Awk…ward…..
Daily Archives: November 12, 2011
A map of the brain
How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region, and how it all connects up.
Great Moments in Vice Presidential Debates: 1992
Huh. Reasonable question, I suppose.
Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1992
It is hard to say if George Bush lost his presidency at the very beginning of this video when he checks is watch as the citizen begins to ask her question, or moments later when he became visibly annoyed at her for not being rich, or a few moments later when Bill Clinton gave the correct answer to the question: Continue reading Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1992
Great Moments in Vice Presidential Debates: 1988
This one needs no introduction or comment:
Question: When is Rebecca Watson going to learn to shut up?
De-dum dum…..
Now THAT was funny. Unlike Kurt Metzger. Kurt has suggested that women can avoid feeling sexualized by sticking to purdah. That’s when a woman covers herself from head to toe, inclusively, with cloth. It is a practice of patrarchical, misogynist societies in which women are totally controlled by men, often subject to brutal violence, and even killed for not knowing when to shut up or breaking barbaric and absurd rules. Kurt Metzger is a comedian, so what he said can be taken as a joke. Whether or not it can be taken as funny is an otter matter.
Continue reading Question: When is Rebecca Watson going to learn to shut up?
Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1988
This is one of my favorites and to me one of the most frustrating moments in American politics. I was in the Congo at the time so only heard about this when I got back.
A little background on my thinking on this one.
Continue reading Great Moments in Presidential Debates: 1988
“AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
Rebecca Watson pointed this out in a snork just now and I had to share.
The movie “Atlas Shrugged” was apparently made (remade, yes?) recently and the DVD is just out. But there is an error on the cover of the DVD that is sufficiently outrageous, according to the film’s producers, to require a full recall of the DVD and a change in company policy to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Continue reading “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
Great Moments in Debate History: 1984
Skip to about 1 hour 4 minutes to watch a classic Reagan Moment (the moment is at about 1:06)
Not very impressive, but apparently people noticed. In the following, go right to the end, about 1 hour 23 minutes :
That Pacific Coast Highway bit is said to be irrelevant and rambling, but actually I thin it’s the best thing Reagan ever said. And subsequently ignored.
New Bird Book: Birds of North America and Greenland
Face it. Half the time … most of the time, really … you use your Peterson (or some other favorite “field guide”) as a checklist. You see a bird and you pretty much know in your head what it is, but you need to look it up to see what the three or four similar ducks or woodpeckers or whatever are in your area in order to be sure that it is a Common Merganser or a Red Headed Woodpecker or whatever. All you need is a basic picture (drawing preferred for this sort of thing) the names of the birds and basic range maps.
Continue reading New Bird Book: Birds of North America and Greenland