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MacKay and Stone: Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with Shale Gas Extraction and Use

A report for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. MacKay is Sustainable Energy – without the hot air person, and a rather infrequently updated blog. He's a pretty sensible chap and the new report is a challenge to all the folk who go around unthinkingly saying that shale gas emissions mean that its worse than coal (and for the people who think at least a bit, but rely on Howarth, they provide some reasons why Howarth may be wrong). At least, if you don't agree, you'd better have a good reason. More on global temperature spectra and trends From Moyhu. Interesting stuff: removing ENSO…

Creepy Texas dentist slathers on the smarm

Godless heathen that I am, even I can read the subtext in Don McLeroy's recent letter to the Dallas Morning News. First he reassures us that he is very, very, very Christian, and then he promises to purge the dogma from Texas education. We know what that means in the up-means-down world of Christianist fanaticism: the dogma is the science and his empirical evidence is the revealed word of his Lord, Jesus Christ. I've heard a few words about the situation looking up in Florida, but Texas is a dismal scary place for evolution education — I'm going to have to put a few more quatloos on Texas in…

Watch the largest ever witnessed glacier calving event

Via a blog posting on NPR, below is an excerpt from the recent Academy Award nominated documentary "Chasing Ice" showing highlights of a 75 minute glacier calving event recorded in Greenland. At the end is a time-lapse sequence of the entire event along with some visuals to put the size in perspective.  Really amazing stuff! While on the subject of metaphors, this is a nice example of processes that are in general very slow moving but when tipping points are reached suddenly and dramatically accelerate.  Climate change is such a process, this is rather scary.  But so are social and political…

Simple and beautiful.

Seen on APOD, please enjoy this stunning act of simple observation. Full Moon Silhouettes Video Credit & Copyright: Mark Gee; Music: Tenderness (Dan Phillipson) From APOD's description: One impressive moonrise was imaged two nights ago over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. With detailed planning, an industrious astrophotographer placed a camera about two kilometers away and pointed it across the lookout to where the Moon would surely soon be making its nightly debut. The above single shot sequence is unedited and shown in real time -- it is not a time lapse. People…

Belated Happy Darwin Day

I completely forgot to post a Happy Darwin Day message on Saturday. Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. That was also the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born (though there is some dispute over that, I guess). More importantly, February 12th is also the birthday of Brent Rasmussen's wife. Brent said he was going to celebrate her birthday by "performing dramatic interpretations of excerpts from Origin Of Species", which is both unorthodox and likely to land him in the doghouse. Brent, I suggest flowers are more appropriate, and if you want a Darwin connection to them, just make…

Did Flew Really Disavow Atheism?

As I said before, I don't have a stake in this one either way, since I'm not an atheist and don't much care what Flew believes. But I do think it's important not to misrepresent the views of others, and in light of the long and storied tradition of fundamentalist Christians distorting the views of their opponents, from the absurd "Darwin recanted on his deathbed" story to the more recent claims concerning Daniel Dennett, I think it's worth taking a closer look. Here is Flew in his own words, putting the lie to this enormous campaign of "ding dong the atheist is dead" that is sweeping the…

Skeptic pitied

Oh, no—this article about Craig Schaffer in America's Finest News Source reminds me of me. Eddy said he has tried repeatedly to pull Schaffner back from the precipice of lucidity. "I admit, science might be great for curing diseases, exploring space, cataloguing the natural phenomena of our world, saving endangered species, extending the human lifespan, and enriching the quality of that life," Eddy said. "But at the end of the day, science has nothing to tell us about the human soul, and that's a critical thing Craig is missing. I would hate for his soul to be lost forever because of a…

Throwback Thursday: The Physics of Happy Gilmore (Synopsis)

“What a shot by Happy Gilmore! <aside> Who the hell is Happy Gilmore?” -Announcer, from Happy Gilmore After some intense physics earlier this week, it's time to get on to the important stuff: the physics of taking a running start and trying to beat the daylights out of a golf ball. Image credit: Harold “Doc” Edgerton, of golfer Denny Shute in 1938. Sure, it's the fun stuff that slapstick hollywood movies are made for, but does it actually work? The physics will inform you, but the practical results will amaze you! Image credit: Universal Pictures, Frank Coraci, and Adam Sandler et…

