gregladen | November 9, 2010Bottom line: If you make less than 250,000 a year (per person, not per family) you have no business even thinking about being a Republican.
gregladen | November 9, 2010I know, I know, everybody else has already seen this, but since Comcast, ironically, cut MSNBC from our cable menu, I get my Olberman and Maddow off the net, and there is a delay.
On the suspension:
And, one item on our own Michele Bachmann:
gregladen | November 9, 2010Donald Mackenzie has been visiting Mount Ararat in Turkey for several years, searching for Noah's Ark, which according to the Bible was deposited by god on this mountain after the Noachain Flood. Although it seems to not have made news, Mackenzie was reported missing on October 14th.
Mr Mackenzie became interested in searching for Noah's Ark in his early 40s, and did a variety of jobs to fund his travels.
His mother said he is a Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland member because he believes it sticks closest to the Bible.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We can confirm that a British…
gregladen | November 9, 2010How can there be a large mystery launch of a rocket?
More video:
MSNBC's coverage:
gregladen | November 9, 2010As global warming progresses, habitats change in their suitability for various life forms. It may be that moose will not be able to live in Minnesota in the future; Of the two resident moose populations, the one that lives in the area more affected by global warming has pretty much died out probably due indirectly to the effects of increased temperature. There are regions of the rockies where entire forests are dead because of temperature changes. And so on.
Imagine a large flat landscape. As one moves north vs. south, average annual temperature changes, as does the number of days of…
gregladen | November 9, 2010Today is indeed a momentous day in history. On this day, in 1927, the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was discovered by Teh West. It, of course, had previously been known to all those people for tens of thousands of years who lived among, and eated them.
This is also Carl Sagan's birthday. He was born in 1934, which seems like billions of years ago.
Do you remember Cosmos, first broadcast in 1980? (I always think of it as a few years earlier, but it was not.)
Do you remember The Great Blackout of 1965? I do (barely). It was today, but back then. It looked like this:
It is not…
gregladen | November 9, 2010There are two reasons that the Republicans "won" the house and took more senate seats. One of them was made clear last night at dinner. Our waitress was funny. She started out a little funny-strange, then went to funny-ha ha, and I left the restaurant liking her and wishing more people were mostly like her. The funny-strange bit derived from her thoughtful pauses following certain questions like "do you have vegetables" and "you are out of my favorite beer, what should I drink" and so on. It turns out that we were pretty nearly her first customers ever, and she was hiding her nervousness…
gregladen | November 9, 2010You may recall me mentioning a tornado last year in Wadena.
"The town's been flattened. I'm on my way there for a high school reunion. It looks more like it's going to be a high school clean-up."
If you are in the region, I just wanted you to know about a fund raiser to help get the people of Wadena back on their feet.
Months after a devastating tornado struck Wadena, a benefit will be held this weekend to help the still-recovering Minnesota town.
The Wadena Relief Benefit will be held Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Medina Entertainment Center in Medina.
Details here.
gregladen | November 9, 2010Decision Points is now available at your local bookstore. I'm not going to get a copy, but I do think that it is appropriate to repost this, in celebration of George's literary success:
gregladen | November 9, 2010After extracting the final proton beam of 2010 on 4 November, commissioning the lead-ion beam was underway by early afternoon. First collisions were recorded at 00:30 CET on 7 November, and stable running conditions marked the start of physics with heavy ions at 11:20 CET today.
...
Operating the LHC with lead ions - lead atoms stripped of electrons - is completely different from operating the machine with protons. From the source to collisions, operational parameters have to be re-established for the new type of beam. For lead-ions, as for protons before them, the procedure started with…
gregladen | November 8, 2010Version A:
Version B:
(at 3 minutes)
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - All Wag Christmas Edition
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
2010 Election
March to Keep Fear Alive
gregladen | November 8, 2010Ellen Lutz, former Executive Director for the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution and for the last six years or so Executive Director of Cultural Survival, has died. I received this rom Cultural Survival:
We are deeply saddened to report that Cultural Survival's executive director, Ellen Lutz, died on Thursday, November 4, after a long battle with breast cancer, surrounded by her husband, Ted Macdonald, and her children, David and Julia. She was 55.
Ellen's contribution to Cultural Survival is beyond measure, and we all had enormous affection for her personally and respect for…
gregladen | November 8, 2010Iowa's rejection of three state supreme court justices who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage underscored the growing electoral vulnerability of state judges as more and more are targeted by special interest groups, legal scholars and jurists said Thursday.
"It just illustrated something that has been troubling many of us for many, many years," California Chief Justice Ronald M. George said. "The election of judges is not necessarily the best way to select them."
Story here
gregladen | November 8, 2010This weekend was Deer Opener in Minnesota. So the traffic going up to the cabin resembled Fishing Opener, and the entire experience was like Fishing Opener, but with more blasting and less splashing. Also, we didn't see a single deer all weekend, and other critters were acting strangely. Something spent part of the weekend living under the porch and driving the dogs nuts, for instance.
We heard when we arrived late Friday Night that a hunter saw a timber wolf (and the timber wolf saw him) while the hunter tried out his deer stand earlier this week. The folks who own the hardware store…
gregladen | November 5, 2010Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shamed the cable station MSNBC for indefinitely suspending its liberal host Keith Olbermann for making political donations.
Sanders, an independent who aligns himself with Democrats, called MSNBC's decision to suspend Olbermann, who admitted to making donations to several Democratic candidates this cycle, "outrageous."
source
Olberman had been suspended after Politico, the blog, narked on him for making three donations to Democratic candidates. My source on that is politico but it is the policy of this blog to not link to other blogs that being with the letter "p…
gregladen | November 5, 2010Tomas, once expected to spin up to a fairly strong hurricane, then weakened and not expected to do so, has done so. Tomas is now a serious hurricane with winds of up to 75 knots and sustained winds of 70 knots, and is expected to become stronger.
Tomas is bearing down on Haiti, but the eye is passing as smoothly as possible between Cuba and Hispaniola.
gregladen | November 4, 2010The answer to the eternal question turns out to be:
"Nobody knows" ... but we have some theories