gregladen | October 21, 2008You will recall that John McCain has been trying to get the Cold War going again as part of his ill-fated and hapless campaign for the US Presidency. Now this:
The Russian mission to the UN in New York says it has turned down a request from John McCain to help fund his presidential campaign.
Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin and others received standard mail-outs asking them to help "stop the Democrats from seizing control of Washington".
Spokesmen for the McCain campaign and the mission accepted the letters were "a computer error".
Russians, especially the ones in the embassy, can be…
gregladen | October 21, 2008... wait, wait, does this make any sense at all? Wouldn't the conservative Muslim clerics normally call for the gruesome execution of children who play video games because they involve the creation and manipulation of images of humans and animals? So Koranic lyrics in a background song ... that is just salt on the wounds, right? Here's the story from the BBC:
Copies of LittleBigPlanet are being recalled from shops worldwide after it emerged that a background music track contained two phrases from the Koran.
Sony issued an apology for any offence that its use of the backing track might have…
gregladen | October 21, 2008
Every few years a paper comes out "explaining" short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al.
From the abstract:
Explanations for the evolution of human pygmies continue to be a matter of controversy, recently fueled by the disagreements surrounding the interpretation of the fossil hominin Homo floresiensis. Traditional hypotheses assume that the small body size of human pygmies is an adaptation to special challenges, such as…
gregladen | October 21, 2008If you live in or near Boston, Raytheon is one of those companies that you know about because you know someone who works for them. Or, you've been to the "Raytheon ... something or 'nuther" funded by the Defense contracting giant. Back when I lived in the vicinity, they were famous for making Patriot Missiles. Ah ... suddenly the name "Patriot Missile" makes sense, doesn't it!
Anyway, like any big giant company, Raytheon tends to fund stuff, and one of the things Raytheon funds is math and science education. I have received word of a revamping of Raytheon's MathMovesU scholarship…
gregladen | October 20, 2008Tim Tingelstad says: ".... I believe that justice is served when judges fear God and love the people, and as a Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, I will be impartial to the parties, while partial to the original intent of the Constitution."
And of the Constitution, on his web site, he notes:
"We the people, of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings, and to secure the same to ourselves and to our posterity, do hereby establish and ordain this Constitution."
-Preamble to the Minnesota Constitution
and his motto, on…
gregladen | October 20, 2008African American children may have reduced verbal ability compared to other children to a degree that is roughly equivalent to missing a year in school, according to a recently published paper.
Is this evidence of a racial difference?
The study by Sampson et.al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included more than 200 children aged 6-12 living in Chicago, and followed these children over seven years. The study controlled for poverty, and interestingly, poverty was not found to be a good predictor of differences in verbal ability.
The researchers consider…
gregladen | October 20, 2008.... your Anthropology Posts, for the next Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival. I'll be hosting the next one in Two Days. Email me your links!
gregladen | October 20, 2008This week's edition of the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival is the fourth in the series, and is named the "We Told You So" edition.
This is because there are several of us living here in Minnesota who have been blogging about Michele Bachmann for some time. There is the Dump Bachmann web site, for instance. PZ Myers at Pharyngula has been talking about Bachmann all along.
"I'll get you my pretty, and your Bill of Rights, too!" A few weeks ago, Stephanie Zvan and I hatched a plot, I mean developed an action plan, to provide a weekly carnival of posts regarding Michele Bachmann.…
gregladen | October 20, 2008 An Overhead Projector I was recently contacted by Glen Gould, a reader who is also a relative regarding the repeated mention by Republican Candidate John McCain of the "Overhead Projector" earmark for a planetarium in Chicago. Glen, together with my sister, Bunny Laden, are very serious amateur astronomers. For instance, when Bunny and Glen bought a car a few years ago, the first thing they did on considering each possible model was to measure the vehicle to see if it would fit their telescopes. Glen is also an engineer and spends considerable volunteer time in areas of the humanities…
gregladen | October 19, 2008And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it."