Mmmmm...BBQ

My BBQ giftbox from Cooper's arrived this morning. Holy cow, way more than I expected - a whole brisket, a rack of spare ribs, two huge pork chops, some smoked sausage, summer sausage and a bottle of BBQ sauce. I put the spareribs on the grill and reheated them tonight and I'm currently in that "oh my god if I ate one more bite I'd explode" phase. When I first pulled them out, I had my doubts. There was an inordinate amount of coarsely cracked pepper on it, enough that I thought it would overwhelm the taste. But with the sauce on, the two layers of flavor actually worked perfectly. They were…

Quote of the Day

My favorite line from Bush's speech nominating Miers yesterday was this one: "Harriet has built a reputation for fairness and integrity. When I came to office as the governor of Texas, the Lottery Commission needed a leader of unquestioned integrity." Seriously, how bad would life suck if you had to say things like this with a straight face? The lottery commission needed a leader of unquestioned integrity? Yeah, I'm sure the Texas lottery commission was facing a real crisis of confidence that only her steely resolve could fix. Her reputation as a straight shooter restored the confidence of…

Balko on the 9th Amendment

Speaking of Ben Shapiro, who just published a book on the evils of pornography, Radley Balko says: While on the telly-vision, Ben apparently asked where in the Constitution it says you have the right to look at porn. Well, Ben, how about the First Amendment? If not there, then certainly in the Ninth. You remember the Ninth, don't you? It's the one conservatives once decried the liberals for forgetting about. It was put in the Constitution for the sole purpose of preventing people like you from saying things like, "where in the Constitution does it say you have the right to look at porn?"…

Where's the Landslide, Pat?

Back in January, Pat Robertson pronounced to the world that God himself had told him it was going to be a blowout for Bush: I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. Now, I think we can all agree that one of the closest elections in history can hardly qualify as a blowout. So what happened, Pat? Was the Lord not omnipotent enough to make sure it happened? Was he not omniscient enough to get the prediction correct? Or could you just be a fraud and a conman? I'll go with the latter.

News from Enceladus

There were all kinds of rumors today (from Drudge, of all places) that NASA was going to announce some major discovery related to life elsewhere in the solar system. While that would be incredibly cool, I was dubious—anyone remember the Martian "bacteria"? NASA has a rather poor reputation for this sort of thing. Anyway, Bad Astronomy has the actual news: it's interesting, but the media blew it way out of proportion. Plumes of water (they think) have been observed on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. I'd be more enthused if the earlier hype hadn't switched on my skeptical gland and flooded my…

The Moon's Two Sides Look So Different Thanks To 4.5 Billion-Year-Old Physics (Synopsis)

“Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.” -Langston Hughes 4.5 billion years ago, a giant object collided with our proto-Earth, kicking up debris that eventually coalesced into the Moon. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. While the near side contains dark maria and lunar lowlands, the far side is almost exclusive heavily cratered, high-mountainous regions. This was a mystery for a long time, but it appears that heating from the hot, young Earth caused a chemical and crustal difference between the two faces. Images credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech…

Fanaticism Kills Irony

Ah, our old pal Glib Fortuna is back with another ridiculous post in which he demonstrates that fanaticism eliminates all recognition of irony (to say nothing of hypocrisy). He casually claims that "The ACLU's totalitarian impulse is deeply rooted and inseparable from its ideology...". But Glib actively defends a President who claims the authority to disappear American citizens, hold them without ever charging them with anything, without access to an attorney, without the right to a trial guaranteed by our Constitution AND without any right to challenge that detention in court. While calling…

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to Timothy Sandefur and his lovely girlfriend, Erin. Nice to see I'm not the only one who gets all mushy and sappy despite my reputation for sober and cynical thinking. It happens to the best of us, ya know. Even HL Mencken, the uber-cynic who once defined love as "the delusion that one woman differs from another", fell in love with Sara Haardt, courted her for 7 years and married at the age of 50. All men eventually fall before the charm and power of women, of course, but you could at least have tried to hold out until you hit 30, Timothy!

