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Let's send The Fossil Huntress to Antarctica!

Let's send The Fossil Huntress to Antarctica!

Jul 04 2009 | comment(s)

Look what I found on Quark Expedition website!

http://www.blogyourwaytoantarctica.com/blogs/view/257

In a nutshell, Quark is sponsoring a competition to send someone on an eco-cruise of Antarctica in order to blog for a week.  The Fossil Huntress apparently threw her hat in, and I think any of her readers here would agree that she'd do a kickass job of blogging from Antarctica.


But naturally, the competition is a bit more of a popularity contest than a merit-based blogging appointment; you have 300 words in which to pitch yourself, but nobody besides your friends has any incentive to visit your entry page.  (I'd wanted to enter myself, but then I remembered that I have no friends.)
Self-interest versus Selfishness

Self-interest versus Selfishness

Jul 04 2009 | comment(s)

What seems to be the problem in recognizing these words as being separate concepts?  Everytime I look there's another abuse of the word "selfish" when "self-interest" is intended.  Ranging from Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness (which immediately redefines selfishness so that it really isn't), to Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene (which is redefined so that it really isn't), to the following quote from The Introduction to Economic Analysis which states that people in economic models are "entirely selfish.  (The technical term is acting in one's self-interest)"

A Science Of Human Language - Part #10

A Science Of Human Language - Part #10

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

A Science Of Human Language - Part #10

In this part of the series, commenced here, I give some concrete examples from various languages of how words can cue the category from which other words were, or are to be selected.
"Can the Saussurean definition of grammar as a structured system of SIGNs be reinterpreted as a structured system of code + information?"
Huang, Chen and Gau1, Institute of Linguistics,
Academia Sinica.
Tangential Science: Super Tuna Is The Worst Superhero Name Ever

Tangential Science: Super Tuna Is The Worst Superhero Name Ever

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1. The Japanese have responded to the persistent outrage of Greenpeace over their whaling efforts by seeking to enrage the anti-GMO contingent as well.   Up next; a new line of 'super tuna' that will be possible thanks to the awesome power of genome sequencing.

Super tuna?   That's the best they could do for a name?  It makes Aquaman sound positively masculine.  'Super' and 'tuna' just don't go together.  This is why there are no cool Japanese superheroes.
US Ranks High in Anti-Evolution Beliefs

US Ranks High in Anti-Evolution Beliefs

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

This is not much of a surprise:

In six out of ten countries including Argentina (57%), China (72%), Great Britain (62%), India (77%), Mexico (65%) and Spain (61%), the majority of people who had heard of Charles Darwin and know something about his theory of evolution agreed with the opinion that ‘enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution’, compared to an overall average across all the countries surveyed of 56 percent.
Using Fire

Using Fire

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Although possessing an undeniable bias against consciousness and mood altering drugs, courtesy of the 1960s and 1970s, I was curious to see what progress had been made utilizing these same substances to treat addictions.  Allegorically, we have vaccines derived from pathogens to prevent disease, thus grudgingly but also with a bit of morbid fascination, I can admit that hallucinogens and their derivatives might be effective in treating some individuals with certain addictions, and precedence seems to support this hypothesis.
On Geek Love

On Geek Love

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

I'm out of town today, so I'm doing a break from my usual work.  Instead, I thought I'd share these tales of geek love.  First up is a nice fluff piece by Ashley Nelson, 4 Reasons Why Women Dig Geeks. Only 4 reasons (you may ask)? There must be more than a dozen reasons why geeks rock!
Declaration of Independence screen saver

Declaration of Independence screen saver

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Colonial Williamsburg is basically a theme park about colonial days in America, the time in the 18th century before and around the establishment of the United States. It can be somewhat kitschy[1], but it can also provide a good bit of education about U.S. history.

Bar Bets You Can Win (Installment I)

Bar Bets You Can Win (Installment I)

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

House of Straw
Use six straws to create the classic house shape (a rectangular body with two straws forming the roof, all laying flat on the table). Bet that you can make four equal triangles by moving only three straws. Try it! To all but the most creatively freethinking, this is impossible. The trick is to go 3D—pick up the three straws that make the bottom and sides of the rectangle and replace them so that one end of each straw is rooted in a corner of the triangle with all three moved straws touching above the center of the original triangle, like a tent or teepee—four, equal triangles, each the size of the original roof.

Paper Match
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Milky Way Gets A Cold Dust Map

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Milky Way Gets A Cold Dust Map

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Astronomers have unveiled a new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way - that's our home galaxy, if you're from someplace else - and it's peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust, the potential birthplaces of new stars. Using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this survey is the largest map of cold dust so far.

This new guide for astronomers, known as the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) shows the Milky Way in submillimetre-wavelength light (between infrared light and radio waves. Images of the cosmos at these wavelengths are vital for studying the birthplaces of new stars and the structure of the crowded galactic core. 
Deducing Societal Trends From Second Life

Deducing Societal Trends From Second Life

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Do friends wear the same clothes or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, part of the reason they became friends or, once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors? 

