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Balmy Arctic Stymies Climate Modelers?

So says Science. But for the life of me I can't see why. Hat tip: CB and (!) LM. Its based on preliminary results from ACEX. Which says... drilling revealed that the latest Paleocene to earliest Eocene boundary interval, well known as the early Eocene Thermal Maximum (EETM), was recovered. During the EETM, the Arctic Ocean was subtropical with warm surface ocean temperatures. I'm not quite sure why this is supposed to be a problem for the modellers though. Very few people run climate models back then; I don't suppose the boundary condtions are known very well. So quite why the conclusion has…

Another HIV Denier dead...

... From an infection that generally only affects those who are immunocompromised. *surprise* :( You all might remember me talking about Tommy Morrison: HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing: Round 2 HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing: Round 3 Morrison died last week, at the age of 44. "That's the way Tommy took off after he was told he was HIV-positive," Holden added. "When he first was told, I was taking him to seek treatment and to different doctors around the country. And then he started research on the Internet and started saying it was a conspiracy. He went in that…

Good News/Bad News

GOOD NEWS!  There are lots of different ways to do science. I like to tinker with/build stuff. After over two years of banging my head against a wall, another of my inventions, one I really wanted, is finally working!!!!! BAD NEWS!  Its only working at ~33% of capacity. I want 100%. GOOD NEWS!  I know how to fix it! BAD NEWS! Its going to take me a couple months to fix it :( GOOD NEWS! The idea has finally graduated from 'thats a neat concept...' to 'holy crap it actually works'. So its going to get patented, and I get a cut. YAY! BAD NEWS! I am never going to graduate. Ever. I am too busy to…

Blatantly inappropriate data analysis still counts as lying

BlogBrother Ethan Siegel just caught (yet another) scientist manipulating data to generate the conclusion they want... not the conclusion the data actually supports. Exposing a Climate Science Fraud Yeah, thats how we roll on SciBlogs. But in my example, the scientists actively hid relevant data from other scientists they were speaking to/the journals they were submitting to/the patients they were preaching to. In Ethans case, all of the data was happily and knowingly laid out for anyone and everyone to mess around with themselves. So either this Judith Curry character is a fantastic idiot,…

It May or May Not be 2012 Somewhere

A while back, a reader from Bulgaria sent me a photo of a highly topical bottle of local spirits: You can either know where you are, or how much you've drunk, but not both... Having spent my last day of 2011 taking SteelyKid to the mall for bouncy-bounce and midway games, and then having her help me bake apple pie (which she demanded to do out of nowhere, and wouldn't stop talking about), I could really use a shot of quantum liquor. Or even some classical beer. Sadly, I'm fighting a wretched cold, so booze is out of the question. But if you're in a partying state, have a drink for me. And…

Links for 2011-03-14

Why I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors. | Morgsatlarge - blogorific. "Now, where does that leave us? * The plant is safe now and will stay safe. * Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else. * Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants' chimney when they…

Raine Borg is the Keymaster

Raine Borg has an amazing web site about locks and keys through history. And it so happens that he's made reconstruction drawings of how keys identical to the one me and Per Vikstrand found in Torstuna recently were used. It's not a padlock key: it's most likely for a lock mounted permanently inside the lid of a chest or a door. Lena Thunmark-Nylén's Die Wikingerzeit Gotlands informs me that the key type dates from the 11th and 12th centuries. Thus, alas, a bit too late to tell us much about pagan activities in the Field of Thor. Thanks to Raine for permission to reproduce his drawings and…

Indecipherable Punk Reactions

Punk musician G.G. Allin (1956-93) led a short hard life marked by drug binges, violence, mental illness and on-stage coprophagy. I've never heard any of his music, but reading about this legendary underground figure I came across the above remarkable photograph. Dear Reader, please disregard for a moment the guy to the left who is covered in blood and feces. Look at the audience members to the right. What are they feeling? What do their expressions signify? Maniacal glee? Revulsion battling with fascination? Is the bearded guy dancing? Has the leftmost guy just smoothened his features for…

