September 14, 2012
From NASA:
...astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be…
September 14, 2012
President Obama experienced a significant post-convention bounce. Already a little bit ahead, this places Obama more firmly ahead of Romney. But, the news would be so much more interesting if the two were much closer. How does one solve this problem if you are CNN? Make stuff up!
Yesterday CNN…
September 14, 2012
The median income for Americans is about $50,000. Thus...
Question: Is $100,000 middle income?
Answer: No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.
The question was being asked by George Stephanopoulos and answered by Mitt Romney.
source
September 13, 2012
When I look at the Atari Arcade, I get a bunch of gobbledygook but if I click on individual links to individual games, I get an interesting experiment in HTML 5.0 demonstrating old fashioned character-based-graphic style games. Here are the links, but I suggest right-clicking and opening in a new…
September 13, 2012
Have you read, or at least acquired your copy of, Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories? Just so you know, it is an anthology of (just like the title says) personal stories of individuals' journey to atheism. And, those people are writing from a Minnesota perspective.…
September 13, 2012
Fusion Wallpaper
There comes a time in each person’s life when it is time to change the wallpaper. And the drapes, but we’ll focus on wallpaper here. And by wallpaper I mean the picture on your computer screen that is normally covered by icons and open windows. I came across a few neat individual…
September 13, 2012
My friend Adria Richards on why you should learn to code:
More details, especially if you are a girl, here.
Books mentioned in the video:
Learn to Program, Second Edition (The Facets of Ruby Series)
The Book of Ruby: A Hands-On Guide for the Adventurous
Eloquent Ruby (Addison-Wesley Professional…
September 12, 2012
It has been a while since we've done a recipe. And, it has been a while since we had a huge internet fight over something. Therefore, we will discuss:
how to cook corn on the cob!
First, you have to get some very fresh corn and do everything you can do to minimize the time from picking the corn…
September 12, 2012
NASA's Earth Now Android App
One of the top iPhone education apps in the iTunes store is now available for Android. The free NASA "Earth Now" Android app immerses cyber explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASA's fleet of Earth science satellites, bringing…
September 12, 2012
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has acquired data that seems to indicate that Mars has dry-ice snowfalls.
From a press release by NASA:
Frozen carbon dioxide, better known as "dry ice," requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius), which is much colder than…
September 12, 2012
Katherine Bagley of InsideClimate News has an interesting commentary on the idea that only in America do climate scientists face organized harassment.
She notes:
The harassment faced by U.S.-based climate scientists has been well documented in the media—but not the harassment of scientists in…
September 12, 2012
A number of lines of evidence have converged on the apparent fact that how you feel about Cilantro is a relatively simple genetic system. That Cilantro hatred is inherited genetically and not culturally has long been suspected, but now it is becoming clear enough that this could be a new module in…
September 12, 2012
I love the iPad, but it is not really suitable for young kids, because it requires an adult perspective on life to operate it correctly. For example, for a two year old, there is nothing more fun than figuring out how to make all the little icons dance, and once you do that, there is nothing more…
September 12, 2012
Some interesting news from the Open Access front:
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) today announced the membership agreement with BioMed Central and SpringerOpen. Publication costs for research articles published by researchers funded by NWO for articles published no later…
September 11, 2012
It is said that the national conventions of the two main parties in the US influence polls. This is sometimes called the "Convention Bump" but that term is used for a lot of other things, like a network getting more viewership during a convention, or a candidate getting more funding or larger…
September 11, 2012
A young woman was driving along the road, at night, and needed to focus her attention on a cell phone call, so she pulled into an open parking lot of a closed restaurant along side the road and visible to passing motorists. She pulled her car into a parking space, switched it off, and made the call…
September 10, 2012
Here's Romney's "candidate" page:
Here's Obama's:
September 10, 2012
For various reasons, it has been difficult for the Democrats in Minnesota (called "DFLers") to unseat Republican Congressional Representative Michele Bachmann. This has been partly because the candidates put up were not properly selected (probably) and partly because the people in her district…
September 10, 2012
A while ago, I wrote Who is to blame for politically shaded shootings? in which I made this rather extreme statement which was only weakly opposed by any commenters:
Generally speaking these days, progressive movements and for the most part the “left” in America speaks out against violence, is more…
September 9, 2012
Romney would replace Obamacare with a law that would require insurers to do what they were already doing before Obamacare, but makes it sound better than it is:
The key phrase here is "continuously insured."
As pointed out by Jonathan Cohn via Think Progress:
the federal government already…
September 7, 2012
There has been concern over the safety of Gardasil (and other?) HPV vaccines. This concern emanates from the usual Anti-Vax sources. The Anti-Vax people are wrong, often to the point where we have to regard them as delusional, about everything they say. If you find yourself leaning towards…
September 7, 2012
The so-called "Galilean thermometer."
The object known as the Galileo Thermometer is a vertical glass tube filled with a liquid in which are suspended a number of weighted glass balls. As the temperature of the liquid changes, so does the density. Since each glass ball is set to float at…
September 6, 2012
The Twin Cities Metro Transit (which we voted some time ago to call "The T" but still haven't really started doing yet) has added a very cool bus to its fleet. It is Minnesota Made which is nice, and super efficient in part for reasons that I had not realized were important. From the T's web site…
September 6, 2012
In case you were not noticing, a few items have come up on the X Blog for your attention. I made a few observations from Bill Clinton's amazing speech last night and have a suggestion for my Republican friends. There's a wonderful bit of video in which Mitt Romney sits down with a plaid flannel…
September 6, 2012
Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future is a new book on global warming produced by Climate Central which contains ...
...Sixty easy-to-read entries tackle such questions as: Is climate ever “normal”? Why and how do fossil-…
September 6, 2012
Minda Berbeco
Minda Berbeco is a biologist who is an expert on the carbon cycle, climate change, and science education. She'll be joining the NCSE staff's new initiative on climate change related education.
"I have long respected NCSE's defense of evolution education and I am thrilled that the…
September 6, 2012
NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott received the Atheist Alliance of America's Richard Dawkins Award at the group's annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, on September 1, 2012. Unable to attend the ceremony in person, the namesake of the award began his video introduction by saying, "Eugenie…
September 5, 2012
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak speaking in support of President Obama at the DNC:
September 5, 2012
[Update Update: The probability of ex-Isaac becoming a tropical cyclone is now 50%, and the storm is looking pretty good.]
[Update: The probability of this low pressure system turing into a tropical storm has been increased to 40%. It is moving in the general direction of some relatively warm…
