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Fantastic new illusion blog by Arthur Shapiro

The man behind the amazing Contrast Asynchrony illusion has started a blog! Arthur Shapiro tells me he has a backlog of literally thousands of illusions. He promises to offer a new illusion every week, along with an explanation of the science behind it. Here's a preview of this week's illusion: For an explanation of how it works, you'll have to visit Shapiro's blog, Illusion Sciences. There are already three illusions posted, with plenty more to come. Arthur Shapiro is a world-class illusion designer and psychologist whose illusions have won the most prestigious awards in the field. Two…

Like a deadly lightning bolt made of treacle

Somebody clone Attenborough, quick — the British nature program must continue forever! His latest documentary is Frozen Planet, and all I've seen of it is short clips on youtube and various other sites…which just makes me want to see more. Here is a time lapse video of a brinicle forming: a column of cold water descending from the surface which is saltier than the surrounding sea, so it both sinks and remains liquid as it oozes downward, but it freezes the less briny water around it. It's slow, but if you're a slow-moving echinoderm, it's like the icy finger of a vindictive god reaching down…

Minnow 37: Likes to drink pink ink

There are less than two weeks of Minnow photos remaining before the grand finale. A couple of donors haven't yet made specific photo requests, leaving me with a lot of leeway in picking photos. If you donated to my DonorsChoose challenge and haven't requested a subject, there's still time. Here's a photo from the archives (taken in June). Actually, the pink is the antibiotic (for an ear infection) she managed to spit back out. I suppose I could have done some spectrometry and figured out what fraction of the teaspoon dose she wasn't getting, but instead I did the laundry and was relieved to…

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner has passed away at age 95. I fondly remember going back through the back issues of "Scientific American" as a kid and devouring Gardner's "Mathematical Recreations" column (along with the similar columns written by Hofstadter and Dewdney.) If I have any mathematical skills, I probably owe a large chunk of them to some of Gardner's puzzles. Indeed, in my mind, Scientific American went from a pretty good first rate science magazine, to something less than stellar, when they ended these regular columns along with their "Amateur Scientist" column. (And don't get me started on…

We are stardust. We Are Bacon.

Katherine passes along an amusing article about Bacon: As America's bacon-frenzy illustrates, when culture, technology and economy allow mankind the option of unlimited bacon -- for bacon to fill every moment and aspect of its life -- Mankind will hit the "Bacon Me" button like an unhinged mandrill. In David Lynch's Dune, when Kyle gnomically insisted: "The spice is the worm! The worm is the spice!" we can see, now, that both worm and spice were, in fact, bacon. Bacon is the Dark Matter that holds together the Universe. Richard Bacon has just taken over from Simon Mayo on BBC 5 Live*. We are…

Hawaiian Retiree Takes Grey Parrot to Breakfast

A friend of mine in the Neuroscience program just got back from Hawaii (nice spot for an academic conference, I'll say) and sent me some entirely amusing parrot pictures. FYI, the title of the email was "You in 40 Years?" Hrm. "In Hilo, at "Bear's Cafe," I saw a retired lady eating breakfast with her African Grey "Yullie" or "Yummie" or something like that. Notice he had has own plate and was eating breakfast. The lady knew who Alex was; I told her I had just met Dr. Pepperberg the week before...." If only I could be so lucky as to be brunching with Pepper in Hawaii one day! Although, I…

This Blue Whale Wants You To Relaaaaaaax

Wow, why is this so relaxing? I think this slow-moving up-close-and-personal whale thingamajig could supplant bubble baths and candles as most relaxing thing ever. If they had added whale-song in the background I think we'd have the cure for insomnia and hypertension. And while you're feelin' so fine, why not read about blue whales here? A blue whale, while the largest animal, doesn't have the largest brain. That honor goes to the sperm whale, who's brain weighs in at 20 pounds. A blue whale's brain is 15 pounds, and a human's is about 6 pounds. From the Whale and Dolphin Conservation…

Save the James Webb Space Telescope

Lawrence Krauss has written an excellent defense of the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble which is currently under threat of cancellation. I was really down on the space shuttle the other day, but that's because I think it was a failure at doing its job of enabling exploration and discovery — the Space Telescope is a fabulous tool that works, and I want NASA to focus more on cost-effective, powerful methods of exploring the universe. Lawrence Krauss also criticized the space shuttle, and urges us to send more robots into space. Uh-oh. Cue ominous music as Neil deGrasse…

We need a petition to urge a school to tolerate menstruating girls?

