As you know, my nephew LeRoy is a contestant on the X Factor. I expect you to go vote for him on Tuedsay, OK? Assuming there is voting. I’m not sure how it works, actually.
Anyway, here’s LeRoy getting through the last round (and some other guy):
Monthly Archives: October 2011
My baby was designed by god just like a banana
When my baby nurses from his mom, he can see her face and bond with her because he was designed to do so by god. Like how a banana is designed by god to fit comfortably in the hand for eating, or maybe just carrying around.
What am I talking about?
Continue reading My baby was designed by god just like a banana
BOYCOTT!!!!11!!
When do you go from not wanting to buy a product or patronize a service (pay to see a movie, hire a lawyer, etc.) to bothering to try to convince others to do the same as you, to engaging in or calling for a boycott, to trying to get a law passed or regulation implemented so on one else can do the thing you have decided you don’t want to do yourself?
Floods: Don’t go in them.
As an archaeologist, my expertise in the cognate field of geology includes fluvial processes, so I know something about floods. And I’ve experienced plenty of floods working in the Hudson and Mohawk river valleys … now that I think of it, I’ve got quite a few good flood stories. But the most significant experience I’ve had with flooding happened in about a foot of water.
It was in the Congo, at Senga, a location I’ve written about before. Our camp was on one side of a wash right where it entered the Semliki River, and the excavation was on the other side of the wash, but since the digging all occurred during the dry(ish) season, that was never an issue. But when the excavation was over, and almost everyone went home, those of us left behind to do our own non-excavation research projects experienced a number of good rains.
Continue reading Floods: Don’t go in them.
What is scarier than Halloween?
What is scarier than Halloween?
1804
Lewis and Clark struck out on their famous expedition. Alexander Hamilton was shot to death in a duel. Morphine is invented. Short distance transport is done on foot or horses, long distance on clipper ships or packets. The world population reaches 1 billion.
1927, over a century later
Horses are still widely used but some people are driving around in cars and trains have been in use for almost a century. The War of 1812, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War 1 have all come and gone. The first transatlantic phone call is made. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is probably formulated. A total of about six hominid fossils are known. Carving of Mount Rushmore commences. The world population reaches 2 billion.
1960
Cars, trains, and increasingly planes are the main Western form of transit. World War II and the Korea War have passed. Independence in the Belgian Congo. France tests an atomic bomb. Kennedy is nominated. A total of about a dozen hominid fossils are known. I exist. The world population reaches 3 billion.
1974
The Vietnam War is just ending. We’ve been to the moon. Skylab 4 crew returns to earth after breaking a record for stay in orbit. I get my first job. There are now dozens of hominid fossils known and most major genera are known. The 60s happened. India detonates a nuclear bomb. The world population reaches 4 billion.
1987
Disco has come and gone and U2 is famous. Mathias Rust is placed on trial and the Soviet Union teeters on collapse. The first National Coming Out day happens. I’m in graduate school and working in Zaire. The world population reaches five billion.
1999
The music scene has not changed much. Transportation technology has not changed. World politics are about the same. I switched from Zaire to South Africa for field work and am about to move to Minnesota. Hugo Chavez elected President of Venezuela. Spongebob Squarepants airs for the first time. The World Population reaches six billion.
2011
Michael Jackson has died. Cell phones have changed a lot but other technology remains similar. The war in Iraq is winding down. I’m working on some of the same stuff I was working on in 1999. The world population reaches seven billion on or about Halloween.
Let me rephrase this slightly
Bachmann calls for increase on taxes for wealthiest Americans.
“For my tax plan, I take a page out of one of my great economists that I admire, Ronald Reagan,” Bachmann boasted. “And under my tax plan I want to adopt the Reagan tax plan. It brought the economic miracle of the 1980s. Why not go with what works? I want to reinstitute the Reagan tax model from the 1980s.”
Should Punishment For ‘Negligent Shooting’ Be Harsher?
When two teens were shot in an apparent hunting accident, the family wanted to know why not more was done to the teen responsible.
TORNADO — On August 8, Keith Holsopple was hunting squirrels with two teenage friends. It would end with he and another friend being peppered with shotgun pellets in their arms.
“It was like claws digging into my arm and being pulled out slowly,” said Holsopple. “Blood was squirting everywhere.”10 pellets are still under Holsopple’s skin and full mobility could take as long as a year to return.
The teen who fired the shotgun has not been charged with any crime. According to Dwight Holsopple, Keith’s father, he was banned from getting a hunting permit for a number of years.
Should the National Cathedral get Government Funding?
When the news first broke that the National Cathedral in Washington DC was damaged by the famous earthquake that hit the region last summer, I had two thoughts: 1) They are probably including on the list of needed repairs things that were already extant before the quake and 2) They are probably going to ask for government money to fix this.
But then I looked into the current news reports and found out that the National Cathedral has always been privately funded. I did not accept that as, shall we say, gospel, but I stopped worried about it, and then went on with other things.
But then I ran into this:
Continue reading Should the National Cathedral get Government Funding?
