On The Reality and Unreality of Political Boundaries Border Disputes between Argentina and ChileI waited for four hours to cross the border between Argentina and Chile in Tierra del Fuego. An Irishman on the bus travelling all through central and south America from Mexico to Ushuaia informed me that this was the worst crossing point on the whole continent.After so many years of the European
Jerusalem in a day and a half then down to Eilat
Setting Saturday night after the group has left I waited in the hotel lobby of the Prima Kings waiting for my friend Kfi to make her way back into Jerusalem from Efrat. When she arrived I lugged my giant bags around the traffic intersection multiple times in the wrong direction looking for her and her friends car possible apparently. There ended up not being enough room in the car for ever
Jan 9 to jan 11
Jan 9530 am wake up to hit abydos and dendara with another tour. It's was a few hours drive away from Luxor which is why we had to leave early. We went to Abydos first. This temple had some really amazing heirogliphcs. I wish I could describe these places better but I cannt figure out how to. Haha they are really old ruins with heirogliphcs and some statues. This one was cool because the roof wa
City of Angels
Touchdown...It is currently 830am here in Sunny Los Angeles and it has been a looooong night. After the customary preflight anxieties Em and I jumped on our plane and spent a lovely 13 hours together attempting to sleep in a chair.OVERSEAS LESSON NUMBER ONE the human body is not physically capable of sleeping in a chair regardless of the numerous variations of a 'sitting' position. IT IS NOT PO
Berlin Hotel Comments
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Jacksonville Reviews
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Richmond Accommodations
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London Hotels
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Billings Hotel Information
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Silver lining
Ok So today was 5 million times better than the last It turns out that I am not Dostoevsky and I have not been sent to Siberia as pentinence for some crime I am not aware of. During the week when the stores are open Besanon is actually not a ghost town. It is a thriving little town in a valley with lots of shops restaurants and cool buildings.Sleeping at Christine039s last night was very
Obama supporting actress Halle Berry gets to jump the line at International Airport
Halle Berry, was among the most diehard of Obama supporters in 2008. She made numerous appearances for Obama on MTV's Rock the Vote, and sported a t-shirt "Barack the Vote." She donated the maximum $2300 to his Presidential campaign. According to Politico, During the height of Obamamania back in February 2008, at a campaign rally in Philadelphia Berry declared:
"I'll do whatever he says to do," actress Halle Berry said to the Philadelphia Daily News. "I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear."
Now Berry is in a bit of hot water, and catching criticism from all sides for an incident that happened at the Montreal airport. Berry, her husband and baby daughter were allowed to bypass the security line at the busy airport, much to the dissapointment of other waiting passengers. A security guard simply lifted the red rope and allowed her and her family to got to the front, instead of waiting.
From Yahoo News Jan. 8:
Quebec journalist Marieve Paradis said on her blog Friday, she spotted Berry, her partner, Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, and their child, being led to the front of the security line at a Montreal airport Monday, while other passengers waited more than an hour.
Alexis Stodgeill of Black Voices news site comments:
Normally, this would not seem like a big deal -- Hollywood A-listers get led to the front of lines all the time. But following on the heels of the recent failed terror attack in the U.S., any breech in airport security seems like too much.
Various media are reporting that the individual who allowed Berry to pass has not been fired, nor even re-assigned duty. Though a supervisor has promised that they won't do it again.
Note - all Canadian security personnnel at airports are members of the Canadian Airport Worker's Union.
SCOTT BROWN PULLS AHEAD OF MARTHA COAKLEY IN MASSACHUSETTS SENATE RACE!!
BREAKING NEWS...
Fox and various other Media are reporting this morning a bombshell of a political development.
State Senator Scott Brown, who had been as much as 30 points behind Attorney General Martha Coakley in the race for US Senate, for Ted Kennedy's seat, is now 1 point ahead in the latest poll.
From Fox News:
The race to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate is looking like a toss up, with Republican Scott Brown up 48-47 on Martha Coakley.
Brown is benefiting from depressed Democratic interest in the election and a huge lead among independents for his surprisingly strong standing.
The crosstabs indicate that candidate Brown has a much higher favorable to unfavorable ratio than candidate Coakley. Brown is at 57/25, while Coakley is at 50/42. And voter intensity/excitement is much stronger among those who had voted for McCain over Obama in 2008.
From the summary by polling firm PPP:
Brown is benefiting from depressed Democratic interest in the election and a huge lead among independents for his surprisingly strong standing. Those planning to vote in the special election only report having voted for Barack Obama in 2008 by a 16 point margin, in contrast to his actual 26 point victory in the state.
That decline in turnout from Obama voters plagued Democratic candidates for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey last fall. Beyond that 66% of Republicans say they’re ‘very excited’ about turning out while only 48% of Democrats express that sentiment.
Public Policy Polling (PPP), is generally regarded as a left-leaning firm. Another poll conducted just last week had Brown down by 8, 49 to 41.
