gregladen | April 6, 2009In June of 1940, France fell to Germany. Among the troops who were overwhelmed by the German attacks were about 17,000 black West African colonial troops with the French Army. Many of these soldiers were shot do death by the Germans, who considered these Africans to be subhumans, as they stood in surrender. Surely, it would be fair to consider this to have been part of the Holocaust.
Then the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese did a pretty good job of trying to take over the world, millions upon millions died in that war, and the rest of the Holocaust happened.
The Allies banded together…
gregladen | April 6, 2009Or, "Botany ... can't live with it, can't live without it ...."
... I was out there on the nature trail, both high on life and high on a rolled up and smoked version of Mother Nature. I started talking to Jeff and the other classmates who had gathered around the growing pile of deadwood. Everybody agreed that life was pretty good and were especially happy for me that I had a date for Homecoming.
... For some strange reason, which I can't for the life of me explain right now, I picked up a leaf from the ground and ...
No, no! Don't do it! Don't do it!
Continue reading ....
gregladen | April 6, 2009An Astronaut is blogging from space:
I am going to try to paint a picture in words of what I saw. Close your eyes and imagine yourself here on ISS with me looking out of the docking compartment window. You are positioned so the Earth is passing by below and you can see the horizon as well with the night sky behind it. Here is what you see:
It is completely night. There are thunderstorms across Africa and lightening is everywhere; bright flashes are going cloud to cloud illuminating the clouds as it arcs from one to the other. It is a private fireworks show.
Here.
gregladen | April 6, 2009The three judge panel convened for the purpose of addressing the Coleman challenge of the Minnesota Senate Election won by Al Franken (after a detailed recount) will meet today to examine ballots they had asked brought to the court. The panel had asked for four hundred ballots, but a small number of these (just over a dozen) had already been included in the recount and thus will not be examined.
The panel will examine the 387 or so ballots today, and decide which should be counted. Tomorrow, in a two step process the ballots will be opened by the judged (step one) and counted by court…
gregladen | April 6, 2009Apparently President Obama has to be bound. By Bachmann.
These people are insane.
Hat tip: DMB
gregladen | April 5, 2009Carnival of Space 98 is here.
Carnival of the Blue 22 is here
Down Under Feminist Carnival is Here.
The BoBo Carnival of Politics - April 5, 2009 Edition
gregladen | April 5, 2009An ice bridge holding a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place has shattered and may herald a wider collapse caused by global warming, a scientist said Saturday.
"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey. "Two days ago it was intact," he said, referring to a satellite image of the Wilkins ice shelf.
The satellite picture, by the European Space Agency, showed that a strip of ice about 25 miles long that is believed to pin the ice shelf in place had snapped.
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gregladen | April 5, 2009Once again, cheap, only barely regulated and readily available firearms take a number of lives in yet another mass shooting. In Graham Washington, a man killed his children and himself.
He had a reason, though it was a demented reason. And he had the inclination, though it was a misguided one. And he had a gun. Had he had the first two and not the third, there is a pretty good chance this would not have happened.
The man who fatally shot his five children and killed himself had just discovered his wife was leaving him for another man, authorities said Sunday.
The bodies of James…
gregladen | April 5, 2009It would be nice if George Bush went to jail.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
gregladen | April 5, 2009 The federal government has opened a criminal investigation into the capture and death of the last known jaguar in the United States, amid accusations that a biologist working for the state illegally baited a trap to attract the cat.
The 118-pound male jaguar, known as Macho B, was captured on Feb. 18 in a leg-hold snare placed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in a rugged mountainous area southwest of Tucson. The animal, which was described in field reports as healthy and robust, was tranquilized, equipped with a radio-tracking collar and released from the trap.
The jaguar, which was…
gregladen | April 5, 2009And now, for today's ROFLMAO moment, I give you Michel Bachmann on Homosexuals!
Hat Tip: Dump MB Web Site, where you will find much more.
gregladen | April 4, 2009You have probably heard about the shooting in Pittsburgh. The details are still sketchy, but word on the street is that the shooter, who killed three cops, was upset about a law placing some restrictions on gun ownership. He was also upset about secret government activities that "they are not telling us about."
Do what extent does Gun Nut = Paranoid Maniac who should not be trusted near firearms?
UPDATE:
Police chief Nate Harper says the motive for Saturday's shooting isn't clear. Friends say the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration…
gregladen | April 4, 2009Now that THIS is available.
Shall we start with a Below the Knee Amputation?
gregladen | April 4, 2009Contrary to what some have suggested, the worm did, in fact, do what it was expected to do -- it activated, giving the worm-masters full administrator-level control over some five million infected PCs, and making itself much more difficult to detect and fight. The worm generates URLs by which the master computer communicates with infected machines, constantly staying ahead of the efforts of security experts to shut them down. Beginning yesterday, the botnet began communicating over 50,000 domain names in 116 countries -- a dramatic increase over the 250 URLs used by previous versions of the…
gregladen | April 4, 2009A very large percentage of the earth's land masses were covered by glacial ice during the last glaciation. Right now it is about 10%, but during the Ice Age it was much more. Enough of the earth's water was trapped in this glacial ice that the oceans were about 120 to 150 meters lower than they are now. The thicker ice sheets were one or two kilometers thick, and they tended to slide around quite a bit, grinding down the surface of the earth and turning bedrock into dust and cobbles.
Then the ice went away, but the effects of the ice having been there are still being felt. A paper…
gregladen | April 3, 2009It being Twitter
While the "news" that Google was in "late-stage" talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn't accurate in any way, according to a number of sources BoomTown spoke to close to the situation.
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gregladen | April 3, 2009Although there has been plenty of blogosphere gossip regarding the monetisation of Twitter, the hugely popular social networking in 140 characters service, not a great deal of sense has been spoken. Until now. It would appear that an acquisition of Twitter by no less than Google is on the cards....
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