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stcynic | August 9, 2006Relatively new, anyway, and new to me. Dangerous Intersection is the name and it has a strong group of writers, ranging from a grandmother whose family fled South Africa after getting into trouble for their anti-apartheid activism to a college freshman. They cover a lot of the same territory that I do and they do it pretty well. Take a look.
tqa | August 8, 2006I just walk in from the airport, turn on the television, and what do I see before me but Ned Lamont giving his victory speech. He's come from nowhere and defeated a once popular senator for his party's (former party's, I should say) nomination. The fight between Lieberman and Lamont isn't over, though - Lieberman has announced that he has absolutely no intention of bowing to the will of the voters, and will file petitions tomorrow to run in the general election as an independent. (That self-serving announcement came during his "concession" speech.)
Lieberman may well manage to retain his…
moleculeoftheday | August 8, 2006Glad to be here. Look for a new molecule soon. In the meantime, a few months worth are located at http://www.moleculeoftheday.com/.
tqa | August 8, 2006we turn to the Veteran's Administration, which has somehow or another managed to lose another laptop containing the personal information of thousands of veterans. OK, this one contained a couple of orders of magnitude less data, and was lost by a contractor instead of the agency per se, but still...
stcynic | August 8, 2006Testimony from military investigators in the trial of 4 US soldiers on trial in a military court for the rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl.
At the hearing into whether four U.S. soldiers should be court-martialled for rape and murder, a special agent described what took place in Mahmudiya in March, based on an interview he had with one of the men, Specialist James Barker...
Special Agent Benjamin Bierce recalled that Barker described to him how they put a couple and their six-year-old daughter into a bedroom of their home, but kept the teenage girl in the living room, where Barker…
purepedantry | August 7, 2006Bedbugs say "I'm back baby!":
After waking up one night in sheets teeming with tiny bugs, Josh Benton could not sleep for months and kept a flashlight and can of insecticide with him in bed.
"We were afraid to even tell people about it at first," Benton said of the bedbugs in his home. "It feels like maybe some way your living is encouraging this, that you're living in a bad neighborhood or have a dirty apartment."
Absent from the United States for so long that some thought they were a myth, bedbugs are back. Entomologists and pest control professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in…
stcynic | August 7, 2006Media Matters has an article pointing to numerous footnotes from Coulter's new book that contain nothing like the claims she attaches them to. Turns out her footnotes are as fake as her religious piety.
stcynic | August 7, 2006Krauze has a post up at Telic Thoughts that responds, at least in part, to my post accusing Rob Crowther of dishonesty in his post about Paul Nelson and Karen Armstrong's misquote of him. I didn't mince words. I accused Crowther of telling a baldfaced lie and I stand behind that accusation now. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Crowther's wording was intentionally (though not intelligently) designed to paint an inaccurate picture of the situation. Here's how it started. Crowther said this:
Today there is another urban myth building up a head of steam, and being helped along by…
tqa | August 7, 2006The Conneticut primary is tomorrow, and it's starting to look like Joe Lieberman will need some sort of last second miracle if he is to run as a Democrat for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Recent polls have him trailing Ned Lamont by over ten points. A nearly constant stream of major Democratic personalities campaigning for Lieberman has done nothing to help that number (if anything, things have been getting worse, instead).
It's clear that the opposition to Lieberman is fueled largely by anger. You really don't need to do much more than look at the matchup to figure that one out. Ned…
retrospectacle | August 6, 2006Former Tour de France champ Floyd Landis is now disgraced. His "B sample" came up positive for synthetic testosterone.
Bumblebees like their nectar warm, thank you. (Read about bee intelligence here!)
Top ten places for future disasters in America to occur.
Body modification is an increasing trend. Ever seen a split tongue?(ouch!)
Masterbate-a-thon trying to lift taboos?
Global warming could increase the price of food.
E-passports: Good idea, or an invitation to hackers?
Law enforcement using shame to curb speeding.
Generation Y turning away from religion. Only 48% believe in a god.
stcynic | August 5, 2006From a recent comedy special:
I was at home one night, sitting in a beanbag chair naked, eating cheetos. And I had the TV on and I was watching Robert Tilton, this evengelist from Texas. And he said, "Are you lonely right now?"
Yeah, I am.
"Have you wasted your life drinking in bars and nightclubs?"
Yep, sure have.
"Are you sitting in a beanbag chair naked, eating cheetos right now?"
Damn, this guy's good.
"Do you feel the desire to send me a thousand dollars right now?"
Whew. That was close. For a minute there, I thought he was talking about me.
Hilarious.
stcynic | August 5, 2006I watched part of the NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony today and was particularly interested in the induction of Warren Moon. Moon is the first black quarterback in the modern era to be inducted into the hall of fame, but he surely won't be the last. He helped pave the way for guys like Daunte Culpepper, Donovan McNabb, Steve McNair and Vince Young. And the story of how he came to the hall of fame helps illuminate one of the most important lessons that history could possibly teach us.
When he graduated from the University of Washington in 1978, having won the Rose Bowl and been an all-…
grrlscientist | August 5, 2006
After centuries of mistreatment, the Archimedes palimpsest is in bad shape. During its thousand-year life, it has been scraped, singed by fire, dribbled with wax, smeared with glue, and ravaged by a deep purple fungus, which in places has eaten through its pages. Without the use of computer technology, the Archimedes palimpsest would be largely illegible. But modern imaging technologies, similar to those that helped experts read portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1996, allow for astonishingly precise views of faded text.
Image source: Nova.
Has the ancient link between mathematics and…
stcynic | August 5, 2006Here's a great youtube clip of ESPN bloopers. At about the 1:55 mark is the worst national anthem ever sung, by Carl Lewis. Still breathtakingly painful after all these years.
bcohen | August 4, 2006Dave and I have been talking about Mountain Top Coal Removal, in two parts so far (one, two) of an on-going discussion, and I had yet to mention this article from early July, in The Roanoke Times. (That's southwestern Virginia.)
Since Dave just got back from the Canadian Rockies, I wanted to get back on topic. But it's Friday and I don't wanna type. So, here are some great pictures from that Roanoke Times piece instead of long, rambling discourse on mountains and energy and ecology and culture. Gene Dalton is the photographer.
Incidentally, Dink Shackleford, the guy below in the…
grrlscientist | August 4, 2006Finally, an online quiz that tells you everything that you need to know about yourself, and it's all so simple, too!
What Your Underwear Says About You
Admit it, you've dreamed of being a underwear model.
You're comfortable in your own skin - and don't care to impress anyone.
The Underwear Oracle
purepedantry | August 3, 2006Sorry folks.
Heading to a wedding for the weekend. Blogging light to nonexistent til Monday morning.
Have a good weekend!
stcynic | August 3, 2006The fact that it's not all that easy to tell should frighten us. If it wasn't in The Onion, I'm not sure we'd know:
In a decisive 1-0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.
"As president, I strongly believe that my first duty as president is to support and serve the president," Bush said during a televised address from the East Room of the White House shortly after signing his executive order. "I promise the American people that I will not abuse this new power, unless it becomes necessary to grant myself the…
stcynic | August 3, 2006In reviewing the google analytics stats for this blog, I find that July was a record month with 173,024 hits. That's an average of 5581 hits per day, and that's even with the long 4th of July weekend that had lower than normal hits. The weekends are always slower, with around 3000 hits a day, so during the week we're averaging around 7000 hits a day. I never imagined when I started this blog that it would ever get anywhere near that level of readership. So I want to thank all of you for your interest in what I do and for helping to make Dispatches from the Culture Wars a success. A large part…