Libertarian Humor
“You libertarians are the types that would allow fornication in public parks!”
"What do you mean, public parks?”
Orzel Nails It on Science and Religion | The Intersection
I haven’t blogged on this subject in a while, due to the kinds of comments/blitzkrieg it always evokes. And I’m sure I’ll be accused of “arguing from authority” here, simply because I’m quoting someone I find particularly eloquent and persuasive.
But so be it: When I saw Chad Orzel’s post last week explaining why it is that science and religion can be compatible, I couldn’t help linking, as it so perfectly summarizes my own view, and in better terms than I myself can probably put it:
OK, fine, as a formal philosophical matter, I agree that it’s basically impossible to reconcile the religious worldview with the scientific worldview. Of course, as a formal philosophical matter, it’s kind of difficult to show that motion is possible.
We don’t live in a formal philosophical world, though, and the vast majority of humans are not philosophers (and that’s a good thing, because if we did, it would take forever to get to work in the morning). Humans in the real world happily accept all sorts of logical contradictions that would drive philosophers batty. And that includes accepting both science and religion at the same time.
So, in my view, it is not in any way an “unconscionable” political statement for professional scientific organizations to state that science and religion are compatible. It’s a statement of fact, an acknowledgment that in the real world, there are numerous examples of people who are both personally religious and successful, even prominent scientists. Guy Consolmagno, George Coyne, Bill Phillips, Francis Collins, and many more.
How do these people deal with the philosophical contradiction inherent in there beliefs? I have no idea. I don’t really care, either, any more than I care how philosophers resolve Zeno’s paradox. Religious scientists exist, and I can move from one side of the room to the other in finite time. End of debate, let’s talk about something that actually matters.
There is nothing unconscionable, in my view, in professional organizations stating publicly that these people exist. What would be unconscionable is the reverse–a public statement that science and religion can never be compatible amounts to a denial of the existence of the many men and women who find some way to reconcile science and religion in their own lives. I find that sort of rhetoric deeply insulting even on blogs, let alone from a professional organization.
Amen amen amen….and now, let the wild ruckus begin.
Crafty & Clever Neanderthals Made Jewelry 50,000 Years Ago | 80beats
The jewelry in Spain speaks mainly to the brains (of Neanderthals). So says a team of archaeologists this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers led by João Zilhão have turned up artifacts they believe to be jewelry dating back 50,000 years—a time only Neanderthals and not early humans occupied Europe—suggesting to them that those Neanderthals were capable of the abstract thinking necessary to make symbolic art.
Zilhão’s team found shells and bones that showed evidence of craftsmanship, the scientists say. First, some of the shells were perforated and could have been strung and worn as a necklace. It’s not out of the question that those holes could be natural, but the team says the finds also appear to have been painted. If the researchers’ analysis is correct, the Neanderthals could have mixed up reddish goethite and hematite, yellow siderite and natrojarosite, black charcoal and sparkly pyrite to create a spectrum of paints [MSNBC].
Scientists have found similar artifacts in Europe before. But those finds were roughly 40,000 years old – dating to a period where Neanderthals and modern humans would have shared the European continent. This has led other researchers to argue that the purported Neanderthal artifacts represented mindless imitation or were from later periods, but they somehow got mixed into the wrong soil layers of the archaeological digs where they were uncovered [Christian Science Monitor]. The new finds, however, date to a time 10,000 years before our ancestors migrated to the European continent. So if these fragments truly show signs of handiwork, and if the dating is correct, that points to Neanderthals as the creators.
For Zilhão, this means that Neanderthal mental capacity was closer to that of early humans than we often give them credit for. Objects and compounds like these would have been used to “tell other people who you are,” Dr. Zilhão said. “They are like socially recognizable identity cards.” What’s more, he said, “this is exactly how the same kinds of objects and finds are interpreted in early modern human contexts” [The New York Times].
That wasn’t Zilhão’s only Neanderthal study this week, either. He published a separate study in PNAS addressing the question DISCOVER posed last month: Did we mate with Neanderthals, or did we murder them? Analyzing the teeth of a 30,000-year-old early human child skeleton, he says that it shows similarities to Neanderthals—similarities that again raise the question of whether and how much early humans and Neanderthals interbred in Europe tens of thousands of years ago.
Related Content:
80beats: Did Spear-Throwing Humans Kill Neanderthals?
80beats: Controversial Study Suggests Early Humans Feasted on Neanderthals
80beats: Rough Draft of the Neanderthal Genome is Complete
DISCOVER: Did We Mate with Neanderthals, or Did We Murder Them?
DISCOVER: Cavemen: They’re Just Like Us
Image: João Zilhão
My God, It’s Full of Blogs | The Loom
Time for some livestreaming! At the end of this week I’ll be heading to North Carolina to Scienceonline 2010, a confab about all things scientific on the Tubes. I’m going to be talking in a session on Saturday morning at 10:15 am called “Rebooting Science Journalism In the Age of the Web” along with fellow rebooters Ed Yong, John Timmer, and David Dobbs. You can watch live on UStream and Second Life. Later, our session (and all the others) will end up where everything ends up sooner or later: on YouTube. (More details here.)
