Monthly Archives: May 2012

Signs will be in both native and immigrant’s languages in northern Minnesota

Apropos recent discussion on Native American issues in Minnesota, we have this from MinnPost:

Tourists visiting Bemidji this summer may pick up a few words of a “foreign” language.

That’s because the first city on the Mississippi River way north in Minnesota may be the only town off a reservation trying to incorporate the area’s indigenous Ojibwe language into daily life.

All over town Ojibwe language signs are posted right alongside English language labels, and for a just cause. The signage is part of a broader effort to preserve the language spoken by an estimated 60,000 persons across areas of the northern United States and into Canada as well as to bridge cultural divides between whites and American Indians.

Words such as “boozhoo,’’ an Ojibwe word for “welcome” and many other Native American terms crop up around town, in an appliance store, the local hospital, the convention center, a local coffee shop, and this spring in the public schools. …

Human Conflict

Science Magazine is running a “Science Voices” series of short essays by members of the science community on the topic of Human Conflict. So far there are four or five, and they cover conflict from a wide range of perspectives. You can see them all here.

I’ve written one on conflict in the blogosphere which will probably be up on the Sciencemag site by the time you read this.

The topics I touched on in my short essay are very familiar to you as readers of this and other blogs, and they mostly have to do with social and to a lesser extent political problem in “meatspace” and how those conflicts play out in the blogosphere. A few days back I wrote two “hub” posts intended to tie together some of these discussion. One addressed gun control and homeschooling as topics we’ve dealt with here (and on The X Blog). That post has engendered quite a bit of discussion about both topics, though mostly in the area of Homeschooling which, in my opinion, is a topic where we have NOT made much progress.

The other post–Does the Internet need an HR Department?–is very closely related to a topic that emerged from the recently Women in Secularism conference organized by the CFI. That discussion is currently developing quickly at the Richard Dawkins Foundation site and at Almost Diamonds. It appears that people are taking my suggestion that we look to professional HR experts to find a good solution to sexism in the secular community and elsewhere.

I hope you pick a spot–this post or one of those referenced above–and join the conversation!


Photo courtesy of Feggy Art

Can Blogs Be Used to Resolve Conflicts?

Someone is always wrong on the Internet. The idea that the most free-wheeling part of the Internet–blogs–would be a place where conflict is resolved seems laughable. The detachment of argument from social cues normally used to moderate our conversations combined with the intentional sloughing off of civil norms means that the only resolution that happens here might be the screen resolution of your computer. It would be easy to say that the Internet is where conflict is born, not resolved.

But that would miss an important point…

Read more (and comment!)

An important revelation regarding Heartland Gate (global warming denialism)

Peter Gleick has been cleared of faking a key memo. Who is Peter Gleick, and what is this memo of which we speak? Here is a refresher of events over the last 3 1/2 months:

You will recall that last February 14th, we were all given an interesting Valentine’s Day present: A cache of documents had been acquired from the Heartland Institute, and these documents revealed important details about Heartland’s effort to interfere with science education and otherwise agitate and lobby to promote climate science denialism. The documents were released to the public by an as then unknown activist, and then redistributed by numerous bloggers including this one.

Heartland is the organization that made itself famous by working for the tobacco lobby in their effort to prove that smoking cigarettes was not really harmful. Over recent years, Heartland has received funds from a wide range of organizations and individuals to support climate denialism. Most recently, Heartland gained considerable notoriety (the bad kind) with their noxious and ill-conceived billboard campaign that equated “believing in global warming” with being a deranged serial killer (Tool Time: Heartland, Ted Kaczynski, and Education).

Continue reading An important revelation regarding Heartland Gate (global warming denialism)

I personally put Al Franken in the Senate

Today is Minnesota Senator Al Franken’s Birthday. In honor of that, I’m reposting this historically accurate and important essay, which first appeared on this blog on April 23, 2009 at 3:56PM:

I personally put Al Franken in the Senate

Al Franken is about to be seated as the Junior Senator from Minnesota after a long and costly battle between loser Norm Coleman and Senator Franken. Al won the election by just a few hundred votes, and three of those votes are mine.