Going to Trondheim

Almost half of Aard's Dear Readers are based in the US, nearly a fourth are in Sweden, and the remaining fourth is dominated by people in the UK, Canada and Australia. Alas, the citizens of my Scandy neighbouring countries show very little interest in the blog, and so I don't know if I have any readers in the Norwegian city of Trondheim. I'm going to be in Trondheim from 1 to 6 September for this year's Sachsensymposium. It's the main conference for archaeologists working with post-Roman, pre-Viking Northern Europe, and I will be accompanied by Professor Steve Steve. If you're in Trondheim…

Hurried Robbers

Last Saturday morning an armed robbery was attempted at the Nacka Forum mall not far from where I live. Two masked robbers went in just as staff were arriving to work, dragged a woman into her workplace, gaffer-taped her to a chair and demanded that she turn off the alarm and tell them when her co-workers would arrive. After receiving confusing replies, the two men left, running, and minutes later the woman worked herself loose of the tape and called the police. She is physically unhurt. The robbers had gone into a cashless realtor's office, Svensk Fastighetsförmedling, instead of the post-…

Wiley InterScience Needs Schoolin'

OMG, how stupid! And I ain't foolin'. The other day my SciBling Shelley at Retrospectacle got nastygrammed by Wiley InterScience for reproducing part of a figure from a paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture! Shelley had provided due reference to where she had found the figure and used it to discuss the contents of that paper. Fair use. Wiley InterScience describe themselves as "a leading international resource for quality content promoting discovery across the spectrum of scientific, technical, medical and professional endeavors". Yeah, sure, and they apparently want to…

Ophistokont

A Dear Reader who calls themself Ophistokont made me curious about what this intriguing word might mean. It's very rare, with only seven Google hits and no entry in Merriam-Webster. Ophi- should have to do with snakes. -stok- calls stoichiometry to mind, having to do with elements. -ont has to do with being. Something that forms the basic element of a snake-like thing, maybe? I didn't make that up unaided. Those seven Google hits explain (mostly in German) that an ophistokont is the end of a single-cell being from which its motile flagellum extends. These little whip-like outboard motors…

Inger Österholm 1942-2007

Inger Österholm died the night between Wednesday and Thursday after a long battle with illness. For over two decades, she was a driving force behind the Ajvide excavations on Gotland, where countless archaeology students from Stockholm and Visby received their first taste of fieldwork. Inger specialised in the Neolithic of Gotland, as seen in her seminal 1989 doctoral thesis, Bosättningsmönstret på Gotland under stenåldern. She was a tireless teacher, fieldworker and university administrator, and always very good to me during my post-grad work with Gotland's largest 1st Millennium cemetery.…

Star Wars Lego Girls

My 8-year old son is, like myself at that age, a big Star Wars fan. But his road to the stories has been more complicated than mine. Much of what he knows about them comes from a computer game version where everything is for some reason visualised as built out of legos. So he asks me a lot of confused questions that I can't always answer. Just now we had such a conversation where I learned that he had gotten all three main female characters mixed up: Luke Skywalker's grandma, mother and sister were the same person to him. When I teased him about this he just replied, philosophically, "It's…

Estonian Conference: Rank, Gender and Society

Marika Mägi, my old co-student from grad school, is head of the archaeology department at Tallinn university in Estonia. She's organising a conference titled Rank, Gender and Society around the Baltic 400-1400 AD on 23-27 May in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa. Interested scholars are welcome to present papers, and Marika tells me that the registration deadline has been extended to 1 March. Here's a flier with registration details. I'm tempted to go. Saaremaa is sort of Gotland's twin sister and it's the kind of place I'd most likely never visit unless prompted by a conference. And the…

Easter 2012

Today is Easter Sunday, which we celebrated in the manner of my people, by chasing soap bubbles around the backyard: OK, that's not an actual tradition, but it was a beautiful day today, and SteelyKid got a big bottle of bubble stuff from her great-grandmother, so it seemed like the right thing to do. So she and Bodie (my parents' yellow Lab, seen in the above photo) frolicked around the yard until she was so tired that she slept all the way home. Everybody wins with Easter bubbles. Happy Easter if you're someone who celebrates it, or at least won't get into a snit about being wished well…