A New Blog

I was reading Timothy Sandefur's blog and saw a thank you to another blog, No Blog Here, that has begun linking to him. Followed the link and found out that this same person is linking to me as well, along with Jon Rowe, Will Wilkinson and Crooked Timber. And he's from Michigan, even if he is a *spit* Wolverine. Seems like a good guy. Philosophy grad and active in Big Brothers/Big Sisters - gotta love that. So in honor of his excellent taste in blogs (the other 4 are great choices and regular stops of mine as well), I hereby command you all to go forth and visit his blog as well.

links for 2007-10-12

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2007 - Speed Read The Nobel committee explains the Chemistry prize (tags: chemistry Nobel science news) PhysicsCentral: Nanobowl Video Contest: Win World's Smallest Trophy! Make a YouTube video showing the physics of football, win a nanoscale trophy (tags: youtube science physics football sports) Freaky Ninja Turtle Dog Click the image for video. Not even a poodle deserves this. (tags: dog pictures stupid) Single top: new results from CDF! « A Quantum Diaries Survivor The latest exotic particle news. (tags: physics science news experiment) New quantum…

Frat Boys Need Counseling Too

The Weasel King posted a link to the classic Five Geek Social Fallacies essay, which you have no doubt already read. If you haven't, and you're reading blogs, you really should, because you're bound to recognize some of what it says. Of course, that article dates from 2003, so it wouldn't be worth noting, had one of the commenters in LJ-land not misread the title: I first read this as "Five GREEK Social Fallacies" because boy howdy, the entire fraternity/sorority system is built on almost all these fallacies. Except Greeks don't see this as a problem. What follows is a great spoof, and funny…

Mugged!

Dave at the World's Fair is asking ScienceBloggers to show off their coffee mugs. I don't usually have a camera at work, but my signature mug was bought via the Internet, so I snagged the image from the CafePress Store. It's a "Still Not King" mug, a reference to the famous Very Secret Diary of Aragorn. To the best of my recollection, nobody has recognized this reference and asked about it. Of course, it's been over a year since I drank tea, thanks to my stomach problems, and I never liked coffee, so at the moment, the mug is holding a couple of pens and a thermometer. But if I were to start…

Displacing Artie Shaw

A flurry of press releases hit EurekAlert yesterday (one, two, three), indicating the release of a bunch of data from NASA's Stardust mission. This is the probe that was sent out to fly through the tail of a comet, and catch tiny dust particles in an aerogel matrix, and return them to Earth for analysis. The mission appears to have been a pretty impressive success, scientifically speaking, with a bunch of interesting findings relating to the age and composition of cometary material and interstellar dust. The full scientific results are released today in Science Express, and if you've got the…

Extra Dimensions in Web Chat

Discover magazine is hosting a live web chat with Lisa Randall this afternoon at 2 pm. Randall is famous for developing some ideas relating to the physics of extra dimensions, and has recently published a popular book (Warped Passages) on the subject. This is supposed to be a one-hour live chat, with questions taken from the general public. I don't know if I'll have time to drop in (as noted earlier, this is a hectic week for me), but if you're interested in the arcana of modern theoretical physics, check it out. If they archive it in some useful fashion after the chat, I'll post a link to it…

A conduit for good works, untainted by foolish faith

Atheists don't get credit if we give to religious charities. We don't get credit if we give to simply secular causes. Now, though, we've got a new explicitly godless charity that works to improve education and knowledge of science: the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. It's my kind of place — and best of all, money going there isn't going to be mistaken for support for ignorance and superstition. Read the announcement. It's cleared all the legal hurdles in both the US and Great Britain and has been granted charitable, tax-exempt status, and is going to be my favored choice of…

Really Obscure Bands

Whenever I post about the music I listen to, I get a comment or two from people commenting that they've never heard of any of the bands I talk about. This is always a little surprising to me, because I don't think I'm all that much of a High Fidelity type. As proof, let me note that I really have never heard any of the albums on Bullz-Eye's list of The Fifty Best Albums You've Never, Ever Heard. I've never heard of any of the bands on their list. I don't think some of the people in those bands have ever heard these records... (Link via jefitoblog.) Any of you recognize any of these?