What has the world come to? Valley Park Middle School in Toronto has made a very special provision to make Muslim students happy: they allow them to use the cafeteria for private prayer (to which I have no objection), and then obligingly segregate the boys from the girls, and because it is so very important, also take the young girls who are menstruating and ostracize them in the back of the room, where they are not allowed to participate. OK, not making them join in a prayer is nice, but the implicit public shaming for their physiological state? Outrageous. There's a petition. Let's add more…

Chris Peters' Live and Let Die

To Hold You Again Chris Peters Artist Chris Peters just wrapped up a winter show at Santa Monica's Copro gallery. I've blogged about his work before; it's inspired by vintage medical illustrations, but his agonized skeletons are ripped from their anatomical atlases to brood in Hopper-esque gas stations, Mad Men-like interiors, and smoky chiaroscuro. Whether you find his work creepy, Goth-chic, spiritual, or even humorous, it's a skilled and thoughtful reboot of the classic tropes of medical illustration. I'm sorry I didn't get this posted before his latest show closed, but Copro has a…

Watercolor as aesthetic response to trauma

Via reader-musician John Danley, I learned of Lori Anne Parker's "Watersketch Prospectus," "a yearlong project and response to a personal health crisis requiring heart surgery." As Danley observes, "her work is related to aesthetic responses to trauma." After suffering a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, Parker was unable to work with her usual oils, and branched out into watercolor as a medium. Her weekly sketches, each completed in an hour and a half or less, are free-flowing fantasies filled with networks of vines/veins and anatomically inspired botanical imagery. They have a…

If you're chased by an angry mob armed with infographics...

A short (~4 minute) sweet overview of the political power of data visualization, by Tufte disciple Alex Lundry. He says so-called "dataviz" exists (you guessed it) "at the intersection of art and science." Quite right, sir! You'll note Lundry makes use of the classic pirates-global warming relationship, Tufte's "pie charts suck" message, and so on. It's one of several good videos from a great event I really want to get to - igniteDC. I'd also like to mention that I'll be reviewing Connie Malamed's new book, Visual Language, which appears near the end of the video, in about a week or so, so…

Magnetic Movie wins "most accurate" award at ISF

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo. Last week, at the imagine science film festival in New York, Magnetic Movie won the Nature Scientific Merit Award: In 2009, the Nature Scientific Merit Award went to the film judged to be not only the most deserving but also the most scientifically accurate, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhard's Magnetic Movie. I love Magnetic Movie, too - but what think you about the scientific accuracy angle? See what I had to say about it in my Art vs. Science series, earlier this year: Art vs. Science, Part One: Semiconductor Art vs. Science, Part Two: You want raw data…

Birth control, the crochet way

OK: I'm female AND a biologist, and looking at this one freaks ME out! I'm all in favor of appreciating the beauty of female anatomy and miracle of childbirth and all, but this pasty, long-limbed newborn doll with a detatchable umbilical is nothing compared with its laboring parent, who, in this photo from its etsy creator CozyColeman, looks a lot like Grendel's mom. It's as NSFW as crochet gets, I guess, so it's below the fold. Yikes! Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think if you want to make the thought of pregnancy and childbirth horrifying yet eerily fascinating to your pre-teen…

Wearable spider silk

A gift idea for the person who already has everything: spider silk couture! (Or the closest thing to it). It took one million spiders to produce the silk for this textile from Madagascar (although the wild spiders were released after their silk was extracted, so some of them may have been repeat donors.) The video is absolutely fascinating: The silk is naturally golden and undyed. Each individual thread in the cloth was made by twisting 96 to 960 individual spider silk filaments together. I would love to touch it - I can't really imagine what it must be like, can you? Via Wouldn't You Like…

DINOCAMERA!