Cultural Evolution

Dear Reader CCBC disagrees with me regarding cultural evolution. Here's my thinking, briefly. Cultures are different from each other and change over time. New cultural traits seldom arise for well-thought-out adaptive reasons: most are just made up capriciously. Not all cultural traits are adaptive, i.e. conducive to the long-term survival of a culture in a recognisable form. Most traits are adaptively irrelevant, but some are counteradaptive. Cultures that accumulate enough counteradaptive traits will either dwindle and disappear, or change dramatically. In either case, the original culture…

Respectful Vandals

Here's some characteristically excellent photography by my friend Lars of Arkland. He's recently moved to Visby on Gotland, a big old limestone slab in the Baltic Sea, where he's the Hauptnetzmeister of the National Heritage Board. The funny thing about the above picture is that it shows young vandals/graffiti artists to have a conscious and highly traditional perspective on the cultural heritage. Much more traditional than today's heritage administrators, who worry endlessly about whether their perspective is democratically informed, in touch with the times etc. While these administrators…

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timothy Ball (2nd nomination) closed as keep

In Tim Ball: turned out NN again I gloated over Tim Ball's nth deletion, but now I have to eat humble pie because he's been undeleted. Or rather, he's been created from scratch. Before his partisans get too excited its worth pointing out that the keep rationales begin with Keep: Michael E. Mann called him "perhaps the most prominent climate change denier in Canada". This is clearly silly: you don't become notable just because some genuinely notable person thinks you're an idiot. As compensation, there's still time to rub out Ferenc Miskolczi. He's looking pretty marginal: his puffers are…

Happy Darwin Day!

I'm about to leave town for the weekend, but I did want to poke my head up just long enough to wish everyone a Happy Darwin Day! And just in time for this most wonderful of holidays, my paper on anti-evolutionary mathematics has now been published. In the journal Science and Education, to be precise. Alas, unless you are at an institution that subscribes to this journal, Springer will expect you to pay for it. And it would be a serious copyright violation for me simply to post the paper freely at my website. But if you send me an e-mail at rosenhjd@jmu.edu, I will be happy to send you…

Everything you ever wanted to know about nothing (Synopsis)

Have you ever thought about what "nothing" truly is? We used to think about it in terms of simply removing all the particles from a given region of space, which is a pretty intuitive definition of nothing. But quantum physics is notorious for defying our intuition. Public domain image. When we take a look at this "empty" space, we find it's not so empty at all. Not in terms of energy, and not -- if we consider that particles are not just real but also virtual -- in terms of what's physically inside. Image credit: Derek Leinweber. If you've ever wondered about "nothing," take a trip with…

The Christmas Tree Cluster (Synopsis)

“Bethany: Is your house on fire, Clark? Clark: No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights.”  -National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation With Christmas upon us, what would you ask for from the Universe? It can't bring you tangible presents, perhaps, but it can bring you the greatest cosmic sights you've ever feasted upon. Image credit: Flickr user Alicia, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/capella_891/2779209611/. So why not learn how to find the Christmas Tree Cluster, and enjoy the greatest astrophotography efforts of it, all in the form of a Christmas poem? Image credit: European…

2014's greatest meteor shower (Synopsis)

“Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Sure, sure, and they're not even big, impressive stones. But like any real estate agent will tell you, location is everything. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / W. Reach (SSC/Caltech). And when your tiny, pebble-sized stone originates from an asteroid that crosses Earth's orbit and leaves a debris trail behind, that "only a stone" can appear as so much more. Image credit: Stéphane Guisard (Los Cielos de America), TWAN, via http://apod.nasa.…

Messier Monday: The Ultimate Trip (Synopsis)

“If you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you will learn. Oh, the most wonderful stuff.” -Dr. Seuss It's been more than two years in the making; we started Messier Monday way back in October of 2012, and after 110 consecutive weeks, we finally arrived at our final entry last week. What better way to celebrate than to take a look back at all 110 entries? Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University). From Messier 1 through Messier 110, we've got you absolutely covered, with enough eye-candy (and link-candy, too) for days. Image credit: Adam Block / NOAO…

Weekend Diversion: The Dumbest Sign in History (Synopsis)

“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’” -Stephen Wright It seems like there's a sign for everything, from warnings to advisories to just plain good counsel. Have a listen to the Kelly Bell Band perform their entertaining song, Must've Bumped Your Head, while I share with you the most ridiculous sign ever discovered in all of internet history: a sign that warns you against banging your head on the sign itself. Image credit: flickr user Lush, via…

Off to a Flying Start

Well, the new group blog at Positive Liberty has hit the ground running. I posted my essay about the 9th amendment and unenumerated rights over there as well, which drew the attention of Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy (to whom I once again owe thanks for his unexpected praise). That send hundreds of new people over to the site, helping to sustain the boost in readership that began with Jason's brilliant "How not to make me ex-gay" post. They've bombarded my post with a few dozen messages, some more serious and worthy of responding to than others. I suspect I may well spend today…

Not Clement?

