I never liked Tucker Carlson.
Continue reading Best worse worst worster in days (Countdown) →

I would double my money instantly!

Hat tip: Counter Minds

The Minnesota Flu Hotline that I had mentioned earlier is a failure. The state is calling it a “hiccup.” Basically, no one can get through because a lot of people are calling in. The local news is reporting that they have yet to get through themselves or to see anyone get through.

Reports are that the state or its contractor were not expecting the volume of calls they are getting. I wonder why it did not occur to anyone that they would get a lot of calls DURING A PANDEMIC!!!!

Anyway, not to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but if you ARE sick and you REALLY do have the flu, and you ACTUALLY get through to the hotline (click link above to get the number) then maybe they’ll give you a script over the phone for tamiflu. Or so they say. Isn’t that interesting?

Map of newly extended certainty of Eurasian Neanderthal range. From Nature

It has for some time been difficult to assess the eastern limit of classic “Neanderthals.” Some have claimed that Neanderthals were limited to western Asia, others that they extended across much of Asia. The fossil remains themselves have been difficult to interpret. One reason for this is that Neanderthals are not different enough from other contemporary hominids to assert a similarity or difference for a particular fossil, unless you have enough of it, and the fossil record in Central Asia and East Asia for the relevant time period is a bit dicey. Most people agree that fossil material known from Uzbekistan is Neanderthal. That’s not very far east. Beyond that, there is only controversy and mystery.

Until now, perhaps…

Continue reading Go East, Young Neanderthal →

Surprise! That’s the name of a town in Arizona, and that’s where the victims in this particular story live. A young Iraqi-American woman was living a very westernized lifestyle, and that lifestyle would not play in Peoria. And by Peoria, I mean Peoria Arizona, where the young woman’s crazy “traditional” father lived.

Continue reading How to maintain traditional values: Run your daughter over with your car! →

Peter Tu masterfully crosses face recognition technology, the Naturalistic Fallacy, and engineering in Faces, brains and prairies, oh my.

OK, ENOUGH OF THIS. KTHXBYE.

[Documentation will be found here.]

Twitter had to shut down 33 bogus Twitter accounts that were created by Republicans in the name of Democratic state reps. The plan was to mock the democrats.

Mock THIS, Republicans nincompoops!!!

Details here

Hat tip, Bora’s Twitter Stream. … which for all I know is a total fake perpetrated by LIBERTARIANS!!!

Hold on a second…. Executive compensation will be reduced in the Pig Seven (the seven companies that split up the multi-deca-billion dollar bailout). The argument is against this is that with lower executive compensation, these executives will bail, go away, move to other companies.

Continue reading Don’t Slash Executive Compensation →

Pamela Ronald, author of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, is now a Sbling! She will be blogging at Tomorrow’s Table. Welcome Pamela!

David Sloan Wilson is famous for his work on group selection, a.k.a. multi-level selection, and it is quite a coup for Seed and Scienceblogs.com that he has joined our ranks. Please visit E4E and say hey.

People say that clinical trials have not been perforemd with H1N1 vaccine, so we can’t be sure it is safe. Clinical trials have been performed on the H1N1 vaccine. People say that the inhaled version of the vaccine give you the flu. The inhaled version does not give you the flu. Yes, it is a “live” virus … but only barely. Don’t listen to people. People are not as smart as they think they are.

Anyway, wired magazine is running a major story on this. I’ve not read the story, but I just saw the author interviewed on msnbc.com and it looks interesting.