Tyrannosaurus photoventris Judith Hoffman, 2009 This is just awesome! It's a dinocamera from artist/photographer/metalworker/amateur time traveler Judith Hoffman: That's a lens cap/shutter on his navel. He takes pinhole photos of the late Cretaceous using paper negatives. Here's one of the "photos of the Cretaceous:" The realism is mind-boggling! I feel like I'm about to be devoured by a plastic toy on the set of a B-movie! You can see more fun photos here, at Judith's site. She also has a show opening tomorrow at the Peninsula Art Museum, 10 Twin Pines Lane, Belmont, California 94002.…

Beneath this steel beats the heart of a . . . bicycle?

Father Heart, 2006 Black Nickel on Rolled Steel; Glass Tank - 80cc with pedal Josh Hadar It's always puzzled me that bicycles don't take better advantage of the gleaming potential of curvacious, polished metal. Why are most bike frames so boring and triangular? Fortunately Josh Hadar has come to the rescue, with his beautiful curved steel custom bicycles. They're all lovely, but when he adds blown glass "hearts" to their steel ribs, his bikes seem positively. . . alien. Isn't it interesting that adding elements of human anatomy makes the bikes seem more unnatural? More bikes (and the…

Bad Photoshop, or good [crazy] taxidermy?

Earth Spirit, 2010 Enrique Gomez de Molina Reader Laura alerted me to this iO9 post I missed on taxidermy artist Enrique Gomez de Molina, whose work would be written off as bad Photoshopping - except it's real sculpture. The artist says, The impossibility of my creatures brings me both joy and sadness at the same time. The joy comes from seeing and experiencing the Fantasy of the work but that is coupled with the sadness of the fact that we are destroying all of these beautiful things. See a video of a sculpture in progress - a rhino covered with peacock feathers and thousands of individual…

Donate - and be an advisor on the synthetic bio documentary

Remember the synthetic biology documentary I blogged about a while back? Well, the filmmakers are still working toward their goal. They have a little less than a month left, and I just noticed that they've seriously beefed up the rewards you can get for funding them. There are some interesting gifts from $10 up, but now at $300$1000*, they will send you a rough cut, solicit your input, and credit you in the final version. For everyone concerned about how scientists appear in the film, this is an intriguing option! *Correction -the cost is actually $1000. For some reason Kickstarter bins all…

Oldies But Kinda Goodies

I'm going to have only sporadic computer access for the next several days, so I won't have time to do much new posting. So I'm going to just copy and paste some of the more popular posts from the old blog. They are four posts on neuroaesthetics, particularly Ramachandran's 10 principles of art. Also, because we were talking about metaphor recently, I thought people might be interested in the posts I wrote way back when on theories of metaphor that are both more mainstream and better tested than anything cognitive linguistics has to offer. So I'll repost all of those as well. The first…

Sometimes Francis Collins does something right

He's a delusional kook, but Collins is also a competent administrator, and I have to give him credit when he does the right thing. The NIH, led by Dr. Collins, has recently accepted a recommendation from the National Institute of Medicine that future chimpanzee research funding shall be suspended, and that exceedingly strict guidelines are to be imposed. They're just too close to us, and should fall under the penumbra of the same ethical considerations we apply to humans. I'd say the same of gorillas and orangutans…but I don't think there is any biomedical research being done on those…

NPR interview with Douglas Prasher, the man who cloned GFP

Over the past two days, many have pointed out that the one person left out of the Nobel Prize was Douglas Prasher, researcher who cloned GFP from jellyfish, Aequorea victoria. Sadly, Prasher lost his funding and his lab just after he performed the ground work that led to Chalfie and (some of) Tsien's Nobel Prize winning work. It turns out that NPR recently found Prasher - he's now driving a bus in Huntsville, Alabama. Listen to the interview here. As one former colleague states, his case is an example of "a staggering waste of talent". (ht: Abel) For more on GFP, visit Marc Zimmer's History…

Paris Hilton has a brain?