ABC News is reporting that Edith Clement is not Bush's choice to replace O'Connor: Judge Edith Clement -- perceived by many observers as a potential frontrunner for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- is not President Bush's choice for the high court. An informed source told ABC News they had spoken with Clement and said she received a phone call from the White House this afternoon. According to the source, Clement was thanked for meeting with the president and sharing her views on the Supreme Court, but that the administration has decided to go in a "different…

And So It Begins...

The inevitable result of the Kelo decision: With Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Freeport officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina. The court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that cities may bulldoze people's homes or businesses to make way for shopping malls or other private development. The decision gives local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue. "This is the last little piece of…

We all seem to be in an arithmetical mood today

I may have just used the old 2+2=5 analogy, but I also like this example from the Primate Diaries: Fundamentalists: believe 2+2 =5 because It Is Written. Somewhere. They have a lot of trouble on their tax returns. "Moderate" believers: live their lives on the basis that 2+2=4. but go regularly to church to be told that 2+2 once made 5, or will one day make 5, or in a very real and spiritual sense should make 5. "Moderate" atheists: know that 2+2 =4 but think it impolite to say so too loudly as people who think 2+2=5 might be offended. "Militant" atheists: "Oh for pity's sake. HERE. Two…

Telling Quote on the Explosives Story

Quote: The commander of the first unit into the area told CBS he did not search it for explosives or secure it from looters. "We were still in a fight," he said. "our focus was killing bad guys." He added he would have needed four times more troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps he came across. Sounds a lot like what I've been saying for months, doesn't it? Sounds a lot like what a whole bunch of generals, former generals and military analysts were saying before the war, doesn't it? And just think, Rumsfeld only wanted to go in with 20% of the troops we DID go in with, which was…

Jon Rowe on Catholics and Natural Law

Fascinating post by Jon Rowe about Catholics and natural law, based on a conference he attended recently. He points out the odd fact that Catholic thinkers tend to be more in line with the natural law philosophy of the founders because they have embraced philosophy and reason far more than their Protestant counterparts. That's not terribly surprising, given the Catholic tradition embodied by Aquinas that one could infer the truth of Christianity from reason alone. However, those same Catholic thinkers can then advocate, for instance, harsh anti-sodomy laws, which are inconsistent with the…

Juan Cole on Cat Stevens

Professor Cole also points out the same kind of ambivalent feelings I had upon learning that the Artist Formerly Known as Cat Stevens had been taken off a plane because he's on a terrorist watch list. A lot of people made fun of that, mostly because they still think of Cat Stevens as the guy who sang Moonshadow and Peace Train. Sorry kids, that Cat Stevens left us a long time ago, replaced by Yusuf Islam, a radical nutball who thinks it's okay to kill people for writing books he disagrees with. Several times he endorsed the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence on Salman Rushdie back in 1989.…

British Imam: Killing Gays is Good

Yahoo News reports: Arshad Misbahi of the Manchester Central Mosque confirmed his views in a conversation to John Casson, a local psychotherapist... "I asked him what would be the British Muslim view? He repeated that in an Islamic state these punishments were justified. They might result in the deaths of thousands but if this deterred millions from having sex, and spreading disease, then it was worthwhile to protect the wider community." "I checked again that this was not a matter of tradition, culture or local prejudice. 'No,' he said, 'It is part of the central tenets of Islam: that sex…

Literature Nobel: Doris Lessing

In the "Social Networks Brighten My Morning" file, I am inordinately amused to be getting status updates from a Nobel laureate on Facebook. Speaking of Nobel laureates, the latest chunk of dynamite money was awarded this morning to novelist Doris Lessing: "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny" I have absolutely no idea what that means, not having read any of her books. I associate her with the class of mainstream writers who independently reinvent science fiction, and then insist that they're not…