Social scientists don't know for sure and are still trying to understand the role social influence plays in the spreading of trends because the real world doesn't keep track of how people acquire new items or preferences. 

But the virtual world of "Second Life" does. Researchers from the University of Michigan have tried to use this information to study how "gestures" make their way through this online community. Gestures are code snippets that Second Life avatars must acquire in order to make motions such as dancing, waving or chanting.
Logic As Inquiry

Logic As Inquiry

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

For some thousands of years “logic” was viewed as the “theory of inquiry” – “inquiry into inquiry” if you will. This was almost certainly the case with Plato, definitely the case with Aristotle, and by and large true throughout the history of Western thought right up to the revolution in symbolic logic that occurred with Frege, Dedekind and Peano in the late 19th Century. However, with these changes the notion of logic came to be swallowed up by formal and symbolic concerns.

Logic as the theory of inquiry was lost sight of leaving mathematical logic as the sole claimant to the title of “Logic.”
Ecological Niche Modeling And Finding Sasquatch's Range Distribution

Ecological Niche Modeling And Finding Sasquatch's Range Distribution

Jul 03 2009 | comment(s)

Ecological Niche Modeling is a great tool for conservation biology, phylogeography and evolutionary biology. However, as Jeff Lozier and colleagues point out in a paper in the Journal of Biogeography that the models are only as good as the data they are based on.

The basic premise of the ENM approach is to predict the occurrence of species on a landscape from georeferenced site locality data and sets of spatially explicit environmental  data layers that are assumed to correlate with the species’ range.
New Global Best-Seller

New Global Best-Seller

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

New Global Best-Seller

"The Terrorist Hunters" is a new book by Andy Hayman, C.B.E., Q.P.M., former Assistant Commisioner of Scotland Yard, and one-time head of the Yard's head of Special
Operations.  It is set to become a global best-seller.

Following a precedent set by a previous inept British government in the matter of "Spycatcher", the British Attorney General, a direct political appointee of Gordon Brown, the soon-to-be-outgoing British Prime Minister,  has obtained an order banning sales of the book in the UK.
The Power of Genetics

The Power of Genetics

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

I watched a television program the other night called the "Power of Genetics".  Although it was obviously a few years old, just listening to it set my spider senses to tingling.

There was the talk about cloning (animals and people), the gene therapies for comestic purposes (baldness), genetic engineering, human immortality, and, of course, the obligatory scientist-CEO with the thinly-veiled hope that they would soon be filthy rich running a bio-tech firm.
A Science Of Human Language - Part #9

A Science Of Human Language - Part #9

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

A Science Of Human Language - Part #9
Morning Science Quote

Morning Science Quote

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

It's late, but still morning in my time zone:

Agnosticism is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the vigorous application of a single principle. Positively the principle may be expressed as, in matter of intellect, follow your reason as far as it can carry you without other considerations. And negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend the conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable. It is wrong for a man to say he's certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

- Thomas Huxley, Collected Essays, vol. 5 p. 237






Am I living the life I wanted?

Am I living the life I wanted?

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

This is a funny question to ask.  Funny in that no one has ever asked this of me before, and yet a few moments of reflection reveal how utterly important such a question is.

The simple answer is that no, I am not living the life expected or wished for.  As a child of the 50s and fan of “Dr. Kildare” and “Ben Casey”, I wanted desperately to be a surgeon.  Before I was 10 years old, my plans were laid – I would work at a big hospital and save lots of lives regardless of ability to pay.  I took the Hippocratic Oath to heart and believed in it completely.  Although I retained the intention well into my 20s, an assault endured at 10 years of age effectively put an end to that idea.
Bar Bets You Can Win (Installment II)

Bar Bets You Can Win (Installment II)

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

True Math Genius
This trick will bring a smile to the face of even the most hardened math geek. First, lay matches on a table to form the equation I + II + III = IIII (crossed matches make the plus signs and parallel matches make the equals sign). Challenge your opponent to make this statement true by moving only one match and without messing with the sum after the equals sign. The trick is to pick up one match from the II, and lay it across the middle match in the III, making the full equation read:
I + I + I + I =IIII.

Two Glasses II
'Green' Fireworks For 4th Of July - Can You Get The Same Boom With Less Pollution?

'Green' Fireworks For 4th Of July - Can You Get The Same Boom With Less Pollution?

Jul 02 2009 | comment(s)

If you're like us, you are eagerly awaiting those July 4 fireworks displays because you get to blow stuff up using science (not just the US, Canada too, though they picked the wrong day by using July 1 for  Canada Day celebrations) - if only we could have awesome fireworks yet not ruin the planet.

Maybe we can.  A new generation of "green" fireworks is trying to take off.  Hint: that's "green" as in environmentally friendly.  And take off as in ... oh, never mind.