gregladen | April 29, 2010This is a pointer and an appeal.
Pointer: Go see the current edition of Berry Go Round, the plant web carnival. It is here.
Appeal: If you blog about plants, please send me your blog posts for consideration for the next edition of Berry Go Round, which will be hosted here, with the target publication date of May 29th.
You can use this submission form if you like.
Thank you very much.
gregladen | April 29, 2010
Found Alive: The Loch Ness Monster
Giant spitting worm not so giant
Noah's Ark Finally Found!!!
gregladen | April 29, 2010I walked into her tent, went immediately to her bed and turned over her pillow. And there, as plain as day, was a stack of hundred dollars bills, a US passport, and a first class plane ticket to New York.
"How the hell did you do that?" she asked, astonished, hugging me, crying.
"Just doing my job, ma'am," I replied in a drawl, which caused her to raise her hand in a mock gesture to slap me.
She was an older (but young of mind and sharp) woman of fame and great means. If I said her name you would surely recognize it, either because you know of her or her somewhat more famous relative…
gregladen | April 29, 2010Over on Quiche Moraine I'm writing up a series of short posts on the influences of 1960s and 1970s TV on the sociocultural growth and development of Ammerican Yoots of the age.
If you follow my facebook feed, you'll know that as apart of the rehabilitation of my knee (the cause is indirect) I've been watching a lot of old TV shows on Hulu. Some of these old shows are only on the very edge of my memory, others I remember viscerally and a few literally. In may cases, I note depictions or portrayals, or models, that represented expectations for behavior or though process, or that indicate…
gregladen | April 28, 2010If you do not enjoy medical photographs, do not look below the fold.
As some of you will recall, a couple of weeks into this knee-damage shtick, I was munching on a dried prune and a molar came clean off it's root on my lower left mandible. It turned out to be a crown that had lost its nail, as it were, and was deposed. Following this, there was a period of uncertainty and confusion which finally led to today, when Dr. Spanish, Amanda's family dentist, started the process of tooth implantation. The roots of this tooth were too far gone to allow a new crown, and the choices were between…
gregladen | April 28, 2010
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Boobquake Day Causes Earthquake
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor
Fox News
gregladen | April 28, 2010According to a recent poll, the vast majority of Americans think that the Teabaggers are ignorant racist dumb-asses. Click here to vote.
Website Polls Powered By MicroPoll
gregladen | April 28, 2010Julia is going overseas for most of the summer, and she is putting together her reading list. I'm sure she'll put together a fine list. But we live in a culture in which we are compelled to suggest to high school students what they might want to read, especially in preparation for college. I've looked at a couple of those lists, and they are dismal. Some seem to be lists of works that are especially long, challenging of language, in many cases unpublishable in the modern market, out of date, and boring. I mean, really, Moby Dick? Watch the movie, dude, the book is a bear.
However, the…
gregladen | April 28, 2010We talk to Sherman K. Stein, mathematician and author of "Survival Guide for Outsiders: How To Protect Yourself From Politicians, Experts, and Other Insiders."
What makes us so susceptible to social influence, and how can we guard against being manipulated?
And
Matthew Linsdell on Personal Training
This Friday at 6 PM MST
gregladen | April 28, 2010Well, OK, technically if a man is wearing chains he's not really naked. Whatever. The question at hand is, was sex in skepticism before women showed up? And, when they showed up with their bobbies and all, did they ruin it for everyone?
Read more.
gregladen | April 27, 2010This is the opening paragraph which gets you very interested in the topic.
This is the part where I make you want to do something to find out more, or to help with the disaster. And, just as you really really want to click on something (the obvious next thing to do on the internet) this is the part where I say:
CLICK HERE
The previous post was an experiment. Click above to see what it is all about.
Seriously. This is important. Just go click there. Thanks.
Oh, and take this post and/or the one you click through to and tweet it and post it on your facebook page and so on and so forth…
gregladen | April 27, 2010I'm using the Internet connection of some neighbor who's name is "linksys" because my 6 year old wireless router died this morning. I have had a GI disease of some kind for the last few days which has made it impossible to eat pain meds. Ouch ouch ouch. Tomorrow, I get oral surgery. I blew all the dust out of all of my computers with those cans of air, and it settled on everything. And the vacuum cleaner sucks. In that it doesn't.
So don't expect any great blogging from me today, or even tomorrow, OK? Just don't.
Maybe I'll twitter baby duty tomorrow.
gregladen | April 27, 2010Republicans Scuttle Climate Change, Immigration Reform, and Their Own Credibility.
I can't wait until the Hispanic vote totally abandons the Republican party. Because they are certainly working on that.
(Note the Phillipe Rushton/Bell Curve, Psychometrics link)
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | April 26, 2010Knife throwing is for real. This came up on a different thread. Although it is possible to make a fake stage act that involves what looks like knife throwing, that is actually fairly rare. It is easier to learn to throw the knife than to make a contraption that would actually fool today's skeptical audiences.
The following is a YouTube video that happens to be of a performance that Stephanie Zvan, Julia and I saw last September (I remember two or three things in this video that identify it as that specific show, that specific day).
OK, OK, so maybe that looks easy. Try this:
gregladen | April 26, 2010I felt prettty sick all day, so I was unable to attend our local boobquake dinner. But I have been monitoring the seismographs. It is in fact somewhat rare to have an earthquake of 6.0 or greater on a given day. There are about 200 a year at that level, and they are random, and thus cluster somewhat as random things do. So the daily expectation of one or more earthquakes is less than 4/7. Nonetheless, the single 6 magnitude earthquake that happened on Boob Day (using the international time coordinates) was not impressive. We can conclude:
Intense praying by Islamic clerics reversed…
gregladen | April 25, 2010First, let's get this straight. I'm all for anti-science anti-vaxer right wingers not being vaccinated, as long as a) we take their children away from them (and vaccinate the poor dears) and b) isolate the adult anti-vaxers from the rest of the species, perhaps in Texas. But in the meantime, let's look at the latest bit of (mis)information from the utterly insane side of our society. If nothing else, this story may serve to remind us all what we are fighting about.... not the attitude of this or that skeptics, or which movements should or should not be engaged in chopping the pope down to…
gregladen | April 25, 2010Really, is getting vaccinated for whooping cough really a socialist plot to take over your minds?
If you've ever spoken to a mother who has lost a child, you will never forget what she has to say. Mariah Bianchi is such a mother, and she wants you to know why you need to get the pertussis vaccination. Not just for your child, but for you, and anyone who comes into contact with your child.
Her message comes just as the CA Dept. of Public Health is warning people to get vaccinated. Health officials say 2010 is shaping up to be a "peak" year for pertussis, aka whooping cough. The highly…