My broadband connection was down for the whole day yesterday, so I was unable to link to the latest edition of Encephalon, which is now up at Of Two Minds and is, apparently, hosted by none other than Paris Hilton. As usual, this edition includes some fantastic entries from some of the best neuroscience and psychology blogs on the web. I especially like the Neurocritic's short discussion about the practice in eastern countries of using the odour of smelly shoes to control epileptic seizures, and Jennifer's post about Rita Levi-Montalchini's discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) and the role…

Victory for Open Access

Last night, the US Senate approved the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that includes a provision requiring all NIH funded studies to be available free of charge (i.e. Open Access). Furthermore, the bill passed 75-19 preventing any possibility of a veto. And the Inhofe amendments? From Open Access News: Inhofe withdrew his anti-OA amendments earlier in the day and as a result the bill passed with the OA mandate for the NIH intact. However, Inhofe did file a "colloquy" (statement for the record to be included as part of the legislative history) objecting to the NIH provision and asking the House…

Colin McGinn Video

Wow - a creationist was appointed to high level position in the Conservative government back home. On the other side of the line Richard Dawkins has set up a foundation to promote acceptance of atheists (Richard, you better open a franchise in Ottawa.) Speaking of the RDF (Richard Dawkins Foundation) there are great videos available there, including one with Collin McGinn, professor of philosophy at Rutgers (I read his excellent book recently - see this post). The video is from Jonathan Miller's BBC series, A Brief History of Atheism and you can watch it bellow the fold: Well, something is…

Friday Deep-Sea Picture: Two-Colored Lobster

A two-coloured lobster caught by Digby County (Nova Scotia) fisherman Edward Pothier. Tina Comeau photo Lobster color derives from the presence of three different pigments: red, yellow, and blue. These colors typically mix to form a greenish-brown color. It is not uncommon to get a developmental error that inhibits the accumulation of red and yellow pigment, thus producing a blue lobster. Rarer is a two colored lobster. Because the two sides of lobster develop independently of each other an error can occur on one side an not the other. Most likely this occurs at a very early cell…

More Prizes For Donors

Jason over at Cephalopodcast has generously donated a copy of The Bioluminescence Coloring Book (with glow-in-the-dark paint!) and the video Marine Bioluminescence: Secret Lights in the Sea to give away for donors. This means the person who gives the largest donation and two random donors will receive gifts. Again the list of current swag is Monterey Bay Aquarium T-Shirt, Socks, Hat, or other such thing A vial of mud from the ocean floor at 3500m with a framed map and certificate of authenticity. The Bioluminescence Coloring Book (with glow-in-the-dark paint!) and the video Marine…

A (qualified) 'woo-hoo!'

I hold in my hand a letter from our Provost informing me that my sabbatical leave for academic year 2008-2009 is awarded. Of course, this is contingent on: My actually getting tenure (something which will not be official, one way or another, until May 23). My filing a promissory note (basically, allowing the university to come after me for financial losses should I not return to my position after my sabbatical). "Budget availability." Which ... have you heard that California's budget situation is not so good? So, probably I have next academic year to do some serious writing, assuming none…

A few nerd jokes.

Let's start with a song: Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-null bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall! When you're done with that: Q: Why do computer geeks get candy-corn in their stockings? A: Because OCT 31 = DEC 25. Q: Why is six afraid of seven? A: Because 7-8-9. This neutron walks into a bar, orders a beer, drinks it down, and asks the bartender what he owes him. The bartender says, "For you, no charge." Did you hear that electron belch as he dropped from an excited state? No? Well, he did it discretely.

What's that smell?

Well, I can't smell it from here on the Left Coast, but those of you in nose-shot of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden may soon get to partake of the wonder that is the Amorphophallus titanum, aka "corpse flower". Yes, you guessed it, this fragrant bloom smells like a dead animal. Flies loooove it. If you're not going to be near Brooklyn in the near future (or, you know, you don't want to hurl), you can follow the blooming of the corpse flower vicarously on a BBG blog, or watch it on webcam. (There is no live smell-o-cast, but undoubtedly someone is working on that technology for next time!)

Snail eradication (day 38).

When the snail hunter is away, the gastropods will play. It should be noted, though, that the slugs and snails I found today were not playing in my vegetable garden. That's progress. Conditions this morning were dry and overcast. However, it rained a little over the weekend, and our wee lawn was watered once with the sprinklers. Most of what I found today was on the lawn or in easy gliding distance from it. Another observation: I found some slugs clustered around wee, shriveled fallen lemons on the lawn. These slugs were much less responsive to touch than were the gastropods who hadn't…

Snail eradication (day 8).

