Orac at Respectful Insolence Has awarded the Crank Trophy to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for his pseudoscience stand on autism. If Mr. Kennedy has a science advisor he needs a new one, if he’s rollin his own he needs more education or a good science advisor.
Lord Kelvin's Birthday
On this day in 1824 (June 26th) William Thomson was born in Belfast, Co. Antrim, Ireland. He was the younger brother of James who was the first Giant Birthday I celebrated on this blog. In recognition of his important work on an absolute temperature scale the SI base unit for temperature is named the Kelvin. For more information see the links below.
Biographies:
Wikipedia
Eric Weisstein’s World of Scientific Biography
Physics World – PhysicsWeb
University of Glasgow – Lord Kelvin Online
Lord Kelvin: An Account of His Scientific Life … – Google Books
Publications by Lord Kelvin:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Memoirs by … – Google Books
Many papers from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh are available from Google Books. Here are a few samples:
On the Electrification of Air – Royal Society of London
Leakage from electrified Metal Plates … – Royal Society of Edinburgh
Electrification of Air and other Gases … – Royal Society of London
Flash Video Converter
It’s at vixy.net, their page title says it all, “Online FLV Converter : Download online videos direct to PC / iPod / PSP. It’s free!”
It works great!
H1-B visa problems
Industry has long maintained that they don’t use the H1-B visa program to drive down wages for technical professionals. There have been many allegations but until recently I hadn’t seen good evidence of an organized effort to avoid hiring American tech workers.
That was until earlier this week when GrrlScientist posted about this issue complete with a damming video courtesy of The Programmers Guild. In the post is this comment from “Human Resources Rep” who gives further details of this disgusting practice. I suspect there are many people in this country who have knowledge of this abuse of the system but blowing the whistle is a sure way to cause you and your family financial ruin. That’s why the people who know can’t say so publicly and leaking documents can also cause legal problems.
A few days later she posted again about this and included a video clip from Lou Dobbs CNN show. It is nice to see this issue getting some press again. I think Congress should launch a formal investigation into the bad practices of H1-B visa abusers. There will need to be extraordinarily good guarantees of anonymity and immunity from prosecution for whistle blowers who can provide evidence.
63rd Skeptic's Circle
The 63rd meeting of the Skeptic’s Circle is up at Relatively Science. As usual all the linked posts are excellent and I encourage you to read them.
These two posts I had not seen before the circle and I found them to be excellent:
Junkfood Science: Processed foods arent real food
Action Skeptics: Paranormalists Are Running Out of Ideas: Rods
Final Joost update for me
Well I’ve been playing around with the newest Joost version, it rarely ever plays for more than a minute or two. Also the multi-monitor support has not improved and the image quality is not very exciting compared to downloadable video or cable TV, so I’m giving up on it. For now I’ll just keep using Instant Media for IPTV.
If anyone wants an invite to try out Joost for themselves let me know and I’ll get you one ASAP.
DDT update
Bug Girl has another excellent post on the DDT and Malaria control issue. It is written so that even a non-biologist like me can grasp the situation easily. Great job again Bug Girl, I encourage everyone to read it and become informed about this pseudo-controversial issue.
(pseudo-controversial = tiny to no controversy among scientists, yet pushed by conspiracy theorists and politicians)
Maxwell's Birthday
Today June 13th is another Giant Birthday, James Clerk Maxwell was born in 1831 at Edinburgh, Scotland. There are number of good biographies on the web (see list below) so I will not bother writing a summary biography for this post.
Maxwell’s greatest contribution is his grouping and independent derivation of equations originally developed by Gauss, Ampere, Faraday and others into what is commonly referred to as Maxwell’s Equations. This and his other work in physics has been so instrumental in the advancement of our understanding that I feel he ranks right up with Newton and Einstein in importance to science overall. In the now nearly obsolete CGS system, the derived unit of magnetic flux was named the maxwell in his honor.
James Clerk Maxwell’s importance to physics is highlighted by these quotations from other giants in science.
Albert Einstein –
“The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell’s equations of the electromagnetic field”
“The work of James Clerk Maxwell changed the world forever”Max Planck –
“He achieved greatness unequalled.”Carl Sagan –
“Maxwell’s equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents.”Richard Feynman –
“From a long view of the history of mankind – seen from, say, ten thousand years from now – there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.”
Biographies:
Wikipedia
National University of Singapore
University of St Andrews
James Clerk Maxwell Foundation
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
EdinPhoto
Ham's Museum
Media Czech of the BlueGrassRoots blog had Fun at the Creation Museum!!!!
It sure seems like Ham’s Museum has it all, bigotry, incest and a “Jesus Horse”. I wonder if many Christians think this is a good place to bring kids, I hope not.
Thanks to PZ for pointing this out. For further reading about this madness check out PZ’s Creation Museum Carnival.
DDT is not a wonderful chemical and Rachel Carson was NOT Hitler
The number of ridiculous things I encounter on mail lists and web sites is truly astounding. A little over a year ago I first encountered DDT misinformation on an engineering mail list. The misinformation was coming from some of the members who believe in popular conspiracy theories, don’t seem to grasp the basics of science and, generally don’t seem to want to look at evidence before jumping to conclusions. I generally ignore their wacky posts after learning my lesson long ago that I won’t change their minds regardless of how much evidence I present refuting their claims.
Fast forward to this year and I see that the DDT misinformation is proliferating and some people are equating Rachel Carson to Hitler and Stalin. This is way over the top, so I figured I had better start investigating the situation in greater detail. What I’ve found is that there is no logical basis for the allegations. The best places to start researching for yourself are DDT posts at Deltoid (Tim Lambert’s blog) and, DDT Posts at Bug Girls Blog. They both link to the allegations and refute them with links to actual evidence.
More Information:
Latest entries on this at Deltoid and Bug Girl’s blog:
Reaction to Tierney’s bad science
DDT, Junk Science, Malaria, and the attack on Rachel Carson
Short Biographies of Rachel Carson:
Rachel Carson
TIME 100: Rachel Carson
WHO report on DDT:
DDT and its derivatives: environmental aspects (EHC 83, 1989)
Info on Raptors and DDT:
Patuxent Science Notes, DDT and Birds of Prey
Conservation of Raptors
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 
