gregladen | October 23, 2012In last night’s debate, Mitt Romney said this:
“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.”
This is not the first time Romney has said this. In March, he said, “Maybe one of the few bright spots in the Middle East developments in the last year has been the rising of the people in Syria against Assad. Obviously, as you know, Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally in the region. Syria is the route that allows Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons in Lebanon. Syria is Iran’s route to the sea …” When he said that in March, the Washington Post called him on it, but…
gregladen | October 23, 2012Their similarity is not restricted to their inability to spell their own names!
Second ad from the Brian Barnes campaign:
gregladen | October 22, 2012I am uncomfortable discussing ableism and related topics linked to mental illness for several reasons. One is that I don’t know enough about it to ask people to pay a lot of attention to what I have to say. Despite the whingings of my many detractors, I actually do tend to know a fair amount about the stuff I do talk about, such as race and racism, issues of gender related to both biology and politics, evolutionary biology, human foragers, and climate change. Indeed, I wrote my theses on these things. Well, some of them. But when it comes to mental illness outside of issues related to…
gregladen | October 22, 2012I really dislike the commentary on Slashdot. It is worse than reddit in a way. Well, not really, but it is very annoying that an interesting question can be raised, and then seven thousand geekoids feel that it is very important for the world to read their own stupid little joke about the question. If someone provides actual information or rephrases the question usefully or anything like that, then it is lost in the sea of irrelevant yammering that is Slashdot.
So, yesterday or so, acer123 posted this:
"Lately I have replaced several home wireless routers because the signal strength has…
gregladen | October 22, 2012Check out this film trailer. Description below.
Wildfires in the West. "Brown-Outs" in the East. Farmers losing crops to the worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Climate change is no longer a prediction for the future, but a startling reality of today. The U.S. Pentagon believes it to be a matter of national and international security. Yet, as the evidence of our changing climate mounts and the scientific consensus proves a human causation, there continues to be no political action to thwart the warming of our planet.
"Greedy Lying Bastards" investigates the reason behind stalled efforts to…
gregladen | October 22, 2012
Both parties are concerned with the problem and regardless of who is elected, they will take care of it. Because they said so.
What? Wait? I got the wrong debate? What? Damn, you mean I have to WATCH these YouTube videos I post!
gregladen | October 22, 2012Do you know the TV show Arthur? It is a very good kids show on PBS, involving anthropomorphic animals (including Arthur the Aardvark), most of whom are middle school students, who face the daily struggles of life with families, schoolyard dynamics, difficult teachers, etc., and learn lessons and and all that stuff. One of the more memorable episodes is the one where the beloved Cafeteria Lady, Mrs. McGrady, has cancer and Lance Armstrong, with bunny ears (everybody has to be an anthropomorphic non-human animal), comes to town and helps make everybody feel better. Here's the trailer for that…
gregladen | October 20, 2012Allen's Rule. One of those things you learn in graduate school along with Bergmann's Rule and Cope's Rule. It is all about body size. Cope's Rule ... which is a rule of thumb and not an absolute ... says that over time the species in a given lineage tend to be larger and larger. Bergmann's Rule says that mammals get larger in colder environments. Allen's Rule has mammals getting rounder in colder climates, by decreasing length of appendages such as limbs, tails and ears.
All three rules seem to be exemplified in human evolution. Modern humans tend to be larger and rounder in cooler…
gregladen | October 19, 2012Bruce Springsteen in Ohio Campaign for President Barack Obama:
And now for the comic relief (You'll need to turn the volume up):
gregladen | October 18, 2012I wrote a post at 10,000 birds that starts to explore this question by comparing the number of birds that there are, the number of birds that seem to die off every year, and the possible number that get munched by cats, and briefly discusses predator niches and that sort of thing. I hope this is the start of an interesting discussion that will eventually get us tilting at windmills.
Have a look: Are there so many birds that cats don’t matter?
gregladen | October 18, 2012First, I want to remind you that Greata has written a great book called "Why are Atheists so Angry." From my previous notice:
Why are atheists so angry?
And they are! Just yesterday I was hanging around with a bunch off atheists and they were all pretty angry. They were even getting angry with each other. I could hear "get off my lawn" as a more or less constant droning sound in the background.
People who are not atheists, or who may be indifferent to religion but never thought about it much, might want to know what this is all about. One way to do this is to read a book that just came…
gregladen | October 17, 2012How do science and religion view the origins of life, of humans, of the Universe? NCSE executive director Genie Scott examines the two approaches, the similarities, the conflicts. When 9/19/2012. Where: Westminster College
gregladen | October 17, 2012
How can you go wrong with blimps?
The Aviator is a new book that gives you a world of post-global warming climate and interesting developments in transportation technology and artificial intelligence. It is written by New Zealand based writer Gareth Renowden. The Aviator explores a post-apocalypse world where the apocalypse is not nuclear war or a large object hitting the earth, or even an outbreak of zombi-ism, but rather, unfettered human-caused climate change. The story itself is an excellent read and even qualifies as a page turner. But there is another element that readers don't need…
gregladen | October 16, 2012...Sungudogo is a little known zoological mystery, an “undiscovered” primate living in the remote and rugged region of the eastern Congo, where the Central African Rain Forest fringes the high walls of the western edge of the Great Rift Valley.
Sometimes called the “fourth African ape,” Sungudogo is not a Gorilla, not a Chimpanzee, not a Bonobo, and possibly not even real.
Years ago, Sungudogo drew the interest of the world famous primatologist Dieter Phillips, who was funded by a secret society of “scholars and gentlemen” to launch an expedition to determine the veracity of this mysterious…