Hedwig Pöllöläinen
grrlscientist
Posts by this author
October 23, 2006
Fatuity (fah·TOO·i·tee) [Latin fatuits, from fatuus; silly, foolish.]
n. pl. -ties.
smug stupidity, utter foolishness. absurdity. A ludicrous folly.
something that is utterly stupid or silly.
Usage: The possibility that the Rethuglicans can maintain their stranglehold on both houses of…
October 23, 2006
One question that people like to ask me is how I decided to study evolution in birds? The fact is that I had always been particularly interested in birds so I have a life-long history of watching and feeding wild birds as well as breeing and training captive birds, so it would seem natural that I…
October 23, 2006
When you see Bush's bone-headed responses to cutting-edge scientific research, especially global warming and embryonic stem cell reasearch, it's easy to think that he is the worst thing to happen to science in the history of this nation. But other 19th and 20th century presidents have ignored…
October 22, 2006
The latest spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope: the sharpest picture ever of the merging galaxies known as the Antennae. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies may be doing something very similar in about 4 billion years.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you…
October 22, 2006
After long hiatus, I think you all will be pleased to know that Birds in the News will return soon -- I think it will be the Monday before Thanksgiving, but I am still not sure yet. If you have high-resolution images that you'd like to share with the world as the featured photograph for Birds in…
October 22, 2006
Clouded Sulfur butterfly, Colias philodice,
nectaring at the garden of the (now defunct) Tierra de los Suenos
Bed and Breakfast near Patagonia, Arizona, mid-July 2003.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel…
October 22, 2006
A friend emailed this picture to me, so I am sharing it with you -- just to let you know that I am here and thinking about all of you. This image has inspired me to share some images with you throughout the day today. I hope that you enjoy them!
Male Indian Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, in courtship…
October 21, 2006
Thanks to my blog colleague, John, I learned that I am special in one way ...
HowManyOfMe.com
There are:0people with my namein the U.S.A.
How many have your name?
According to the search engine on that site, there are 3,000 people in the USA who share my first name and 0 people…
October 21, 2006
A friend emailed this image, prompting me to ask; when will the pastor of this congregation be arrested and detained indefinitely as a terrorist?
A reader points out that this sign was created using an online church sign generator. Well, of course! That explains why the sign was not vandalized.…
October 21, 2006
A government led by pants-wearing individuals? Um, no.
Pantisocracy
n. government by all equally; anarchistic community. pantisocratic, a.
Usage: If this country was a pantisocracy, we would sell a lot of guns.
.
tags: word of the week, vocabulary, politics
October 20, 2006
What is a good way to get kids to read particular books? Ban those particular books and then place them on public display. Of course, if you are genuinely banning those books for being controversial, there are problems associated with this;
"But I don't think we should tease kids into reading…
October 20, 2006
This isn't the prettiest streaming video, but I think it will bring back some fun memories.
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here
Quickly, quickly, quickly, get your adverbs here
Slowly, surely, really, learn your adverbs here
You're going need 'em if you read 'em
if you write or talk or…
October 19, 2006
Did you like my newspaper story? It appeared in today's issue of The Daily Prophet.
Write your own newspaper story.
October 19, 2006
Er, I was referring to the public opinion polls!
According to a recent MSN/Wall Street Journal public opinion poll, Rethuglicans have sunk so low that they can slide under the belly of a snake whilst wearing a tophat.
With congressional elections less than three weeks away, the Republican party'…
October 19, 2006
A friend emailed this link and even though I have only begun to poke around on it, but already I find it fascinating. Darwin OnLine is a searchable webbed database that contains more than 50,000 text pages and 40,000 images of publications and handwritten manuscripts. It also has the most…
October 18, 2006
You won't believe this but Senator McCain says he thinks he will commit suicide if the Democrats win the Senate in this upcoming election.
McCain, on a visit to Iowa to campaign for Republican congressional candidates, was asked his reaction to a potential Democratic takeover of the Senate in…
October 18, 2006
Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down, a study recently showed. But acting now will avoid some of the massive damage and cost relatively little,…
October 18, 2006
A friend who owns a dog emailed this design that is being used on t-shirts, so I am sharing it with you because I have a tradition of sharing such things with you. The website where this image is found, ObeyThePureBreed, has world domination by dogs as its primary focus. You can get your very…
October 18, 2006
I couldn't resist this quiz -- seriously now, guess which president I am most like? And which president are you most similar to?
You Are Most Like Bill Clinton
No doubt, your legacy may be a little seedier than you'd like.
But even though you've done some questionable things, you're still…
October 17, 2006
Image source.
As some of you know, I have been seeking a job for several years (I won't embarass myself by saying exactly how many years). Needless to say, I have made a few discoveries along the way, one of which is how to decipher job ads. Below the fold is a dictionary of words and phrases…
October 17, 2006
Gallup Poll Results of
Congressional Job Approval by
American voters,
9-12 October 2006.
If I was a republican, I'd be upset with the party leadership because they are clearly not listening to the average American voter. Instead of circling the wagons, key republicans should be asking difficult…
October 17, 2006
There are so many misbehaviors, such as the Foley sex scandal and "PlameGate" (need I say more?), that deserve attention and action by the Rethuglicans, yet these issues fester while BushCo signs the terror bill into law.
Bush's plan becomes law just six weeks [italics mine] after he acknowledged…
October 17, 2006
You Passed 8th Grade US History
Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!
Could You Pass 8th Grade History?
I got the first question wrong; John Quincy Adams is not the same person as John Adams.
October 16, 2006
A couple days ago, one of my doctors told me that "if you could bottle your sarcasm and sell it, you'd be a rich woman." So of course, I had to take this online quiz to see how it measures up against medical opinion. I'll let you peek below the fold for my results, and I hope that you share your…
October 15, 2006
The newly described YariguÃes Brush-Finch,
Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum.
Photo: Blanca Huertas, Natural History Museum.
A previously unknown subspecies of bird was discovered on an isolated South American mountain range. This coloful bird is approximately the size of a stick of butter. It…
October 15, 2006
Wealth accumulated by First World countries is largely based on riches taken from Third World countries. For example, the destruction of India's textile industry, the takeover of the spice trade, the genocide of native American tribes, and African slavery all served to fuel the Industrial…
October 14, 2006
If you were 62, unemployed and broke, what would you do to avoid living on the streets? Well, if you are Timothy Bowers, you rob a bank. ...
... and make sure that you get caught.
Apparently, Bowers is like most people out there, because he cannot pay all his living expenses by working at a…
October 14, 2006
Does anyone else out there in America think this is long overdue?
More than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, called Wednesday for an increase in the minimum wage, saying the value of the last increase, in 1997, has been "fully eroded."
Critics claim that…
October 14, 2006
I ran across an online quiz today that claims it can identify if you tend to be more of a socialist or capitalist. I think I am more of a capitalist than a socialist, despite my score (below the fold) so I think this quiz just used the wrong statements or made the statements too black-and-white for…
October 14, 2006
I want to thank several people who have recently sent gifts to me during my hospital stay (yes, I am still in the hospital by the way, and probably will remain so for another month).
I know that some of my benefactors would like to remain anonymous, so I'll just leave notice of my appreciation on…