Van Gogh’s Cowboy Boys Shakespeare’s Pot
Although one can not be certain, all the evidence points to the fact that William Shakespeare smoked pot. This is not a new story. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Francis Thackeray, who has never smoked pot in his life but who has acted in Shakespeare’s plays numerous times, led a research team that put 2 and 2 together and came up with narcotic literary munchies. In Shakespeare’s time, land owners were required to grow pot in order to provide fibers for making the rope needed hoist the sails and flags over the increasingly powerful British Navy and merchant vessels. One of the better depictions of Shakespeare’s face shows the well known smoker’s mark, a feature that forms when one habitually smokes with a kaolin tobacco pipe. Thackeray masterfully identifies numerous passages in Shakespeare’s work that strongly indicate that he partook of the weed but not of stronger narcotics such as cocaine. But, that was all mentioned in code; Elizabethan England did not exactly have “drug laws” as we know of them today (though substances were controlled, legal, or not legal, depending). The main problem was that drug use was considered Witchcraft, and even though smoking various things was either legal or not depending on which Monarch was in charge, Witchcraft was always going to get you … well, stoned. As in crushed by them. (Or hung or burned at the stake, though rarely the latter … why waste good fuel.)
Continue reading Van Gogh’s Cowboy Boys Shakespeare’s Pot
Colonel Gadaffi’s last stand – animated
The Secular Side of Marriage Equality
Minnesota Atheists has been fighting for decades to keep religion out of government, according to August Berkshire, the group’s president.
When three same-sex couples were denied marriage licenses in Hennepin County for their sexual orientation, filed a lawsuit in March 2010 to strike down the Minnesota Defense of Marriage Act and then lost, the atheists took notice.
LA Schools To Turn Totally Gay!!!
Somebody just sent me a letter giving the good news:
Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected by any urban effects, and if urban areas are a) warmer than surrounding areas and b) increasingly warm over time then “global warming” may well be an artifact of the urban heat island effect. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a hoax, but it would make it wrong. We would then have to revise our understanding of certain aspects of physics because we expect global warming to occur in CO2 levels go up, but physics has been revised before. Kepler was wrong, Newton was wrong, maybe the climate change scientists are wrong too.
Some time ago a study was funded by a number of organizations and individuals, including some who are famously skeptical of global warming (such as the Charles G. Koch foundation) in order to see if urban heat island effects could explain the famous “Hockey Stick” curve. The study was supposed to be non-biased, and it may well be, but if there are any biases they would likely be in favor off anti-Global Warming thinking, or perhaps “pro-denialist” or “anti-warmist” … pick your term.
Well, just moments ago, the study was released and the findings are quite interesting. I have to admit, I was not expecting these findings at all, and they have caused me to change my mind about certain things. Which is fine, because that is how science works, but still, I was rather shocked.
Continue reading Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Do Urban Heat Islands Explain the Global Warming Hockey Stick Curve?
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected by any urban effects, and if urban areas are a) warmer than surrounding areas and b) increasingly warm over time then “global warming” may well be an artifact of the urban heat island effect. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a hoax, but it would make it wrong. We would then have to revise our understanding of certain aspects of physics because we expect global warming to occur in CO2 levels go up, but physics has been revised before. Kepler was wrong, Newton was wrong, maybe the climate change scientists are wrong too….
Our Conversations Are Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day
I am having a conversation with my friend, Pat. We are talking about the way we talk when we have a chance to spend some time, or the way our emails seem to go.
“I tire of being asked what I think about something only to have the conversation derailed at the first ‘bump’ in my logic, at the first self-contradiction,” Pat says, of life in general.
My response: “I savor your contradictions. It is my desire to explore them with you and to experience the change that happens when you wrestle with them.”
“Yes, I think you get it. How refreshing.”
As you can see, Pat and I have a deeply meaningful relationship. Enviable, in fact. It is based on not knowing things that we want to know, and how to fix that. There is also an element of bringing unformed or poorly formed thoughts to the table, cutting them up like a fruit salad, and enjoying them. Our conversations are like a cold fruit salad on a dusty hot summer day. Yes, very, very refreshing.
But not everybody has the opportunity to interact that way. This is because all utterances are questionable, if you want them to be. All communications are subject to measurement against a standard that one can easily justify as “Teh Standard,” even though one has merely pulled it out of one orifice or another. In fact, there is a place where that kind of communication is favored, revered, honed and practiced, and imposed by force of will and repetition on those who do not come to the table oppositional in affect and armed with snark.
That place is known…as the blogosphere.
But, dear reader, that is a feature of the blogosphere that I generally don’t like, even though it can be amusing, it can be productive, and it can bring lots of page views to my hit-counter. I don’t like it even though I am as capable as the next person of doing damage with printed word, baiting the most wary of trolls, and turning and churning the most innocent of conversation until it becomes vile like ogre piss. I don’t like it because I find it inhumane. I find it not the way I want to interact, not the way I want to understand. It is bitter roots and rotten offal. It is not a refreshing fruit salad on a dusty, hot, summer day.
Continue reading Our Conversations Are Like a Cold Fruit Salad on a Dusty, Hot, Summer Day