gregladen | December 15, 2010
1) Clay Duke tried to kill several school board members, but missed from a distance of between 6 and 8 feet with his Smith & Wesson pistol. Indeed, over 25 rounds were fired in the small public space, all aimed from a short distance, and only one fatal shot occurred. This puts an end to the idea that if everyone in every public meeting had a pistol that the bad guys would be easily dispatched.
2) Duke had previously been in trouble for a gun related stalking event in which he actually discharged a firearm. Only in a society with very little serious concern over gun ownership could a…
gregladen | December 15, 2010This is the day, in 1890, that Sitting Bull died. He was fatally shot by two tribal police officers while being arrested in order to keep him from influencing an ensuing Native American movement that threatened the Great White Father (Benjamin Harrison at the time). He is probably most famous for his role in the defeat of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, but he was a prominant member of the Lakota (Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux) community for his entire life, recognized as an important shaman.
Image from the Smithsonian
gregladen | December 14, 2010That would be an interesting headline to see. Even more interesting is the fact, as far as I know, that we haven't seen it. For that, there should be consequences. Rant below the fold. Not work safe. Grrrrrrrr.
Julian Assange and his Hactivists can kiss my ass. Did you hear that? KISS MY FUCKING ASS!!!! I've gotten more "your password was compromised" emails in the last day or so than I've ever seen since the beginning of the Internet. Why? Because you have the maturity and perspective of an overtired baby with diaper rash.
Item: According to their own Rhetoric, Julian Assange is…
gregladen | December 14, 2010NASA may have spotted evidence of ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock.
Topography and surface composition data have enabled scientists to make the best case yet in the outer solar system for an Earth-like volcano landform that erupts in ice. The results were presented today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
"When we look at our new 3-D map of Sotra Facula on Titan, we are struck by its resemblance to volcanoes like Mt. Etna…
gregladen | December 14, 2010
"It isn't that some gay will get some rights. It's that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children .... They will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality."
gregladen | December 13, 2010Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is part of my own personal enigma. I have shown it to people who don't know me, who don't know what I think about, who don't know much about what I study. Nineteen out of twenty such people react in this matter:
A cold stare with underlying anger for wasting their precious time.
I admit that most of this has happened to captive audiences in the classroom, but it has also happened with family members and colleagues.
Then, time goes by. Lectures. Conversations. Blog posts. And suddenly one day, seven out of the nineteen say something like:
Oh ... Aha…
gregladen | December 13, 2010Registered users of Gawker.com media sites have had their names, email addresses, reading histories, and passwords stolen. But that's OK, because just yesterday I heard you say that any information hackers steal from secret computer databases should be public. (Or did I hear you wrong?)
The hacking appears to have been done by one of the same groups of "Hactivists" that is sucking up to Wikileaks and the largely directionless and infantile Internet anarchist community. [No, wait, probably not. Updated.]
This is all unfolding rather quickly, and you can get updated at least through…
gregladen | December 12, 2010
"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."
gregladen | December 12, 201011-year-old Birke Baehr presents his take on a major source of our food -- far-away and less-than-picturesque industrial farms. Keeping farms out of sight promotes a rosy, unreal picture of big-box agriculture, he argues, as he outlines the case to green and localize food production.
gregladen | December 12, 2010William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.
gregladen | December 12, 2010
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
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gregladen | December 12, 2010Before:
After:
Video of the collapse!!!:
This happened about 5 AM. Too much snow, and the Metrodome is basically a big balloon. There is a live snowcam here but the signal is poor. This is why the Vikings game had been moved to Monday, for fear of there being too much snow.
If you work in one of the skyscrapers downtown, this is your chance to get one of those once in a lifetime photos!
This has happened before but no one can remember how long it takes to get it back up again. Or, at least, Amanda, Huxley and I can't remember.
gregladen | December 12, 2010How come we don't all have one of these? I suppose one possible down side would be that if you fell off it would drag you into the vortex and crush you. But still ... well, have a look:
gregladen | December 12, 2010Of course, it would burn up in the process, but whatever. The following is one of those size and scale videos mainly showing the relative size of our planets and selected stars, then making quick reference to other larger scale structures. It is a good video (hat tip: Joe) but it does have a major flaw: It demonstrates that the earth is small, then it demonstrates that there are many other big structures in the galaxy, then it concludes that we are not the center of the universe. But being small does not make us NOT the center of the universe.
They've mixed up their fallacies here.…
gregladen | December 11, 2010A new species of stork has been identified from Flores, which is the Indonesian island on which the famous "hobbit" fossils have been found. The "hobbit" is a form of hominid (human relative) that seems to be a diminutive form of Homo erectus but different enough from that widespread species to give it a distinct taxonomic status, Homo floresiensis. The Flores hominids were probably about 120 centimeters in height, and the new stork was probably about 180 centimeters in height. The following artist reconstruction is meant to demonstrate bigness of the stork in relation to our diminutive…
gregladen | December 11, 2010If you've been in a restaurant kitchen, you've seen how much food, water and energy can be wasted there. Chef Arthur Potts-Dawson shares his very personal vision for drastically reducing restaurant, and supermarket, waste -- creating recycling, composting, sustainable engines for good (and good food).