Monthly Archives: January 2012

“Mitt walked up to me and said that he had some experience with the press …”

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Graham Smith has a nice piece on Mitt Romney’s activities protesting during the Viet Nam War. It includes an interesting photograph.

This will not bother many of those who support him, but anyone who is leaning right these days but who thought the Draft and the Viet Nam war was bad, might want to know about his activities. They were, of course, a long time ago, so it really does not matter much. What does matter is that he was protesting to retain the draft at the same time that he was exempt from it, which makes Mitt Romney a bit of a dick.

Rick Santorum, Primate

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Matt Thompson at Savage Minds discovered this: My much asteemed colleague Sara Hrdy (who wrote this book, and other books on this list) happen to use Santorum as an example in her writings of several years ago:

The abortion issue is notorious for generating so much “heat” and so little “light.” On this particular occasion, one of the senators debating the issue (Rick Santorum, Republican from Pennsylvania) became “so emotional” that the blood vessels leading to his stomach constricted, while those leading to his heart and brain dilated. Responding to signals from the most ancient portions of his brain, his pounding heart caused the face of this deeply threatened mammal to flush “crimson” in preparation for a fight. His voice rose to such a pitch that colleagues had to intervene.

That’s just a taste. Read the longer quote with context HERE.

Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?

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That, apparently, is one of a number of questions on a math assignment being used in the Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, part of the Gwinnett County, Georgia, School District. It was said to be a cross-curricular activity. This is part of one of the newer ways of teaching math … use the math in context of real life situations, etc. etc. Unfortuantely, this attempt at linking math to history class looks more like a helpful exercise for future plantation owners … of the Antebellum period.

A vice principle has collected the assignment and filed them in the shredder.

Details here.

Also, it is no “how much would each slave pick” but rather “how many would each slave pick.”

Do you hate dogs? Then Romney is your candidate!

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Yeah. Romney is the one who strapped a dog to the roof of his car and drove hundreds of miles while the dog freaked out. He used to tell the story all the time, for laughs, as I’m sure people listened to him with an insincere smile pasted on their faces waiting for him to finish.

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Read the whole story here.

Then, click here.

Who will win in New Hampshire and what will it mean?

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Ask anybody who knows anything and they’ll tell you that no one has ever won both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary and then failed to go on to win their party’s nomination. But look a little deeper and you’ll see that this is not a very firm model for what can happen in the upcoming primary. First, even though the New Hampshire Primary has been going on a long time, the Iowa Caucasus have only been running since 1972, which means there have been 10 of them. And the total number of times someone has won both is is once for the Democratic party (if you exclude sitting presidents or a vice president heir apparent) and the only time its ever happened with the Republicans (again, not counting sitting presidents or heir apparent VP’s) is, well, never. Continue reading Who will win in New Hampshire and what will it mean? →

MSNBC: Time to retire Buchanan (an open letter, reposted)

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I first wrote this on July 1, 2009. Finally, a possible result.

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Dear MSNBC,

I know it is appropriate to have a range of opinions among the talking heads representing a news agency, and MSNBC certainly does have a range. Pat Buchanan, regular commentator on two or three MSNBC news shows, probably serves at the most conservative individual in the MSNBC panoply.

But he has to go now. Continue reading MSNBC: Time to retire Buchanan (an open letter, reposted) →

Interesting Intelligent Design and Evolution Spat Going On

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Mike Haubrich, of Tangled Up in Blue Guy blog, has documented a discussion between a biologist, a commenter, and the Discovery Institute (a creationist “think” tank). No apes were harmed during this incident, but one of them may be rather embarrassed. It’s quite intresting, have a look: Cornelius Godsplains Science to a Scientist

More Speculation on Bachmann’s Future

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Aaron Blake at the Washington Post wrote this a couple of days ago but I missed it. It is still rather speculative, but the basic idea is that she would win if she ran for re-election to congress (a risky prediction given upcoming redistricting) but notes that her money supply has dried up and the shine is off her candidacy.

The fundraising prowess that Bachmann showed in her 2010 reelection campaign never really translated to the presidential campaign, for whatever reason. Yes, Bachmann raised decent money, but it seemed that as her campaign wore on, she became less and less a hero of the tea party movement. Given her poor showing in Iowa, we have to wonder whether she will retain the kind of cause celebre status that helped her raise an astounding $13 million for her last House reelection bid.

The redistricting is interesting, because Michele lives in the part of her district where she would have less support than other areas, and a redrawing of district boundaries in Minnesota will be required to make her district smaller. So, there is a certain chance that she’d find herself living (and thus required to run) in a district that wouldn’t vote for her.

