this one (apologies for vagueness ... I have not seen the movie in quite some time): There is a bus running wild on the streets being followed by emergency vehicles. A group of girl scouts are crossing the street, but the bus is coming, and the horn is blaring, so they run out of he way. The bus speeds by. The troop of girl scouts is led by their leader across the street again. But now a police car, siren blaring, comes tearing down the street. The girl scout troop jumps out of the way and the police cruiser speeds by. Now that the action is over, the girls scout troop can safely cross the street, and they start to do so. But then a fire truck with its sirens blaring comes tearing down the street.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

New mouse for OpenOffice and other OpenSource apps

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:57:51 -0500

Just when you thought it was time to abandon the mouse altogether and start using only the command line, the OpenSource world has come up with a mouse with one zillion buttons that allows one-handed use of OpenOffice apps and plays World of Warcraft.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

How do you explain evolution?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:39:29 -0500

Many people claim it is easy to explain. I once heard a bunch of high school teachers at a conference patting each other on the back about how easy it is to understand evolution. And I remember thinking "OK, so this must be why none of my intro college freshman students don't have a clue...."

Anyway, Discover magazine had a contest to try to explain evolution in two minutes in a video.

Here's one runner up and the winner:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

You said one thing wrong, therefore everything you ever said is also wrong

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:11:11 -0500

In lecturing about behavioral biology (in any of a number of classes) it has been hard for me to avoid the lion story and the languar story. Both involve infanticide and selfish strategies by individuals. In both cases, females do things that are unexpected from the middle class heternormative Caucasoidowestern perspective. Babies die. For all these reasons, the stories wake up the students, get the students interested, and stuff gets learned. The key pedagogy here is this: If you are presented with a counter intuitive situation (and you are alert enough to recognized its counterintuitiveness even if it wasn't natively counterintuitive for you personally), and then you study the situation long enough and deeply enough to understand why it is NOT really counterintuitive, then you are now in a new place. Good for you.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Dear public school principals everywhere

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:39:29 -0500

It is a good idea to not use religious phrases like this in your newsletters:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Managing your References

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:54:41 -0500

Reference management is always an issue for academics. I have the following piece of advice for you in this regard:

1) Start early in your career to actually manage your references.

2) Consider OpenSource alternatives where possible.

3) Check out this post and it's comments for a current discussion on what seems to be working for people.

Read the comments on this post...

Noachian Flood Reconstructed

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:10:00 -0500

Those people were gambling and consorting with donkeys. They deserved to die.

Read the comments on this post...

The Corporation Part 15

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:56:51 -0500

Read the comments on this post...

Cobra vs. Python: Who would win?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:26:57 -0500

I can tell you which one I'd prefer to go up against. Below the bold because it is all squiggly and gross.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

We may need this in Minneapolis (a.k.a. Bikeyapolis)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:58:53 -0500

Minneapolis is the City of Bikes. There are more bikes here per capita than any other US city, I'm told. Many Japanese cities have more bikes per capita and even less room, so the whole bike parking issue in Japan is pretty severe. And, as usual, Japanese culture allows for more flexibility in technological solutions than American culture does (a limitation that I don't think Americans realize they are living with).

Anyway, here's how to deal with bikes in an urban setting with less and less available bike parking space and more and more people on the bikes:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

New Physics Theory Explains ... More than we Want to Know

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:47:34 -0500

There is a theory that the Large Hadron Collider has had bad luck getting started up, and the US based super colldiing super duperductor was defunded over 10 years ago because the Higgs Boson does not want to be discovered, and has gone back in time (to now) to muck up the process of its own discovery in the future (then). The story is outlined in an article in the New York Times.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...