April 24, 2010
Learn the name. She's the next governor of Minnesota.
There were a lot of great candidates in the race for the DFL (Democratic Party) endorsement this year. The party, at the primaries, has chosen Margaret Anderson Kelliher among them.
Now, what will ideally happen is this: The other candidates…
April 24, 2010
Notice that I didn't say that the medium IS the message. Just that some of the message is in there. In the medium.
I am forever amazed at how easily compelled my fellow skeptics, and/or my fellow atheists, and/or my fellow feminists, and/or my fellow anti-racists are to tell each other that…
April 24, 2010
In their own words ...
They call themselves Teabaggers, but really, they are nothing other than Republicans. Out of the box, run of the mill, nothing special Republicans.
You might think that these conversations are cherry picked, a rare set of unusual views held by a small number of the…
April 24, 2010
Twenty years ago today, the rocket ... The Discovery .... blasted off, carrying the Hubble Space Telescope.
And, to celebrate, NASA has released one of the most astonishing photographs ever.
April 24, 2010
Open Sourcing Genetic Research
Counting Gorillas and Elephants; The study of pain; Yet Another Complete Genome; The winter plumage of grouse; and much much more.
Open Access in Canada (PDF File)
April 24, 2010
At least one, probably several.
Don't forget to Dance your PhD this year!
April 24, 2010
Biblical anti-Obama slogan: Use of Psalm 109:8 funny or sinister?
There's a new slogan making its way onto car bumpers and across the Internet. It reads simply: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8"
A nice sentiment?
Maybe not.
The psalm reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."…
April 24, 2010
Men circumcised at birth saying that they prefer being circumcised makes as much sense as a man deaf in one ear extolling the virtues of monophonic sound.
That is a quote from one of many interesting comments on the equally interesting article Is male circumcision a humanitarian act? by Jesse…
April 23, 2010
Bonus video:
Spot the blatant continuity error:
April 22, 2010
Lady Duff Gordon (Lucie) traveled to Cape Town in the 1860s, and chronicled her trip with letters home, which are available from various sources as "Letters from the Cape."
From that volume:
From ship board on the way to the Cape:
The children swarm on board, and cry unceasingly. A passenger-ship…
April 22, 2010
This was expected:
THE US GOVERNMENT has released open source code that it has been working on.
In an unusual move for government transparency, the White House is letting developers get their mitts on its open source code. The US executive branch has been working on its custom code as part of its…
April 21, 2010
... continued ...
In the US, political parties have what is called a "platform" which is a list of assertions ... "we want this" and "we want that" sort of assertions. The "platform" is made up, quaintly, of "planks" with each plank being about one issue. Like for my local Democratic Farm Labor…
April 21, 2010
... continued ...
So, it seems that Arlo Guthrie was hauling firewood or something with his tractor out on his place in western Mass, and he took the usual shortcut across the pond. The pond was too deep for the tractor to drive in unless, of course, it was frozen, as it always was in mid…
April 21, 2010
... continued
The flames were so hot that we could feel it on our faces over 300 feet away as we stood near the corner of Delaware and Whitehall avenues. At first we gawked at the burning factory from about 100 feet away, but a large explosion caused us all to turn and run. But not too far.…
April 21, 2010
The first Earth Day was a red letter day in the long, hard struggle to make being good to the environment ... to the Earth ... normal instead of a fringe idea held only by quirky college professors and stoned-out hippies. This year, the first significant health care insurance reform bill was…
April 21, 2010
The venue, Minneapolis, is well chosen as it is very hard to get an earthquake going on this nice stable bit of crust.
I know it is a bit early, but I'll remind you of this now and then ... as you are making your plans for the summer, consider attending the Skepchicon track at the Convergence…
April 21, 2010
NEW YORK (AP) - Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus.
McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its…
April 21, 2010
C.E. Cupp is Ann Coulter before the bottle-blond crap is poured on her head, but maybe slightly less vile.1 She just came out with a new book: Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity, which explains everything you had wrong if you were a progressive liberal in the education…
April 21, 2010
Well, since he has that direct god connection and all, he must have...
The detention of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 has added to the scandals hitting the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, even as Chile's bishops asked pardon Tuesday for past cases…
April 20, 2010
... crazies ask for death to South Park authors ...
Oh, here's a picture of Muhammad I found on the Internet.
Ooops. Was I not supposed to do that?
April 20, 2010
A FORMER vicar-general in the archdiocese of Munich has claimed that he was pressurised last month into taking the blame for a mistake made 30 years ago by the then Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), concerning the case of a paedophile priest.
Fr Gerhard Gruber has now said…
April 20, 2010
Nearly Extinct Tree gets new lease, Elephants invade South America, Python on Wall Street.
There is a species of tree in New Zealand that has only one individual in the wild. They thought it was a female, but it turns out that there are individuals (among those cultivated by gardeners) that seem…
April 20, 2010
There will be a Linux based iPad equivalent (I hesitate to say clone for obvious reasons), and it will have touch-technology on the 'screen." Mostly, it will have this technology because when people started touching their computers ... that way ... Linux developers fashioned software so it could…
April 20, 2010
Dear Texas Board of Education,
I have substantial concerns that the social studies standards proposed by the Texas State Board of Education are not in the best interest of students and are not based on the recommendations of respected academics in the field.
These standards place our children in a…
April 20, 2010
Lest we forget:
April 20, 2010
GOP Leader Lies About Bank Reform Bill on CNN...
Party line vote does not equal partisan, if one party predetermines a nay vote on ever single freakin' bill. Moron. And so on. Anyway, enjoy the ranting.