Journamalism Question

Why is it that when non-famous people are quoted in the news media, their ages are always given? Just about every story in the paper features a sentence like: "Of course, I'm aware of the wave nature of matter," said Tallulah Johnstone Black, 47, a homemaker from Waterloo who witnessed the incident while walking to the store, "But I never thought I'd see an elephant diffract." Unless the story is about age specifically, I don't see the point. What am I supposed to do with that information? Stranger still, the one time I was interviewed by the police as a witness to a "domestic disturbance"…

Dorky Poll: Quantum Statistics

I was trying to think of something deep and meaningful to post today, but I've been in conference mode too long to do anything all that deep. So here's a simple binary choice for all the nerds in the audience: Bosons or fermions? It's a tough call after a few days of conferencing: On the one hand, I'm typing this Thursday night, and I'm about to head out to get a few more beers, so I can appreciate the sociable nature of bosons, but then again, another day of this, and I may not want to talk to anyone at all next week. Plus, fermions in a spin-polarized sample are absolutely forbidden from…

Guess-the-Lyrics Hints

Only four songs from the Memorial Day music post remain unguessed, so here are some additional hints: 1) "So, she said it's time she goes, but wanted to be sure I know she hopes we can be friends." 2) "And as we sort out the who said, you said, who said, I said, I only wish I came a little better prepared." 3) "I can't stop/ The way I feel/ Things you do/ Don't seem real." 11) "She said you are the perfect stranger she said baby let's keep it like this." #2 is legitimately kind of obscure, but the others are among the best-known songs by the artists in question. #3 gets line breaks indicated…

Wake Me When September Ends

Yesterday's quickie photo-blog post came during the short break between running around preparing for house guests, and the arrival of said house guests (about fifteen minutes after I posted, while I was in the shower). Other than that, I was way too busy to even read blogs, let alone post. So, crawling out from under my turkey hangover, and surveying the Internets, what do I find? Sniping about whether string theory is good for anything. Doctrinal arguments about whether a lack of enthusiasm for calling religious people stupid is a mortal sin or only a venial one. (I'm linking to Mike's…

The Never-Ending Saga of PowerPoint

Some of the discussion in my recent post giving example slides made me realize a problem with the way I posted them-- converting the slides to PDF loses the transition effects, which are a significant part of the lecture. In an attempt to address this, here's a crude simulation of the effect, done by making incremental copies of two slides, to show how the text is revealed. The slides in question are from the Camp College lecture, if you want to see them in context. (Somebody else in comments suggested using SlideShare, which I would've tried, if the page had successfully loaded in, say, the…

...To Wound the Autumnal, um, Bike Path

A little fall foliage from Saturday's bike ride: The bike path runs along the old Erie Canal tow path, and in a few places, they have restored/ preserved bits of the old canal. This is one of those-- you can see some of the stone wall on the left, and the wooden decking on the right is part of a structure that I think is an old lock. The canal itself is dry, and filled with these sumac trees, which have turned a really dramatic orange. Click on the image for a larger version. There's an autumn Americana shot below the fold: This is the baseball field at the local community college. It would…

Blogger SAT Challenge Update

As of this morning, the Blogger SAT Challenge has been looked at by 177 people. The number of completed essays is considerably smaller-- Dave estimates somewhere around 40-- and so far, everyone I've heard from has said that it was a lot harder than they thought it would be. Even Kate thought it was tough, and she's way smarter than I am. So, do you have what it takes to face the Challenge? It'll only take 21 minutes, and it'll give you a new perspective on education... (Also, if you're an English composition type who would be willing to grade a few of these SAT style, email me at orzelc at…

Robert Putnam to the White Courtesy Phone

Via Inside Higher Ed, a story about a unique attempt to address student problems at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai: One of India's top engineering schools has restricted Internet access in its hostels, saying addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students' performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal. Authorities at the elite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai said students had stopped socializing and many were late for morning classes or slept through them. Accordingly, the Internet access will be completely cut off from 11pm-12:30 am…

