I have only one Michael Jackson story.
Continue reading Michael Jackson Thrilled The Kids in Zaire
Daily Archives: June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson Is Dead (LA Times)
LA Times:
[Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.]
Michael Jackson Has Heart Attack, Rushed to Hospital.
Not many details available, but it sounds like he was found ‘not breathing’ and rushed to hospital. UPDATE: The word is that Jackson may have been not breathing and unresponsive at the time the paramedics arrived.
He was taken to UCLA medical center. This happened 2.5 hours ago, and there are no other details available.
The best information for now is probably the LA times.
Sarah Palin Attacks Blogger
In an unprecedented move, former vice presidential candidate and intellectual leader of the Republican Party, Sarah “my daughter can have your baby” Palin has ruthlessly attacked a blogger who was being funny.
From an official Palin office email:
Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother’s love for a special needs child.
Desecration? Doesn’t that word usually refer to damaging holy things and stuff?
Falcons vs Cardnials: I and the bird 103
The current I and the Bird blog carnival (it is about birds) goes into extra innings. This is a particularly good version of the carnival, which is always good anyway. Check it out here.
Supreme Court: 8-1, Strip search of girl to find ibuprofen was … wrong. Duh.
Eight to one? Any guesses as to which of the nine supreme court justices think it is OK to get a 13 year old girl to strip down and shake out her underwear so you can see if she has TWO ASPIRIN ON HER???
The Supreme Court said Thursday school officials acted illegally when they strip-searched an Arizona teenage girl looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches when they ordered Savana Redding to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear.
Redding was 13 when Safford Middle School officials in rural eastern Arizona conducted the search. They were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.
The dissenting opinion was, of course, Clarence Thomas.
Continue reading Supreme Court: 8-1, Strip search of girl to find ibuprofen was … wrong. Duh.
Farrah Fawcett Dead
… At age 62. Updated:
Continue reading Farrah Fawcett Dead
The Great White Missionary
It was a rare day that I was at the Ngodingodi research station at all … usually I was off in the forest with the Efe Pygmies, up the road excavating an archaeological site. It was also rare that Grinker, my cultural anthropologist colleague, was at the research station. He was spending most of his time in the villages learning language and waiting around for the other shoe to drop (he studied conflict, so on the average day … not much conflict).
But then an even rarer thing happened.
Continue reading The Great White Missionary
Light in Moon’s Permanently Dark Craters
I have friend who has been trapped in a mostly underground research facility at the South Pole since early winter. She recently broke her foot, which is just tough luck because nobody gets out of there until spring, which is, I think, in October.
This will remind you of the stroy of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who was at an Antarctic research station and diagnosed herself of having breast cancer, and was rescued rather dramatically back in 1999. Nielsen died, by the way, Tuesday. (Of breast cancer.)
Well, my friend at the South Pole is not going to die of a broken foot. (Though perhaps other people will. Die of her broken foot, that is.) But what is eventually going to happen is that the sun is going to come up.
But on the moon, there are places where, for all practical purposes, the sun never comes up. Just as with the earth, the polar regions receive oblique sun. Now think about that for a second. A crater is essentially a round cliff. While a cliff may blot out the sun from one direction, the sun will eventually be on the other side of the cliff and any shadowed area will be visible. But if the cliff circumscribes an area steeply enough, that area will never, ever have sunlight.
Between the round-cliff effect and the polar oblique sunlight effect, there are craters in the Moon’s polar regions that are not visible. Well, the crater is visible, but not the inside.
Fearing that these dark places may be where Moon Dwellers have set up extensive cities invisible from outer space1, NASA has figured out a way of imaging these craters using radar.
Details from the press release: