gregladen | May 11, 2008Quite simply, Michael Moschen has revolutionized juggling, refining it into an art and a bit of a science. With a few flying balls and well-chosen props he will completely re-wire your notions of..
gregladen | May 11, 2008 Marilee Thomas of Beaver City, Nebraska. And a tornado. [source] Mid-Americans ... Minnesotans, Texans, Nebraskans and denizens of Arkansas, and everyone in between, understand tornadoes, but to varying degrees. There are differences by region in how we deal with them. In Arkansas, I've seen foolish bravado. The tornado shelter there is known as the "fraidy hole" and having one or not in your back yard may be linked to one's sense of machismo. People from Missouri that I have known have a deep respect for tornadoes. An example: A few years back there was a talk being given at The U…
gregladen | May 11, 2008 Manson It is amazing to consider that Charles Manson's crimes (stemming from religious cultism) are still under investigation. Apparently, there will be some digging at a ranch occupied by "The Manson Family" because there is suspicion that there are more bodies to be found.
...police are to carry out excavation work at a Californian ranch to search for more possible victims of notorious mass murderer Charles Manson.
They believe more bodies may be buried at the ranch in the Death Valley national park where Manson and his followers hid after the killings.
Manson was convicted in 1969 of…
gregladen | May 10, 2008
.... stop here if you don't want to be creeped out, like, totally.
... was that Willard Scott???
gregladen | May 10, 2008Apparently, Obama has taken the super delegate lead. He previously had the popular vote lead. And he had the elected pledged delegate lead. Now he also has the super delegate lead. All together, it seems like he is just plain in the lead.
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has overtaken Hillary Rodham Clinton in superdelegate endorsements for the first time, according to The Associated Press calculations.
Obama picked up four superdelegate endorsements, including two from the Virgin Islands who had previously endorsed Clinton. The additions erased Clinton's once-imposing lead among the party and…
gregladen | May 10, 2008 Opener This is one of the few Fishing Openers for which I've stayed in the Twin Cities since moving to Minnesota. Before moving to Minnesota, I had never heard of a thing called an "opener" before. Well, I had heard of openers, but they were tools used to open beers in the days before they figured out that if you left the bottle cap just a little loose, beer drinkers could twist the cap off without the tool ... the opener. But that's another story entirely.
But, even though I usually have been outstate (up north) for the Opener in previous years, it was never really because it was…
gregladen | May 10, 2008Richard Dawkins does pretty good in the debate or discussion format. But here we have an example of Dawkins' skill combined with a bit of luck, the hubris of the interviewer, and other particularistic circumstances converging on a moment. A moment you absolutely have to hear to believe.
There are three items at this link, but the first one is the one to which I refer:
Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor
Hat tip: Pharyngula.
gregladen | May 10, 2008Despite apparent support from city officials and the local press, a very large majority polled clearly say that they prefer that Frankenmuth Michigan NOT boast a Christian Cross on its official city seal.
See the poll here. More details here.
gregladen | May 10, 2008How should public school administrators react to students who sit through the pledge of allegiance in the US? This issue came up recently in a small town in western Minnesota, where kids were suspended and possibly humiliated because they failed to stand (in once case entirely by accident) for the pledge.
There is now an on line poll being run by the Star Tribune in Minneapolis asking your opinion on this issue. Here.
Hat Tip: Stephanie Z
gregladen | May 9, 2008NCSE Press Release:
House Bill 923 was among the hundreds of bills that died in the Alabama legislature "because they did not pass in the house where they were introduced," the Associated Press (May 7, 2008) reports. The latest in a string of "academic freedom" bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution in Alabama, HB 923 purported to protect the right of teachers in the state's public schools (including both K-12 and colleges and universities) to "present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views in any curricula or course of learning," especially with…
gregladen | May 9, 2008Dilworth Minnesota is not far from Fargo. On Thursday, three eighth graders in this small town have been suspended from school because they sat down during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
School rules at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High requires that students stand during the pledge, but does not require that they recite it. The school's principle is hiding behind the usual "this is a privacy issue" smoke screen and is not commenting on this disciplinary action.
The students committed this act of sitting down while Principle Houglum was observing the class. She told them to…
gregladen | May 9, 2008The first deliver of aid from the UN World Food Programme was stolen by officials from the Burma military Junta. As a result, the shipment of aid into the country by the UN has stopped.
This is as earlier reports indicating that the death toll would surpass 100,000 are starting to look realistic, if not optimistic. Yesterday, a BBC reporter, under cover, was taken on a tour of the peninsula, where he and his crew filmed rice fields with a thin scatter of corpses. Tradition in this region dictates that the dead are cremated, but local monks claim that there is not enough firewood to cremate…