Monthly Archives: December 2010
Alan Dershowitz to Mike Huckabee: Enjoy your new orifice!
First, the video. Then, if you’re good, I’ll tell you an Alan Dershowitz story. It involves Stephen Jay Gould.
Continue reading Alan Dershowitz to Mike Huckabee: Enjoy your new orifice!
Last Minute Holiday Shopping!!!
As I’m sitting here ordering things on line and last minute for people’s Christmas presents (there, I said Christmas. Take THAT Bill O’Really!) I thought I’d make a few suggestions for my readers.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is Done …. maybe.
Good News and Bad News from the Large Hadron Collider
The good news: Despite their best efforts, the folks at CERN failed to produce a black hole that sucked the entire earth into it! That would have been cool. The bad news is for string theory. What might be one of the few empirical tests for that tangle of math and stuff seems to have come out negative. From CERN:
Continue reading Good News and Bad News from the Large Hadron Collider
The Bible-Thumping Grinch who Pissed on Christmas
A repost, of sorts:
I am amazed at the giddiness amongst Christian Fundamentalists that has fomented from the mere utterance of a holiday greeting by Richard Dawkins. The counter-insurgents in the War on Christmas … the Red White and Blue, squeaky-faced smirking shits that call themselves commentators or preachers are creaming in their jeans. But they are also stepping over the line, and I’m calling them on it.
Amelia Earhart’s Finger Found in Pacific?
If you go to a place where humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years and bone happens to be well preserved, you will find bits and pieces of people on a regular basis. If you go to a Polynesian island and look for bones you are more likely to find a turtle or fish bone than a human bone. Thus, when I see ….
Continue reading Amelia Earhart’s Finger Found in Pacific?
Happy Day of Reconciliation!
Formerly known as Day of the Vow, as South African holiday, and a time of reflection on dramatic historical and cultural changes.
Continue reading Happy Day of Reconciliation!
Clay Duke: The Latest Poster Boy for Gun Control
1) Clay Duke tried to kill several school board members, but missed from a distance of between 6 and 8 feet with his Smith & Wesson pistol. Indeed, over 25 rounds were fired in the small public space, all aimed from a short distance, and only one fatal shot occurred. This puts an end to the idea that if everyone in every public meeting had a pistol that the bad guys would be easily dispatched.
2) Duke had previously been in trouble for a gun related stalking event in which he actually discharged a firearm. Only in a society with very little serious concern over gun ownership could a clearly mentally unstable man who had previously fired a gun in the commission of a crime still be allowed to have a pistol.
3) Once again, a major story in which firearms were used and the press has not even posed the question as to where the firearm came from, if it was legally owned, etc. I know Florida is a fairly lawless state when it comes to guns, but it is still an important issue. What nefarious force causes reporters to be unable to answer this question? Does the gun lobby really control that much advertising in standard news outlets?
4) Duke was, clearly a teabagger, given what we know of his politics. So this particular incident can be chalked up as yet another violent right winger. At least he did the right thing in the end, I suppose.
We need stricter gun laws.
Sitting Bull . 1831 – December 15, 1890
This is the day, in 1890, that Sitting Bull died. He was fatally shot by two tribal police officers while being arrested in order to keep him from influencing an ensuing Native American movement that threatened the Great White Father (Benjamin Harrison at the time). He is probably most famous for his role in the defeat of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, but he was a prominant member of the Lakota (Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux) community for his entire life, recognized as an important shaman.
Bart Weetjens: How I taught rats to sniff out land mines
“Julian Assange Denounces Hactivists”
That would be an interesting headline to see. Even more interesting is the fact, as far as I know, that we haven’t seen it. For that, there should be consequences. Rant below the fold. Not work safe. Grrrrrrrr.
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Ice Volcanoes of Titan
NASA may have spotted evidence of ice volcanoes on Saturn’s moon.
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Michele Bachmann: It will NOT ‘get better’ if I can help it!
“It isn’t that some gay will get some rights. It’s that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children …. They will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality.”
Fast, Cheap and Ooops. NASA’s NanoSail may be dead, but it was not that big of a deal.
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
A cold stare with underlying anger for wasting their precious time.
Continue reading Fast, Cheap and Ooops. NASA’s NanoSail may be dead, but it was not that big of a deal.