-Isaiah 35:8
So, I'm having dinner over at Lynn Fellman Studios with Lynn, Genie Scott of NCSE who is in town for a conference, and a variety of friends and colleagues including the recently decorated Randy Moore. And I bring up the idea that I 35 ... the main north-south interstate through the Twin Cities, the one with the recent bridge collapse, is seen by some crazy religious people as a special "god's…
gregladen | October 19, 2008A Republican Challenger has risen in the ranks of the Congressional Sixth District in Minnesota to directly challenge incumbent and Republican Nominee Michele Bachmann. Aubrey Immelman, a professor of poly-psy at St. John's University and College of St. Benedict, has registered as a writ-in candidate for the office.
Aubrey Immelman, who mounted an unsuccessful Republican primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, said today he will file to run as a write-in candidate for the 6th Congressional District in the Nov. 4 election.
...
Immelman said he sent an application to the office of…
gregladen | October 19, 2008 The North End, Boston, Massachusetts I'm standing outside Luigi's restaurant having a smoke, and Luigi's doorman had joined me. Across the street yellow stingray is parked, as usual, to block the alley. The word is, the fire escape down into that alley leads directly from Baronelli's office. The stingray is an escape pod.
Almost every restaurant on Hanover street and the dozen side streets is like Luigi's: owned by a family from a particular part of Italy or Sicily, with a local cuisine variant, and for the most part, run by the third generation in the family that originally…
gregladen | October 19, 2008In my opinion, it is time to bring McCain and Palin in for questioning. There is currently a $5,000 reward being offered for information leading to the capture and conviction of the members of the McCain gang who are responsible for this latest outrage.
Boston:
ACORN Massachusetts' head organizer Noemi "Mimi" Ramos arrived at the organization's offices in Fields Corner Thursday morning, Oct. 16, to find the front door unlocked, three desktop computers missing, internet and phone lines ripped out of the walls and general disarray.
Ten minutes after she was scheduled to start for the day…
gregladen | October 19, 2008An active following of unrepentant racist scum. Click the Obama is a Monkey Man to read more about it at TUIBG.
gregladen | October 19, 2008Did you see Oliver Stone pop his head up in the audience on Saturday Night Live last nigh?
I have not yet seen W but I plan to. I know a lot of you find Oliver Stone annoying, but I want to make an argument that he is less annoying than you think.
Oliver Stone
I think most people who are annoyed at Stone are annoyed because of one film: JFK (1991). This was an amalgam conspiracy film, bringing in every single known conspiracy idea regarding the tragic assassination of the President of the United States in 1963. But consider these two things; First, Stone has made quite a few films,…
gregladen | October 19, 2008I would like to begin by reminding you to submit your entries to a Special Edition of the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival, which will be up tomorrow morning some time as scheduled. The current edition of that article is here, at Almost Diamonds.
And now, today's carnivals:
Friday Ark #213 is at The Modulator
ABATC's "New and Exciting in PLoS ... real research you can read ... is HERE.
The Carnival of Space, "The space carnival has the biggest tent this election" is at Lounge of the Lab Lemming.
Carnival of Cinema: Episode 97 - Max Mad: Beyond Bloggerdome is at Good News
The…
gregladen | October 19, 2008Looking it up ... so you don't have to.
This post is a resource for those interested in learning more about Michelle Bachmann, who represents Minnesota's 6th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
The first thing you need to know is that Michele has one "L" and Bachmann has two "N's."
Michelle was born in 1956 in Waterloo, Iowa, but was raised in Anoka, Minnesota. Today she represents the 6th Congressional District in Minnesota, which includes many of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities as well as Saint Cloud (which is NOT…
gregladen | October 19, 2008It is very significant that one of the main reasons Powell chose to endorse Obama is the vicious and untruthful attack campaign being run by McCain and Palin. Bachmann's connection to this is noted in this video (the link kindly sent to me by The Science Pundit).