I Told You So

There have been a few good posts recently on topics that I've discussed here a fair bit. I don't really have anything new to say on either topic, though, nor do I have the energy to repeat myself, so I'll just post the links: - Gordon Watts on the collapse of corporate research labs, based on this article from The Economist. The original article is fairly positive about the triumph of D over R, but Gordon is a little more skeptical, and I am as well. - Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias on vouchers as union busting. Kevin also provides an illustrative example. It's rare to see things laid out so…

links for 2008-09-22

Making kinematics graphs in Excel | Dot Physics Important tips on making a graph with Excel. (tags: physics education computing blogs science) Robert Hughes on Damien Hirst's upcoming Sotheby's auction | Art and design | The Guardian "Where you see Hirsts you will also see Jeff Koons's balloons, Jean-Michel Basquiat's stoned scribbles, Richard Prince's feeble jokes and pin-ups of nurses and, inevitably, scads of really bad, really late Warhols. Such works of art are bound to hang out together, a uniform message from our fin-de-siècle decadence." (tags: culture review art) Vote for…

links for 2008-09-18

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Free e-books from Will Shetterly and Emma Bull Two really good books, for free. What more could you want? (tags: SF books literature) D.F.W., R.I.P. :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "For a young writer to discover Wallace in those days could be an experience of very mixed emotions, for it meant realizing that one's generation had produced a literary genius, and that it was somebody else." (tags: books literature writing academia) Public Relations for Science - Big Think Everybody's favorite…

links for 2008-08-15

Green-Clad Olympic Archer Steals Gold Medals From Rich, Gives Them To Poor | The Onion - America's Finest News Source "Since entering China last month by using a forged Sherwood Forest passport under the name Robert Huntingdon, the archer has appeared at more than 70 medal ceremonies, escaping with the gold every time." (tags: silly internet sports) U.S. Charioteer Breaks 2,500-Year-Old Chariot-Race Record Set By Perseus | The Onion - America's Finest News Source "American charioteer Hank Fowler shocked those gathered in the Beijing Hippodrome Wednesday by breaking the four-horse chariot…

Thank God for Grandparents

SteelyKid is home from the hospital now, and settling in to her new environment. She had a pediatrician appointment yesterday, and all is well. Of course, the more difficult adjustment is for me and Kate, trying to learn to speak Infant while also maintaining a semblance of a normal life. And, of course, freaking out at every slightly unusual thing SteelyKid does. Happily, my parents have come up to stay with us for a few days, to help keep everyone sane. They've done a ton of stuff around the house, and have also occasionally agreed to take on the onerous baby-calming duties: Seriously, we…

The Year in Cities

Taking my time to copy a meme from Dave, here's the list of cities where I spent at least one night in 2007: Niskayuna, NY (duh) Whitney Point, NY Tewksbury, MA Mineola, NY Boston, MA New York, NY Holland, MI San Rafael, CA Calgary, Alberta, Canada Cruz Bay, St. John, USVI Kyoto, Japan Yokohama, Japan Takayama, Japan Osaka, Japan We also spent sigificant time visiting Tokyo, Nikko, and Himeji, but didn't spend a night in any of them. 2007 was a pretty busy year. 2008 hasn't really taken shape yet, but I confidently expect to spend time in State College, PA and Lewisburg, PA, along with the…

links for 2008-01-02

Pop Culture News: Popdose.com The new group music/ pop culture blog from Jeff Giles, Jason Hare, Py Korry, and others. Future home of Chart Attack! and Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold. Adjust your RSS feeds accordingly. (tags: music culture blogs television movies) The World Question Center 2008 "What have you changed your mind about? Why?" (tags: science politics religion psychology biology chemistry physics economics academia math) My Year Of Flops Case File # 98 Rent | The A.V. Club "The film and play follow a series of suspiciously middle-aged-looking scruffy bohemian…

Truly gagworthy

Young America's Foundation is giving away a poster of the 'heroes' of the Conservative Movement — the usual roster of dunderheads shipped in to the photo shoot by way of the short bus — for nothing but the cost of shipping and handling. I guess they were having a tough time finding anyone who wanted to hang a picture of Dinesh, Michelle, Novakula, Ann, etc. anywhere in their home. But in case you want one for a dart board or something, just follow the link. Myself, I don't need one. I already have many copies of pictures of my conservative heroes. They're all blank, white, and hanging from a…

Wild Alaska seafood?

& This ad campaign is going to have some troubles, I suspect. It's saying something I want to hear: they're marketing wild seafood from Alaska, and they're trying to convince me that it is a sustainable fishery. I have my doubts; but they are about to start a series of ads to tell me that it is, and they're pushing salmon and king crab. Mmmmm. I want to believe. Delude me, baby, I want to taste your sweet, sweet lies. The slogan is "Grab a fork, and eat all you want. There's a lot more out there," though, which I find appalling. And worse, far worse, I watched the ads. Who is mouthing…

Who Are You People?

