gregladen | December 11, 2008Check this out. It is the US Civil War re-enacted as an exchange of facebook twittery-thingies. HT BATC.
gregladen | December 11, 2008
Something made me think of these toys, one shown above and other examples here.
I have seen incredible examples made of bamboo or other wood-like substances, sometimes incorporating bits of a tin can or some other material. The more sophisticated ones (often made by adults rather than the kids) are made of bicycle spokes.
Bicycle spokes are an important commodity in Central and East Africa (and probably elsewhere). They can be used to make these toys, but they also have another use you may not be aware of. Have you ever seen a likembe?
This is also known as a thumb piano. I'm sure…
gregladen | December 10, 2008 ... about the distribution of food at dinner tonight. Well, not totally. SIL and FIL did not exchange food. But everything else was wrong. But no matter, really.
Warning: If you go to Manny's, you should know that they moved. Manny's is now in the Forshay building. Otherwise it's the same old Manny's. Bring lots of money. Expect to bring home bags of meat.
Manny's motto is "Life is good at the top of the food chain." And that is meant in more ways than one. Manny's is where the teams eat. You know, the teams. Like the Vikings. It is an expense-account place too. It is where…
gregladen | December 10, 2008 If not, ignore this blog post.
If so, then my next question is, are you an atheist, agnostic, or free thinkier kinda person? If not, then ignore this blog post.
If so, then my next question is, are you a member of Minnesota Atheists? If not, then.
CLICK HERE AND JOIN, GODDAMMIT!!!!
On the left side bar: A "join and donate" link just waiting for you.
gregladen | December 10, 2008
Linnaeus' Legacy No. 14: A Carnival of Diversity
Encephalon 60, A Neuroscience Blog Carnival
Hourglass VI: A carnival of biogerontology
Grand Rounds 5:12 - Healthcare Reform Q&A
Carnival of Homeschooling #154: Anniversary Gifts
Christmas Recipes Carnival of the Recipes
Carnival of Cinema: A Smorgasbord!
Carnival of Politics Edition #21
93rd Make It From Scratch Carnival
The December Oekologie will be hosted HERE by yours truly. I've already got an excellent selection of entries, but there is still time to send in yours if you hvae not already. What is Oekology? "Oekologie is a…
gregladen | December 10, 2008Wait -- my headline is wrong. Coleman isn't stealing the election, and neither is Franken. Both sides are going to fight the recount battle all the way to the end, and that's the way it should be.
And the election isn't in chaos. Routine problems are being handled routinely, with one precinct still up in the air. It's just an unbelievably close election, and no one knows who will win.
What is happening, though, is that the national Republicans (Ann Coulter, Powerline, Wall Street Journal) are setting the stage for a "stolen election" claim. ...
This post is dead on. Here at GLB, we monitor…
gregladen | December 10, 2008As you read this, Amanda and I our our celebrating our Anniversary! (Of when I asked her to marry me.) I know it is a little extreme to celebrate such a thing, but we don't get out much.
gregladen | December 10, 2008REPOST
I hope these stories are not related to each other...
Great beasts peppered from space
There is fairly convincing evidence that the explosion of an object not of this earth hit mammoths and other Pleistocene Mega Beasts with shrapnel up in Siberia and Alaska.
Boeing's 12,000lb chemical laser set to fry targets from aircraft
Earthlings have finally developed an effective, large scale, and portable Ray Gun.
Global group aims to return Martian soil to Earth
There is a plan to go to Mars and bring back some dirt. Who knows what is going to be in that dirt?
Who Speaks for Earth? ...…
gregladen | December 10, 2008A good friend of mine, whom I shall call L.R., got a job ... a pretty nice job, with benefits and a salary and everything, in the "helping" industry, which she's good at and which she likes. So I took her out for a congratulatory dinner (and just because we had not seen each other in weeks). It took me some effort to get her to tell me where she really wanted to eat. L.R. is a sweetly, quietly self contained person (but made of steel inside, so don't mess with her) so it was totally out of character for her to tell me where we should go so I could buy us both dinner. But I made her talk…
gregladen | December 9, 2008The Japanese Education, Science and Technology Ministry have issued a recall notice for 5,500 cell phone straps that contain the radioactive substance tritium.
The straps, not surprisingly marketed as "glow in the dark cell phone straps" had been on sale since the beginning of the year, although not with widespread distribution. The Hiroshima couple making the straps was arrested primarily for selling the straps without a license, ....
I will refrain from all the obvious things that could be said at this point....
source
gregladen | December 9, 2008Draft 2 of the Minnesota Science Standards for K-12 is out, and once the current standards are approved, that's it until 2017. So now is your last chance for input for a very long time.
You could be childless, get pregnant over the next year, and have a child in school with these standards in effect. Even if you don't live in Minnesota, you may end up here. You never know!
HERE is where you go to comment.
gregladen | December 9, 2008Black is beautiful, without a doubt. We are all versions of Africans with varying degrees and patterns of non-adaptive and often unfortunate mutations owing to chance, inbreeding, or genetic isolation, and we are all subject to clinally manifest selective forces resulting in clinally distributed phenotypes. Here and there there may be a pocket of people who really stand out from the rest of the species, but that is rare and is presumably a short term phenomenon, and the level of difference if actually measured between such groups and their neighbors remains far less than typical levels of…