September 27, 2017
There are special elections all the time, mostly at the state level. The news is full of the Moore vs. Strange race, which isn't just strange because Strange is in it. You all know about that. But what you may not know about is the interesting victory, also yesterday, of Kari Lerner in New…
September 27, 2017
It wasn't a mammoth, it was a mastodon. But it was still a big hairy elephant featured at the climax-end of the main exhibit hall in the New York State museum. And it was an exhibit to end all exhibits. The New York State Museum, during its heyday, was world class, and the hall of evolution, which…
September 26, 2017
In Tooth and Claw, Season 2 Episode 2 of Doctor Who 2.0, we see the formation of The Torchwood Institute and the banishing of The Doctor (and Rose) from the United Kingdom. Fat lot that does. Anyway, we also see Queen Victoria make mention of the multiple attempts at her assassination. I suppose…
September 26, 2017
I have a love-hate relationship with farmers. I have a great deal of respect for the enterprise and for those who dedicate their lives to it. But, I also become annoyed at the culture in which modern American farming embeds itself. And, I don't feel a lot of reticence talking openly about that.…
September 26, 2017
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/911789314169823232?ref_src=t…
A pair of American B-1 Lancer bombers is flying north northeast along the border of North Korean air space. Accompanying the bombers is a squadron of F-15C Eagle fighter jets. The crews are aware of the fact that North Korea…
September 24, 2017
It isn't. Well, it is a little, but not totally. OK, it is, but actually, it is complicated.
First, you are probably asking about the Atlantic hurricane season, not the global issue of hurricanes and typhoons and such. If you are asking world-wide, recent prior years were worse if counted by how…
September 22, 2017
To understand the Trump-Russia scandal, I believe it is necessary to step way back and take the very long view. I'm not talking about going back to early 2016, or even the year before. Much farther.
I'm not going to make a claim in this post as to what happened and who did what. Rather, I'd like…
September 22, 2017
The new Collins Nambia Wildlife guide is the perfect companion for travelers from the US who are trying to get away from it all. Quickly and quietly.
This handy field guide provides the usual information about the alt-Animals one finds in this remote African country, such as the Vote Suppressing…
September 22, 2017
Bill Nye's Everything All at Once: How to unleash your inner nerd, tap into radical curiosity, and solve any problem on Kindle is available for 2.99.
Everyone has an inner nerd just waiting to be awakened by the right passion. In Everything All at Once, Bill Nye will help you find yours. With his…
September 20, 2017
From the Washington Post:
The special counsel investigating Russian election meddling has requested extensive records and email correspondence from the White House, covering everything from the president’s private discussions about firing his FBI director to his White House’s handling of a warning…
September 20, 2017
Earlier today, Minnesota Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto released her energy transition plan. It an ambitious plan that puts together several elements widely considered necessary to make any such plan work, then puts them on steroids to make it work faster. To my knowledge, this is the first…
September 19, 2017
As you already know, Hurricane Maria is a Category 5 storm menacing the Leewards, and heading, likely, for Puerto Rico.
Please avoid making the mistakes that were made in talking about Irma. There will probably be no Category 5 storm hitting Puerto Rico. The storm will probably be a Category 4…
September 18, 2017
A lot of people will object to the title of this post. I will be told to take the post down. I will be told to modify the title or to change what I say in the post.
Nope.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and his presentation is brilliant. Watch the following interview (in two parts) and read his…
September 17, 2017
I love the The Mathematics Calendar 2018.
Math Calendar sample days
It has an equation or other statement about math for every day, often linked to that day (like, the January 13th entry is "the sixth prime number"). Some entries are little mat quizzes for you to fugue out. Some are funny…
September 16, 2017
CheMystery authored by C. Al Preece is a graphic superhero novel, drawn by Josh Reynolds, that teaches -- wait for it -- Chemistry!
A radiation accident transforms two youngsters into superheros, and simultaneously creates an evil villain for them to fight. The graphic novel covers that story and…
September 14, 2017
You'll remember that Philando Castile was killed in cold blood by a St. Anthony cop, who was later acquitted with the defense that "he was a black guy, I wuz scared."
A couple of days ago, tragically and sadly, a cop in a town near me was run over by a driver who was probably on drugs and drunk,…
September 14, 2017
Telling people that they are doing statistics wrong is a cottage industry that I usually want nothing to do with, for various reasons including the fact that the naysayers are often blindly repeating stuff they heard but do not understand. But, Alex Reinhart, in Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully…
September 14, 2017
The policy of the Republican Trump White House is that if a reporter or commenter says something that the White House strongly disagrees with, the reporter or commenter should be fired.
It remains to be seen how the Trump White House will enforce this newly articulated policy.
The policy was…
September 14, 2017
Wildlife of Ecuador: A Photographic Field Guide to Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, and Amphibians by naturalist Andrés Vásquez Noboa, witih photography byablo Cervantes Daza, covers mainland Ecuador (but by "mainland" we also mean ocean mammals). Focusing only on non-piscine verts, you will need to go…
September 12, 2017
Some potentially interesting science related books cheap now in Kindle format:
The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig
We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves…
September 12, 2017
Ya don't know, you just don't know.
Note: I'm pretty sure that at the time Trump made those remarks, the Coast Guard was still hunkered down.
September 11, 2017
This is a preface to the preface to a piece I wrote in 2011. I have only this to add:
First as an aside, I suspected Trump could win the presidency, most people simply said it was impossible. But nonetheless, I was just as shocked as anyone else.
Here's the thing. American culture reacted to 9…
September 11, 2017
This is not my favorite book, because I think the subtitle should be "No, it doesn't Steve" ... but How the Mind Works is not without merit, and Steve Pinker is a great writer. Anyway, I thought you's like to know that it is now available on Kindle for two bucks.
September 10, 2017
Before discussing What Happened by Hillary Clinton, the nature of the political conversation demands that I preface this review with some context.
First, about me.
I supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election because I did not want Donald Trump to be president.
During the primary…
September 9, 2017
I know a lot of you are interested in local elections. There are three special elections coming up Tuesday that you might want to know about, and possibly lend some support to, or at least, watch. The candidates are shown above. They are:
Charlie St. Clair
Kathryn Rehner
Jacob Rosekrants
September 8, 2017
It has been a long time since I've written any machine or assembler code, and it is a rare day that I hand construct a logic circuit using transistors. But it is comforting to know that these skills and the knowledge associated with them still reside in some form or another in the world of…
September 8, 2017
Tenergy is a company that you know well even if you don't know them. They make a lot of the replacement batteries for everything, external power supplies, other electronic items. But recently they've added a few items to their line of products that reach out in an entirely different direction.…
September 7, 2017
I usually write my annual back to school post earlier than this, but I was distracted by various events. There are three themes here.
1) You are a science teacher and I have some stuff for you.
2) You have a student in a school and you want to support the school's science teacher.
3) You have a…
September 7, 2017
I'll just put this item from UCS here for your interest:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Study Finds Top Fossil Fuel Producers’ Emissions Responsible for as Much as Half of Global Surface Temperature Increase, Roughly 30 Percent of Global Sea Level Rise
Findings Provide New Data to Hold Companies…
September 6, 2017
It is very rare that I find myself yelling at the TV when Rachel Maddow is on. She is very good at historically contextualized nuanced well informed analyses. But when I watched a segment of last night's show (on the Internet, I have no cable) I was shocked to see that she missed something really…