Brother Guy On Ice

Kate has posted a report on Boskone talk by Brother Guy Consolmagno, on hunting for meteorites in Antarctica. Guy is a Jesuit brother, and also a research astronomer for the Vatican, and a better example of the peaceful coexistence of science and religion would be hard to find. He's also a very entertaining speaker. I forget what I was doing that kept me from seeing this talk, but I was on a panel with him later, and he's a charming fellow. If I'd known he was spending the year on sabbatical in New York, I would've tried to get him booked into our colloquium schedule... Anyway, the talk was a…

New Jersey in the Morning's Like a Lunar Landscape

In that it's bombarded by meteorites, anyway. The object that crashed into a New Jersey house has been confirmed as a meterorite by, well, looking at it: The family has not yet given permission for physical testing of the meteorite, but from looking at it, Dr. Delaney and other experts were able to tell that the object it had been part of -- perhaps an asteroid -- cooled relatively fast. It is magnetic, and reasonably dense, they determined. The leading edge -- the one that faced forward as it traveled through the earth's atmosphere -- was much smoother, while the so-called trailing edge…

Go spineless for Halloween

I just got back from Madison, which is mad about Halloween, and then I was emailed this exceedingly cool Halloween costume idea: dress up as a jellyfish with flashing LEDs. It looks easy: here are the full instructions, with the traditional hot glue gun and soldering iron, but no duct tape, which does violate the rules of home handicrafts, I think. The only drawback is that the LEDs cost about $2.50 each, which adds up. The jellyfish uses 18, but if you modified this to make a luminescent squid, you'd only need 10. Another virtue for the paranoid parents out there, though, is that the late…

links for 2008-10-05

...My heart's in Accra » Cultural appropriation of the kick-ass kind The haka comes to Texas. (tags: rugby football culture society sports) VOTD: I Love Sarah Jane (Zombie Short Film) | /Film "Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way - bullies, violence, chaos, zombies - nothing is going to stop him from finding a way into her world." (tags: video movies SF) The Shakespeare Programming Language "The design goal was to make a language with beautiful source code that resembled Shakespeare plays. There are no fancy data or control…

Cocktail Party Variance

With the LHC starting up last week, this week's Saturday science video on bloggingheads.tv had a physics theme, with Sean and Jennifer getting together to chat about physics, calculus, and poker. It's good stuff, and I was surprised to hear my own name appear in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the idea Jennifer cites me for-- the concept of "lies-to-children" isn't original to me. I got it from Terry Pratchett (or possibly Ian Stewart or Jack Cohen-- I think it's in The Science of Discworld). Of course, the really important question here is how does one get on the list of people asked to do…

Belated Baby Blogging 090608

We went down to visit Kate's parents on Wednesday, so I wasn't able to post the weekly bison-for-scale picture. I did get one, though, so here it is a few days late: This also gives us a chance to show off her "Smart Cookie" onesie, which I picked up because it's a nice break from the frilly pink princessy crap that dominates the girl-baby clothing market. SteelyKid is adorably cute, to be sure, but that's not all she has to offer. A different sense-of-scale option is below the fold: This is the "airplane" carrying configuration, which sometimes helps quiet her down when she's a little…

Blue Sky On Mars

Well, OK, that's a stretch, but there is water, according to the latest Phoenix results: "We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William V. Boynton, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and the lead scientist for the instrument that detected the water, said at a news conference on Thursday. "And I'd like to say, from my standpoint, it tastes very fine." No word yet on whether they've managed to figure out how to turn on the alien atmosphere-generating machine. That'll probably have to wait for the next mission. Update: Here's a bonus link to…

"Keep Your Hands to Yourself" Covers

In the middle of reviewing the top ten songs from Feb 7, 1987, which includes the Georgia Satellites at #7, Jason Hare offers us a list: Artists I'd Like To Hear Cover "Keep Your Hands to Yourself": Andrea Bocelli Barbra Streisand Anita Baker Smokey Robinson Tom Waits Beverly Sills Glass Tiger Maybe it's the cold pills talking, but I find this inordinately amusing. And, of course, the obvious question is who else should be on the list? The Old 97's are probably too obvious. The Afghan Whigs/ Twilight Singers/ Greg Dulli are my default "Who should cover this song?" artist, because I'm always…