What we're talking about 
Thursday, August 30, 2012
In Memory, on the Moon
Footprints on the Moon
Universe August 26, 2012
Yesterday we lost Neil Armstrong, an accidental hero, thrust by fate onto a rock in the sky. Many dreamt of walking on the moon before he did, and a few men did after him. He happened to be the first. Hopefully many more men, and women too, will echo his iconic footsteps in the future.…
Neil Armstrong died today. NASA has released a statement.
“Geologists have a saying: rocks remember.” -Neil Armstrong Looming up above us, hundreds of thousands of miles away, is the largest moon in the inner solar system: our Moon. One of the greatest achievements in the history of our planet culminated on July 20th, 1969, when the first creatures from our world set foot on…
Channel Surfing
Life Science
I was browsing through The Scientist and came across this image of a Venezuelan poodle moth that I could not resist sharing: Image by: Arthur Anker on flickr What is interesting about this particular moth is that scientists are currently trying to figure out exactly what type of moth it is (its phylogeny). Needless to…
For the past 3 years, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a week in a house on a beautiful lake in Vermont. Usually, this week is a chance to completely unplug. I take some photos, buy a bunch of books from Northshire and read them, and lounge around. On this past trip however, I received…
Physical Science
“At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed.” -Edwin Hubble While new discoveries are made about the Universe, a new explorer finds its way…
“You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.” -Martin H. Fischer I’ve always thought that the Universe is absolutely amazing; that everything from the tiniest indivisible particles all the way up to the largest structures and superstructures making up the Universe has an amazing…
…. prolly. At the moment, Isaac has all the pieces in place; winds are high enough, pressure at the center is low enough, and all that. But, the storm is not organized with an eye and nicely formed bands. I imagine that the folks in the Hurricane Prediction Center are annoyed. I suspect they will…
Environment
In Minnesota’s Lakes Country, what we sometimes call “Up North,” the people have various degrees of knowledge of the land and its wildlife. Cabin people and campers visit briefly and may learn in detail the workings of a particular lake or patch of forest, but are usually poorly informed of the true nature of the…
Plenty of other people are talking about seaice, so I don’t need to. Monthly means are more interesting the dailies, and since August is unlikely to beat September, we’re unlikely to see a record monthly mean for a month yet. The bets are summarised here and in this, to which the former refers. I was…
During the last seven Presidential election years, OSHA has an interesting record of issuing new rules on worker safety issues despite the heated national campaigns.
Humanities
A Food Chain Worker Alliance survey of food industry workers — including agricultural and farmworkers, food processing and slaughterhouse employees, and those working in food distribution and retail — found that 86% earned low or poverty wages.
My cousin Annika kindly forwarded me this postcard from a budding archaeologist just out of high school and on his first dig. I translate: * Hazor-Haglilit July 15th, 1990, 12:05 [Sunday] Shalom! Mainly I’m digging. At the same time we exchange some language teaching – my new Israeli acquaintances call each other “whitstevell” in passing…
This isn’t even in the advisories and discussions yet on the Hurricane Center site, but they are calling Isaac a hurricane. Here’s a recent snapshot: The current track puts Isaac just southwest of New Orleans with the heaviest winds and storm surge along the outer reaches of the delta and Lake Pontchartrain. Expect a storm…
Education
I was browsing through The Scientist and came across this image of a Venezuelan poodle moth that I could not resist sharing: Image by: Arthur Anker on flickr What is interesting about this particular moth is that scientists are currently trying to figure out exactly what type of moth it is (its phylogeny). Needless to…
Creationists are holding everyone else back
For the past 3 years, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a week in a house on a beautiful lake in Vermont. Usually, this week is a chance to completely unplug. I take some photos, buy a bunch of books from Northshire and read them, and lounge around. On this past trip however, I received…
Politics
Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week’s Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Disruption News Information Overloadis Pattern Recognition August 26, 2012 Chuckles, COP18+, Overshoot Day, The Critical Decade, GCF,…
The Pump Handle
‘An issue that affects all of us’: Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months. On his last day of work, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday.