A question from the Corporate Masters: Is there a 'typical ScienceBlogs reader'? Who are these people? Why do they read Sb? What do they get out of it? So, well, who are you people? Other than, you know, physics nerds. My vague impression, based on what I know of the people who comment regularly, is that my regular readers tend to be grad students or post-docs, with a scattering of college faculty and professional scientists/ engineers. But I could be way wrong, so you tell me. Leave a comment, or send me an email and tell me about who you are and what you get out of reading this blog.

Don't You Blashpheme In Here!

I've gotten away from posting Japan pictures, but here's what may be my favorite warning sign ever: In case you have trouble reading the text in the image: Stranger whosoever thou art and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages. This is the Temple of BHUDDA [sic] and the gate of the Eternal and should therefore be entered with reverence. I think that's fantastic. Of course, the tourist shop selling the glow-in-the-dark Buddha keychains was about fifty feet away. Outside the gate, though-- I guess you take…

Physics of Engine Repair

Via Physics Buzz, a Mechanical Aptitude Test for diesel technicians. It's fifty basic physics questions, covering a wide range of material from introductory physics: basic concepts of force and torque, a little bit of electrical circuits, and even some thermodynamics. I got 45/50, which is a passing score. I suspect that I bombed the handful of questions involving specific engine terminology, because I know as much about cars as I do about 11-dimensional superstring theory. Somebody needs to sit down with the authors and explain how units work-- forces are not measured in kilograms-- but…

Didja win? Didja win? Didja win?

Before everyone goes nuts with the queries, here's the official word on the now closed commenting contest. It will take a day for us to determine the winners of the contest. We have to make sure our data is correct before making the draw happen. We will email the winners directly. If you don't hear, you didn't win. It will probably take a week or so to contact and hear back from the winners. I have no say in anything, and will not know anything until the winners contact the big guys managing the contest. You are encouraged to go on commenting to run the tally up to a million.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, Sideways

A Japanese physicist who I worked with as a post-doc spotted the Japanese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the wild, and picked up a copy. He sent along a scan of a couple of pages of the text, one of which I reproduce here: I had totally forgotten that Japanese books are often printed with the text in vertical columns from right to left, which creates a slightly weird effect. What's even stranger, though, is the way the equations are done-- they're also rotated to be vertical, but the kanji characters are rotated as well. Not that the rotation changes the readability in any…

Baez on Leggett on High-Temperature Superconductors

I had the tab open and everything, and still somehow forgot to include a link to John Baez's blog post reporting on a talk by Tony Leggett which directly addresses some of the questions asked about yesterday's superconductivity post. It's about a talk called "Cuprate superconductivity: the current state of play" ("state of play" apparently being a favorite phrase of Leggett's), and directly addresses what's weird about high-temperature superconductors and why they haven't been explained theoretically. These are notes from a talk, and thus somewhat compressed, but it's a good summary of the…

Go help Grrrrl Scientist do something really cool

There are two ways to go to Antarctica. One is like my friend Elle, who is at this very moment in an underground bunker at the south pole with a broken limb and inadequate medial attention, where she is working on a NASA scientific expedition where they thing somehow it is a good idea to spend the WINTER there. The other is to wait until summer then go when the weather is nice. Well, Grrrl Scientists, from Living the Scientific Life, is currently in the running for Plan B, the summer trip to Antarctica. Go here and find out how you can help her get there! Seriously, go!

Class Action Status for Race Discrimination Suit Against Eli Lilly

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is seeking class action status for a 2006 federal lawsuit that accuses drug manufacturer Eli Lilly of discrimination against African-American employees. The plaintiffs include nine current and former employees who allege that the drug manufacturer engaged in pay and promotion discrimination on the basis of race. An amended complaint filed last week with the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana includes allegations of discrimination from 106 additional current and former employees, reported Business Week.…

Captain America Alter-Ego Pulls a Lazarus

For those of you interested in Super Heroes, check this out: Superhero alter-ego Steve Rogers - the original Captain America - is to come back from the dead in a new five-part Marvel Comic series. The first part of Captain America Reborn will be out in the US on 1 July, but its makers will not say how Rogers will come back to life. Rogers was apparently shot and killed in 2007 on the steps of a courthouse. Since then, the 68-year-old series has continued with Rogers' sidekick Bucky Barnes taking on the superhero mantle. bbc Which reminds me, I've been meaning to repost my old post on Jim's…