Here’s the official description of our session:
Are blogs and mainstream media the bitter rivals that stereotypes would have us believe, or do the two sides have common threads and complementary strengths? How will the tools of the Internet change the art of reporting? How will the ongoing changes strengthen writing about science? How might these changes compromise or threaten writing about science? In a world where it’s possible for anyone to write about science, where does that leave professional science journalists? And who actually are these science journalists anyway?
If you want something to read in advance, Bora Zivkovic, one of the prime movers behind this conference, has kindly organized a veritable banquet of food for thought on this topic. If you’re interested in the experiences and opinions I bring to the discussion, read this. Basically, I find kvetching and yearning for some global system a waste of time. I am interested in people doing new things.
ScienceOnline has a strong tradition of openness, and so you’re welcome to visit the session wiki and help us formulate the discussion in advance. You can also start a discussion here, which I will track.
[Image: 2001 Internet Archive]
Satellite Photo of An Entire Country Frozen [Image Cache]
Here's a satellite picture showing why I spent 48 hours stranded in London Heathrow's Terminal 5 last Thursday. I witnessed about 3000 passengers fighting for luggage, another 3000 waiting for hotel coupons. I left before the food riots.
This is Britain covered under the snow, from top to bottom.
I was lucky. I got the last seat on flight BA177 on Thursday. It was the last flight that left to New York that day, after an extra six hour delay (apparently, there's only one defrosting machine in Heathrow) on top of the two days. The previous day, they canceled two of my flights. The next day, they cancelled all flights again.
While the weather was bad, there was no excuse to what happened at Terminal 5 those days. British Airways and the people at the airport were nowhere to be found after 6pm. Before that, there weren't helpful, offering no directions except "we don't know" and "they haven't told us anything." They were the most incompetent, most idiotic people I've ever found anywhere in the planet, leaving all their customers unattended on the evening, and treating everyone like cattle the rest of the time. There was a point in which passengers had to step in and organize the baggage belts, because the machines were overflowing and jamming. At another point, there were passengers fighting for food in the departures area. Sad.
When the guy at JFK's customs asked me if I had anything to declare, I quoted Dennis Farina in Snatch, from the very deep bottom of my heart and soul: "Don't go to England." And don't ever fly British Airways. [NASA]
[A lot of you have written to me in protest of Jesús's post, claiming prejudice towards the British. I think the spirit of the post is Jesús expressing his frustration at BA, and his quote at the end of the post is from a movie, and a joke. Don't take it too seriously. Have a good weekend. —Blam]
This Boeing 747 Flies With a 15×14-Foot Door Wide Open [Airplanes]
This is Sofia. Like the Italian actress, it will turn heads everywhere it flies. Not because of its cleavage, but because this Boeing 747 has a 15 by 14-foot door on it, which opens to reveal a 2.5-meter telescope.
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy—which went through $500-million in modifications after two decades of engineering—has finally been tested after its construction, flying at 15,000 feet and 415km/h with the door fully open. The test was a complete success, and in 2010 they will start testing the telescope itself. [Flight Global]
The Smallest World Map in the Whole Wide… World? [Photonics]
Behold the smallest world map, created by the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University-IMEC. Its scale is one trillionth. That's a 40,000-kilometer equator reduced to 40 micrometer, half the width of a human hair.
The map was embedded in a silicon photonics test chip, using a 30-step etching process. The chip has optical circuits, submicrometer scale "tiny strips of silicon called waveguides or photonic wires." These developments will allow companies to integrate optics in packages that will be a million times smaller than today's glass-based photonics. The resulting chips will allow for inexpensive integration of photonics in every technology, from consumer gadgets to medical equipment. What does that really mean? Think more inexpensive high-speed network connections—like Light Peak, non-mechanical gyroscopes, and holograms. [Intec ]
The Ghost City of Ordos [Architecture]
China keeps growing like a giant red octopus fed by nuclear power and monosodium glutamate, a country that keeps spending money in pharaonic projects. Some useful, like the fastest train in the world. And some eerie and worthless, like Ordos.
The city of Ordos was founded on February 26, 2001. Ordos means "palaces" in Mongolian, and it's richer than Beijing. In fact, with a $14,500 GDP per capita, it's one of the richest in the whole country. With 1,548,000 inhabitants, Ordos is not exactly empty. But much of its modern architecture, sometimes awesomely futuristic, sometimes nafftastically overdeveloped and underdesigned, remains completely empty. The density of this city is only 17.8 people per square kilometer. By comparison, New York City has 157.91 habitants per square kilometer, San Francisco has 6,688.4, and Madrid 5,293.69. Even the city of Dubai, which has only grew in recent years, has 408.18 people per square kilometer.
And yet, the city of Ordos keeps growing like its motherland, with no control and making little sense at times. If at all. [Wikipedia]