Well, I think it's safe to say that the slim pickings on days six and seven were related to the low level of dewiness. This morning: much dewier. The gastropod population in evidence in the back yard: back in the triple digits. Still, things seem not as infested as a week ago, when we launched the eradication effort. Most of the snails and slugs I found were a good distance from the vegetable garden, and the strawberries seem largely slug-free. However, I did have to pick a handful of snails out of the apple tree. Speaking of handfuls, my current record is 46 snails in one hand at a time.…

At the AACR

Blogging might be a little sketchy for the next couple of days, because I'm at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting (AACR) in Chicago, all to to imbibe the latest and greatest in cancer research. I'm sure I'll manage to get a post or two in while I'm here, but I doubt there will be any Orac-ian epics before Wednesday (other than, perhaps, a recycled blast from the past) or Thursday because, well, there's just not a lot of time, and Internet access can be dicey at times while I'm traveling. In the meantime, until I get a chance to post something later today or tomorrow, it's…

Editing PDF's

Linux probably has a lot more FOSS tools for editing PDF's than other platforms. ImageMagick will do basic manipulation from the command line. But for a GUI interactive kind of editing, you should look at PDFedit sudo apt-get install pdfedit You can do what I'm pretty sure is one of the most often required tasks: Take a page or two out of an existing PDF file and put a page or two into an existing PDF file. Like when you mark up one page of a document, and need to scan the marked-up page and stick it back in the original, replacing the pre-marked up page. It worked great for me!

Ed Brayton on Atheist Talk

Ed Brayton, known to many of you as the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blogger, as well as co-founder of Michigan Citizens for Science and The Panda's Thumb, will be on Atheist Talk Radio this coming Sunday. Mike Haubrich, Ed and I will chat about the very current, often disturbing, and occasionally entertaining subject of Crazy Preachers. Like Harold Camping for example. We may also touch on other currently in the news individuals who don't happen to be preachers. Perhaps we'll ring some bells and warn some Brits! Details are here. I hope you can join us. Here's Ed on Rachel Maddow…

Eat your heart out, Wilkins!

Since John Wilkins also made the pilgrimage to Down House this past July, we had to one-up him and find something he hadn't seen—and here it is. There was a laboratory space behind the greenhouses that he hadn't been able to enter, but we could, and inside was a beehive and…worm pots! The placard simply says that Darwin studied worms for the last two years of his life, and includes a few paragraphs from his worm work. There they are, three dead-looking pots on a bare shelf. Writhe in envy, Wilkins! Now you're going to have to book a flight to London to catch up with us.

Richard in the Belize

Hurricane Richard is now Tropical Storm Richard, and is weakening rapidly. When this storm passes over the Gulf of Mexico, it is not expected to gain strength, but rather, will be torn asunder by the forces of nature and stuff and will dissipate. Richard knocked out power and messed up a bunch of roofs, but the news from Belize seems to indicate that the storm was not a disaster. Will there be a Shary (that's the next name on the list of hurricane names for this season in the Atlantic). Maybe. There's a stormy area in the middle of the Atlantic that may develop, but not for a least a few…

Please help with a science survey

A colleague at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies at Loma Linda has asked me to pass this on to you: IMPORTANT SURVEY ON ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION - Your help is needed! The Loma Linda University Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies is conducting a groundbreaking survey on attitudes toward the environment and conservation, particularly of those who love plants and animals. The results from this study, to be published in a professional journal, will contribute to our understanding of the role of plants and animals in society. Participants…

American Eugenics Organization Is Sterilizing British Drug Addicts

This is astonishing. An organization called "Project Prevention" led by a person by the name of Barbara Harris is offering money, which she openly admits to be bribes, to UK addicts who will submit to sterilization. This comes after some 3,500 Americans were previously paid to not have children. The BBC report is here. Founder Barbara Harris' bio from the Project Prevention web site: Director and Founder- Barbara Harris: Former foster parent, PTA member, founded interracial organization in 1992, actively recruits foster parents, adoptive parent, author of assembly Bill 2614 CA, speaker…

Coulter drives a stake through irony's heart

Ann Coulter is coming out with a new book: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. I read Coulter's last book, Godless, and I can tell you that having Ann Coulter call anyone else stupid is like seeing cockroaches complaining about vermin, or a pig farmer turning up their nose at someone else's stink. It's just not right. Speaking of that Godless tripe, my challenge to her fans still stands. I still get email now and then from supporters whining that I dare to criticize her, but not one has ever plainly pointed to one single paragraph in the evolution chapters that they will…

Regulation of Private Gun Ownership in the US ...

