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gregladen | November 8, 2008And I promise you, the poll keeper, Rachel Maddow, will not be annoyed. This is a community driven TODO list for President Elect Obama.
HERE
grrlscientist | November 8, 2008Here's the latest carnivalia for you to enjoy;
Linnaeus's Legacy, which celebrates biodiversity.
The most recent edition of Brain Blogging, 41st edition. This edition discusses the likelihood of bipolar children becoming bipolar adults, problems with learning during multi-tasking, how magnets can improve your mood (ahem, where's the skeptics in the crowd?), and more.
mspringer | November 8, 2008Another grad student potluck today! Not sure what I'm going to make, as I'm writing this yesterday (relative to you reading it on Saturday). Last time I posted my recipe for praline bacon, so continuing the tradition today I'm going to post a cocktail of my own invention:
The Pearl Harbor
1 part vodka
1 part blue curacao
6 parts lemonade, frozen into cubes
Combine in blender, blend to a slush. Enjoy.
The curacao and the lemonade combine to form a nice sea blue color. This is essentially a more tropical variation of the Kamikaze, thus inspiring the name.
Now, some news.
This has been…
gregladen | November 7, 2008Some of you are trying to get your message ... one message or another, like about RFK JR as EPA head, or about what the stimulus package should contain, etc., off to Barack Obama and the new administration. There has even been some organization happening .. bloggers banding together to make a mega blog that can't be ignored.
Well, there is a better way. Just go HERE. Obama is listening.
gregladen | November 7, 2008
By the way: You know that at the moment, the current vote count (with nearly three million votes cast) in the Coleman - Franken Senate race in Minnesota is just over 200 votes and fluctuating. This raises the possibility of a perfect tie. Minnesota law stipulates that at tie be settled by lot. That could be a coin toss, or it could be by drawing straws, etc.
Were that to happen, what kind of stupid crap would come from Coleman ... What 9 year old rule changing or sophomoric complaining would we have to endure????
gregladen | November 7, 2008A pilot who suddenly went blind while flying his plane at 5,500ft (1,676m) was guided in to land by an RAF plane.
A plane was scrambled from the RAF base at Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire to help stricken pilot Jim O'Neill, 65.
He was flying a two-seater Cessna aircraft from Prestwick airport in Scotland to Colchester, Essex, when he suffered a stroke and lost his sight.
Holy crap. Details here.
jwilbanks | November 7, 2008Just so everyone knows, I will post this twice, once today, and once more during the campaign.
But in times of economic downturn, keeping non-profit organizations going is hard. Keeping user-supported ones going is harder. We're committed to raising about 20% of our operating funds from our users, and in the middle of our fall campaign.
If you use CC licenses, please stop by and drop $25 or so into the tiller. It's like NPR - the more you give, the more swag you get. But hopefully what you really get is the good feeling from supporting something you care about.
A $25 donation is about the…
grrlscientist | November 7, 2008The latest carnivalia is now available for you to enjoy;
Carnival of the Blue, issue #18. This blog carnival focuses on marine life.
Carnival of Economics, 14 October 2008 edition. This carnival included something I wrote -- about birds! To read what birds can teach us about human economics, along with mountains of other interesting essays about economics, you have to read this blog carnival.
The blogosphere's answer to Friday Cat Blogging is the Friday Ark, a collection of links to images of animals and animals only.
And the most recent edition of the Carnival of Travelers, November…
sb admin | November 7, 2008By Myra L. Karstadt, Ph.D
Â
Did you enjoy your acesulfame today? How much did you eat? Do you know whether acesulfame is safe to eat?
 Those are not trick questions. Acesulfame is currently one of the best-selling artificial sweeteners in America, but itâs likely that very few people even know that acesulfame is in many of their foods and beverages.Â
The FDA has approved acesulfame as a food additive, but it based its decision on flawed studies.
Stealth Sweetener
Thereâs a good reason why acesulfame has such a low profile: itâs usually a back-up player, used in sweetener blends with…
mspringer | November 7, 2008William Gibson revolutionized the world of science fiction with his dark and gritty but somehow impossibly cool cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. Dystopias have always been a staple of science fiction, but in this case the dystopia didn't seem too horribly dystopic. Sure some computer might try to take over the world or some vat-grown ninja might shiv you in a space station, but it would sure be an interesting life even if it was short and weird. Gibson's skill with language helped. The first line of the novel resonates in fiction circles to this day:
The sky above the port was the color of…
jwilbanks | November 7, 2008Just a quick hat tip to our new president, who understands that Creative Commons is a nice way to be a good citizen on the Web. He's shared his election night candid set on Flickr under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. That means any of you who want to make copies or derivative works are free to do so, as long as you don't sell the works, give credit where credit is due, and release your own derivatives under the same license.
This is a small step, but an important one. The very fact that our president understands that 1) the existing copyright system and…
cortex | November 6, 2008From the fanastic series of just-released Newsweek articles on the presidential campaign:
Obama was something unusual in a politician: genuinely self-aware. In late May 2007, he had stumbled through a couple of early debates and was feeling uncertain about what he called his "uneven" performance. "Part of it is psychological," he told his aides. "I'm still wrapping my head around doing this in a way that I think the other candidates just aren't. There's a certain ambivalence in my character that I like about myself. It's part of what makes me a good writer, you know? It's not necessarily…
cortex | November 6, 2008Whatever It Takes, the new book by Paul Tough that profiles Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, is one of the most bracing, sobering and inspiring books I've read in a while. It's the story of one man's attempt to systematically disrupt the cycle of poverty, and fundamentally alter the nature of childhood in Harlem. Fixing the schools is only a small part of the solution: Canada realized that it was also crucial to change the typical parent-child interaction, and so he developed a Baby College where new parents are given lessons on how to speak to their child in the supermarket.…
mspringer | November 6, 2008I promise this is not a politics post. It just uses some vote totals for some fun math!
The Minnesota senate race has so far a total of 2,422,811 votes between the two leading candidates. The margin separating them is 477. It's about as close to a 50:50 split as we've seen this cycle. Probably in the last several cycles.
Now let's say you have a perfectly fair coin that has a probability of 1/2 of landing heads and 1/2 of landing tails. For any given string of coin tosses you won't expect to have an exactly even number of heads and tails. flip the coin 10 times and you wouldn't be…
drorzel | November 5, 2008
stevenberlinjohnson.com: The System Worked
"We hear so often that the American political system is broken, but I think the last two years suggest that our national politics are healthier than we have been led to believe."
(tags: politics us society culture blogs)
Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » Dear President Santa
"Here's a Christmas wish list of stocking stuffers for the Obama transition team to consider."
(tags: politics us law society culture)
pharyngula | November 5, 2008Besides spending some time with the good people of Americans United, I'll be giving a talk at George Mason University at 7pm on Saturday night. Here's the flyer:
If you can't quite read that tiny print, the information is also online at the Beltway Atheists Meetup Group and on Facebook.
Say, does anyone want to invite Obama to show up?
By the way, you should read AU's post-election analysis of the state of the religious right. You will be disappointed to learn that they did not simply evaporate after the election.
gregladen | November 5, 2008And if THEY'RE happy, I'm happy.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Tuesday's poll historic and said he and Mr Obama "share many values".
Chinese President Hu Jintao said he looked forward to strengthening dialogue. France's Nicolas Sarkozy said the poll had raised "enormous hope".
...
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was looking forwards "to an era of renewed partnership and a new multilateralism".
In Kenya - the birthplace of Mr Obama's father - President Mwai Kibaki declared a national holiday on Thursday.
Pope Benedict XVI asked for "bla bla bla"
BBC