Conservative World Congress of Families --> Amsterdam

Presumably they are going for the drugs and prostitution. Up to 4,000 social conservatives are expected to descend upon liberal Amsterdam, Netherlands, on August 10-12 for the biennial World Congress of Families, a meeting that brings together scholars, academics, policy makers, elected officials, and activists for four days of speeches, lectures, and networking. The Netherlands beat out four other countries in its bid to host what is the largest gathering of social conservatives in the world. Russia, Bolivia, Latvia and Nigeria lost out after the Dutch proposal included support from the…

Joachim de Posada says, Don't eat the marshmallow yet

In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow. Joachim de Posada's infectious energy and humor have turned him into a popular motivational coach. Working in Spanish and English, he helps companies and teams find deep and lasting reasons to succeed. His books include How to Survive Among the Piranhas and his latest, No te comas el marshmallow ... todavia, or Don't Eat the Marshmallow ... Yet. (He's recently updated the…

Right Good News for Whale

Nice going, mom! Right whales break birth record (AP) -- Right whales have plenty to celebrate this Mother's Day - the sea moms gave birth to a record 39 calves this spring. Considering that there are only a few hundred of these whales left, this is good news. The "right whales" were originally called that because back in the old days when our oil supply came mainly from fellow mammals, they were identified as the "right whale" to hunt down and kill for the oil. The term "Right Whale" refers to several different species, but the one being discussed here is the North Atlantic right whale,…

Ubuntu security alert

One of the nice things about Linux -- but by no means the most important -- is the enhanced security that comes along with running it. That doesn't mean Linux never runs into security issues, though, and this week, the vulnerability in question centers around a nifty little service called udev. According to advisories from several distributions, including Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE, a bug has been discovered that allows a local or remote user to exploit the udev service in order to gain root access to the system.... You can read the rest here, but mainly, just update your system frequently…

Photo Synthesis ...

... isn't just for plants anymore. It's a new blog here at the Blorg, a Scienceblogs Dot Com production. The internet is home to a wealth of captivating science images, from the many microscopic components of a cell to the remote corners of the universe captured by Hubble. On Photo Synthesis, we aim to bring you the best of what's out there. Every month we will feature the work of a different photoblogger, exposing worlds both small and large, familiar and exotic. We will let the power of the lens take us where we ourselves are not able to go. Photo Synthesis presents its first photo-…

The Trials and Tribulations Of a Catholic School Boy

Or, "Botany ... can't live with it, can't live without it ...." ... I was out there on the nature trail, both high on life and high on a rolled up and smoked version of Mother Nature. I started talking to Jeff and the other classmates who had gathered around the growing pile of deadwood. Everybody agreed that life was pretty good and were especially happy for me that I had a date for Homecoming. ... For some strange reason, which I can't for the life of me explain right now, I picked up a leaf from the ground and ... No, no! Don't do it! Don't do it! Continue reading ....

Feeding the right-wing nightmare

Take a look at this promising poll at Daily Kos. This informal and unscientific survey of the netroots seems to be showing that a third of the readers are utterly godless, and that if you toss in the agnostics, freethinkers have got a clear majority. I anxiously await the hysterics from the wingnuts, who will be horrified at all the heretics and apostates and damned infidels lurking on the Left, with their forked tails twitching and their horns filed to sharp, pointy tips. Maybe we need to start agitating for a godless caucus at Yearly Kos—or even a panel on standing up for secularism, and…

PREMIOS ''PUÃOS ARRIBA'': Premiaciones del rap cubano publicado en el 2008

From my homey Emetrece: El 3 de abril, en la Ciudad de La Habana, se realizara la ceremonia de premiación "Puños Arriba" en el Cine-Teatro Rivera de 23 y G // 8PM CategorÃas en competencia incluyen: Canción Beef, Canción Social, Canción al amor. Canción mas popular, Mejor featuring, Mejor Beat, Mejor Grabación, Mejor Video Clip, Mejor mini reportaje, Mejor cover CD, y CD del año. Discos en competencia: Mi Testimonio (Escuadrón Patriota). El Atropello (Los Aldeanos), Miseria Humana (El Aldeano), Dr. jekill & Mr Hyde (El B.), Redención (Papá Humbertico), La Segunda Temporada (…