... often involves partisans flailing about with statistics they don't necessarily understand. Lets look instead at two individual cases. This: http://wcco.com/crime/elderly.woman.shoots.2.1644974.html is an example of a home owner using a gun to ward off an intruder. But it really isn't, is it? This http://wcco.com/topstories/intruder.shot.and.2.363267.html is an example of a home owner with a gun killing an innocent person. On the second story, I'll add that the victim (as in the one who got shot and killed) was a 17 year old kid named Anthony James Parks. He used to live about a half…

Homeschoolers and public libraries

Should (or would?) home schooling families pay a small fee for public library access? The Allen County Public Library has changed the number of holds available to patrons to five per card. ... The library is a support system to our at-home curriculum. ... The usage of the library hold system to find and retrieve books needed for such curriculums has been a truly valuable resource. I understand the need to curtail mounting expenses, but the move from an unlimited number of holds to five per card is too drastic. I believe home educators would even pay an annual educator card for the ACPL to…

Racist Anti-Obama Tee Shirt

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he's peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with "Obama in '08" scrolled underneath, are "cute." But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past. "It's time to put an end to this," said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. He was among about 15 people who protested outside Mulligan's Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon against the sale of the "racist and highly offensive" shirts. Express your…

Obama Takes Super Delegate Lead

Apparently, 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…

More shameless namedropping

Let's see…what did I do today? I met with a whole bunch of people at Seed. They were cool, but they won't notice that I mentioned them because they never read my blog. I also had dinner with Niles Eldredge, James Watson, Adam Bly, and Laura McNeil (big guns at Seed). It was an engrossing evening, but now you're all going to really hate me: I can drop names, but I'm not going to reveal private conversations…other than to mention that I was honored by a toast from that distinguished crowd, which means I can either die smug, or I've got a heck of a lot to do to live up to it now. I fear the…

Expelled Exposed: But Wait, There's More!

I've already announced to you, twice, the emergence of a new web site called "Expelled Exposed" developed by the National Center for Science Education. Chances are you already went and looked at the site. But, as of a few minutes ago, the site has been totally refined and updated. The site that is now up at www.expelledexposed.com is presumably the intended product, and it is quite different from, more extensive, more informative, fancier, than the earlier site. So if you looked at the one-page site I had sent you to before, please go back and have a second look. There is much more to be…

Nicholas Negroponte: From 1984, 4 predictions about the future (3 of them correct)

Speaking at the first TED Conference in 1984, Nicholas Negroponte waxes prophetic on the converging fields of technology, entertainment and design. Years before anyone was using the word "convergence," Negroponte was thinking about TV screens as the "electronic books of the future" and computers as the future of education. In excerpts from his 2-hour talk (this was before TED's 18-minute time limit), he foreshadowed CD-ROMs, web interfaces, service kiosks, the touchscreen interface of the iPhone, and his own One Laptop per Child project. Oh, and there's also a fascinating project called Lip…

The great Phoenix blogger get-together

A few of us infamous bloggers met at a pleasant party at the home of Jim and Kat Lippard, and here we are: From left to right, the hospitable Jim Lippard, inscrutable Brent Rasmussen, elusive GrrlScientist, me, and that strange Irish guy. At last, someone has accurately reported on my awe-inspiring personal presence: P.Z. Myers was a towering giant of a man, with a bristling piratical mustache, a rakish beard, fangs, and little sucker-tipped tentacles instead of fingers. His booming, gravelly voice took over every conversation and ranted at us until we all finally agreed with him about…

This Blog Endorses Ashwin Madia for US Congress

The Third Congressional District from Minnesota, in which I live, has been a Republican seat since the districts around the Twin Cities were Jerrymandered some time ago. The Republican incumbent in this district is retiring this year, and there is a reasonable chance of flipping the district to a Democrat. Ashwin Madia is moving quickly towards attaining the DFL (That's Minnesotan for 'Democratic') endorsement. (I caucuses for him in the Senate Distract convention a couple of weeks ago). He's an excellent candidate, and will make an excellent member of congress. If you are a voter in the…

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