From MetroWeekly:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, education, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

Here’s the attempted Launch this morning of the SpaceX rocket ship, which would have been the first non governmental flight to the International Space Station. Listen to the chatter to learn all sorts of great jargon!

Details here.

Fewer White People than Other-Than-White-People are being born in the US, which means eventually there won’t be too many white people. It’s about time.

Almost all societies in the world allow, often encourage, marriage between cousins. There are reasons for this which I shall blog about if you remind me to. But for now, here is a discussion on the topic you will find interesting.

More on those climate change billboards.

At some point, while I was in graduate school, it became apparent that I was going to study the problem of finding one’s way around. Navigation, orientation, mental maps, sense of direction, knowledge of the landscape, and related ideas must be linked to how people who live off the land survive, and I was studying the foraging ecology of Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest. One of the things I realized early on is that it is very easy to find something in the rain forest, as long as one simple thing is true: You already know where it is. Otherwise, you are sunk.

Wait, what does this have to do with tiny compasses in bird brains? Click here to find out.

There are certain thing you should do and certain things you should not do. But whatever you don, don’t do what Daniel Donno, visiting the Twin Cities from Wales (apparently) did in the wee hours of the morning today.

He had stolen a car (who knows why) and led the police on an extensive chase avoiding stop strips, and generally evading capture. Eventually, he got to the bridge on highway 63 that goes over the river into Wisconsin. The police decided to break of the chase (and, presumably, to call the Wisconsin State Troopers to let them know about the stolen car that just drove into their territory, tough I don’t know this for certain).

Not realizing that he was no longer being chased by the cops, but while the cops were still watching the bridge, Donno stopped the car and jumped into the river.

Annoyed, the police called the other police who rescue people from water. They went down the river in a boat and found him flailing around out in the middle.

Donno then refused to be rescued, so the cops got a bunch of boats around him and corralled him, then pulled him out of the water.

He will be charged with fleeing police, speeding, reckless driving, disobeying a stop sign, and car theft. The Coen brothers have already started negotiation with Donno’s agent to use his character in their next movie.

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The conversation was about car pooling during World War II:
Continue reading The earliest known example of Godwining a converation →

Walker has something like 30 million dollars in his campaign war chest. If you are going to donate to any race outside your state, this would be the one and this would be the time. The election is SOON, on June 5th.

Right?

This has come up recently in relation to a comedian hired at a major atheist conference who was so offensive people left and got mad and even blogged about it. The argument has been made that you can say whatever you want and it isn’t really offensive if you are a comedian … people just have to decide if they think you are funny or not, and the possibility that somewhere out there in the world there just might be one person who does think you are funny makes it OK.

But that, it turns out, isn’t at all how it works.

Scott Hanselman has a post on “old people icons” that don’t make sense any more. This is one of those posts I’ve always wanted two write but never got to (or have I? … can’t remember).

The most obvious one is of course the floppy disk for “Save” long abandoned by Gnome and replaced with a down arrow (which makes zero sense, but whatever). One I had not thought of is the radio button, which of course matches those old radios with the buttons… The radio button as a convention in a dialog box makes total sense in and of itself. Calling it a radio button is of course atavistic.

He includes clipboards for cut and paste. This is out of place a bit, because a clipboard still makes sense as a thing (we still use them) but they NEVER made sense as “cut and paste.” There were at one time icons used that did sort of make more sense … a paste jar with a brush … anybody remember what products use that?

Scott has many more, go take a look. I especially like some of the absurdities he points out such as “At some time in the past the magnifying glass became the “search everywhere” icon, but for some reason binoculars are for searching within a document.”

My Greek-linked contacts tell me that he Golden Dawn (read: Nazi) WordPress website has been taken down, WordPress having been informed by the broader international community (THIS MEANS YOU!!!) about the violation of terms of service. Good for WordPress!

Now, according to the same sources, Golden Dawn has a new blog hosted by Google on Blogger. Time for a new petition!

It is here.

We call on Google to follow the example of WordPress and stop providing a free platform for Golden Dawn’s hate speech and intimidation of journalists by suspending the official Golden Dawn blogs hosted on their platform.

Click through and read the details, and you’ll see that it makes sense and you’ll want to sign it, I’m sure.

There are two items that I’ve posted on Scienceblogs that might be of interest to readers here:

Does the Internet need an HR Department?
Settling Conflicts: Guns and Homeschooling

Interesting discussions are emerging on both threads.