To me, the Oakland Bay Bridge was always one of those bridges that made you think about bridges when you drove over it. It is very long (one of the longest in the world) and spans an arm of the sea. It is old, and there are earthquakes in the region now and then. So as you drive from one end to the other, it is impossible to marvel that the bridge was even built, and that it is still standing.
Continue reading The Scoop on the Bay Bridge →

“If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will.” — President George Bush, addressing the RNC via satellite feed, September 1, 2008

“I Am The Angry Left.” — T-Shirt seen at demonstration outside RNC, September 2, 2008. *

A criminal trial against Eight American Patriots is about to start in Saint Paul. These eight patriots armed themselves with information and guts and planned to attack dogma and repressive politics at the Republican National Convention. They were arrested, treated like animals, and pressed with trumped up charges, including an accusation of terrorism under a Minnesota state law that mirrors the oppressive Bush Anti-Patriot Act.

The right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms, and the right to due process are fundamental tenets of the American System of Democracy. The Original American Patriots carried out civil disobedience that culminated in the design and ratification of the Constitution that guarantees these rights. Please understand the connection. The original American Patriots knew what they had to do, they did it, then they built a system that would allow future generations a means to do the same thing if necessary. They made the American system one open to self-criticism and progressive change.
Continue reading I am the angry left (Repost from last election season) →

There appears to be a new blog at Science Blogs, and it is APPLIED STATISTICS!!!!! That’s the name of the blog, and that’s what it is about, and the blogger is Andrew Gelman. Welcome Andrew. We needed a stats blog, and it is very nice to have you here.

So now, a statistics joke:

Continue reading Scienceblogs Dot Com Has Stats!!! →

As promised, the footnotes for A True Ghost Story.
Continue reading A true ghost story: The Footnotes →

The McGregor Museum is a complex building with several wings surrounding an inner court yard, a multi-layered roof, balconies everywhere, and numerous trees in the court yard close in to the building. So, a cat can spend the heat of the day in the shaded crown of a tree, and the cool of the evening up on the building’s sun-warmed metal roof.

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The interior of the McGregor museum houses numerious exhibits. The old period rooms and hallways focus on the late 19th century, and other newer areas (not shown) have an excellent set of exhibits on archaeology, human evolution, and “San” rock art.

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Defending Kimberly.

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The dude in the kilt.

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The Gatling Gun. (A Gatling gun is an old fashioned machine gun.)

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A visitor to the museum checking for ghosts.

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Doing fieldwork in a game park.

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Possible “San” burial … which turned out to have no physical remains.

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Although no artifacts of note or bones were found in the burial, there were plenty of these. The scorpions were in a state of torpor, as it was winter.

The End

Finally, without any further interruption …
Continue reading A True Ghost Story Part 7: How I captured the Ghost of the McGregor Museum →

On July 20, Kevin Lily and two friends (Danielle Katz and Brian Coggan) left Bemidji, Minnesota to travel the length of the Mississippi River. They are raising money for local, national and international charities working to alleviate the global water crisis….

Details here

Since we are talking about geology, I do not want to give up the opportunity to bring up one of the coolest stories of geology ever, given the present day discussion of science and religion. You will be asking for a source for this story. Look it up in Wikipedia, where all knowledge resides, and you will not find it there.
Continue reading A True Ghost Story, Part 6: But first, since we’re talking geology … →

Dan Delong teaches English at Southwester High School in Piasa, Illinois. He has been suspended for assigning an article originally published in Seed Magazine called “The Gay Animal Kingdom.” If you are a teacher you know what to do.. download that article and assign it to all of your students as soon as possible!!!!

Here is a press report on this astounding event.

Here is a blog post by Jonathan Turley about The Banning.

Here is Mike Dunford’s blog post: Seed Magazine in the Classroom: Grounds for Suspending the Teacher??

One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
Continue reading A True Ghost Story Part 5: The Grave on the Hill →

By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right….

Please read this post at Real Climate and pass it on.

I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist.
Continue reading A True Ghost Story Part 4: I see dead people. Hey, It’s my job! →

Well, we were living with this ghost who would walk up and down the hall in the middle of the night, invisibly leaving behind only the sound of its footsteps. But before I tell you how this all came out, I want to tell you a related side story.

As I had mentioned, I had the “hallway extension” room. Let me explain.
Continue reading A True Ghost Story Part 3: Who is that kilted man with the big gun? →