What is needed, if she runs, is a better DFL strategy. So far the DFL has tried candidates that have features that make them more Bachmann like … former Republican, conservative, minister, etc. etc. What is needed here is are true liberal who is fast on his or her feet and can make people like them regardless of policy … a young and upcoming Paul Wellstone or Al Franken. A loss with a lot of important things said and severe damage done to the credibility of the Tea Party philosophic is the worst thing that can happen in such a case, and if Bachmann stumbles and the stars align just right, a victory by such a candidate over the Darling of the Tea Party would be awesome. And unlike everyone else I know, I don’t use the word “awesome” lightly!

Glock … the book, the gun, the gun nut.

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There is an interesting interview with Paul Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, published here. What I find most interesting about it is the way gun owners as a group are characterized. At several moments in time, private ownership of Glock pistols increased significantly for reasons that one would normally find explaining the behavior of toddlers, or dogs, or monkeys in an experimental setting, not sentient adult humans. For instance, the cops start using Glocks, and gun owners automatically want to use what the cops use. Or, a made up fictional Glock (the Glock 7) is described in a Lethal Weapon movie, where everything about it is wrong (remember, it’s fictional) and this enrages gun owners who run out and buy Glocks. And so on and so forth.

Now, one of the things that seems to rive Glock sales is the fact that they have been used in an increasingly larger number of tragic and horrific massacres on American soil. Somehow, the association with angry carnage and hateful violence makes American gun owners want one.

Glocks hold more ammo than other pistols, can be fitted with super-large ammo holders, and have a trigger that is very smooth making it easier for untalented amateurs to be better shots. Glocks should be banned.

A sad anniversary

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One year ago today, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was shot to death by Tuscon resident Jared Lee Loughner, using a 9 mm Glock automatic pistol with a high capacity ammunition clip. Seventeen other people were shot in that incident, a total of six of whom died. One of the injured was Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords, whom had already been “targeted” for removal by radical elements of the Republican Party. It is not clear that Loughner was acting as an agent of these radical elements, but it was widely thought at the time that his decision to attempt an assassination of the congresswoman was spurred on by the hateful and violent rhetoric, often laced with references to firearms, of the Tea Party Movement.

In Utah, you can carry a concealed weapon on campus

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And apparently that’s the only state where you can do that.

So, what’s the score card:

Number of times a mass killer started shooting people on campus but a student, staff member, or faculty member pulled out a gun and ended it right there: 0
Number of times a student was walking along on campus with a legal weapon concealed, that happened to be loaded and with no safety, and the gun went off and he ended up shooting himself in the leg: 1

We are not impressed.

Source.

Spider Silk on the Radio, Sunday Night

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Skeptically Speaking # 146

This week, we’re looking at some of nature’s most accomplished materials scientists, and the amazing substance they produce. We’re joined by Leslie Brunetta, co-author of Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating. We’ll discuss the form, function and uses of the sticky wonder material, and the ways that its study can help us understand evolution. And on the podcast, science writer Ed Yong tells us about silkworms with spider genes and the hybrid silk they spin.

We record live with Leslie Brunetta on Sunday, January 8 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, DATE.

Click Here for Details

Software Needs and Nerds

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I have two items for you. First, I’d like you to inspect this brilliant computer game and come up with a bash equivilant (or something that will run from the Linux Command Line). The current version of the program is 32 megabytes of some kind of DOS based source code. I’m sure we can do this in perl or awk as a couple of one liners kobbed together.

Second assignment. This could get you the prize in the now-getting-stale Land of Lisp Book Giveaway. Here’s what I want. I keep snippets of code and stuff in text files. For instance, I have a standardized org-mode header that sets a lot of common options I like fr making html files (I use it for these to process Ana’s Feed) and another for pdf files. Here’s what I want, and there is more than one way to do it:

I need a utility that quickly and easily with no fuss and no muss sucks the contents (text) out of a text file (well, a copy of it) and puts it on my clipboard. I might like this to be the X clipboard so I can use it anywhere, but I’d be happy with it going onto the kill ring. But, it has to be something implemented from a gnome interface, or nautilus. For instance, as a nautilus macro that calls some code that affects the currently running instance of emacs, so I can find the file with the snippet in nautilus, right click on it and chose “suck the text out” and then, magically, the text is now on my clipboard.

Thank you very much.

Report Suspicious Behavior

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A black four door older model caddy in need of some body work and a new muffler turned into our street. The car drove quickly but furtively, the driver seeming to not quite know where she wanted to go, to the end of the faux cul-du-sac off of which each development’s street radiated. A sharp left turn brought the vehicle next to a large storm sewer inlet, and out of the car flew a suspicious black thing with wires. The car roared off, too quickly to get the plate but not too quickly to be able to describe it and its occupants.

An electronic, repetitive, alarm-like noise emanated from the sewer, presumably from the object left behind.

A phone call is made.

“911, state your emergency” Continue reading Report Suspicious Behavior →