Daily Archives: February 13, 2008

Be careful who you bury…

As Raleane (Rae) Kupferschmidt lay motionless in her hospital bed, family and friends said their final goodbyes and the funeral home was called.

But just as the grieving began in her Lake Elmo home, Kupferschmidt woke up from her coma.

“There’s no medical explanation for what happened to my mother,” said Kupferschmidt’s daughter, Lisa Sturm, who is a surgical technician at Regions Hospital. “It’s a miracle.”

Continue reading Be careful who you bury…

Are Home Schooled Athletes Cheating?

In a previous discussion on home schooling and athletics, this idea, surprisingly, did not come up:

Some senators worry a bill that passed the Senate this morning might allow student to cheat their way into playing sports.

The bill allows home schooled students to join public school sports teams and other exrtracirricular activities. But their academic performance must meet certain standards. But how do home schoolers establish academic standards? Some argue that they can’t.
Continue reading Are Home Schooled Athletes Cheating?

Crazy Anthropologist Links Food, Sex

Can you believe this guy? Check it out:

The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once proposed that humanity began with cooking. [a Twin Cities anthropologist] says love may have begun with cooking, as well.

The earliest human ancestors, some kind of chimp-like apes, were living off raw plant foods and probably doing a bit of hunting like chimpanzees do now.

And then, somebody discovers the ability to control fire. Everybody argues about when this happened. We’re saying it happened about 2 million years ago. Suddenly, all this food that was previously poisonous or indigestible becomes edible. We’re talking about grass seeds, like wheat. And tubers. The amount of energy available to these early human ancestors goes up a huge amount. So, they get bigger. At the same time, their jaws get smaller, which is supported by the fossil record.

and so on and so forth, bla bla bla. Read it here.

Creation Scientist Enters Political Race in Indiana

Paul Abramson founded and runs “creationism.org” … a creation science web site. It is one of those sites that provides parents and students material to use in harassing their life science teachers and generally making an obnoxious nuisance of themselves.Paul is now seeking the Republican Party’s nominiation for congress, with which he hopes to challenge sitting congressman Brad Ellsworth (Democrat).[source]

Charles Darwin – Coral Reefs

As Europeans plied the seas in search (and ultimately management) of colonies and conquests, they learned the practical geology they needed to find their way and avoid wrecks. Everyone knows that Charles Darwin’s opportunity to spend several years on the Beagle ultimately rested on the British Admiralty’s need to improve navigation maps, especially along the South American coasts. The near shore conditions change, some of the existing maps were not adequate, and the size of ships was increasing so once-safe passages no longer necessarily were. The Beagle’s Captain Fitzroy had a reputation was for tenacious accuracy in map making and navigation, and the fact that a one or two year voyage (as planned) more than doubled in its time is a testament to this. Continue reading Charles Darwin – Coral Reefs