gregladen | October 31, 2009I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I've never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist.
It should not have been terribly surprising that there were graves in this particular patch of land, just across a small road from an existing…
gregladen | October 30, 2009Well, we were living with this ghost who would walk up and down the hall in the middle of the night, invisibly leaving behind only the sound of its footsteps. But before I tell you how this all came out, I want to tell you a related side story.
As I had mentioned, I had the "hallway extension" room. Let me explain.
To get into the apartment, you would walk up a set of stairs and through a lockable doorway. Then to the right was a bedroom, and to the left a bathroom. Moving on ahead were two more bedrooms on the right for a total of three. On the left side past the bathroom was a…
gregladen | October 30, 2009So there we were in the Haunted Guest Quarters of the Old Infirmary, and I had already heard the ghost once. In the morning, my colleague and BFF Lynne who was staying with us for a couple of days noted that she had heard the mysterious footsteps as well....
"Greg, one, maybe both, of your students are really afraid of ghosts," she said.
"Why were they even talking about ghosts?"
"They've talked about little else since finding out that the ghost tour business is the biggest thing in town! And sooner or later they're going to hear whatever that was."
"Nah, they'll just get drunk and pass…
gregladen | October 30, 2009Shulinab Nursery School is located in a small village of 500 people. The school can't get enough water from rainwater, so they need to set up a system that will let them get water pumped from a nearby windmill. The community will build and maintain the system, but it needs $500 to purchase materials.
Go here to help.
gregladen | October 30, 2009Skepchick Rebecca writes about the Low Anthem's song "Oh my god, Charlie Darwin with comes along with a video:
Rebecca has the lyrics and more information, like who this band is and stuff.
gregladen | October 30, 2009 This is Melisa Riviere. White People sometimes do hip hop. I have a reading suggestion for you. First a little background.
I've gotten into a few arguments on race and racism in my time, some on this blog. Racist thinking is all around us. Why just a few hours ago, a neighbor complained that his car had been robbed by the black kids that pass down our street now and then. How did he know it was the black kids? Because the people who robbed his car like hip-hop. How did he know that? Because they didn't take his rock cds. Oh, did they take his hip hop cd's? Well no, he doesn't…
gregladen | October 30, 2009For Halloween, I'm reprinting the only Ghost Story on my blog (so far). It is in several parts, and here's part one:
Everything I'm about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it may span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
Kimberley South Africa is said to be the most haunted city in the world, and it certainly is a city with a remarkable and dark history. The culture of Kimberley is constructed from the usual colonial framework on which are draped the tragic lives of representatives from…
gregladen | October 30, 2009I would very much like your help in picking out a tee-shirt to wear around town. Let me tell you about the town, and you'll be able to make an appropriate suggestion.
I live in a conservative, working class, quasi-religious city, though my heart is in a nearby radical lefty atheistic edgy cool city. To put a fine point on it, a few blocks from where I sit right now is Michele Bachmann's congressional district, but the congressional district I've mostly lived in while in Minnesota, and to which I hope to move within the next year, is represented by the first African American Muslim member…
gregladen | October 29, 2009I've stopped paying attention to John Stewart and that other guy what's his name at Comedy Central because over the last month or so every single video form that source I've looked at produces this error:
I've checked for this on three different linux machines running two different Ubuntu distros, all with Firefox and Flash, across one service upgrade for Firefox and Flash. So it is not just a unique strange thing with one computer. Rather, it seems to be a conspiracy against Linux.
Did Microsoft buy Comedy Central or something?
gregladen | October 29, 2009Broadly speaking there are two kinds of federally regulated sources for dogs and cats used in medical research, training, an testing, in the US. They are labeled, unambiguously, A and B. A-class sources are breeders that produce animals for use in research. B-class sources, also called "Random source," provide animals, usually adults, that are not bred, but just acquired somehow (more or less randomly?) and kept for a while, and sold to research facilities. Random source dogs and cats are not bred by these dealers. (These are USDA regulatory categories.)
According to a report produced by…
gregladen | October 29, 2009Have a look at this veto memorandum written by Arnold Schwarzenegger to kill a bill authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. Ammiano is famous for shouting "Kiss my ass" to Arnold at some public event or another.
Tell me, is there a hidden message here?
story here
gregladen | October 29, 2009Last night, during Teh Game, we were told that Viking Orlando Thomas had died, succumbing to his battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. This is not true.
The initial report to a member of the press was confirmed by seeing a similar report on someone's MySpace web site. But apparently he is alive.
The story is here.
Hat Tip: Asha
gregladen | October 29, 2009If you don't know someone's age, over time they may let out clues that tell you when they were born based on what they remember, or things they claim to have done. This can be very inaccurate. My wife said something the other day that would cause anyone to infer that she was at least ten years older than she is, but it turns out the TV show she was referring to came to her home as syndicated re-runs. (My own personal memory of the recently deceased Soupy Sales is a similar example.)
The Universe
You can always ask a person his or her age, but you have to infer the age of inanimate…