Continue reading I personally put Al Franken in the Senate

NAACP Endorses Same Sex Marriage

From MetroWeekly:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, education, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

TED Talks didn’t want you to see this video:

The Washington Post notes:

Chris Anderson, head honcho at TED, has responded to Nick Hanauer’s claims that his TED talk was censored. TED, Anderson says, tries “to steer clear of talks that are bound to descend into the same dismal partisan head-butting people” and that Hanauer “framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan.” The upshot, though, is that he’s letting viewers decide for themselves.

Chris Anderson was abysmally wrong to call this partisan. Who’s funding Ted anyway?1

See Also:

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1AT&T, Autodesk, Blackberry, Cokacola, Delta, GE, IBM, Intel, Johnson&Johnson, Kauffman Foundation, Levis, Pioneer, Rolex, Santander, Shell, Stellcase, J. and J. Knight, Tiffany, Walmart, (Red), Adobe, Akamai, Aljazeera Network, Allianz, AOL, ARUP, Audi, Baille Gifford, bing, Cengage, Cisco, Coffee Common, Datatran Media, T Dewar’s, Direct Brands Inc, Dow, Genantech, GM, 10,000 women, Goldstar, Google, Grameen America, GREY, Gucci, Hyundai, Ideo, Jawbone, Jack Spade, Liberty Mutual, Loncoln, LObard Odier, Lynda.com, Microsoft, Newegg.com, OVI Nokia, Pfizer, Qatar Museums Authority, Benault Nissan, Siemens, Sony, Syfy, Target, Toyota, University of British Columbia, Walt Disney, Wipro, Women at NBCU, Workspring.

Hat tip: 99% Miles.

Links you should visit:

Fewer White People than Other-Than-White-People are being born in the US, which means eventually there won’t be too many white people. It’s about time.

Almost all societies in the world allow, often encourage, marriage between cousins. There are reasons for this which I shall blog about if you remind me to. But for now, here is a discussion on the topic you will find interesting.

More on those climate change billboards.

Finally, we’ve got enough white people and can now move on to other things!

From the New York Times:

After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

It’s about time. I was getting really tired of all these white people everywhere.

Pigeon Navigation: Just as long suspected, they've got cellular compasses

At some point, while I was in graduate school, it became apparent that I was going to study the problem of finding one’s way around. Navigation, orientation, mental maps, sense of direction, knowledge of the landscape, and related ideas must be linked to how people who live off the land survive, and I was studying the foraging ecology of Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest. One of the things I realized early on is that it is very easy to find something in the rain forest, as long as one simple thing is true: You already know where it is. Otherwise, you are sunk.

Wait, what does this have to do with tiny compasses in bird brains? Click here to find out.

If you are ever being chased by the police …

There are certain thing you should do and certain things you should not do. But whatever you don, don’t do what Daniel Donno, visiting the Twin Cities from Wales (apparently) did in the wee hours of the morning today.

He had stolen a car (who knows why) and led the police on an extensive chase avoiding stop strips, and generally evading capture. Eventually, he got to the bridge on highway 63 that goes over the river into Wisconsin. The police decided to break of the chase (and, presumably, to call the Wisconsin State Troopers to let them know about the stolen car that just drove into their territory, tough I don’t know this for certain).

Not realizing that he was no longer being chased by the cops, but while the cops were still watching the bridge, Donno stopped the car and jumped into the river.

Annoyed, the police called the other police who rescue people from water. They went down the river in a boat and found him flailing around out in the middle.

Donno then refused to be rescued, so the cops got a bunch of boats around him and corralled him, then pulled him out of the water.

He will be charged with fleeing police, speeding, reckless driving, disobeying a stop sign, and car theft. The Coen brothers have already started negotiation with Donno’s agent to use his character in their next movie.