Timothy Egan nails it, the Republican caucus is composed of crackpots and cranks. Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s…
Medicine
If there’s one thing that practitioners of pseudoscientific medicine crave more than anything else, it’s respectability. Believing that science-based medicine is corrupt and that their woo is as good or better, they delude themselves into thinking that they can function as well or better than primary care doctors practice and therefore should be given the…
Mahabouba*, age 14, was sold into a marriage as a second wife to a man 50 almost years her senior. Raped and beaten repeatedly, she ended up pregnant, finally succeeding in running away 7 months into her pregnancy. Fleeing to the nearby town, she found that the people there threatened to return her to her…
I might as well lay it on the line right at the beginning. It’s not as though it will surprise my regular readers given what I’ve been writing here, most recently about when Rob Schneider played the Nazi card to express his opposition to California Bill AB2109. It’s a bill that does something very simple…
Brain & Behavior
“Imagine that you wake up in the morning feeling nothing special, yet you find yourself inexplicably behaving just a bit differently during the day. For example, you take a sniff every time you hear a tone,” says Prof. Noam Sobel. Of course, the people this actually happened to knew they had volunteered for a sleep…
“World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet” by Michael Chorost will be the subject of discussion, with the author himself, on this week’s Skeptically Speaking. The show airs live before an Internt Audience on Sunday, with the podcast coming out later in the week. Details and links will be found…
In 2009, scientists at the California Academy of Sciences Steinhart Aquarium discovered some of the snakes suffering from a strange illness that caused them to stare off into space, appear like they were drunk and even tie themselves into knots they could not escape. Other serious symptoms included the buildup of proteins, susceptibility to secondary bacterial infections and body wasting.…
Technology
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.” -Dwight Eisenhower One of the greatest feelings is the freedom to travel, whether by your own power or a mechanical motor, far faster than your own legs can take you. Kimya…
I am now using an iMac for a lot more than I ever used a Mac of any kind before, and in so doing I’m discovering some interesting software. I will therefore be telling you about it, because it is much more interesting than telling you about what I had for lunch or dinner. (Having…
I am making a couple of iBooks. I’ve already produced three of them, but you can’t see them because they were experimental and they have been mercifully deleted. I found three or four problems (mainly with my own design and understanding) that I’ll tell you a little about below. There are things to consider when…
Information Science
Imagine a scenario where suddenly over night all toll access publishing suddenly converts to Open Access. You go to bed and your average academic library spends millions of dollars on serials. You wake up, and the subscription bill is zero. Now, that doesn’t mean that suddenly scholarly publishing doesn’t cost anything to support. It just…
Confessions of a Science Librarian
2011 Lane Anderson Award Shortlist: Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada
I saw an article in the Quill and Quire announcing the shortlist for the Lane Anderson Award, celebrating the best in Canadian science writing. The Lane Anderson Award honours the very best science writing in Canada today, both in the adult and young-reader categories. Each award will be determined on the relevance of its content…
George R.R. Martin is the new J.R.R. Tolkien, right? Great big, fantasy series with large casts of characters, epic battles between good and evil? Maybe, maybe not. Tolkien certainly create a more black and white universe compared to Martin’s infinite shades of gray. On the other hand, Tolkien found a very nice level of actual…
Jobs
The Pump Handle
‘An issue that affects all of us’: Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months. On his last day of work, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday.
In the fall of 2011, a new Texas statute took effect against employers who engage in wage theft, putting in place real consequences for employers found guilty of stealing wages from workers. It was a big step forward in a state where wage theft has become as common as cowboy boots and pick-up trucks. It was especially good news for workers in El Paso, where wage theft has become so rampant that workers rights advocates have dubbed it an “epidemic.”
The Pump Handle
Houston, we have a workers’ rights problem: Profile of a worker justice center in Texas’ biggest city
Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren’t members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.
