Daily Archives: December 1, 2011

Dog Shoots Man

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This is cute for two reasons. First, we seem to have a dog who is sympathetic to the ducks, possibly in cahoots with them, who helps arrange for the attempted assassination of a duck hunter. Second, the story is told by the hunter himself on an internet forum…

…I set my double barrel in the decoy box, walked around the front of the boat to get a better angle to push it out of the weeds and just as I had turned to cross the front of the boat and ( in case you haven’t guessed) Boom, the gun goes off. I looked back and the dog had climbed over the side and stepped on the trigger. About a half second later I realized I had been shot. I fell down backwards in the water…

Read it here.

Let this be a lesson to you … vet your dog and unload your gun!

Safety in High School Science Departments

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i-a01d8ebecfc55032aba675dbd5e54661-studentns_burned_science_class.jpgFour students in one of our local junior high schools were involved in an uncontrolled fire and/or explosion a few hours ago. It was in a physical science class. One of the students was burned severely and is in the Hennepin County Hospital burn unit. His injuries are not life threatening by my understanding is that his face is covered with second degree degree burns or worse. The other students are not at present hospitalized.

The mishap occurred during the demonstration of an experiment that was intended to be a “reward” for the students performance in class. There are various stories floating around as to exactly what happened, but I won’t repeat them here because they are not verified and there is not enough detail for that information to have any meaning. At this point we do not know what kind of accident this was, how it may have been prevented. I think, however, it is safe to say that it is generally a bad thing for students to get blown up in science class.

And, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you something you may not know about your local high school.
Continue reading Safety in High School Science Departments →

Top Science Books of the Last Year

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These are books that I’ve reviewed here, and would like to recommend that you seriously consider picking up if you are looking for a cool present for someone and you think they should read more science.

I’m including a couple of bird books in this list, but I also recently wrote up a summary of just bird books that you may want to check out.

These are in no particular order, and I’m not paying a lot of attention to publication dates. What matters is that I’ve I’ve put the book in this stack of books I’ve got here that I clean out every year about this time; Some are clearly older than one year but if you’ve not read them or know someone who has not, this simply must be corrected. I’m also not listing anything I’ve reviewed in the last few days because you just saw them. This is more a reminder of what you forgot to read last June or whenever!

And the books are:
Continue reading Top Science Books of the Last Year →

Top GOP Strategist: “Occupy Matters”

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The Republican Governor’s Association met in Florida this week and featured pollster Frank Luntz, who … told attendees that he’s “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Apparently, there are some interesting changes going on in the current culture of politics. According to Luntz, people still prefer “capitalism” to “socialism” (we all know the average American has no clue what either one is, so when we say “capitalism” and “socialism” we speak not of the systems but the words themselve… but I digress). But, he says, people know that capitalism is immoral. That’s an improvement! He suggests to his Republican mentees that they avoid the word “capitalism.”
Continue reading Top GOP Strategist: “Occupy Matters” →

Kentucky church bans interracial couples

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Southern Man ….

A small church in Pike County, Kentucky has voted to ban interracial couples from most church activities “to promote greater unity among the church body.”

Melvin Thompson, former pastor of Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, proposed the ban after Stella Harville brought her fiance, Ticha Chikuni, to services in June. Harville, who goes by the name Suzie, played the piano while Chikuni sang.

Before stepping down as pastor in August, Thompson told Harville that her fiance could not sing at the church again. Harville is white and Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe, is…

guess. read the rest here

Hat Tip, Aseem

Bachmann: Teaching Only Evolution Is ‘Censorship’

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Uffda …

At an education forum at the University of Northern Iowa this afternoon, GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said she favored the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in schools, saying that just teaching the science of evolution would be “censorship by government.” Asked by a Catholic student why it’s not a violation of the separation of church and state for a public school to teach the religiously-tinged theories, Bachmann said evolution is just a “theory”…

Read the rest.