Carnivalia, and an open thread

November 22, 1963

I was 19 years old, and a student at New York University's Washington Square College. It was located on the east side of Washington Square Park in New York City. I was on the 6th floor of the Main Building, in a classroom where I was taking a test in Organic Chemistry. I remember thinking that I was never going to pass this test, and I was wishing that I had stayed home that day.

About an hour had passed, and the graduate assistant who had been in charge of the exam came back into the room. I don't remember his name, but I sure remember what he looked like. He seemed a little bit uneasy and I was wondering why. After a few minutes, he said to the class ( I remember the words exactly) "I don't know if this will upset anyone, but the President has just been shot". Clearly, it upset everyone. Some of us (for some unknown reason) got up and went over to the window. It was a beautiful day, but it was obvious that something was wrong. Cars had stopped in the street and people were standing in little groups, listening to the car radios.

After a little while, it became obvious that it would be impossible to resume the exam. The Professor (Dr. Morrison of Morrison and Boyd) came into the room and told everyone that they could go home. I went downstairs and walked out into the street. It was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. It was almost like everything was frozen in time. Groups of people were gathered around whatever radios were available, listening to the news broadcasts.

I decided to head home and I walked to the subway and took the train uptown to Penn Station, to catch the LIRR. It was sometime around 1 p.m and I was in the main hall where there was a large message board and hundreds of people were gathered around watching. When the announcement came over the public address system that President Kennedy had died, the reaction was unforgettable. For a moment, there was just stunned silence. You could literally hear a pin drop. Then some people began to cry and moan. It's a lot different hearing news like that when you're alone. But when you're in a large mass of people, there's a collective angst that sweeps across you like a wave.

The ride home was eerie. There wasn't a sound in the car. People were sitting, just staring foward, like zombies. When I got home, I turned on the television to watch Walter Cronkite. My strongest recollection is hearing the reports that the shots had come from the grassy knoll in front of the motorcade. Everything we saw seemed to point to that conclusion. Then we heard that a policeman had been shot and later that a suspect had been arrested in a Dallas movie theater. The one other thing that I remember clearly was thinking that this all just didn't seem to make sense. I was a believer from the very first moments that the information we were getting was not accurate. I remember hearing that the rifle had been recovered and it was a German Mauser. Later it became an italian rifle. First reports said that, Kennedy was shot from the front, later, the shots came from the rear, from the book depository building.

Often people will ask me who I think killed Kennedy. Well, I've heard most of the theories, seen much of the evidence and I can tell you that I honestly don't know. What I am mostly sure of, however, is that lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone assassin. And I doubt very much if the entire truth will come out any time in the near future. After all, look how long it took for the truth to come out about the Lincoln assassination.

A few years ago, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. had an exhibit on the 4th floor and among the display items was an old T.V. set from the 60's and on the T.V. set they were playing a tape of Walter Cronkite announcing the death of President Kennedy. I looked around me at the tiny group of people that were standing there watching and I felt the exact same stunned silence that I had observed in 1963. When I looked closer, I could easily tell that there were tears in some of their eyes.

The US isn't the only place to have idiot government and/or religion induced problems with education. The state of education in the UK just keeps on getting more depressing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1766946,00.html

we're all evolution fans here. Some of us formally educated, others merely enthusiasts. Most are also leftists. Which is something I don't understand. I've never heard of a Republican I'd vote for either, mind you.

I just find it interesting that so few evolution enthusiasts are willing to apply the lessons of behavioral ecology to political philosophy

http://www.indiancowboy.net/blog/?p=147>
Read more here

sorry, goobered up the link like a doofus. Maybe leftists really are smarter?

Read more here

You can reach me at mona dot albano at gmail dot com.

Cheers,
Monado

Remember that tripe a while back about the virginity pledges? Happily, it looks like such pledges don't work and even foster epidemic dishonesty. A press release from the Harvard School of Public Health begins,

Adolescents who sign a "virginity pledge" and then go on to have premarital sex are likely to disavow having signed such a pledge, according to an analysis of survey data by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researcher Janet Rosenbaum published in the advance online edition of the American Journal of Public Health's June 2006 issue. Conversely, adolescents who have had premarital sex and then decide to make a virginity pledge are likely to misreport their earlier sexual history. This misreporting of sexual experience will make it difficult to accurately assess virginity pledges' effects on early sexual intercourse, according to the author.

Moreover, the fact that the majority of adolescents recanted their vows within a year may suggest that the virginity pledge programs have a high drop-out rate and that adolescents do not make a strong affiliation with the pledge, said the author.

Anybody know of a link to the original Science article that this one discusses?

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23358/

The original article is a subscription-only read:

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/21410/

Is Science drumming up business or is there substance to what appears to be the usual amount of trimming and commenting on sexual selection theories of all kinds?