Monthly Archives: August 2010

SOS: Racist working class rednecks dragging the rest of us down with their fear.

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Hey, if the media gets this, what do you think will happen?

The YouTube video comes with this text:

A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him. I told him that I hoped it did not ruin his day.

Finishing Up the Political Process

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Jim Emery’s series is complete, and you should look through it. I find it interesting that he speaks about the “Macaca moment” and all that entails, given the current situation in the Minnesota Governor’s race.

Jim’s posts describe what it was like to be in the communications division of a major congressional campaign:

Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota

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I’ve become very interested in Minnesota history, and by interested I mean annoyed in many cases. The first thing white Minnesotans did was to exploit the Indians. The second thing they did was to throw the Indians out, move them to reservations, kill them, and otherwise treat them very poorly. Meanwhile, they got going on the process of cutting down 90 percent of the trees in the state. Even New York State, where I grew up, did not have such wanton destruction of the forests, and Whitie had two hundred more years to do it there. They also killed off most of the wolves. Oh, and both wolves and Indians had actual monetary bounties on them. Both Indians and Wolves were killed for bounty in times recent enough that the average old Minnesotan white person may have had a parent or grandparent involved in that business.

I’m also very interested in Sherlock Holmes. My interest is partly because they are fun stories, but it goes deeper than that. I’m interested in semiotics, and the Holmes stories have been investigated and discussed in that context. I’m interested in race and racism, and the Holmes stories are a window int the inter-ethnic attitudes of colonial period England. I’m interested in South Africa, and these stories overlap in time with major events related to the British and South Africa, including the largest and most intense war ever fought by Britain to date. And so on.

So, how do these things relate? Well …
Continue reading Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota →

“A new theory of evolution proves what Sarah Palin has always known: Darwin was a retard”

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As I predicted earlier today, various journalists are taking up the theme that “Darwin was wrong” because he did not predict that niches into which organisms evolved would be a major controlling feature in the overall pattern of evolution.

But of course, he did, and the new research being referred to does not “disprove darwin.”

At least the piece I’m referring to here takes a somewhat tongue in cheek attitude towards the story.

Continue reading “A new theory of evolution proves what Sarah Palin has always known: Darwin was a retard” →

Less than a week to private space launch

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In which an actual living person, instead of just the ashes of TV actors, will be launched into space.

Here’s a picture of the rocket and it’s friend, the submarine:

i-80de3e46097605e8b70cd384ad80319e-Sub_rocket01.jpg

Our mission is very simple. We are working towards launching a human being into space.
This is a non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, based entirely on sponsors and volunteers.


Click here to find out more, and if you like, give them money.

I’ve never been paid a dime by a Democrat

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Obviously, I have to switch parties:

Katie Couric once described bloggers as journalists who gnaw at new information “like piranhas in a pool.” But increasingly, many bloggers are also secretly feeding on cash from political campaigns, in a form of partisan payola that erases the line between journalism and paid endorsement.

“It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.”

Whoa. Sign up here!

More on being a dick

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Don’t be a random, arbitrary dick. Be meaningful and relevant in your dickosity:

If your dickishness is going to help you communicate the values of skepticism, it has to relate, directly and immediately, to the circumstances that warrant anger.

Read the rest here

And then, if you want to know everything else about this topic, click here. Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen. Just. Click. It. Trust me.

Danielle is back UPDATE

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Danielle is a hurricane again. Not real well organized but showing signs of getting its act together, Danielle will likely continue to strengthen for a couple/few days, remain a hurricane for a couple of days, then start weakening in about five days. This is all going to happen out in the middle of the Atlantic, which is, of course, where Bermuda is. But, there are no coastal warnings in effect now.

The other system that has been forming A number, “7”, has been given to the system that has been developing in the vicinity of the Cape Verde islands is getting better organized and will probably become a tropical depression within the next few hours. It is fully expected that this will become a major storm by the end of this week. Stay tuned.

TD 7 is fairly large and wel defined, with visible cyclonic curvy bands. TD 7, just named because it just got organized enough to be a depression, will probably become a tropical storm very soon, probably by mid afternoon. Then, what will be a named tropical storm (Earl, I believe) will continue to travel across the very warm Atlantic Ocean and become a full blown hurricane by Saturday or so.

Danielle has left a path in its wake for Earl to follow. This and other factors suggest that the fast forming and very likely intense Earl will veer north and head out into the middle of the Atlantic.

However, if Earl is very strong, and other conditions change somewhat, it may not be the case that this storm will dissipate in the middle of the ocean. It is too early to say. Keep an eye on this one.

It is also worth noting that the track of this storm … and this is a bit early to say this but nobody’s paying me to be right here …. seems more directly aimed at Bermuda. If I lived in Bermuda I’d buy an umbrella this week.