gregladen | October 25, 2008
Thank you Susan.
... but it is going to be a long time before I get that song out of my head.... What's the word? Tinklenberg! What's the word? Tinklenberg!
Oh, and while we are on the subject of Michele Bachmann, have you seen her latest ad? Her ad is so freakin' dumb that I'm posting it here as an ANTI-MICHELE BACHMANN thingie:
I may get my words wrong, but I just played this ad for Amanda and she puked on the couch.
gregladen | October 25, 2008
But wait, there's more!
Oh. Never mind.
What I think is really funny is that she carved the B on her face backwards. Note to self: if I'm ever going to carve a letter in my face and use a mirror, REMEMBER THAT EVERYTHING IN THE MIRROR IS BACKWARDS ... (though, strangely, not upside down).
gregladen | October 25, 20081975, winter, somewhere in the American Southwest. I am driving across a state border and there is a sign that reads "do not transport citrus fruit across state lines." There on the side of the road is a check point with uniformed federal agents, a place to pull off, some garbage cans. I look at the oranges sitting on the floor over on the passenger side and figure ... "better pull off and dump this contraband." But then something surprising happened.
I started to pull into the checkpoint, and one of the uniformed federal agents leaned over a bit to see who was in the 10 year old…
gregladen | October 25, 2008It is time to be alarmed. An usual but possibly valid poll taken at Saint Cloud State indicates that Norm Coleman may be quite far ahead of Al Franken in the Senate race here in Minnesota. This is very disturbing for three reasons.
1) This is one of the only poll anywhere, and certainly THE only one for this race, in which a systematic effort was made to contact people who's primary telephone is a cell phone. The theory was that this cell-phone subset of people would be smarter, more liberal, less likely to support a lying treacherous dweeb like Norm Coleman. So, either that theory is…
gregladen | October 25, 2008Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on.
How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don't be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual…
gregladen | October 24, 2008For starters, we are currently looking for hosts for the next Replace Michele Bachmann web carnival. We've been slugging along providing this great service for a month now, and suddenly she is all famous and stuff. Now is your chance to join in at the last second and take advantage of our hard work and get some link love. Tell me if you want to do this.
Second item: There is a new carnival thing being discussed/proposed/organized over at Sharp Brains. This is a Metacarnival: A Carnival of Blog Carnivals. This is where select carnivals (or actually, the organizers of said carnivals)…
gregladen | October 24, 2008Oh, this is just unbelievable. Thanks Mmme P for digging this up for our enjoyment. You must be assimilated. Into the suburban borg. Anything else is animalistic tribalism.
I literally became somewhat nauseated watching this. But then, I thought ... "Hey, we're putting this bitch, I mean, witch[hunter] away. This is not a problem any more."
gregladen | October 24, 2008I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and two people who have lived in Minnesota a lot longer than I have brought up Governor Arne (pronounced "arny") Carlson. Carlson was governor years ago. Since I've moved here, I've heard Carlson now and then as a commenter on Minnesota Public Radio, and to be honest, I just assumed he was a Democrat because of what he said about various issues and various candidates.
Anyway, someone brought up Arne Carlson and I said "He seems pretty moderate for a Republican." One of the people I was talking to said "Yes, that's right." The other one glared at…
gregladen | October 24, 2008There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years.
By an increased rate of evolution, the authors mean an increased rate of adaptive change in the genome. By recent times, the authors mean various things, depending on which part of the analysis you examine, and depending on what is meant by "increased." ... In other words, the timing of an event that is not really an event (but rather a change in rate of something) is hard…
gregladen | October 24, 2008Welcome to the 22 October Edition of the Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival. The previous edition of this carnival was on Clashing Culture. The Home Page of Four Stone Hearth is here, and the next edition will be at Archaeoporn.
And now, on with the show!
Archaeology
What is "The relevance of archaeology?" According to A very remote period indeed...
archaeology is the only discipline that can provide us with a relatively objective measure of how things were in the past, even following the advent of writing.
"But don't archaeologists, being academics, often eat their own…
gregladen | October 23, 2008Happy Birthday Genie Scott!
Today is Genie Scott's birthday. Genie is loved by all in the community of biological scientists because of her central role, as director of the National Center for Science Education, in fighting the good fight against irrational efforts to teach creationism in our public schools and elsewhere. Genie is the author of several books, articles, and book chapters, including Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.
I met Genie at a conference (SAA? APA? AAA? Don't remember). The link was…